Cross-Posted from Teacher Beat, by Education Week's Stephen Sawchuk

Could teacher evaluations begin to offer us the best portrait yet of what instruction actually looks like in America's classrooms? And what changes might such information spur in teacher preparation and on-the-job training?

Those are implications raised by a couple of different papers looking at teacher evaluations. I've written about them on this blog before, but only from the technical aspects of the systems. In reviewing the reports again, it strikes me that they also have a lot to say about instructional quality--some of which seems frankly troubling.

First up is the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's most recent release from its Measures of Effective Teaching study. As part of the study, observers scored thousands of taped teacher lessons against a bunch of different teaching frameworks.

The key data are in the charts on Pages 26-7. In essence, no matter what framework was used, teachers got higher scores on procedural tasks like planning and behavior management, but relatively low scores on things like "analysis and problem solving," "using investigation/problem-based approaches," "student participation in making meaning and reasoning," and "relevance to history and current events."

Second, the Consortium on Chicago School Research recently released final results from that city's pilot implementation of the Danielson Framework for Teaching and found similar results. Here, too, teachers generally scored lower on the domains of "using questioning and discussion techniques" and "engaging students in learning" than on managing the classroom. (See Page 14 of the report.)

It's worth pointing out, by the way, that the Chicago study also found that principals were not much better at using these techniques than teachers: They struggled to ask questions to elicit good information from teachers on their practice during the post-evaluation conferences.

The findings would appear to highlight some fairly consistent weaknesses in instruction and raise big question marks for teacher and leadership preparation--especially since the common-core state standards call for teachers to help students master precisely these kinds of higher-order reasoning and analytical skills.

Most educators in our field would agree that teachers should enter the classroom with a good repertoire of pedagogical techniques. Equally important, principals should know how to get appropriate assistance for a teacher who isn't quite up to snuff.

There's room for other interpretations in these findings, of course, such as whether the No Child Left Behind Act's focus on basic-skills tests has shifted the focus of instruction. We do know that the NCLB law has caused changes in teacher practices, but we don't know all that much about what the instructional process actually looks like in most places.

(Education Week receives Gates grant support. )

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New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, never one to shy a way from expressing contempt for teachers' unions, is calling for the executive director of the New Jersey union to resign for comments he made regarding poor families, reports NorthJersey.com.

During a discussion about vouchers on NJTV, New Jersey Education Association chief Vincent Giordano responded to the host's comment that many families can't afford to pull their kids out of underperforming public schools by saying, "Life's not always fair and I'm sorry about that." (NJEA has historically opposed school vouchers.)

According to NorthJersey.com, the Republican governor said he was "disgusted" but "not the least bit surprised" by Giordano's comment. He contended that if Giordano does not resign, the NJEA president should fire him.

Steve Wollmer, spokesman for the NJEA, called Christie's remarks an "obvious political attack." He told the news site that Giordano's comment was "open to misinterpretation" and that the NJEA has long supported disadvantaged students. "We will put our record on urban education up against the governor's anytime anywhere," said Wollmer.

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Ward Elementary School in Winston-Salem, N.C., has created a unique program to promote reading and exercise by having students do both at the same time, according to the Winston-Salem Journal. Through the "Read and Ride" program, students exercise on donated stationary bicycles while reading a book or magazine. Started in 2009 by school counselor Scott Ertl, the program conducts 15-minute reading and riding classes for students in the trailer behind the school.

Ertl told the paper that since the program is voluntary, the impact on students is difficult to quantify. The school has not gathered data on whether students' test scores have gone up, or drawn any conclusions as to its effect on health. In addition, the counselor says that while some teachers praise the concept, not all of them embrace the idea of having to use class time to let their students participate in the program.

But some teachers appear to appreciate the idea. "So many (students) associate reading with sitting at their desk," said teacher Katie Garcia. "It kind of opens their eyes that they can pull out a book and read anywhere."

According to the Journal, other schools that have taken up similar reading and cycling programs include Naperville Central High School in Illinois and Russell Jones Elementary School in Rogers, Ark. The paper notes that Russell saw more growth in their reading benchmark tests among classes who participated in the program than those who did not. A similar program in a Canadian school showed both academic and health gains.

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Last month, the Chicago Architecture Foundation launched DiscoverDesign.org, a free Web-based learning tool aimed at getting students excited about architecture. According to the website, it "empowers teens to gain architectural skills, learn green design principles, engage in problem solving, and connect to an online community of their peers, their teachers and design professionals around the world."

The site lists various design projects with step-by-step guides to help students develop and implement their ideas. Students can choose to design anything from a new school locker to a new technology wing for a school. Once their projects are complete, students can upload their work to the site and receive feedback and comments from teachers, architects, design professionals, and other students.

This month, the foundation announced that they will be conducting a national design competition. The project challenges high school students to redesign their school cafeteria for healthy eating in a sustainable space.

Posted by Francesca Duffy at 5:12 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Over the last few years, the teacher-evaluation debate has revolved mainly around whether—or to what extent—value-added scores should be involved. Since most researchers and educators agree an evaluation system needs multiple measures, there's also been some discourse around observations—how often they should occur and who should perform them. But for the most part, the same proposals for revamping evaluation systems have been recycled over and over.

However, just this week, two somewhat novel teacher-evaluation ideas crossed our desks here at Teacher. (A bizarre but pleasant surprise—not unlike the string of 60-degree days we've been enjoying this first week in February!)

Yesterday, we spoke with Ryan Balch, a former teacher and current Ph.D. student at Vanderbilt University who is doing research on the use of student surveys in teacher evaluations. The idea of using student surveys in and of itself is not a novel one—in fact, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Measures of Effective Teaching project incorporates student feedback as well. But Balch says his survey, unlike others, allows students to be more objective in their answers by asking for the frequency of a teacher's behaviors rather than a qualitative judgment of them. Balch also uses screening procedures to eliminate surveys he deems outliers—generally ones in which students appear not to have read the questions.

Balch conducted a pilot survey with 250 schools in Georgia and found strong correlations between the survey answers and teachers' value-added rankings. His next challenge is to determine whether students might alter their answers if they know the results could affect teacher pay or job status.

As for the second idea, a hat tip goes to The Washington Post's Jay Mathews. In his blog Class Struggle, Mathews describes the "wild" idea for improving evaluations proposed by a (brace for it...) non-educator. Luke Chung, the president of a software development company who was asked to serve on an evaluation task force in a Virginia district, offered what's essentially a new spin on peer review. The idea leverages the fact that teachers, to some extent, are at the mercy of how effective their students' previous teachers were—"like a production line." Mathews explains:

Downstream teachers should assess upstream teachers, as Chung put it. That means a teacher should evaluate the teachers who had her students in their classes the year before by judging what those students brought with them to her class, including behavior, curiosity and other non-tested traits. ... Systems such as D.C. public schools rate teachers in part by how much each of their students improves on standardized tests, but a downstream teacher would probably see improvements the tests missed.

The idea was, not surprisingly, politely dismissed by the task force, writes Mathews. (Chung said the group thought it would be "foreign and frightening" for new teachers to be in a position to evaluate veterans. Seems like there might be some objectivity issues as well, to say the least.)

Have other seemingly novel teacher-evaluation ideas come your way? Should school and district leaders (and non-educators, for that matter, like Chung) be thinking outside the box, or are we already on the right track for designing the most effective teacher evaluations?

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In a lively podcast, Jeffrey Wilhelm, a professor of English Education at Boise State University, discusses the preliminary research behind his forthcoming book—the wonderfully titled Let Them Read Trash: The Power of Marginalized Texts to Promote Imagination, Satisfaction, and Social Action. Wilhelm's bottom line, as his title suggests, is that the types of narrative works teens are drawn to outside of school, while often "scary" and even "loathsome" to the adults in their lives, can have deep educational and developmental value.

Drawing on interviews with students, he says that such works—ranging from dystopian novels to vampire sagas to video games—help kids forge relationships, deepen conceptual knowledge, and process internal conflicts and transitions. "Vampires and teens have a lot of similarities," he notes suggestively (and, well, accurately).

Wilhelm advises teachers to make such works available to students (without necessarily "championing" them) and to give students a safe environment to reflect on their reading experiences and how fictional narratives connect to their lives. This can have "functional payoffs" for teachers, too, he said, by bridging kids' personal interests to the academic context.

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Having just finished scoring a batch of state English exams, NYC teacher Mrs. Eyre expresses sympathy for an ELL student who wrote one of the required essays in her native language:

This student was clearly not ready for the challenge of writing an entire essay in English. [That] was someone's decision in Albany, someone who has never met this child or knows anything about what it's like to be forced to sit for 4.5 hours (with extended time) and take an essay in a language one understands well enough to slog through a fairly insulated and well-supported school day, but not enough to write a whole essay with absolutely no assistance. ... I believe in high standards. I really do. But I don't believe in crazy ones.

She also wonders why the reading passages on standardized tests are so dull when "there is so much great and compelling writing in the world that kids might actually find themselves engaged with reading." Well, we can't have kids enjoying what they read (especially on a test), can we?

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Google in Education recently launched its redesigned website in an effort to make navigation easier for teachers, schools, and students.

According to Mindshift, KQED's ed-tech blog, the main page is now "better organized," though much of the content offered remains the same. Listed under classroom tools is a link to Google Apps, which opens up myriad collaboration tools and lesson plans that are searchable by subject and grade level.

New this year is the News and Calendar feature, which lists upcoming workshops and conferences related to Google's education-related endeavors, and an online booklet that highlights some of the ways that teachers, students, and organizations used Google resources in 2011. Teachers can also now connect on the Google+ page for educators and share ideas for lessons and the latest in education news with one another.

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On the New York Times Room For Debate blog, Florida high school English teacher Scott Sterling questions the feasibility—and wisdom—of a newly enacted New Hampshire law that requires schools to provide alternative lesson options to students whose parents or guardians object to assigned content. Given the elasticicity of what parents find "objectionable" these days, he writes, the law will essentially create a new layer of Individual Education Plans for teachers to deal with:

Instead of just having to accommodate the students with documented learning challenges, the teachers will now have to tailor lessons for Johnny, whose parents objected to Edgar Allan Poe because "The Raven" gave him nightmares back in seventh grade. Or Susie, whose parents don't want her to read any Shakespeare because she "just doesn't get it and will never use it anyway."

But as a teacher, my job is more often than not to push the students who don't think they can do something, until they can. In New Hampshire now, teachers can only push until parents object. Students will end up learning less.

The new law derives, incidentally, from a parent's objection to the use of Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America in a personal finance class at Bedford High School.

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Teachers in the Chester Upland School District, who had agreed to work for free when the district announced it was facing bankruptcy, will continue to receive paychecks. Last week, a federal judge approved $3.2 million in stopgap funding, which will keep the district afloat (for a while at least).

Sara Ferguson, a Chester Upland teacher who was previously quoted as saying she would keep working without pay because "students don't have any contingency plan," was invited to sit with First Lady Michelle Obama at the president's State of the Union address on Tuesday. Ferguson, a 20-year veteran of the district, published an op-ed in the Huffington Post after the experience. In an inspiring message, she wrote:

My school district could be any school district. It could be yours. It is hard to acknowledge that unsettling reality without feeling pessimistic.

But I hope the response of my community can serve as an example. Parents and community members held candlelight vigils and rallied around our schools. Every day, teachers and support staff came to work prepared to teach. Every day, the students came ready to learn.

It's too bad President Obama didn't use her as an example of persistence during the speech ... (or any teacher for that matter) ...

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Both Alyson Klein and Stephen Sawchuk have great roundups of President Obama's comments on education during his State of the Union address last night. This year's speech didn't offer as much air time to the topic as his speech a year ago, but it did include a key passage on teachers:

Teachers matter. So instead of bashing them, or defending the status quo, let's offer schools a deal. Give them the resources to keep good teachers on the job, and reward the best ones. In return, grant schools flexibility: To teach with creativity and passion; to stop teaching to the test; and to replace teachers who just aren't helping kids learn. That's a bargain worth making.

So, teachers—how do you react to this? Does it bother you that in the same breath he asked people to stop "bashing" teachers he advocated replacing teachers who "aren't helping kids learn"? Or is the call for getting rid of bad teachers—assuming it's clear who they are—worthy of a standing ovation?

Also, this is an interesting tidbit: According to Mashable, the No. 1 hashtag on Twitter during the speech was #education, with nearly 36,000 tweets (despite Obama's limited comments on ed.) How much do you think teachers contributed to the tweeting?

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Just a quick heads-up: The Council of Chief State School Officers has announced the finalists for the 2012 National Teacher of the Year. They are:

• Gay Barnes, an elementary school teacher in Alabama with 21 years of experience;

• Alvin Aureliano Davis, a high school music teacher in Florida;

• Rebecca Lynn Mieliwocki, a 7th grade teacher in California; and

• Angela Wilson, a teacher with the Department of Defense Education Activity who is currently working in a middle school in Italy;

The winner will be announced this spring. More on the finalists and the process here.

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A discussion about the challenges of classroom-level reading instruction led by four superintendents of large districts and one education publisher has the potential to be a rhetorical dance at 30,000 feet (Head, meet Wall!). But at a gathering held Tuesday by the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative-leaning think tank in Washington, the panelists thankfully hovered closer to the ground, touching on teachers' practical instructional concerns as well as more general problems associated with school leadership, professional development, and curriculum.

At the two-hour event, titled "The Literacy Challenge: Getting Reading Right in More Classrooms," Cami Anderson, superintendent of Newark Public Schools, spoke about the nuances of reading instruction and the obstacles to selecting an effective program, drawing frequently on her own teaching experience. Reading instruction is typically broken into four basic areas, she noted: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, and comprehension (including vocabulary development). Most reading programs tend to do a deep dive into just one of those categories, said Anderson—and "almost no program is good at all of those."

On top of that, Anderson said, the individual research-based programs are often cost prohibitive. For instance, the Wilson Reading System has proven effective for students struggling with decoding. (Anderson even contended that "the core concepts of Wilson should be in every classroom and transparent to every teacher.") But the materials are expensive and require extensive training for teachers, making the program infeasible in many places.

Further, said Anderson, most reading programs "are aimed at students and bypass teachers." They fail to "teach teachers the very fundamentals of reading," and those that do make an attempt fall short of helping teachers understand the complexity of how the four areas of reading interrelate. "Teaching reading and writing at really high levels is kind of rocket science," she said. "We need to change the conversation ... and acknowledge it's a complex process."

Mark Vineis, founder and president of Mondo Publishing, a vendor for literacy materials and professional development, said literacy instruction is equally about great tools and great teacher support. "Sometimes boxes of books land in classrooms and are not opened," he said. "We need to help teachers understand why they're doing what they're doing everyday."

Preservice teacher training has contributed to subpar reading instruction as well, according to John Deasy, superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District. New teachers are "by and large nowhere remotely near prepared to come in and do the task," he said. In part, that's because "we train [secondary] teachers to have subject-matter competency first as opposed having every teacher learn how to have students read texts first. ... After 5th grade, our teacher corps doesn't know how to teach reading."

Ten years ago, in an attempt to improve reading instruction, the San Juan Unified School District turned to a strict basal reading program, added Glynn Thompson, who became the district's interim superintendent for the 2011-2012 school year. Thompson railed against the approach, saying it "turned teachers into textbooks" and "reinforced compliance over innovation and what's right for students." These days, he said, teachers in San Juan are involved in discussions around literacy and there's a focus on professional development rather than a particular program.

The panelists also discussed the issue of "curricular coherence," offering vaguely different definitions of what that entails. Anderson said that curricular coherence can be a polarizing topic when viewed as adherence to one program, and that she thinks the best teaching comes out of the "messy middle." Some of the most impressive reading teachers she's seen have created their own materials from a hodgepodge of reading programs' best practices, she said in an interview after the event.

Vineis responded that coherence is less polarizing—and even appreciated—when teachers are confident they will be supported in their implementation. Deasy argued that, to him, coherence does not mean "uniformity," or a "scripted method," but rather that students end up with a particular skillset, regardless of the vehicle for getting there.

Jean-Claude Brizard, CEO of Chicago Public Schools, said coherence in classroom instruction is essential so that school instructional leaders can stay apprised of what's going on with students. In high-performing schools, instructional leaders "understand where the kids are, how the 1st grade assessment works. ...[They] really understand the everyday life of a teacher," he said. That way they can implement job-embedded professional development rather than in-and-out two hour assemblies. The Common Core standards, Brizard added, "will give us quite a bit of leverage to work with."

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In case you haven't heard yet, Apple Inc. announced yesterday that, in partnership with major textbook publishers, it has developed a series of digital textbooks designed for the iPad. (Don't say we didn't warn you.) The textbooks, to be listed at $14.99 or less, include multimedia elements such as video, audio, 3-D graphics (for features like study cards), and highlighting functionality. Here's a demonstration of the Life on Earth science textbook by a YouTube tech reviewer.

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As you probably know by now—thanks either to the widespread media coverage or a failed Internet search this morning—Wikipedia and several other websites instituted a 24-hour blackout today in protest of two anti-piracy bills under consideration in Congress. Critics of the Stop Online Piracy Act (in the House) and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (in the Senate) say the bills threaten Internet freedom in the U.S.

The blackout came as a surprise to many Wikipedia-dependent teachers, and some of them—and their students—took to Twitter to complain, according to Gawker contributor Katie Notopolous. Here are some of the amusing tweets Notopolous unearthed:

• "Also on an unrelated note, went to get my 'notes' to teach today, realized Wikipedia went dark today... #totesoutofluck #wingingit"

• "How am I supposed to learn what I have to teach with #Wikipedia shut down?"

• "Arrghhh, I'm in middle of lesson planning and can't access Wikipedia! #wikipediablackout! Show your support heretinyurl.com/7vq4o8g"

• "The awkwardly hilarious moment when your idiotic teacher can't do half his lesson because Wikipedia is down, and he had no clue."

Posted by Liana Heitin at 4:52 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Will Richardson brainstorms towards a working definition of "bold schools" (as distinguished from "old school"):

...schools that really are trying to move toward a technology-rich, student-centered, inquiry-based learning practice that effectively prepares kids for the required skills and dispositions and realities of the world today and yet also prepares them to pass the test and satisfy the current expectations of parents and policy makers. Places, importantly, where those two things are not mutually exclusive ideas.

He also lists nine qualities (from "learning-centered" to "provocative") that he believes are associated with such schools. (I guess coming up with an even 10 would be too old school?)

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Heads-up: Starting next month, the Kids in Need Foundation, in partnership with Elmer's Products Inc., will be accepting applications for "Teacher Tool Kit" grants of $100 to $500 to support creative classroom projects. The projects must be selected from a database of award-winning lesson ideas compiled by the foundation. (The database looks like it could be a pretty useful resource in and of itself, incidentally.) Grant determinations will be based on financial need, the applicability of the chosen project, and the number of students who will benefit.

Posted by Anthony Rebora at 10:02 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof points to a new Harvard study finding that good teachers—as defined by value-added test score analysis—have a profound long-term effect on students. According to the study, he notes, an average-size 4th grade class with a strong teacher will go on to earn $700,000 more in their life times (in total) than a class with a poor teacher. Gleaning the potential policy implications, Kristof says the study demonstrates 1) that we need to provide higher pay to good teachers and 2) that value-added ratings do in fact "reveal a great deal about whether a teacher is working out."

Meanwhile, in an Education Week Commentary, think tank scholars Jason Richwine and Andrew G. Biggs defend their argument that the "average public school teacher already is paid more than what he or she is likely to earn in the private sector." But the contrast from Kristof may not be as great as it appears: Richwine and Biggs also advocate for "shifting more funds toward the best teachers."

Update Jan. 17: Not surprisingly, the study Kristof highlighted in his column has caused a stir. A brief, bare-bones summary is here. In an Education Week Commentary, meanwhile, former D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee argues that the findings essentially refute the argument "a teacher's ability to help kids make gains on tests doesn't amount to much" and should prompt us to "rethink how we assign, retain, evaluate, and pay educators." At the same time, education policy bloggers Matthew Di Carlo and Bruce Baker, in extremely detailed posts, question the conclusiveness of the study and caution against jumping to policy prescriptions.

I expect we'll be hearing more ...

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A Georgia elementary school has gotten a flurry of unflattering media attention over the last week, since 3rd graders took home a math assignment with questions about slave beatings and cotton-picking.

The worksheet, created by a 3rd grade teacher at the school, went home with four different classes. According to ABC News, one of the assigned word problems asked: "If Frederick got two beatings per day, how many beatings did he get in one week?" Another read: "Each tree had 56 oranges. If eight slaves pick them equally, then how much would each slave pick?" A third question asked students how many baskets of cotton Frederick would have filled.

Outraged parents complained to administrators. The NAACP held a protest outside Beaver Ridge Elementary, prompting the principal, Jose DeJesus, to post a statement on the school's website yesterday. DeJesus wrote that the 3rd graders had been studying famous Americans, including Frederick Douglass, who was born into slavery. "These particular questions were an attempt at incorporating some of what students had been discussing in social studies with their math activity."

DeJesus also said he understands parents' concerns and is investigating the matter. "While I encourage our teachers to create cross curricular lessons, my expectation is that those lessons be appropriate and provide true connection between the subject areas," he wrote. "That did not occur in this case and we are working to ensure that this does not happen again and that this situation is handled appropriately."

An Atlanta Journal Constitution article states that "the math sheet created at Beaver Ridge also failed to undergo a content review, officials said. Under district policy, the worksheet should have been reviewed before being handed out to students, but that process was not followed."

The situation raises plenty of questions (including a variety that boil down to, "What in the world were those teachers thinking?"). But that last tidbit from the AJC led me to wonder: Do any schools really require teachers to have their worksheets reviewed by the district? Or is that a throwaway policy referred to only when such a problem arises? (As a teacher, I certainly never once submitted a worksheet or test I'd created for administrative review. And as other special ed teachers can attest, plenty of my materials were homegrown.)

Posted by Liana Heitin at 2:02 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Teachers in Pennsylvania's Chester Upland School District have agreed to continue working even though the district can no longer afford to pay them, reports The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Chester Upland has been in turmoil for some time. Last summer, the state passed massive budget cuts that forced the district to decrease its operating budget by $18 million, according to the Delaware County Daily Times. The district laid off 40 percent of its professional staff and half of its unionized support staff, states the Inquirer, and in some schools, class sizes now average more than 40 students. The acting superintendent, Levi Wingard, was laid off as well on Dec. 31. In a letter posted on the district's website, Wingard writes:

We now face a very challenging financial crisis. We are currently unable to fund the district's payroll expenses after January 4, 2012. However, I assure you that the members of the school board and the district administration are doing everything possible to identify a solution. We are working cooperatively with the labor unions, the Delaware County Superintendents, the Delaware County Intermediate Unit and the Pennsylvania Department of Education.

The unions have appealed to Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett for financial aid, reports the Inquirer. However, state Education Secretary Ron Tomalis refused a similar request from Chester Upland's school board last month, saying the board had mismanaged its finances.

District employees passed a resolution last week at a union meeting saying they would continue to work "as long as we are individually able." Sara Ferguson, an elementary teacher who has taught in Chester Upland for 21 years, told the Inquirer, "It's alarming. It's disturbing. But we are adults; we will make a way. The students don't have any contingency plan. They need to be educated, so we intend to be on the job."

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