AFT

So, You Say It’s Not a Revolution

Eduflack AFT, DCPS, Michelle Rhee, teachers

It is now official.  Yesterday afternoon, the Washington (DC) Teachers Union revealed the vote on DCPS Chancellor Michelle Rhee’s ambitious plan to move toward merit pay for all teachers in the nation’s capital.  While some suspected the vote would be close (with new teachers voting yes and the many veteran teachers having doubts), it wasn’t close at all.  The new contract was ratified 1,412 to 425, giving the Rhee agenda a nearly 4:1 win.

The Washington Post’s Bill Turque offers us the full story here.

We’ve come a long way from when Rhee first offered up the plan back in 2007.  When the DCPS Chancellor first arrived in Washington nearly three years ago, she was brimming with ideas and innovations.  One of them was merit pay, offering huge incentives to teachers who could boost student achievement (as Rhee says she did as a Teach for America teacher in Baltimore two decades ago).  At the time, few school districts had been able to truly do merit pay well.  In fact, Denver’s ProComp program probably stood as the only true exemplar in the field.

Rhee was offering five-figure bonuses to teachers in a district that was already perceived as paying its teachers, particularly its veterans, extremely well.  To get to her end game, Rhee enlisted the help of the philanthropic community, which pledged tens of millions of dollars to make this all happen.

Along the way, there were missteps.  A Time magazine cover story with a broom.  Significant teacher layoffs in the name of budget, then under the banner of misconduct.  Concerns of the financial stability of the promise of such incentives.  And, of course, the worry of what happens to all of that outside support should Rhee (or the mayor) move on.  (And Eduflack is thinking, perhaps, of Rhee going to the Gates Foundation to do nationally what she has just done in the District of Columbia, but that’s just me thinking it fits nicely with Gates’ human capital push and the work currently being done at Gates by John Deasy.)

What was particularly telling about the ratification was the sentiment offered up by Kurt Schmoke, the former Baltimore mayor and the consigliere brought in to make peace between Rhee and WTU.  As reported by Turque, in regard to merit pay, Schmoke said, “The ideas have gained currency at the national level … What was seen as bold is now reform, not revolution.”

It is a very interesting thought, and one the entire education community should reflect on.  Just a few years ago, what Rhee proposed was seen as true revolution by most, and a breaking of an urban teachers union by quite a few.  Since then, we’ve seen Houston beat DC to the punch on such a plan (though Houston doesn’t have to deal with unions the way DC does).  We’ve seen threats of massive teacher layoffs and a growing feeling that last hired, first fired is no way to run school systems looking to boost student achievement.  And we’ve now seen 40 or so states pledge to adopt ambitous teacher quality efforts in pursuit of the $4 billion Race to the Top grail.  One can now argue that the DC teacher deal is no longer revolution, and may no longer even be reform.  It is just keeping up with the Joneses.

Don’t believe Eduflack?  Take a look at the public statements offered yesterday.  Rhee, who should be declaring victory from every rooftop in the District, offered a very muted statement here. (And based on past experience, this was the right approach.  Rhee should let others declare her victory for her.)    AFT President Randi Weingarten, as to be expected, praised DC teachers here for putting their students first.  And, interestingly, WTU still does not have a statement posted on its website, with interested readers being directed to last month’s missives on the “tentative” contract.  This was far from a bold pronouncement of revolutionizing the education sector.  In many ways, it read like DCPS has changed its chalk provider.

The real celebration (or protestation) will come next year, as teachers start feeling the 21 percent pay increases and start anticipating those $20,000 to $30,000 performance pay bonuses.  The real fun is now in seeing if other urban school districts (particularly those in AFT cities) decide to “borrow” from the DC model and enact similar plans, or if we wait a few years to see if the DC approach works.

Looking at the history of real reform and improvement in the education sector, DC is likely to be extremely lonely in this pool for a bit. 

Come Together …

Eduflack AFT, NEA, teachers

A lot of paper tends to pass over Eduflack’s desk in a given week, and these past few days has been no exception.  One thing that caught my eye was from the Coalition for Community Schools, promoting its 2010 National Forum up in Philadelphia this week.  Full information can be found here, at the Coalition’s site.  (And the good news is that the video is still accessible, particularly if you can get beyond the hair removal commercials at the beginning.)

The issue of community schools, including the integration of issues like health, safety, and general public welfare, is always an interesting topic.  It is also one that gets lost in the current era of test scores and accountability.  But the holistic approach to education is not what caught my attention, no.  Eduflack was a little taken aback to see that NEA President Dennis Van Roekel and AFT President Randi Weingarten joined together to speak in one voice on the importance of community schools and the conditions needs for effective teaching and learning.
On most issues, we tend to see NEA and AFT pitted against each other.  NEA, the larger, is the voice of the status quo.  AFT, thanks to the Al Shanker reputation, is the rebel or the boat rocker.  AFT is more willing to compromise with the “opposition.”  NEA stands firm on its ground, no matter the opposition.  AFT is seen as the representatives of urban teachers, NEA of the suburban.  Fair or no, we are regularly comparing the two teachers’ unions, looking for differences, splits, disagreements, and other perceived chasms in the land of teachers.
But here they really did seem to speak with a united voice, so much so that one can remember the good ole days when Bob Chase and Sandy Feldman were trying to merge the two organizations into one superpower.  One supposes that threats of eliminating teacher tenure, throwing aside past collective bargaining agreements, and reconstituting views of teacher effectiveness can really help sharpen an understanding of who one’s friends are.  
From Weingarten: “Especially in these tough economic times, schools must be places where children can be nurtured and educated.  We know that teachers can’t do it all, but through partnerships with other groups and agencies, community schools can address out-of-school factors like poverty and stability at home that research shows affect two-thirds of student outcomes.”
And from Van Roekel: “As educators, we know that the development of the whole child extends beyond the walls of the classroom.  We must harness the coordinated power of social services, parental engagement, service learning opportunities for students, extended learning and afterschool programs to ensure our children’s successes.”
Regardless, it is worth watching the Weingarten/Van Roekel session, if for no other reason than to see the kumbaya.  They both remind you of Helen Lovejoy, the famed voice of reason on the Simpsons … “won’t someone please think about the children!”  
So congrats to the Coalition for Community Schools for bringing the two together with a shared voice (and if I am wrong about how often the two join together in chorus, please let me know).  Now if only we can find similar common ground on teacher incentives measures or ESEA reauthorization …

Great Teachers, New Contracts, and Incentives, Oh My!

Eduflack Achievement gap, AFT, Chancellor Klein, teachers

After a few days, the dust is finally settling on the supposed deal between Michelle Rhee and the teachers’ union in Washington, DC.  By now, we’ve all heard the Cliff Notes version — significantly increased teacher pay, performance bonuses, elimination of full protection of tenured teachers’ jobs from budget cuts, huge financial assistance from national philanthropies.

A year ago, we thought the deal was dead as a doornail.  Earlier this week, a tentative agreement was reached (the members of the DC union still have to vote.  As always, Bill Turque of The Washington Post has terrific coverage of the issue, starting with the announcement story from earlier this week here and a very interesting story this AM about how former Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke served as consigliere to bring this final deal over the finish line.
Whether intentional or not, the trio of chairs for the Education Equality Project — NYC Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, UNCF President/CEO Michael Lomax, and NCLR President/CEO Janet Murguia — weigh in on the general topic this morning’s Washington Post in a strongly worded commentary on the need for “great teachers” in historically disadvantaged schools.
The EEP trio offers up a three-point plan on great teachers and improved student outcomes:
* Attract teachers who performed well in college
* Create systems that reward excellence (including making it “easier to remove teachers who are shown to be ineffective”)
* Do more to attract teachers to high-needs students, schools, and subject areas (including ELL and special education)
Obviously, this is not the first time we have heard these tenets from EEP, but today’s treatise may be the clearest and most direct explanation of the EEP platform.  It also becomes clear, when you look at the reports of the DCPS teacher deal, that Rhee was calling plays directly from the EEP playbook (or would that be from Chancellor Klein’s), seeking to model after some of the more successful policy and rhetoric on the issue of teacher quality and the incentivization of effective teaching.
It is also incredibly difficult to quibble with these three points.  Who is opposed to attracting successful students into the teaching profession?  Who doesn’t believe we should reward excellence, regardless of field?  And who doesn’t see the need to get our best teachers in the areas that need them the most, including historically disadvantaged schools and subject areas that have long been neglected.
But the devil remains in the details.  How do we sustain — over the long term — incentives for teachers, knowing that philanthropic and government support for teacher quality efforts may wane in a year or five?  When the outside support dries up, are our states and school systems positioned, financially, to continue to support those systems that are rewarding excellence?
How do we transfer that recognized excellence to the schools, classes, and students that need them the most?  For decades, many have talked about National Board Certification and how National Board Certified Teachers (NBCTs) were the best of the best.  Through federal dollars and private supports, NBCTs were financially incentivized to seek seek certification and stand as an NBCT back in their schools.  But there is still much disagreement on the impact of NBCTs, both as to whether they increase student performance AFTER teachers have gone through the certification process and if NBCTs are more or less likely to relocate to the schools that may need them the most.
But the real head scratcher is the issue of attracting teachers who performed well in college.  Based on the rhetoric, we are clearly looking at the Teach for America model, believing that academic superstars will make the best K-12 teachers.  EEP even offers up the urban legend that most teachers come from the bottom third of college graduates (Eduflack has heard the statement time and again, but has yet to see the research that actually proves it).
Without question, we need smart teachers in our classrooms, particularly in those classes that have been struggling for far too long.  But good teaching requires both book smarts and “street” smarts.  Good teaching requires educators who know the subject matter (their math, science, history, or English) but also know the pedagogy behind it.  Good teaching requires educators who can pivot off the “script” when faced with a challenging student or a challenging classroom.  Good teaching requires educators who understand what good teaching is, moving beyond the content knowledge and making those connections between teacher and student that can last a lifetime.  Such qualities cannot necessarily be taught through a textbook, an online course, or a pedagological bootcamp.  But they are qualities that are non-negotiable when it comes to good teaching.
As DCPS heads down the strongest path to date on teacher quality and teacher incentivization, and as EEP and others continue to spotlight the need to recruit and reward great teachers, we can’t lose sight of what comprises great teaching.  Test scores are, and always should be, an important part of how we identify effective instruction.  But there are other elements — both inputs and outcomes — that need to be factored in as well.
The EEP trio is absolutely right, schools and teachers are the differentiators between a good education and a lousy one.  And they couldn’t be more right when they say:

Different teachers get very different results with similar students. So as reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act is considered, we should look closely at those whom we attract and retain to teach, with regard to their quality and to ensuring that they are distributed equally across our school districts. If we can do those things, we could at least make Detroit students perform like those in Boston, and make Boston students do a lot better.


Different teachers do get different results with similar students.  Our goal should be identifying why those teachers in Boston are doing a better job than those in other cities.  And then we need to replicate, replicate, replicate both the inputs and the outcomes.  It isn’t just about how Boston attracts those teachers, it is about the training and support those teachers receive.
   

AFT Policy Talk … and Walk?

Eduflack AFT, Arne Duncan, teachers

About a month ago, Eduflack wrote about AFT President Randi Weingarten’s teacher quality treatises nailed upon the schoolhouse door, where the head of the nation’s second largest teachers’ union laid a vision for how AFT could get on board the new ed reform/school improvement train.  At the time, I wrote that she was talking a good talk, but the real challenge would be how AFT, and Weingarten in particular, would be able to walk the walk.

The first stroll of such a challenge took place deep in the heart of Texas earlier this month, when Houston ISD Superintendent Terry Grier tried to use Weingarten’s rhetoric to get his teachers’ backing for a new teacher quality initiative that allows the school district to remove teachers with lagging student test scores.  Grier’s Houston experiment was unanimously supported by the Houston ISD School Board, but was loudly opposed by local teachers and by the national AFT.  Eduflack reflects on the Houston showdown here, while the National Journal’s Education Experts Blog provides some terrific insights and views here.
Coming out of Houston, there were many an education agitator wondering if AFT is indeed serious about being part of the reform agenda.  After all, AFT is in the business of promoting teachers’ jobs and boosting their benefits.  The reform agenda is now focusing on teacher incentives and so-called quality issues, which leads quickly to a discussion of bonuses for some (but not all) teachers and the removal of teachers who are deemed ineffective.  (Though Eduflack recognizes the rubric for effectiveness is one of the biggest sticking points in the game right now).  So while AFT may be for reform and for teacher quality, can it ever really get behind any plan that will call for the removal of educators from the classroom or the professional entirely, particularly when they are dues-paying members protected under an AFT-negotiated collective bargaining agreement?  How does the reform rhetoric translate into action?
While I’m not sure if AFT has figured out how it truly positions the union on the teacher quality issue (other than knowing that there are few in DC with the knowledge and experience on the issue with the ability to take real action like the AFT’s Rob Weil), it is clear that AFT is not content in simply serving as the “loyal opposition” to the current education reform wave.  Yes, AFT is going to do its share of criticism on policies such as Race to the Top, proposed budget cuts, and the expected ESEA reauthorization, but recent actions signal that AFT may also be looking for some common ground where it can move the needle, make a difference, and be a part of real reforms.
Case in point, earlier this week, Weingarten convened an off-the-record discussion with U.S. EdSec Arne Duncan, WV Gov. Joe Manchin, and 25 or so other business leaders, academics and advocates (supposedly from both the left and right) to focus on the issue of career and technical education, or CTE.  For those not paying attention, CTE is one of those key issues to strengthening our educational pathways, improving high school graduation rates and ensuring more students are ready to enter the workforce with the skills and knowledge needed to succeed.  But it is an issue many stay away from, believing that the current version of “vo tech” isn’t sexy or innovative enough to warrant the spotlight.  So bringing business leaders and educators and politicians and researchers together to discuss how to improve CTE is an important step to move CTE closer to the forefront of the discussion.
Eduflack is told the CTE discussion is the first of many “invitation-only” discussions that Weingarten and the Albert Shanker Institute has planned for the next year.  By hosting a series of salons on what are perceived as the important education topics of the day, AFT is clearly seeking to move issues beyond RttT, i3, and reauth into the education policy spotlight.
Personally, I’m all for such discussions.  The more we discuss such issues, and the more people who discuss it, the better prepared we are to have real, serious, and meaningful policy discussions.  But as usual, the devil is in the details.  Beyond the invitation-only events of the usual suspects, how do we engage a broader discussion with those whose voices are rarely heard in such debates?  And more importantly, what do we do after these discussions are held?  What are the policy reccs that will come out of these meetings? What are the action steps?  What is the call to arms?  Those answers will ultimately determine where we are just talking or adding a little strut behind AFT’s words.

Teacher Quality Showdown in Houston’s Corral

Eduflack accountability, AFT, HQT, teachers

Looking at the headlines coming out of Houston last night, it was a regular showdown at the school improvement corral.  Teachers versus parents.  Reformers versus status quo.  Process versus outcomes.  And in the words of far too many Simpsons episodes, we can’t possibly forget about the children!

For those late to the rodeo, last evening the Houston Independent School District School Board voted (unanimously, 7-0) to approve HISD Superintendent Terry Grier’s teacher quality efforts.  The plan allows the school district to terminate (as a last resort) teachers whose students are unable to make the grade on standardized tests.  According to the numbers being circulated, about 3 percent of the HISD teacher force, or 400 teachers, could be affected by this new initiative.  For those who want more on this, the full story can be found here in the Houston Chronicle.

Most see Grier’s efforts as a direct response to the current calls for teacher quality and accountability coming from Arne Duncan and the folks at the US Department of Education.  Student performance remains the king.  Effective teachers are the path to student performance.  Ergo, students whose test scores don’t improve have ineffective teachers who may not be suited for the classroom.  Or so the SAT logic goes.  Grier is moving a real, tangible plan aligned with Duncan’s teacher quality pillar.

This vote has been brewing for weeks.  As part of his negotiations with the teachers union, Grier tried to use AFT President Randi Weingarten’s speech from nearly a month ago (Eduflack’s analysis here) as grounds for the union to support his efforts.  His argument was straightforward.  If Weingarten was serious about rhetoric to fix a broken system and focus on effective teachers and student achievement, she should side with him on his teacher quality efforts.  Why should 97 percent of HISD teachers be tarred by the student test scores of just 3 percent?  And don’t forget, Weingarten embraced the idea of using student test scores as part of teacher evaluation.

The AFT prez failed to see the connection between her speech and HISD’s plans.  As expected, Weingarten rose to the defense of her teachers and in opposition to any plan that would put the jobs of AFT teachers at risk.  As she told the Houston Chronicle, “Houston is a perfect example of what not to do.  The plan has all the wrong components, and it’s one of the reasons why teachers and parents are opposed to standardized testing.”

Typically, these sorts of battles are local.  We see the local union and the local school district spar.  Local parents and teachers lay their hearts on the rostrum at public hearing, and then a vote comes and all sides live to fight another day.  If most national voices get involved at all, it is after the fact to either praise or condemn the local decisions.  After all, who knows better about how to deal with student achievement and teacher quality in Houston than the folks in Houston.

Of course, this wasn’t the typical local issue.  Superintendent Grier’s plan was the proverbial canary in the teacher quality mine.  If he could get the board to approve his efforts, they could serve as a blueprint for similar efforts in other urban school districts across the country.  If he failed, then the teachers unions would be able to demonstrate their strength, even in a weak union state like Texas (where most still refer to the unions as “teachers organizations.”

So heading into last evening’s vote, two of the loudest voices in education reform/school improvement gladly took up arms on Grier’s behalf. 

Under the header “Nation’s Edu-Eyes Are On Houston Tonight,” Joe Williams, the executive director of Democrats for Education Reform came out as Grier’s bad cop, going after Weingarten and the AFT:



We don’t question President Weingarten’s intent or sincerity, nor do we doubt her assertion that ineffective teachers are a minority of the teaching profession.


 


But far too often in the past, promises by union leaders for real reform over the airwaves have been squarely contradicted by the positions advanced by union officials in political backrooms. Both national unions have steadfastly treated teaching, despite the high stakes for children and communities, as a right rather than a privilege.


 


The first test of AFT’s commitment to the principles it outlined last month will begin tonight in Houston, and play out over the days and weeks ahead.


And the Education Equality Project, in the voice of its director, Ellen Winn, played good cop, offering a far more positive and forward-looking defense of Grier’s reform agenda:



Together, Superintendent Terry Grier (a signatory of the Education Equality Project) and the Houston Board of Education are embarking upon a comprehensive project to dramatically improve student achievement by placing a highly effective teacher in every classroom.  Rigorous research efforts have demonstrated that – in the words of the Aspen Institute’s Commission on No Child Left Behind – “teacher quality is the single most important school factor in student success.”

Last month, the Board unanimously approved a plan to improve teacher evaluations starting next year. Going forward, teacher evaluations will give teachers an honest assessment of how much they’re helping their students learn. The evaluation process will include standardized test scores as one indicator of teacher success. 


Tonight, Grier is asking the Board to approve a policy that would require principals to use all the information available to them—including value-added test scores—when making decisions about renewing a teacher’s contract.  Value-added analysis is a statistical method used to measure teachers’ and schools’ impact on students’ academic progress rates from year to year.  (The process only analyzes the change across one year relative to where a student begins, thereby leveling the playing field.)


The Education Equality Project emphatically encourages the Board to approve this critical proposal and commends Superintendent Grier for leading the charge to close the achievement gap.  If Houston approves this policy, hundreds of thousands of students will be impacted. Think of the doors that will open to these students with better teachers and better chances at a good education – the chances they will now have for meaningful work and a real opportunity at attaining the American dream.  How can we afford to keep those doors closed?


Together, DFER and EEP are defining a new paradigm with regard to urban education reform.  We are now recognizing that school districts are no longer islands unto themselves, where local decisions are made to stay within the city boundaries.  Instead, when one of the big 50 school districts acts, its repercussions can be felt across the nation.  A good idea pursued by one is replicated by others.  A plan that goes down in flames is avoided by any means possible.  Houston is looking to do what is best for student success in the district.  DFER and EEP are looking to defend and support those activities that can feed into the larger national objectives of school improvement and closing the achievement gap.  And now both sides are working together to put a squeeze play on the system of old.  One thing is for sure, this is the first in what will be many, many local skirmishes on new policies and plans aligned with the new federal education improvement agenda.

Many have been longing for the day when education decisionmaking would leave Washington DC and return back to the localities.  The advocacy dynamic down in Houston may show just how that works in practicality.  Let the locals act, and then have AFT, DFER, and EEP square off in the Lincoln-Douglas debates that will occur during and after the decisionmaking process. 

Act locally and opine nationally!

The Weingarten Doctrine

Eduflack accountability, AFT, Arne Duncan, teachers

For those who remember the early days, Eduflack was founded nearly three years ago to comment on how successfully (or unsuccessfully) we were communicating education and education reform ideas.  At the time, NCLB was a hot topic in many circles, Ed in 08 was committed to raise the profile of education issues in national campaigns, and changes in organizational leadership and new constructs of advocacy groups threatened to move education back onto the front pages.

But as a recent Brookings study has demonstrated, education stories simply aren’t capturing the hearts and minds of the media, let alone the residents of Main Street USA.  So Eduflack evolved with the times.  Rather than critique the scraps of media, I spend most of my time talking about the issues that merit discussion.  But we long for the good old days and our original mission.
This is particularly true of speeches.  As a former speechwriter (for members of Congress, members of presidential Administrations, and executives at Fortune 500 companies and leading non-profits), I greatly appreciate the written word.  I particularly appreciate capturing a speaker’s voice, gaining an audience’s attention, and delivering a real ask that results in a change of thinking or a change in behavior.  Unfortunately, such speeches are few and far between in education.  Yes, we occasionally get the Gingrich/Sharpton engagements brought by our friends over at the Education Equality Project, but those are the exceptions, not the rule.  EdSec Arne Duncan delivers a good speech, but pretty much sticks to the stump speech these days (with the true exception being the speech at the NEA last June).  President Obama can deliver a powerful ed reform speech, as he did at the National Academies of Science last spring on the topic of STEM, but those are rarities.  And if we spend time at many of the forums and discussions in DC and around the country, those “discussions” could be scripted and blocked out weeks ahead of time, with transcripts (including questions and answers) released before they are delivered.  For the most part, education rhetoric has grown stale, with us saying the same things to the same audiences with limited impact.  After all, what truly unique discussion can we have on topics like ARRA spending guidelines or RttT guidance.
But last week was one of those true exceptions.  Last Tuesday, before a packed house at the National Press Club, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten unveiled “a serious and comprehensive reform plan to ensure great teaching, taking on systems that have been ingrained in public education for more than a century.”  The full speech can be viewed here.
Over the last week, the field has seen some terrific analysis and critique of Weingarten’s remarks.  Eduflack is not going to add to the chorus.  Instead, we want to take a look at the “Weingarten Doctrine” as a communications vehicle, effective or not.
MESSENGER: From her days leading the UFT, Weingarten has cultivated a reputation as a reformer, one not set on defending the status quo.  While she may not be the most eloquent of public speakers, she is passionate about her issues and a true believer.  Since arriving in DC a year ago to take over the national union, she has laid relatively low.  She hasn’t made headlines and she hasn’t truly rocked the boat.  That changed on Tuesday.  Channeling both the late AFTer Al Shanker and the Randi of her early UFT days, Weingarten was a truly effective messenger on a topic (teacher quality and effectiveness) that has been longing for a strong voice from one of the two teachers’ unions.
MESSAGE: When we wait long enough for a strong voice on an important issue, our expectations get higher and higher.  Even with those sky-high expectations, Weingarten was able to deliver.  She didn’t seek an expected middle ground on the issue.  She didn’t try to defend the way things have always been.  She didn’t run interference for the status quo.  At a time when many think that teachers’ unions are the biggest obstacle to meaningful school improvement, Weingarten made clear that AFT is prepared to lead on the issue.
AUDIENCE: The AFT speech was delivered to a collection of the education blob, as membership organizations, advocacy groups, and those who influence (or pretend they influence) education decisionmakers.  By delivering this speech to this audience, Weingarten sought to reposition the AFT in the current ed improvement debate.  Most in attendance remember the days when the AFT fought the status quo.  This speech informed those stakeholders that the AFT of old is re-entering the game.
VENUE: To reach those stakeholders, AFT hosted the speech at the National Press Club.  This was probably the least visionary of AFT’s decisions.  This speech was to gain media attention, regardless of where it was held.  And while the NPC is a convenient venue for the DC chattering class, it provides a generic setting for a groundbreaking speech.  With school reform, we often forget the true customer — the student.  The backdrop of this speech would have been far more effective at a public school in the DC area.  And extra points could have been awarded for going out on a limb and talking about the new AFT at a charter school (a market that AFT covets for future membership).  Yes, you run the risk of using kids as props, but it is a powerful visual nonetheless.
POSITIONING: AFT was able to position the speech well with the media and key stakeholders alike.  The day before, AFT provided embargoed copies of the speech to select reporters, providing strong media coverage the morning of the speech.  Those pieces drove additional coverage that day, particularly within the ed blogger community.  So in a media environment that can be difficult to wrangle, AFT did a strong job of maximizing a speech, and a vision speech at that (since there was no news or results to really talk about).  Moreover, the AFT strategy seemed to box NEA out of the story, with the nation’s largest teachers’ union offering a “no comment” in the advance stories, assuring limited focus in the day-of coverage.
POLICY IMPACT: Without question, Weingarten’s speech made clear to the Obama Administration (and Duncan specifically) that Weingarten is ready, willing, and able to be part of the solution.  She all but endorsed the EdSec’s four pillars of ed reform, expanding his tent and grading the road ahead just a little bit.  It should be no surprise that the speech was delivered as the AFT (and the NEA) officially communicated to their states and localities that the unions were supporting Race to the Top in general, allowing the local unions to sign onto RttT application MOUs and have an impact on state ed improvement efforts in the coming years.
PRACTICAL IMPACT: Here we begin to see the unexpected consequences of rhetoric.  Immediately following the speech, the new superintendent of Houston ISD in Texas sought to use Weingarten’s words to alter the dynamic of his negotiations with the local union on measuring teacher effectiveness.  And Eduflack would be shocked if Michelle Rhee isn’t plotting the same thing in DC, using the speech to end her long stalemate with the Washington Teachers Union and seeking to do away with teacher tenure in our nation’s capital by moving Weingarten’s words into quick practice.  Those carefully crafted words could come b
ack to haunt some in the teachers’ unions.
THE LONG TERM: Ultimately, speeches are rhetorical devices. They are not hard-and-fast policy, nor are they promises we are often held to.  Weingarten’s remarks, in particular, lay out a vision for where we as a nation can go with regard to teacher quality and school effectiveness.  Addressing issues such as professional teaching standards, standards for assessing teacher practice, implementation benchmarks, and classroom supports, Weingarten has offered a blueprint for how teachers and teaching fit in the current school improvement environment.  But moving those words into the “Weingarten Doctrine” requires buy-in from federal, state, and local policymakers, from school leaders and practitioners, from business and community leaders, and from parents and teachers.  This is no small feat.  Delivering the speech is easy.  Moving the rhetoric to practice is hard.  Weingarten has planted the flag, now she needs to protect it and have others rally around it.  
UNANSWERED QUESTIONS: And that leaves us with the “what nexts?”  How with NEA respond?  Will ED and the policy community see this as a starting point for negotiation or simply meet AFT as is and adopt these reccs as their own policies?  How will the rank-and-file teachers react to this shift in policy?  How will school districts beyond Houston seek to use this to negotiate new collective bargaining agreements and contracts?  Does this end the debate on linking student achievement to teacher evaluation, or does it simply turn up the volume?  Is this the prelude or the climax to the teacher quality discussion?  
Regardless, Weingarten (and her speechwriters) deserve kudos for a well-executed “event.”  The remarks moved AFT to the front of the discussion.  It positioned the union as part of the solution, as an organization committed to school improvement.  And it captured the attention of the chattering class, if even for only a news cycle or two.  Will it change the future of ed reform, no.  But it gives us some hope regarding the rhetoric, news, and ideas that may be possible in the near future.

Teacher Pay in Gotham City

Eduflack Achievement gap, AFT, Bloomberg, Broad Prize, Chancellor Klein, teachers

Over the weekend, Eduflack was fortunate enough to break from the mugginess of our nation’s capital to enjoy the mugginess of the capital of the world — New York City.  After a busy and tough summer, I was fortunate enough to take in my fourth Mets game at Citi Field, this time preceded by the opportunity to be down on that perfect brown dirt and beautiful green grass, with my Fred Flintstone feet touching the same hallowed ground as my beloved New York Mets (before they all took to the DL this year).  I even got to meet David Wright, a great treat (though odd since he is a few years younger than my youngest sister).

These trips to NYC also give me a chance to get a better sense for what is happening in NYC’s public schools.  From time to time, I will wade into discussions on the great Joel Klein experiment, and will usually have my head handed to me by a group of irate New Yorkers.  Why?  I believe that Chancellor Klein has made some real gains in the City That Never Sleeps.  Student achievement on the state standardized tests is up.  The achievement gap appears to be narrowing.  Graduation rates are up.  Progress is being made.  We may quibble on whether progress has gone far enough and deep enough, but when you are steering a ship of that size and shape, any positive progress should be acknowledged.  He’s got that Broad Prize on his mantel for a reason.
For most of the summer, attention in NYC has been centered on the issue of mayoral control.  Thanks to the NY State Senate, we actually had a period of a few weeks when Mayor Mike Bloomberg was not actually in control of the schools.  Some used that opportunity to call for Klein’s head, trying to use the absence of the King as an excuse for a palace coup in DOE headquarters in Brooklyn.  Saner heads prevailed, the Klein team stayed intact, and the good Mayor is back captaining an educational renaissance in New York.
Along the way, we lost sight of the fact that the contract between the NYC Department of Education and the United Federation of Teachers is set to expire.  The brouhaha over mayoral control forced us to forget that NYC’s public school teachers may soon be working without a contract.  And in an urban district like NYC, that is HUGE news.  Yet somehow it isn’t getting the HUGE media attention we would expect from similar issues in similar cities.
What was even more surprising, though, was the state of negotiations with the UFT.  For the record, Eduflack is not a New York Times reader.  When I am in NYC, my newspaper of choice is the New York Post.  First and foremost, better Mets coverage.  But it also provides a more “diverse” view of what is happening in the cities and the myriad of issues the boroughs are truly grappling with.  So I was quite taken by a splashy story on Mayor Bloomberg’s negotiating position with UFT.  These are numbers that I honestly can say rarely surface when we talk about the love/hate relationship between management and teachers in NYC.
According to the NY Post, Bloomberg is starting by placing an 8 percent pay increase on the table for all teachers.  At a time when police and firefighters are at risk for furloughs and the city is looking to tax the purchase of junk food and the mere appearance of folks from New Jersey to keep the lights on, he is starting by offering a fair raise to teachers in a tough economy.  Just by looking at the cards he has been dealt, well before we reveal the flop, Bloomberg is seeking to boost starting salaries in NYC schools to almost $50K a year, with veteran teachers gaining the possibility to max out at $108K by 2011.  The full story can be found here. 
And then we look a little deeper at the Bloomberg/UFT relationship over the years.  Since Bloomberg started hopping the subway down to Gracie Mansion, he will have boosted NYC teacher pay by almost 50 percent if this base 8 percent raise takes place.  There are few careers — particularly those in the public sector — that can boost those sorts of increases over the same period.
Of course, the cynics claim that Bloomberg’s starting offer is just the “pro quo” for UFT agreeing to the extension of mayoral control.  But even Eduflack isn’t quite that pessimistic.  Was the other 40 percent just a downpayment leading to this summer’s showdown in Albany?  Or maybe, just maybe, Mayor Bloomberg and his team recognize the important role NYC’s public school teachers play in academic achievement.  Better to dance with the ones who brought you national attention and the Broad Prize than to try and start over believing that the “system” and not the “teachers” are the drivers for that classroom performance.
At the end of the day, UFT may end up with more than the 8 percent that Bloomberg is anteing with.  A new union president may be looking to make a statement.  UFT could end up with a 10 or 11 percent boost when all is said and done.  They may even be able to extract some protections from Klein’s continued push to remove ineffective teachers from the classroom, at least protecting the checks and benefits for those educators that don’t fit with the chancellor’s long-term plan.  And they may even manage to leave their lasting mark on any Race to the Top or Innovation Fund application that would include NYCDOE.
Nearly two decades ago, then WV Gov. Gaston Caperton became known as the “education governor” because he withstood a two-week, statewide strike of his public school teachers, ultimately giving them raises that took them from the bottom of the rankings to the low middles of state teacher pay.  So what does that make Bloomberg?  If he is serious about essentially boosting NYC teacher pay 50 percent in a 10-year period, “education mayor” does seem to quite do him justice, particularly if the Klein team keeps student achievement on the rise while retaining overall student numbers and getting more of them to earn that high school diploma.  The term czar is now vastly overused.  Maybe it is time to resurrect that terrific moniker “Little Magician” in NY again.  I’m sure Martin Van Buren won’t mind.
      

Tear Down that (Fire)Wall!

Eduflack Achievement gap, AFT, assessment, AYP, high-stakes testing, NEA, Teacher Education, teachers

In recent weeks, there has been a great deal of attention with regard to firewalls and the linkages between the evaluation of teachers and the achievement of students.  The current draft criteria for Race to the Top proclaims that states must be able to use student performance data from their respective state assessments, crosswalking it back to the classroom to determine which teachers have been effective (and which have not).  In a new era of teacher incentives and merit pay, the trickledown of federal law will soon demand that good teachers “show” their effectiveness, and that there is no stronger measure for it than how well their students achieve.

As soon as those draft criteria were written, we started hearing of the legal obstacles policymakers in California, New York, Nevada, and Wisconsin would need to overcome (as all four states currently prohibit linking individual teachers to student achievement data).  California claims that while it is prohibited at the state level, exemplar school districts like Long Beach Unified are already pursuing such policies.  New Yorkers immediately go on the defensive, and claim that the federal interpretation of laws in the Empire State is incorrect.  Wisconsin’s soon-to-be former governor is quickly working with the state legislature to reverse their firewall issue.  And what happens in Vegas is clearly staying there, as we’ve heard nary a peep from Nevada on their plans to address a potential stumbling block to RttT funds.
At the heart of the firewall issue is one incredibly important philosophy.  If we are to improve the quality of K-12 education in the United States, we need to ensure effective, high-quality teaching is happening in classrooms throughout the nation.  To ensure that, we need hard, strong, irrefutable quantitative measures for determining effective teaching.  And the surest path to determining effective teaching is by measuring the outputs.  Good teaching results in effective learning.  Effective learning shows itself on student assessments.  Strong student assessments mean quality teaching in the classroom.  Rinse and repeat.
Is it as simple as that?  In an era where most of our student assessments are focused on measuring reading and math proficiency in grades three through eight, do we really have a full quantitative picture to separate the good teachers from the bad?  Do we really have the data to determine effective teaching from that which is getting in the way of achievement?  And do we know enough about student performance data that we are able to make very clear cause/effect determinations of teacher quality based on student test scores, without needing to factor in the other variables, factors, and resources that ultimately impact a student’s ability to learn?
Don’t get me wrong, Eduflack is all for focusing on teacher quality.  We have schools of education who are turning out teachers that lack the pedagogy or content knowledge to succeed (with most of them ending up in the schools and communities that need teachers the best).  In fact, Harvard University Dean Merseth recently said that only 100 education schools are doing “a competent job,” while the other 1,200 could be shut down tomorrow.  
At the same time, prevalent thinking has grown more and more in line with the belief that pedagogy and clinical training simply do not matter.  New teachers can get by on four weeks of classroom prep, not four years.  Low-quality teacher training programs and questionable alternative certification pathways are all about throwing teachers into the deep end, without ensuring that they are able to swim first.  And we’ve built a system where the classrooms and communities in the most need are rarely serving as home to our strongest and most capable teachers.  Struggling schools are made to feel lucky they have a teacher at all, and are more than happy to just settle for a “warm body.”
The convergence of these beliefs and these realities paint a dangerous picture when it comes to rewarding teacher quality and measuring it by student performance on state assessments.  Why?
Teaching is more than just reading and math.  Yes, those two subjects represent the very foundations of learning.  Without reading and math skills, students will struggle performing in other subjects.  But if state assessments are our rubric, are we saying that some subject matter teachers are less equal than others?  We all know that science will soon be brought on line, but what about other academic subjects.  Social studies and history.  Art and music.  Foreign languages.  Even ELL and special education.  Do those teachers not fit into our bell curve of effective teaching if we do not have state assessments for the subjects they teach?  Are they not effective teachers because we are not measuring student achievement in their chosen academic fields?  
What about the notion of the teacher team?  If I am a middle school student, my performance on the state reading exam is impacted by more than just what is happening in my ELA class.  Hopefully, my social studies teacher is introducing new vocabulary words and forcing me to apply critical thinking and comprehension skills to what I am reading.  My first or second year of a foreign language is getting me to reflect more closely on sentence structure and the roots and meanings of key words or word parts.  Even my math and science classes are contributing to my overall literacy skills.  So if I gain on the state reading exam, is that just a win for my reading teacher (as the current proposals would call for) or is that a win for the entire faculty?  Should teacher success be based on the success of the school, with a rising instructional tide lifting all boats, or can it really be winnowed down to a one-to-one formula, where a boost in an individual student’s reading score is solely credited to the teacher who happened to have them in the ELA class for 45 minutes a day?
What about longitudinal gains?  In Washington, DC, this year we witnessed how targeted test skill development can influence performance on the state exam.  So are we asking teachers to do test prep or to teach? Are they to facilitate or to educate?  Seems that the ultimate measure of a teacher is not just the short term gain on the state assessment, but also how well the student retains that knowledge and applies it in future grades and in future studies.  But how, exactly, do we capture that in a quick and dirty way?  In an era where we still look for the immediate payoff, no one wants to wait and see the longitudinal academic gains of students, ensuring that there are no drop-offs from fourth grade until eighth grade?
Are all gains equal?  If I am a math teacher in an upper class suburban public school, and my students post five point gains on the state assessment, taking them from 92 percent to 97 percent, is that equal to a math teacher in a failing urban middle school who boosts student math performance from 45 percent to 50 percent?  Is a gain a gain, or are some gains more equal than others?  Do teachers get extra points for impacting the achievement gap?  Is there a weighted system for demonstrating gains in dropout factories or historically low-performing schools?  Is demonstrating real movement in the bottom quintile worth more than moving a few points in the uppermost quintile?  
And then we have all of the intangibles that should be factored into the mix.  Class size.  Native languages.  Pre-service education.  In-service professional development.  Quality and quantity of instructional materials.  Accessibility to mentor teachers. &nbsp
;Parental involvement.  Principal and administrator support.  All play a role in driving student achievement and ultimately closing the achievement gap.  How do all get factored into the formula that student achievement plus teacher incentives equals effective educators?
We should be doing everything we can to strengthen the teaching profession and ensure that classrooms in need are getting the most effective teachers possible.  We should acknowledge that not everyone is cut out for teaching, and that getting that first teaching job and a union card should not be the only tools required to assure lifetime employment.  And we should look to quantifiably measure teacher effectiveness, recognizing that the ultimate ROI for education is whether students are learning or not (and that they are able to retain it).  We should be incentivizing superstar teachers, particularly those who teach hard-to-staff subjects or in hard-to-staff schools.
But before we tear down the remaining firewalls and decide that teacher evaluations are based solely on a student’s singular performance on a bubble sheet exam, we need to make sure we aren’t moving a bad solution forward without truly diagnosing the problem.  Virtually all states are struggling to implement good data systems that track students longitudinally.  Before such data tracking is in place, can we really use the numbers to evaluate teacher performance?  Current standards are a hodgepodge of the good, bad, and ugly when it comes to what we are teaching students and what we expect them to learn.  Can we evaluate teachers on student performance when we have no national agreement on what student proficiency in fourth or eighth grade truly looks like, regardless of zip code or state lines?  And can we truly use assessments to evaluate teachers when the vast majority of educators teach subjects or grades that simply aren’t assessed in the first place?
Seems we need to focus on the development and implementation of our standards, our assessments, and our data collection before we can move to step 106 and begin applying that data to determine the salaries, longevity, and very existence of the teachers we are linking it to.  In our zeal to fix the problem, we could be creating a slew of additional ones.  And at the end of the day, none of them get at the heart of the matter — improving the quality of instruction while boosting student learning and closing the gaps between the haves and have nots.
 

Throwin’ Down on Teachers and School Models

Eduflack AFT, EdNews, Gates Foundation, High School, NEA, Teacher Education, teachers

Two interesting news items this morning, showing that what was once old may be new again.  The first the debate over traditional versus alternative teachers, the second on the role of small schools.

Issue One: Up in Boston, the Boston Teachers Union has firmly planted its flag in the sand, hoping to block an influx of new Teach for America educators this fall.  Citing planned cutbacks in the Boston Public Schools and a “surplus” of existing “good” teachers, the BTU is taking its fight to the streets, hoping to keep 20 new TFAers from arriving in Beantown this fall.  The full story is here, in the Boston Globe.
What’s interesting is that TFA seems to be taking the position that it is a public service organization, much along the lines of the Peace Corps or Americorps (something that Bostonians know a thing or two about).  Eduflack doesn’t doubt that many TFAers enroll in the program because they believe they are giving back to the community and performing a public service by going to into urban or rural schools that are having a dickens of a time staffing their classrooms.  But the BTU has a point here.  Is it really public service and volunteerism at its best when a TFA teacher in Boston is making the same starting salary as a beginning teacher in the district (about $46K)?  If Boston were paying TFAers the hourly wage that Americorps members are getting, we are having a different rhetorical fight.  But we are putting each pool of educators on equal footing, at least financially.
Seems to me that if Boston does indeed have this surplus of hundreds of good teachers without current jobs (not something I would be bragging about, but that’s just me) the focus then should be on quality and effectiveness.  Why bring in a TFAer for two years when you can tap the best of the current surplus pool, teachers who may already have a track record of delivering student achievement results in Boston and teachers who are prepared to make a commitment for more than two years?  Do we want surplus teachers or do we want proven-effective teachers who are prepared to make a long-term commitment to closing the achievement gap and boosting student performance?  When caged that way, the answer seems simple (particularly since we are waging this rhetorical war over 20 TFAers).  Part of TFA’s mission is staffing those hard-to-serve schools.  If we have qualified teachers lined up around Fenway Park to serve from Southie to the North End, seems they warrant an equal chance for those 20 available slots.
Issue Two: Back in America’s heartland, Chad Wick, the CEO of KnowledgeWorks Foundation, makes a strong case for the notion that small schools work.  His commentary can be found here at Education News.  This is a bold statement to make, particularly since so many people believe that the Gates Foundation disowned the notion of small schools this past fall.  But if you look at what Bill Gates said back in November, and you look at what Wick says today, they are marching in lockstep.  Those who think we are going to improve the schools simply by changing the structure and implementing a small school model are fooling themselves.  But changing the structure is an important first step to school improvement, particularly if you use the new model to create new learning opportunities for students, offer better supports and PD for teachers, and generally refuse to toe the status quo line.
Having worked with Wick and the good folks at KnowledgeWorks, they seem to know what they are talking about.  They can point to their efforts with the Ohio High School Transformation Initiative and Early College High Schools as examples where the small school structure opened the door to improvement.  They used the new structure to close the achievement gap and improve high school graduation rates.  Seems a model example of using the process (school structure) to actually generate some measurable results.  Isn’t that a novel concept, particularly in this era of innovation.

Reform Without Teachers

Eduflack AFT, NEA, teachers
In keeping with Eduflack’s ongoing discussion of what is needed to improve our schools (and remember, Eduflack doesn’t believe in using the term reform, because it lacks outcome, I’m focused on improvements), following is a guest post from Doug Little.  No one can say Eduflack’s not open to opposing viewpoints.
Writing from a Canadian perspective, the American education ‘Reform’ movement seems to be attempting education reform without listening to teachers, particularly organized teachers in NEA-AFT. This means reform is doomed. The literature is clear. Education reform without significant teacher buy in never works. Periodically people get frustrated and attempt to blame teachers for example, for the achievement gap. The achievement gap has nothing to do with teachers, it is based in the deep inequality that is tolerated in the USA to date that is not tolerated in any other democracy.

Jurisdictions periodically get the idea that they are going to get tough on teachers as Duncan, Obama, etc are doing now. You can predict the results as the night follows the day, an exacerbated teacher shortage.New Zealand made a serious attempt at education reform without listening to the teachers and instituting policies they opposed. The result was an overnight serious teacher shortage. OK we’ll deal with that by having non-teachers teach, once again failure. Things get worse. You have a serious legacy problem with black, hispanic, poor white and AmerIndian achievement because you have never historically made efforts to educate these groups and now you want to close the gap overnight. It won’t happen. You already have a serious teacher problem in schools teachers consider undesirable to work in. Merit pay and Teach for America kids will not solve this problem. The job must be made desirable with pay raises for all teachers, and radically improved working conditions in safe schools. It seems to all the other democracies where social-democratic reforms are popular, that Americans are just not willing to pay the price for this in taxes. There always seems to be an American sense that there is a silver bullet to education improvement. There is not, it is very expensive and very hard work.

To quote Stanford education professor Larry Cuban “It is very difficult for the schools to make students equal within a society that is otherwise dedicated to making them unequal.”

What need to do:

1) Massively invest in early childhood education free for every child from toilet training to kindergarten if parents make below $40 000, $5-10/day for all other children.

2) Abandon standardized tests. Finland, the world’s best education system doesn’t use them.

3) Dramatically reduce class sizes in all poor schools to 15 and all others to 20 students. (STAR project Tennessee)

4) Dramatically improve all teacher pay. Add bonuses for Master’s degrees. 

5) Dismantle charter and voucher schools, they are part of the problem not part of the solution.

6) Dramatically improve teacher education but also only allow university students with straight A’s to apply to be teachers.

7) Don’t make any reforms not approved of by NEA-AFT.

8) Offer free MA to math and science teachers if they teach for ten years after degree.

We think along these lines in Canada but we are not satisfied. We have only the world’s second best system after Finland.

(This post was contributed by Doug Little of The Little Education Report.  It represents Doug’s opinions only.)