Teacher Beat

Wisconsin Teacher 'Firewall' Law Too Lax, Critics Say

2009-11-09T15:16:01Z

President Barack Obama and his administration have made quite a big deal about the Wisconsin legislature's move to undo a law barring student test-score data from being considered in teachers' evaluations.

You may remember that having such a "firewall" between teachers and students essentially disqualifies a state from participating in the $4 billion Race to the Top Fund. Both Wisconsin and California have been scrambling to rectify the issue, although two other states with similar restrictions, New York and Nevada, are passing on it for now.

Last Thursday, I wondered if Wisconsin's law really had the teeth it seems to have, since the bill doesn't actually permit the data to be used for disciplining or dismissing teachers. Additionally, the bill also requires every district to bargain the evaluation system with its local teachers' union, and does not affirmatively demand that the test-score data be used.

Turns out I wasn't the only one to be asking these questions. There's a lot of discussion out there on Wisconsin's law this morning.

The Wisconsin State Journal accuses Democratic legislators of "watering down" the bill. At Flypaper, Andy Smarick suggests that states are just after the Race to the Top money, not necessarily the accompanying reforms.

Now, the question is whether the Obama administration thinks that this law aligns closely enough to its priorities for teacher evaluation to fund the state's RTTT application.

Thursday Odds 'n' Ends

2009-11-05T15:35:01Z

I'm swamped again on some long-term stuff but my wonderful colleagues have some important teacher-related stories.

• Read Lesli Maxwell's write-up of the Strategic Management of Human Capital report here.
• Catherine Gewertz highlights the lack of research about high school instruction in this story.
• And Debbie Viadero has a must-read item up about new research on a Texas performance-pay program.

Second, the mail has been pouring in on this blog item about the SHMC report. (Reminder: I love getting direct mail from readers and I encourage you to send it. But don't forget that your thoughts get out to a lot more people if you use the comment function on the blog.)

A few readers felt I was being glib when I said in this item that the AFT might have had a different reaction to the report if it had included more references to collaborating with unions. I assumed that this was just an oversight from the report's drafters because many of the most high-profile changes to the teacher-quality continuum have been done with union support (think Denver Pro-Comp). But these readers admonished me for making that assumption, and argued that the report needed to be more careful and deliberative about that point. Food for thought!

A colleague of mine had an interesting perspective on the report. Her read was that it seemed to focus on individual teachers more than on teachers working together in their schools collaboratively. It's an interesting observation, and researchers like Harvard's Susan Moore Johnson have been wrestling with this question of individual vs. collective improvement in schools.

Finally, all eyes are on Wisconsin as it works to remove the "firewall" between teacher and student data. Apparently, if the law goes through, such data could be used in evaluations but couldn't be used to dismiss a teacher.

I'll confess to being a bit confused about that. Don't evaluations, after all, ultimately factor into decisions to dismiss teachers? I'll start sniffing around on this today, but if you have immediate details or thoughts, do enlighten us!

UPDATED: AFT Slams 'Top Down' Report on Effective Teachers

2009-11-03T20:37:16Z

The Strategic Management of Human Capital initiative released a report today outlining new strategies for attracting, developing, and maintaining an effective teacher workforce, and in doing so, has managed to really tick off Randi Weingarten and the American Federation of Teachers. She calls the report "top down" and "disrespectful" of teachers and unions. UPDATED: Here is the link to the report.

Among the recommendations, the report says states and districts should raise entry requirements for teacher preparation; institute a tiered licensure system requiring teachers to complete an induction program and demonstrate teaching effectiveness before receiving tenure; and overhaul professional development and evaluations to be standards-based and to provide pathways for teacher improvement.

AFT has both substantive beefs with the proposals at hand, and feels that feedback from its representatives to the task force wasn't adequately taken into account in the report's drafting. A letter that Weingarten sent off to the task force chairs, Allan Odden and James Kelly, says that the report "relies too much on untested ideas for finding excellent teachers, and not enough on supporting and developing teachers to make them great."

She says the proposals don't pay enough attention to the context in which teachers teach, and that accountability for student outcomes is focused too heavily on teachers, and not on the administrators and other environmental factors that affect working conditions. And finally, there is not enough focus on developing reforms in collaboration, with unions, she asserts.

"The work of the task force so far, however, has focused almost exclusively on how teachers need to change rather than how the system and all its actors need to change and work collaboratively to support effective teaching and student learning," Weingarten writes in the letter.

Let's take all of this in turn.

On the "untested" piece: It's true that there are only a handful of experiments to reward teachers on anything other the basis of longevity and credentials. But most of these examples are bonus programs rather than true-blue overhauls of teacher compensation and some of them were done with unions. The general idea is hardly revolutionary, and there are some interesting new studies in the works to help flesh out the research literature on this topic.

As for some of the other ideas, New Mexico and a handful of other states already have a version of tiered licensure. Rhode Island and Indiana are contemplating raising the entry point on teacher-licensing examinations. Unions and administrators alike think professional development and evaluations are lousy and need to be more closely tailored to professional standards to offer quality feedback for improvement. I've never heard anyone from the AFT knock teacher induction. And one of AFT's own locals, Minneapolis, has a rather elaborate process for tenure-granting that includes the submission of a portfolio. (Read more about it in this report.)

I don't know whether all of these examples have really great scientifically based evaluation procedures in place so that we can learn from them. (One hopes so, because otherwise it will be hard to figure out if they're superior to current systems.)

On Weingarten's criticism that this report focuses too heavily on teachers: It's not invalid to say that things like community organizations and parents and wraparound services should be part of the conversation, but can you fault a task force on teachers and principals for focusing, you know, on teachers and principals?

On the other hand, she does make a good point with the environmental-issues factor. She notes that the report says principal evaluations should include consideration of school context, but doesn't mention context with respect to teacher evaluations. (It would be very interesting and enlightening to see whether SHMC, in subsequent work, specifically addresses school context within an improved system of human capital management.)

I am not privy to how the SHMC folks worked to craft this report. But If the drafters had fixed that language on environmental factors (an additional sentence would've done it) and liberally sprinkled the phrase "in collaboration with unions" in the report, would AFT would have had a different reaction?

Two on Teacher Preparation

2009-11-03T14:45:01Z

Two recent news stories illustrate nicely two ways of looking at teacher preparation: an "output"-oriented view of teacher preparation that focuses on student achievement, and an input-oriented one that focuses on credentials and curriculum.

Texas is looking to institute a state system for approving schools of education that puts a heavier focus on teacher effectiveness. It sounds very similar to Louisiana's system, which tracks graduates of teacher-training programs into their classrooms to gauge their ability to boost achievement.

Indiana officials, on the other hand, are duking it out over proposed regulations that would allow for more alternate-route teaching programs, reduce pedagogy coursework in education schools, and require candidates to take more content-area preparation.

In both stories, the common theme is one of the state's role in overseeing teacher training. That's an important if overlooked aspect of teacher preparation: Teachers' colleges and alternative routes get a lot of criticisms about their quality, but ultimately states are charged with identifying and closing poor-performing programs. (The Texas story notes that not once in 16 years did the state accreditation body actually close down a program.)

What mix of "inputs" and "outputs" do you think states should be regulating?

Duncan Calls for Multiple Measures in Evaluation

2009-10-30T15:47:01Z

Education Secretary Arne Duncan made a particular point yesterday of underscoring that teacher evaluations should be based on "multiple measures" that would include student achievement alongside other factors, such as peer evaluations.

He was speaking at conference here in Washington for state officials hosted by the National Comprehensive Center on Teacher Quality.

Frankly, the multiple-measures comment shouldn't come as a big surprise if you've been paying attention. A number of other ED officials have made the same point in other forums. But a lot of the state officials told me they were nevertheless glad to hear the message. They noted that the Race to the Top proposed criteria make a big deal about incorporating student achievement as a "significant" factor in evaluations but are silent about what other measures could or should be included.

Perhaps all of those comments worrying about whether value-added is ready for prime-time hit home at the Education Department. If I were a betting man, I'd wager that the final Race to the Top guidelines will retain the requirements that test scores be factored in evaluations, but also make some recognition of the fact that they shouldn't be the sole measure for rating a teacher.

Duncan did stress, though, that the student-achievement element is the one that's missing from most evaluation systems. "We don't look at student work at all, we're a zero there," he said.

He demurred when asked whether he could point to a model evaluation system: "I'm hesitant to call one out because people think that that's it."

American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten must be doing a victory lap around her office about now. She's been expounding upon the multiple-measures theme for months.

(Weingarten's stance on this issue has developed, too. Last year around this time she was adamant that "we have a moral, statistical, and educational reason" not to use test scores in evaluations. Now, her union is helping to fund projects to explore how it might be done fairly.)

Los Angeles TFA Teachers Outperform Peers

2009-10-28T13:41:01Z

A study financed by the Eli & Edythe Broad Foundation shows that students taught by Teach For America teachers in Los Angeles outperformed peers who were taught by other teachers—including veterans with many more years of experience.

Initially, the study was performed for internal purposes. Having provided quite a bundle of financial backing for TFA, Broad wanted to get a sense of how its investment was paying off in terms of stronger student learning. But officials for the group said they ultimately decided to make the study public given the growing national conversation about teacher effectiveness.

California state test-score results of students of 119 second-year TFA teachers in grades 2-12 were compared with those of the students of 1,190 non-TFA teachers in the same grade levels, subjects, and schools as the TFA teachers, during 2005 and 2006.

The results are interesting for a few reasons. First of all, TFA teachers were linked to test scores that were 3 points higher overall than non-TFA teachers, even those who had been in the classroom much longer. And, they were even more effective than other teachers with similar years of teaching experience. (The scores for that comparison were 4 points higher for TFA teachers than for non-TFA teachers.)

It's important to know, though, that since students weren't randomly assigned to TFA teachers or non-TFA teachers, it isn't scientifically possible to say that TFA is the reason why the teachers were more effective. These data are certainly suggestive, but they aren't evidence of a causal link.

And with any study, there are a couple of caveats. For instance, the findings here combine reading and math, so it's not entirely clear how to interpret them for subject matter. Content area is an important distinction because previous studies of TFA have shown that the group's high school instructors had a particularly strong correlation with improved math achievement.

The folks at Broad think this type of analysis could be indicative of what will be possible once data systems continue to grow and students can be linked to teachers. One interesting feature of the study is that analysts used two different growth methodologies and found that one was much better at explaining variability in test scores. That's important because there isn't really good consensus on the "best" methodology for gauging teacher effect on student achievement.

Second, the paper is an example of the kind of analysis that might be useful for higher ed institutions and programs that prepare teachers as they consider ways of improving the effectiveness of their own programs.

TFA has already begun those efforts, as I reported earlier this year.

UPDATED: Will Reforms to Seniority Catch On?

2009-10-26T14:54:01Z

Rhode Island Commissioner Deborah Gist has instructed districts to work to eliminate hiring practices based on seniority provisions when the districts' collective bargaining agreements come up for renewal this year. (Hat Tip to Eduwonk.) She wants hiring to be based on performance-based criteria instead.

So Teacher Beat asks the question: Is seniority poised to emerge as a major reform priority?

We're seeing efforts to experiment with a lot of traditional structures that affect teacher quality, like compensation, professional development, and evaluation. And even though no one seems ready to chuck out tenure, the conversations around evaluation could make the tenure-granting process a more meaningful one.

So far, though, seniority has been mostly ignored. For instance, the New Haven contract is being held up by union, district, and federal officials alike as a model effort for collaborative reform. But a few people have written me to point out that, even in the "turnaround" charter-like schools, teachers would maintain their transfer rights. That means teachers who aren't rehired by their principals or choose to leave the schools after the two-year commitment can ~~pick their~~ bid on positions based on seniority. UPDATED: There appears to be some language in the contract that gives the board the ability to staff based on the instructional needs of the school before seniority kicks in. Working to get some clarification on what that means in practice.

And practically all districts still use the system for things like layoffs, even if they've done away with seniority-based transfers.

The argument, as it's been explained to me, is that seniority is way of ensuring that teachers are treated fairly, since there's an objective rather than a subjective method of deciding who gets raises and privileges. But the definition of "fair" is sort of in the eyes of the beholder. Seniority doesn't, for instance, take teacher effectiveness into account into things like pay or layoffs, presumably a difficult thing for teachers with fewer years of experience.

But efforts to use performance-based criteria in instances such as reductions-in-force have been quite controversial. (Witness the District of Columbia or Charlotte, N.C.)

So what do you think? Is seniority still necessary as the push continues to define teacher quality in terms of student learning? Or do we risk making things even worse in school or returning to the days when it was easier for boards and principals to play favorites?

AFT Files Federal Complaint on Behalf of Immigrant Teachers

2009-10-23T17:21:08Z

The American Federation of Teachers just stepped up its effort to shut down a teacher-recruiting company that it alleges bilked more than 200 teachers from the Philippines out of thousands of dollars in fees.

It filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Labor on Oct. 20 claiming that Universal Placement International violated federal laws requiring such fees to be paid by employers—school districts—not by employees. And in a release, the union also said that both the firm and the school districts who employed these teachers in Louisana may have tried to circumvent federal caps on H-1B work visas.

You can read more about it on AFT's Web site here.

Contracts signed by both state-level officials and those in New Orleans' Recovery School District show that federal Hurricane Katrina recovery dollars disbursed by the U.S. Department of Education were used in part to pay for this recruiting service.

Could an inquiry over at ED be next on the list?

Few Policy Details in Duncan Speech

2009-10-22T17:08:01Z

Like many of you, I just finished watching Education Secretary Arne Duncan's Teachers College speech. We'll have more reaction for you later, but just to make a general point, few new policy tidbits emerged, even during the Q & A.

The genial, if always on-message Duncan didn't really say much we haven't heard before. About the third time he began answering a question with the line, "We have $10 billion in discretionary funds at our disposal," the audience started giggling.

(You've got to hand it to Margaret Spellings. As EdSec, she was ever-quotable, with her talk of Ivory soap and big-girl panties.)

I was particularly intrigued by a question from one audience member, who wanted to know whether the administration would support "incorporating a multisensory phonics-based reading program" into teacher training.

An interesting question, now that funding previously earmarked for Reading First apparently will be shifted to Title I. But Duncan didn't bite. "We're going to look to those places that are getting great results for students," he said.

Duncan to Reiterate Criticisms of Teacher Education

2009-10-22T14:08:37Z

Education Secretary Arne Duncan doesn't appear poised to go easier on schools of education in remarks he's making this morning at Columbia University's Teachers College. As you may recall, his remarks earlier this month on the theme caught some flak from the teacher-ed community.

News of this morning's speech has already hit the wires, and here are some advance remarks we've gotten from the Department of Education:

"...by almost any standard, many, if not most, of the nation's 1,450 schools, colleges, and departments of education are doing a mediocre job of preparing teachers for the realities of the 21st-century classroom. America's university-based teacher-preparation programs need revolutionary change—not evolutionary tinkering."

"In my seven years as CEO of the Chicago Public Schools and in my current job, I've had hundreds of conversations with great young teachers. And they echo many of the same concerns about ed schools voiced in the Levine report and in earlier decades. In particular they say two things about their training in ed school. First, most of them say they did not get the hands-on teacher training about managing the classroom that they needed, especially for high-needs students. And second, they say there were not taught how to use data to improve instruction and boost student learning."

Duncan does seem to spread the blame for "mediocre" programs a little broader this time. He'll note that states haven't really done their part in closing down poor programs, and that universities often treat the programs as "cash cows" and direct resources to more prestigious departments. Teacher tests don't measure how well teachers actually teach, he adds. And districts often shortchange mentoring programs.

And he'll compliment the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education for its new reaccreditation standards and the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education for getting behind new models, like the teacher-residency programs. And he adds, "I am optimistic that, despite the obstacles to reform, real change is under way."

Near the end of his speech, he says that strong preparation programs include a "strong, substantial" field experience, a focus on classroom management, and training for candidates on how to review and make use of student-performance data. He plugs the teacher residencies, which the department just spent millions of dollars to promote.

But am I the only one that sees a little bit of tension between the thrust of this speech and the proposed Race to the Top criteria? After all, under those proposals, states would get additional competitive points for having alternative routes to teacher certification. Though alternative routes vary, many of them don't have all that long of a student-teaching component. By comparison, in the residency model, candidates aren't the "teacher of record" until after they've spent a year under the tutelage of a full-time classroom teacher.

Maybe the administration feels both routes can be successful, but this difference does seem to complicate states' abilities to hold both types of programs to the same set of high standards.

Are you a professor or dean at a college of education? Are you listening to the speech or watching it in person? Want to share your comments? Post them here, or e-mail me directly at ssawchuk@epe.org.

We'll also have a full story up for you later today.

New Haven Pact Lays New Ground for Evaluations, Pay, Peer Assistance

2009-10-19T21:01:01Z

The New Haven, Ct. teacher contract has been approved!

You will recall that earlier this month I was a little skeptical about all this talk of it being groundbreaking given that the details on it were scant. (Reminds me of that line in William Golding's The Princess Bride about labeling your own novel a classic.)

Now that we have the details, let's take a look at what's what.

First, by all accounts these negotiations were collaborative, and both parties are talking up the results. Here's the district's take:

"The new contract transforms the role that teachers will play in our public schools," New Haven Mayor John DeStefano Jr. said. "Rather than resisting change as some teachers associations have done in other parts of the nation, New Haven teachers have chosen to make change, to help direct change, to be the change."

And Joan Devlin, senior associate director in AFT's educational-issues department, had this to say: "We really worked very hard and very collaboratively to get this done. The contract addresses teacher voice and gives the district the flexibility it needs to make this work."

Second, there's a new "turnaround school" model that will be utilized in a handful of schools that have failed for many years to make adequate yearly progress under the No Child Left Behind act. These schools will function as charter schools. The teachers in them will be unionized, but most of the current contract will be waived, aside from some provisions about teacher absences, layoff policies, and personnel files. The existing grievance process will only apply to these provisions.

Everything else, including teachers' working hours, the length of the school day, and additional compensation programs, will be set at the school level by the principal and an advisory group of parents, teachers and community leaders.

Now for changes that affect all the schools in the district. Many of these are outlined in the contract, and will be fleshed out by a reform committee formed of administrators, union officials and community members The committee will examine and recommend new ways of measuring student progress. Ms. Devlin said this committee will consider test-score data, in addition to multiple other measures.

Then, using these recommendations, a second committee will devise ways implement that data into new teacher evaluations. The data will also be used to classify schools into three "tiers," with the board exerting more control in setting the instructional program in the lowest-performing tier of schools.

You can see the AFT's fingerprints in a few of the new areas. The teacher-evaluation committee, for instance, will work to create a peer-assistance and -review program for struggling veteran teachers. Over the last few years, the union has tried to get more affiliates to institute these programs. (Read more about PAR here).

The district and union will also work out details of a differentiated compensation program to be based on schools' overall test scores, rather than individual classroom results. Teachers and principals in schools that win the bonuses will have the responsibility for divvying up the money. That structure sounds nearly identical to the program AFT President Randi Weingarten negotiated in New York City with Chancellor Joel Klein.

A few other items of note: Evaluations will differentiate among four levels of teacher performance, rather than the current two. The contract allows schools in higher-performing "tiers" to seek waivers of certain work rules in the contract, with teacher agreement.

A few other media outlets (and apparently Education Secretary Arne Duncan) seem ready to declare this a sign of increasing flexibility from the teachers' unions, partially in response to the Obama administration's pressing forward on merit pay and so on. (The new New Unionism?)

But perhaps—as seems likely with the NEA's recent promise to encourage locals to waive some elements of contracts, and with AFT's Innovation Fund—the proof of real innovation will lie in how these provisions play out and whether they result in higher quality teaching. There is clearly a lot still to be done in New Haven, with all these committees still to meet and hash out details. Devlin acknowledged that much in our conversation.

"We're really excited, but we know this is just the beginning of the hard work," she told me.

Still, this is not your mother or father's teacher contract. It deals with issues that have traditionally made teachers uncomfortable. And I, for one, am excited to see what New Haven comes up with.

What Happens Now in the NCLB Suit?

2009-10-19T15:33:01Z

An appeals court has deadlocked over the "unfunded mandate" lawsuit, filed by several school districts and the National Education Association, against the No Child Left Behind law. That means a lower court's decision backing the feds will stand. Mark Walsh has the scoop over on the School Law Blog.

But for you Teacher-Beat-ers, the question is whether or not the NEA and related parties will seek to appeal this decision to the Supreme Court of the United States.

As a related aside, I do wonder about the future of the provision that caused all of this commotion. It was added to several education statutes in 1994 and incorporated into that year's rewriting of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Then in 2001, it was carried over into NCLB, which is the most recent iteration of the law.

Will Congress seek to rewrite, clarify, or delete this problematic section when action on the ESEA renewal gets going again?

Education Venture-Capitalist Group Invests in Mentoring

2009-10-16T15:45:32Z

The NewSchools Venture Fund, an education "venture capitalist" effort, has put $1.2 million into the New Teacher Center, a California-based group that has taken the lead in supporting intensive teacher-induction programs.

This must be good news for the NTC, which became an independent nonprofit organization in July—right before a report came out implying that intensive mentoring may not be all it's cracked up to be.

NewSchools Venture Fund's other education-related investments include the New Teacher Project, Teach for America, and New Leaders for New Schools.

Teachers' Colleges Respond to Duncan Remarks

2009-10-15T21:28:10Z

I checked in with the president of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education today to get some feedback on what her members thought about Education Secretary Arne Duncan's speech on teacher colleges. Overall, she said, her members were disappointed in the tenor of the speech and hope for a more balanced address at the next, when he addresses educators at Teachers College, in New York City, on Oct. 22.

"I think that in one sense, Arne used the [UVA] speech to review some of the perennial criticisms of teacher education. I'm hoping he'll use the speech at Teachers College to talk about some of the work that is going on in response to those criticisms," said Sharon Robinson. "I'm not asking that he avoid critique. ... I'm just hoping it will be [an address] that does more to inspire us and bring us all together to support change rather than create an angry defensive reaction out of which it's very hard to motivate people for change."

Ms. Robinson pointed to a couple of initiatives that she thinks are helping change the status quo in teacher education. The recent changes to the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education's system, she said, give universities the cover to try new kinds of reforms, rather than being hamstrung by old regulations. Closer partnerships between districts and universities result in stronger accountability for both sides. And advances in performance-based teacher assessments could lead to better understanding of the qualities of effective teaching and the extent to which specific universities produce graduates that exhibit those qualities.

States, Ms. Robinson added, should also take a stronger role in stepping in when programs aren't up to par in meeting new demands, such as working with diverse populations. After all, poor programs aren't going to close themselves.

"It should be known to prospective teachers that if a program cannot give you a good solid experience managing a classroom with ELLs, it's defective," she said. "Any institutions using public funds should be responsive to public priorities."

Be sure to check out her remarks up on the AACTE Web site.

I don't know if her arguments will convince those who criticize university-based teacher preparation. But clearly Duncan will be the one to watch next week—and his tone will set important signals about his administration's priorities for teacher preparation.

Rhode Island Beefs Up Entry Teacher Test

2009-10-14T13:54:01Z

Up in Rhode Island, Jennifer Jordan has an excellent story about Rhode Island's move to make its initial "gateway" teacher test (the one a candidate has to pass to enter a preparation program) the most difficult in the nation.

There's the usual back and forth about whether a test is an appropriate screening mechanism, but the most interesting part of the story discusses whether it's possible to screen candidate for attributes, such as compassion, that are difficult to measure using standardized tests.

A staffer from the National Council on Teacher Quality makes an interesting observation by suggesting it's the state's role to measure things that are more easily quantifiable (such as content knowledge), while district HRs should handle other aspects.

Lest you think that's impossible, consider groups like Teach For America. Although this info didn't make it into my recent piece, the group told me it has done extensive research on the attributes that seem to correlate with its most effective teachers. TFA has also retooled its screening process to check for these characteristics, which include whether a candidate exhibits persistence or is able to find creative solutions to problems.

What sequence do you think states and districts should follow when they screen candidates for teaching jobs?