With all of the talk about student achievement and turning around schools, there is a larger issue lurking in the shadows. Teachers. For much of this year, we’ve focused discussions of teacher quality on how we measure effective instruction in the classroom. And while Eduflack is all about the outcomes, the research shows that the inputs of teacher quality are just as important, particularly when we look at the education and clinical preparation that goes into growing a better teacher.
Today, the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education releases its (much) anticipated report from its Blue Ribbon Panel on Clinical Preparation and Partnerships for Improving Student Learning. The Panel itself is a relative who’s who of the education blob, particularly those organizations and individuals involved teacher quality issues, including AACTE, AFT, IEL, KA, NBPTS, NCTAF, NEA, and a host of IHEs and LEAs (how’s that for using your edu-alphabet?).
What did the Blue Ribbon winners offer up on their key reccs for improving teacher quality and the clinical preparation of educators? The group offered up a Top 5 list:
1) More rigorous accountability, including calling for teacher ed programs to do a better job of monitoring their programs, ensuring they are up to par, and guaranteeing they are meeting the needs of the school districts filling teaching jobs.
2) Strengthening Candidate Selection and Placement, with a careful eye to making teacher ed programs more selective and more diverse.
3) Revamping Curricula, Incentives, and Staffing, with a commitment to couple practice, content, theory, and pedagogy in the teacher ed process.
4) Supporting partnerships, particularly those relationships that produce college graduates “who do want to teach and are being prepared in fields where there is market demand.”
5) Expanding the knowledge base to identify what works and support continuous improvement, giving a hat tip to the unfortunate fact that “there is not a large research base on what makes clinical preparation effective.”
To help move these concepts into practice, NCATE announced that eight states — California, Colorado, Louisiana, Maryland, New York, Ohio, Oregon, and Tennessee — are now part of the new NCATE Alliance for Clinical Teacher Preparation (though it is interesting to note that six of those eight states now have new governors, thanks to this month’s elections).
So how does NCATE keep this report from suffering the fate of so many reports before it, being applauded at its release and then relegated to a shelf never to be read again? Put simply, the NCATE reccs need to be moved into practice NOW. The Alliance is a good first step. But how are the reccs being implemented into the US Department of Education’s teacher candidate recruitment effort? How are these priorities being funded through the Higher Education Act and Title II programs? How are we rewarding colleges for doing right, while dealing with those leading us down the wrong paths? And how do we ensure that federal, state, and local teaching dollars are going to employ those educators who live up to expectations and enter the classroom with the clinical preparation necessary to succeed from day one?
I realize I often throw cold water on these sorts of reports, always asking what comes next. But informing is only the start of the battle, and all a report does is inform. If we are to change the hearts, minds, and actions, we need to go further and dig deeper. Changing the way we address teacher preparation is a big thing requiring a lot of work. One report does not solve the problem, but it can get the discussion going.
Teacher Education
“Teacher Preparation: Who Needs It?”
Without question, teacher quality is one of THE hot topics in education reform these days. Logically, we recognize that teachers are the ones primarily responsible for boosting student achievement in the classroom. Programs like the US Department of Education’s Teacher Incentive Fund have thus been designed to reward those teachers whose students demonstrate success. It is a simple equation, outcomes result in rewards.
But what about the inputs that result in that achievement? What do teachers need to know, be able to do, and experience before they ever become a teacher of record? Those are the sorts of questions that the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) is trying to tackle with a new series of policy briefings it launched today, titled “Teacher Preparation: Who Needs It?”
In today’s episode, AACTE offered up The Clinical Preparation of Teachers: A Policy Brief, a document that provides some of the history, the research, and the vision for how to best address clinical preparation. Chief among the recommendations — all prospective teachers, regardless of their pathway, need at least 450 hours of clinical training (or a full semester).
Full disclosure, Eduflack has worked with the folks over at AACTE for years. Regardless, today’s briefing offered some interesting recommendations for the federal government, state government, and those preparing the next generation of teachers, including:
For the feds:
- Revise the “Highly Qualified Teacher” definition within the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) to require that teachers must establish not only their content expertise, but their ability to teach it effectively, as measured by their actual performance in classrooms, following extended clinical experience;
- Invest in the development of a National Teacher Performance Assessment that would parallel the development and adoption of Common Core Standards;
- Maintain the Teacher Quality Partnership Grants, with a specific clinical preparation focus, in the Higher Education Opportunity Act while increasing funding for the program;
For states:
- Require a minimum of 450 hours, or one semester, of clinical experience during pre-service teacher preparation;
- Ensure that all teacher preparation routes, regardless of pathway, include the same clinical preparation requirements;
- Require a high-quality teacher performance assessment of all teacher candidates;
- Collaborate to agree upon common clinical experience requirements;
- Offer incentives to schools that act as clinical settings for teacher candidates;
- Support the expansion or replication of successful teacher residency programs;
And for providers of teacher preparation:
- Ensure school districts and universities work jointly to design and supervise strong clinical practice collaborations;
- Provide all teacher candidates substantial and appropriate clinical preparation prior to becoming “teacher of record” in their own classrooms;
- Train clinical teachers and other teacher mentors to help and support novice teachers;
- Require all clinical teachers to have at least three years of teaching experience; and
- Assist our nation’s public schools and teacher preparation programs to jointly adopt standards for newly redesigned clinically based teacher preparation programs.
As part of the formal presentation, the crowd heard from U.S. Sen. Jack Reed (RI), who is quickly becoming THE Senate voice on education in general and professional development in particular. In his remarks, Senator Reed praised President Obama for adding funds to the Teacher Quality Partnership program as part of last year’s economic stimulus package, but took issue with Obama eliminating the program as part of his budget recommendations last month. Reed urged all those in attendance to reach out to their Senators and Congressmen to ask that TQP be restored, as the program is essential to ensuring our colleges and universities are working toward developing the high-quality, effectiv
e teachers our schools need so badly.
With a greater and greater focus on effective, results-based instruction, the issue of teacher preparation isn’t going to go away. Even as part of its Quality Counts study, Education Week recently highlighted those states that are leaders and laggards when it comes to the clinical experience. Content may be king these days, but pedagogy is quickly gaining stature.
Backbenching the Prez’ Ed Budget
It has been a little over a week since President Obama officially submitted his FY2011 budget. Depending on who you speak to, it was the best of times/worst of times for the education sector. Overall, the Administration is seeking to raise the federal commitment to education spending by more than 7 percent. But that increase comes with a new set of priorities, a new grouping of funding streams, and some eliminations of long time, cherished programs. You can see Eduflack’s original thoughts on the budget here.
During the original scrum, we heard from many of the groups we expected to hear from — including oldies but goodies like the NEA and AFT and the growing number of education “reform” organizations seem by many to benefit the new “consolidation.” But Eduflack thought it would be interesting to see what some other organizations have been saying about the budget reccs, particularly those who are focused on the issues IDed in my original analysis. Unsurprisingly, most comments come from those unwilling to throw a big bear hug around the proposed budget.
On the issue of teacher quality and preparation, we have Dr. Sharon Robinson, president and CEO of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (ISTE) opposing the elimination of programs such as the Teacher Quality Partnership saying:
Across the nation, colleges and universities are playing an indispensable role in supplying our schools, particularly hard-to-staff schools, with effective teachers who intend to serve as classroom leaders for decades to come. Through the federal budget and new programs such as Race to the Top and Investing in Innovation, the U.S. Department of Education should be supporting and incentivizing those teachers colleges that are blazing a trail when it comes to strengthening instructional standards, effective use of data systems, improving teacher quality, and turning around low-performing schools. Programs like TQP are essential to ensuring preservice teacher preparation is part of our improvement agenda.
Over at NSDC, policy advisor Rene Islas had a very different take on the future of teacher preparation, stating:
What does this framework say about teacher effectiveness? The president is beginning to adopt NSDC’s language. The budget request outline a new program called “Excellent Instructional Teams.” Sound familiar? Taking it to the next step, the new program description includes the following statement: “promote collaboration and the development of instructional teams that use data to improve practice.” I count that as a significant victory.
And what about education technology and its consolidation into the overall ESEA framework (and the elimination of specific grant programs funding ed tech at the state or district levels)? The following was offered by Don Knezek, CEO of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE):
We cannot and must not lose sight of the value and impact of education technology in our classrooms. As ISTE noted in its Top Ten in 2010 just last month, education technology is the lifeblood of lasting school improvement. Working from best and promising practices in the field, we must continue to use technology as the backbone of school improvement. We must ensure technology expertise is infused throughout our schools and classrooms—particularly through programs like EETT—and that we are continuously upgrading educators’ classroom technology skills as a pre-requisite of ‘highly effective’ teaching. We must boost student learning through real data and assessment efforts. And we must work together to leverage education technology as a gateway for college and career readiness so that our K-12 systems can help fulfill the President’s pledge to make the United States tops in the world when it comes to college-completion rates. We cannot and must not deny policymakers and educators the resources they require to provide all students with the globally competitive education they so desperately need.
And we saw similar words coming from the ed tech community at large in a joint statement from ISTE, State Education Technology Directors Association, and the Consortium for School Networking:
While there are elements of the President’s proposed budget that are laudable, we remain extremely concerned that the Administration has elected to defund EETT in its FY11 Budget Proposal and urge the Administration and Congress to restore adequate funding for this critical program. Congress and the President included EETT as a core provision of the current ESEA law in recognition of the importance of driving the next generation of innovations in teaching and learning, assessment and continuous improvement, and cost-efficiency in coordination with other federal, state and local school improvement strategies. We fear that years of investments through EETT and the E-Rate, coupled with American Recovery and Reinvestment Act investment, may be devalued or lost entirely without adequately funding EETT or a successor program.
Carol Rasco, the president and CEO of Reading is Fundamental, was far more direct on RIF being eliminated (and not consolidated) from the President’s budget:
Without this federal funding, over 4.4 million children and families will not receive free books or reading en
couragement from RIF programs at nearly 17,000 locations throughout the U.S.
Unless Congress reinstates $25 million in funding for this program, RIF will not be able to distribute 15 million books annually to the nation’s children at greatest risk for academic failure. RIF programs in schools, community centers, hospitals, military bases, and other locations serving children from low-income families, children with disabilities, homeless children, and children without adequate access to libraries. The Inexpensive Book Distribution program is authorized under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (SEC.5451 Inexpensive Book Distribution Program for Reading Motivation) and is not funded through earmarks. It has been funded by Congress and six Administrations without interruption since 1975.
Interestingly, many of the so-called reform groups didn’t issue public statements (or at least haven’t put them up on the web for discerning minds to review). Nothing from Teach for America. Nothing from American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence. Nothing up from New Leaders from New Schools. Nothing posted from the National Council on Teacher Quality. (And, in fairness, Eduflack realizes that public statements are often issued but are slow to get up on the websites, as seems to be the case with groups like the Committee for Education Funding, which released a statement that can’t be found on its website.)
The priorities identified in the President’s proposed budget demonstrate which groups and individuals have the greatest sway over on Pennsylvania and Maryland Avenues. What’s left to be seen is who will have real impact on Capitol Hill. Anyone who is ready to leave RIF for dead, for instance, is underestimating Rasco’s passion and the power of the national RIF network. The President’s budget is merely the first hand in what is going to be a long and expensive game of poker. Those players who have been around the table many, many times before are likely to be the ones with chips still on the table when all is said and done.
(Full disclosure, I have done work with both AACTE and ISTE in recent years.)
Teacher or Teaching Quality?
Over at Education Week this week, dear ole Eduflack has a commentary on current teacher quality efforts, asking the question if teacher quality (as primarily reflected in teacher incentive efforts) or teaching quality (such as the current push for improving teacher education) is the strongest path toward real, lasting school improvement.
The full commentary can be found here: <div><br></div><div><br></div><div>Happy”>www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2009/11/04/11riccards.h29.html
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The Great White Whale of Teacher Quality
At the heart of EdSec Arne Duncan’s remarks at Teachers College last week has his new never-ending pursuit of the illusive “teacher quality.” Clearly, the search means more than the “highly qualified teacher” definition currently found in NCLB. More than the qualities that currently win one additional monies through the federal Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF). And even more than the plans floated more than two years ago by Sen. Joe Lieberman et al to redefine HQT as “highly qualified and effective teacher.”
So with states and school districts across the nation scrambling to demand effective teachers and pledge policy and funding to support new efforts under expected Race to the Top, i3, and such funds to implement teacher quality efforts, what exactly are we using as our benchmark for such actions. Surely, how students perform on their standardized test scores is an important piece to the equation. But is there more to effective teaching outcomes than simply student achievement? And are there key inputs that need to be factored into the process as well, recognizing that quality teachers come as the result of both effective preparation and effective teaching?
While nailing Duncan’s latest teacher quality demands to the schoolhouse door up at Columbia was THE story last week, we’ve also had two new reports designed to support, enhance, or rethink the efforts moved by the EdSec and his Brad Jupp-led teacher quality team. Earlier this week, Hope Street Group released its study on Using Open Innovation to Improve Teacher Evaluation Systems. This follows on the heels of the Forum for Education and Democracy’s Rethinking Learning Now campaign’s Effective Teachers, High Achievers report.
As part of its new phase of education reform dialogue, the Hope Street Group released a series of eight recommendations around how to measure effective teaching, including:
* Objective measures of student achievement gains must be a major component of teacher evaluation
* Clearly defined standards of quality instruction should be used to assess a teacher’s classroom performance
* Teachers, teacher groups, and unions should be included in developing and implementing teacher evaluation systems
* Teacher evaluation systems themselves must be periodically evaluated and refined
* Teacher evaluation systems should reflect the importance of supportive administrators and school environment to effective teaching
* Components of teacher evaluation that rely on observation and discussion must be in the hands of instructional leaders who have sufficient expertise, training, and capacity.
* Evaluations must differentiate levels of teaching efficacy to identify opportunities for professional growth and drive rewards and consequences
* Information from teacher evaluations should be comparable across schools and districts, and should be used to address equity in the distribution of teaching talent
Hope Street’s full report, shaped by actual teachers (a novel concept in education policy), can be found here. The group is clearly building on the accountability recommendations released earlier this year from the Education Equality Project (EEP), while looking to provide some additional support to Duncan and his teacher quality efforts. Focused primarily on outcomes, Hope Street is all about results and who is the final arbiter of said results.
And what of the Forum? No surprise, but the education policy minds at the Forum take a decidedly different world view of teacher quality, focusing primarily on the inputs that go into effective teaching. The Forum first focuses on the current obstacles to true teacher quality, emphasizing dramatically different levels of training (with those least prepared teaching the most educational vulnerable students); disparate salaries; radically different teaching conditions across districts, schools, and classrooms; and little mentoring or on-the-job coaching to help teachers improve their skills. And they look to international models (those found in Singapore, Australia, Great Britain, Canada, and others) for inspiration, seeking a system that requires high-quality teacher education for all candidates, completely at government expense; a year of practice teaching in a clinical school; mentoring for all beginning teachers; equitable salaries; and ongoing professional development embedded in 15-25 hours a week of planning and PD time. The full policy brief can be found here.
The Forum limited its demands of the federal government to seven, including:
* Create incentives for recruiting teachers to high-need fields and locations
* Strengthen teacher preparation
* Make teacher education performance-based
* Support mentoring for all beginning teachers
* Create sustained, practice-based collegial learning opportunities for teachers
* Develop teaching careers that reward, develop, and share expertise
* Mount a major initiative to prepare and support expert school leaders
Two different paths. Two different perspectives. Two different rubrics. So which direction are we headed? Clearly, Hope Street is more closely aligned with the priorities, objectives, and goals of the U.S. Department of Education and reform-minded school leaders such as Joel Klein and Michelle Rhee. And the emphasis on results — recognizing that talks of teacher quality are relatively hollow if they don’t translate into improved achievement and performance in the classroom — are key if we are to turn around our nation’s low-performing schools and improve overall student achievement while closing the persistent learning gaps our school districts have struggled with for decades.
But can we achieve that vision without first addressing the ideas and issues laid out by the Forum? Can we achieve results-based improvement in teacher quality if we do not first address those inputs that go into building and supporting an effective teacher? In an era where results are king, how important is the process that gets us there?
From the cheap seats, it seems clear that this should not and cannot be an either/or approach. If we want to see the tangible results (as advocated by Hope Street and others) we need to invest in the systems and structures that build and support effective teachers (as called for by the Forum). If we don’t, teacher quality will remain that great white whale for the EdSec and policy voices across the country, always top of mind, but always out of reach. If we are going to catch our Moby Dick, we need to find those areas of agreement between the inputs advocates and the outcomes champions and find the common ground to build comprehensive expectations and rubrics for real teacher quality. It may be the only way to have the true impact so many are now looking to have on what happens in the classroom.
Retraining Teacher Training
Big to-dos this afternoon up at Columbia University, Teachers College. Speaking before a packed house of students, teacher educators, and reps from the education policy community, EdSec Arne Duncan continued his push for improving teacher preparation in the United States. Duncan challenged education schools to “make better outcomes for students the overarching mission” of today’s teacher preparation programs.
Clearly, today’s remarks at TC were “good cop,” compared with Duncan’s “bad cop” words a few weeks ago at the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education. Duncan praises AACTE and NCATE for their efforts to improve the quality of teacher preparation and the assessment and evaluation of prospective and new teachers. He recognized the good works going on in states like Louisiana and New York. And he applauds the innovations happening at institutions such as Emporia State University, Alverno College, and Black Hills State University. He honored the good work of teachers, while calling for a common level of quality and effectiveness at schools of education across the United States. The EdSec’s full remarks can be found here.
As Duncan embarks on his national effort to retrain our models of teacher training, he raises some essential issues. With so much new money soon funneling into school districts for teacher training, hiring, retention, and reward, teacher quality is a must-discuss topic. If we want tomorrow’s teachers to succeed (particularly if we are going to measure them based on student assessment data), we need to prepare today’s education students for these new paradigms and expectations.
One of the logical next questions coming out of Duncan’s TC speech is which are the IHEs that are failing to live up to these new expectations? One would be hard-pressed to find a teacher’s college that would say they are failing at their mission. This is particularly true when we think about their actual job description. For decades now, the task before our colleges of education has been simple. The taught the cores of both content and pedagogy. They were expected to graduate a significant number of their students (at grad rates similar to the institution as a whole). Their graduates were expected to pass state licensure exams. And those graduates were expected to find employment with local school districts (or at least districts somewhere in the state). These were our expectations of our ed schools, and based on these standards, most were indeed living up to the expectations.
Through his rhetoric, though, Duncan is looking to dramatically change the rubric by which we measure teachers. Teacher quality measures are all about using student test data to determine teacher effectiveness. We are no longer seeking “highly qualified” teachers, as mandated in NCLB, but are now seeking highly effective ones. Clearly, the teaching profession is facing major changes.
But we need to learn to walk before we can truly run this race. Through years of research, we know the components of effective teacher training, including strong content and pedagogical training, intense clinical experience, and mentoring and ongoing development once one hits the classroom. This is particularly true of hard-to-staff schools and those being targeted by Duncan for school turnaround efforts, where quick-and-easy, low-impact teacher training efforts simply leave new teachers unprepared for the challenges of the modern-day classroom.
How do we make these components of a high-quality teacher education program the norm, particularly for those schools serving historically disadvantaged communities? How do we find the balance between the inputs that go into building an effective teacher and the outcomes that prove it? How do we ensure that teachers are the primary drivers of school innovation and improvement, and not merely stakeholders to whom new changes happen to?
And just as important, how do we build the data systems to prove it? Across the nation, we have doubts about the power of our current collection methods. We want to use student data to evaluate and incentivize teachers, but need to make sure we have the collection mechanisms in place to do so. We need to break down firewalls and strengthen our connections. But Duncan’s charge forces us to take it a big step further. We collect student performance data. We are to use that data to evaluate the performance of current teachers. And now we want to use that data to determine those teachers colleges and alternative certification programs that are doing the job (along with those who are not). A noble goal, but not one we are equipped to deal with, at least not with our current data systems.
Before we start calling out individual schools of education for failing to live up to the expectations set by the EdSec (and Eduflack will admit there are quite a number that would make that list), we need to first set a clear rubric for how we are measuring effective teacher education. Until then, we will simply be assembling a hit list of “laggard” colleges based on personal opinion, anecdotes, bias, or wild conjecture. And while that may make good fodder for the blogs and faculty senate meetings, it is hardly the stuff that a new renaissance in teacher education should be based.
The EdSec is definitely on the right track. But we must be sure we are making decisions based on good data and even better expectations. We have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to improve the quality and effectiveness of teacher preparation. That means one chance to get it right. Before we start asking colleges and universities to make changes to drive innovation and improvement, we need to be clear on what we are asking for and how we will measure it. It is the only way to ensure we are truly improving, and not merely changing.
Calculating Meaning in the Latest NAEP
Yesterday, the National Assessment Governing Board released the latest numbers with regard to student math proficiency (at least proficiency as measured by NAEP). The headlines seem simple, yet troublesome, enough. Fourth grade math scores were stagnant. Eighth grade score saw a slight uptick. The math achievement gaps between white and black students and white and Hispanic students have remained relatively unchanged.
As to be expected with such numbers, we can wring our hands, look for conspiracy theories, and listen for things that go bump in the night. Many a critic will likely take these latest numbers as yet the latest indictment of No Child Left Behind, pointing to all of the time and money that has been invested in elementary instruction over the last decade and the lack of return in recent years. The continued struggles to close the achievement gap remain incredibly troublesome. Yes, we should acknowledge that eighth grade math numbers rose slightly across the board. But it provides little comfort when we think about all of the interventions and programs that are in place to specifically close the achievement gap, and that chasm remains as large as it has always been, with little sign of narrowing.
In the global sense, EdTrust President Kati Haycock has it right. Mixing both optimism and concern, Haycock concludes, “It’s clear from the data at both grade levels that we still have a long way to go to effectively prepare all of our elementary and middle school students for the world that awaits them in high school and beyond.” Yes, we have miles to go before we sleep, and we cannot be content with where the latest numbers leave us. We also can’t assume that the common core standards, once they are developed and adopted, will immediately translate into gains in student proficiency. Such standards are goals. The real rub is in the interventions and assessments meant to align with such goals.
But perhaps the most interesting remarks regarding the latest NAEP scores come from David Driscoll, the new NAGB chairman and the former education commissioner for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. According to Education Week, in overseeing the release of this latest batch of data, Driscoll remarked that the flatlining in fourth grade scores was the result of “shaky math content knowledge among teachers.” Eighth graders did better because they “were taught by teachers with math majors.” The full EdWeek article can be found here.
Driscoll’s remarks clearly play into the current debates on teacher quality, as well as EdSec Arne Duncan’s upcoming teacher recruitment campaign. Rhetorically, all of the “cool” ed reform kids are pointing to alternative certification, mid-career transitions, Teach for America, and other such efforts as the magic bullets to fix what is ailing the American classroom. The pendulum is swinging back to a belief that content knowledge is king, and pedagogy is overrated in the grand scheme of all things teaching.
As part of the argument, we’ve tagged our teachers’ colleges as part of the problem. The attacks can get tiresome. “Ed schools are the cash cows of the higher education system. As such, they favor quantity over quality, seeking to turn out as many education majors as possible. They worship at the altar of process, rather than results, and thus are focused exclusively on pedagogy and not worrying about the end game of student performance. And worse, there is little consistency in traditional teacher prep programs, particularly when some of the lower-quality ed schools are those serving the highest-need communities.”
Driscoll is probably right. Teachers with a strong understanding of the content knowledge are more effective than the average bears. But does that mean we scrap our ed schools and expect that math majors will give up their plans for corporate or research jobs to become middle school teachers? Of course not. The issue should be how we strengthen our teacher ed programs with such content knowledge, not how we work around our ed schools to get prospective teachers in through the back doors, particularly if those back doors neglect the pedagogy, clinical training, mentoring, and other efforts that go into effectively preparing a teacher for the rigors of the 21st century classroom.
We seem to forget that upwards of 90 percent of our K-12 teachers come from traditional schools of education. We can hand Teach for America the Gates Foundation’s entire endowment, and TFA will still be unable to get to scale and serve as the primary teacher provider for our public schools. We can make major shifts in emergency certifications and licensures to move mid-career shifters into high-need areas like math and science, and it will still be a minor ripple in a very large pool. We can break down the barriers to get ABCTE in every state and let every mom-and-pop alternative certification program serve the local school district, and it would still be but a hiccup in the larger scheme of things.
Don’t get Eduflack wrong. Programs like TFA can be a wonderful value-add for school districts, injecting new energy into a school and bringing a fresh take to the classroom and the faculty lounge. But such efforts don’t get at the heart of the issue. If the end game is to improve the quality and effectiveness of teachers and teaching, that fight begins and ends with our schools of education. If we are to truly improve teacher quality for the long term, it requires focusing on our colleges of education and ensuring all accredited programs are of the highest quality and greatest impact. It’s about making sure prospective teachers are trained in the latest research and understand how to use data to improve the quality and impact of their instruction. It is about offering a strong clinical training, so new teachers understand exactly what they are in for in the classroom and have the supports and knowhow to deal with the challenges they face. And yes, it is about calling out those schools that are not up to snuff, holding them accountable if they do not meet our expectations.
A century ago, the Carnegie Corporation rocked the medical community with its Flexner Commission, a comprehensive look at medical education in the United States. In its report, Flexner found that the majority of medical colleges in the United States were lacking, doing a poor job preparing prospective doctors. As a result, huge numbers of medical colleges were shut down and those remaining redoubled their efforts to focus on quality, research-based practice, and outcomes. Since then, U.S. medical education has stood as the gold standard for the world.
If Duncan et al are truly serious about improving the quality of teaching, the time has come for a Flexner-style study of teacher preparation in the United States. Instead of throwing all of our federal stimulus dollars at teacher incentives and alternative certification efforts, let’s actually get under the hood of good teacher preparation. Put our traditional education colleges up against alternative programs and recent teacher recruitment interventions and really study what is working … and what is not. What programs are producing the most effective teachers? What institutions are responsible for the teachers who are boosting student achievement? And what are those institutions teaching and offering that results in those outcomes? Then we come up with the formula for the most effective teacher preparation. What pedagogy, content knowledge, clinical training, mentoring, and ongoing support is necessary to improve teacher quality? What is the gold standard for teacher preparation? And most importantly, what should tea
chers know and be able to do in order to boost student learning and achievement?
chers know and be able to do in order to boost student learning and achievement?
Until we have the answers to such questions, we will never be able to truly have the systemic impact on student achievement that we seek. And we certainly shouldn’t be making decisions on this teacher prep path versus that teacher prep path without strong data analyzing both inputs and outcomes. I’m all for following one’s gut, but this is just too important an issue to decide based on anecdotal evidence or through a buffet-style approach to simply choose whatever looks most appealing.
Tear Down that (Fire)Wall!
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.  
;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?
;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.
Racing Toward Long-Term Change?
It should come as no surprise that we are seeing a great number of states and school districts instituting new reforms so they appear to align with the goals and ambitions of Race to the Top and the overall Duncan reform agenda. Just this week, Indiana’s state superintendent announced major policy shifts (including a relaxing of teacher certification regulations), Illinois’ governor agreed to double the number of charter schools in Chicago, and even the Los Angeles superintendent is looking for ways to qualify for the RttT moneys, even if California is rejected because of its firewall issues.
Without doubt, governors, chief state school officers, and urban superintendents have been listening carefully to what EdSec Arne Duncan and his team at the LBJ Building are expecting from those who will be a part of the federal school improvement gravy train. For more than half a year, we’ve listened to speeches and dissected policies on topics such as teacher quality and incentives, charter school availability and quality, data systems, alternative teacher pathways, and core standards. We’ve scrutinized the details and criteria of last week’s RttT draft RFP, knowing that little, if anything, will change in the final. We all want to show we are part of the solution, and not part of the problem.
Those in the know seem certain that only a select group of states are going to be bestowed the title of Race to the Top states. The betting odds are 10 to 15 states will earn the RttT seal. That leaves another 36 (if you count DC) knowing the end game, but possibly lacking the financial resources to truly innovate.
Earlier this month, the National Conference of State Legislatures released data on the budget gaps. It is no surprise that many of the states on the short end of the budget stick are states that many believe have an inside track for RttT. For instance, Connecticut has a $4.1 billion budget gap; Illinois a $7.3 billion gap. New York posts a $17.65 billion gap, while California clocks in at $38.95 billion. Even with State Fiscal Stabilization Fund dollars, these states have major obstacles to overcome just to keep pace with previous budget years. That means a lot of energy spent running in place, when ED is looking for states who will be sprinting out of the gates.
On the flip side, there are some interesting states that appear to be in the best financial shape, where their budget gaps are less than 5 percent of the general fund, meaning (in theory) that public education will face a scalpel, and not an axe. So there may be opportunities in states like Arkansas, Missouri, Indiana, and Ohio to quickly put real reforms in place and document the impact it is having on student learning.
It begs the question, who will win RttT? Are we looking for states with the greatest need, the states with the largest achievement gaps to overcome? Are we looking for low-hanging fruit states, where a couple of billion dollars in education funding can make the difference? Are we looking for states that want to invest in one major area, like STEM or teacher incentives, or are we looking for states that will be the full embodiment of the ED reform agenda? Are we looking for states that are willing to “match” federal funding with state and private dollars to spur innovation and improvement, or are we looking for those states extending the most aggressive hand?
And equally important, will the Indianas and Illinoises of the world continue with their reform agendas if they do not get added federal funding? We all want to believe that these proposals and changes are being offered because state decisionmakers see them as in the best interests of the schools and the students. But the cynic in Eduflack wonders how many are acting to give their states “curb appeal” as ED starts shopping for a home for more than $4 billion in new federal education funding. Will Illinois’ legislature fund the doubling of charter schools in Chicago without a check from the feds? Will Indiana’s state superintendent be able to move forward with his reform agenda if the Hoosier State is a spectator, and not a participant in the great Race? If the core standards movement doesn’t gain steam, will anyone other than RttT states endorse them?
Ultimately, programs like RttT are designed to model what is possible and spur innovation across the board. One expects RttT states to be incubators where the remaining members of our great union can see what is possible and what can work for them. We also expect those RttT states to continue their programs well after the federal funding spigot is turned off. But will that be the case? At the end of the day, will states who are not Race states change, without the financial incentive to do so?
One hopes they will, but history tells us that status quo education is status quo for a reason. It is far easier.
Top 10 RTT Questions
The clock has officially started. Last night, the U.S. Department of Education officially posted the draft Race to the Top (RTT) RFP on the Federal Register. Interested parties can find at http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2009/pdf/E9-17909.pdf. The big change from the draft circulating before last week’s unveiling is the proposed criteria are now put in a handy, dandy chart, instead of just being pages and pages of text. Regardless, all interested parties have until August 28 to provide their comments and recommendations to officials at ED. Eduflack would be surprised if the final version of the RFP is not released to states as close to September 1 as possible.
Earlier this week, ED officials held a conference call to speak to the RFP (along with other funding streams such as State Fiscal Stabilization Fund, ed technology grants, and the like). After taking some time to digest it all, Eduflack is left with more questions than he has answers. So rather than suffer with these queries on my own, I’m just going to put them out there so others can struggle along with me (or at least realize that they are not alone). So here’s my top 10.
1) How many states does ED intend to bestow with RTT grants? Clearly, they aren’t intending most states to secure Race funding (else the language would be quite different). But is this intended for half the states? A quarter? Fewer? I’ve heard six to 10 states. Alexander Russo has reported at thisweekineducation.com that the Gates Foundation is helping 15 states with their applications. So how many states will actually become RTT states?
2) Speaking of Gates, if it is true, who are the 15 states that they are assisting? I’ve heard two handfuls of states mentioned as possibles/likelies, including Colorado, Connecticut, Louisiana, and Illinois. Will the four states that will play home to Gates’ deep dive states be priorities for funding? Can states like Texas, which receives big Gates dollars, overcome the political and administrative obstacles to qualify if they have the right assistance? Will we ever know who Gates is helping? (Some ED RFPs require that the applicant disclose who actually wrote the proposal, but I don’t see that in the requirements here.)
3) We know that there will be a Phase One and a Phase Two of grants, so what prevents a prospective state from laying the weeds, waiting to see who is approved in Phase One, and then liberally “borrowing” from the previously approved application? We saw some of this in the initial rounds of Reading First back in 2002. Will we see it again this year?
4) And about those approvals, who, exactly, will be reviewing applications? The folks over at Education Week and its Politics K-12 blog have noted that ED is expecting to get top-notch, expert, experiences individuals with SEA backgrounds to review these applications. Obviously, reviewers can’t have a dog in the fight. So who are these reviewers who aren’t currently working with individual states or the organizations that represent them (like NGA or CCSSO) that will be determining how the $4-plus billion is spent?
5) Are California and New York (and Wisconsin) really knocked out of the running because of their prohibitions to link teacher identifiers with student performance data? ED did a great deal of research and vetting of what was happening in the states before releasing this draft. I guarantee that they knew about the CA and NY laws. And we heard EdSec Duncan in California earlier this year expressing some doubts about California being an RTT state. Is the Golden State just too big with too many moving parts to demonstrate measurable change out of the gates? Would we prefer to work with smaller states like Delaware, Georgia, or Ohio that may be easier to navigate in the early going?
6) How sacrosanct are the proposed criteria that guide selection? I can’t help but notice one of the criteria is a letter of endorsement from the state teachers union. Is that a recommended or a non-negotiable? Do the state chapters of the NEA and AFT essentially have veto power over a state’s RTT application? How does a state determine whether they need this item, or whether it is just a nice value-add?
7) With regard to charter schools and requirements around school choice, how will reviewers distinguish between states whose laws essentially prohibit charter schools versus those like Virginia that have terrific charter laws on the books, but just don’t authorize them? Is the measuring stick intent or actual implementation?
8) The draft focusing on alternative certification, but where is emphasis on improving the quality of traditional certification paths? Collecting data on the student achievement of graduates of specific colleges of education? Comparing the impact of traditional certification with alternative certification (and with Teach for America)? How can RTT be used to ensure an ample supply of effective teachers, regardless of the path they take to the classroom?
9) What is the real crosswalk with core standards? It seems like ED is hedging its bets, asking states to provide annual reports based on their state assessments, yet requiring RTT states to sign onto the core standards by mid-2010 (if they are out). Assuming core standards are in place, do we not expect assessments to accompany them? Or do we expect that such assessments will not be completed and in place until after RTT’s four-year run?
10) Other than state self-reporting, how will we actually know that RTT dollars have improved student performance and closed the achievement gap? What specific measures, other than state tests, will be in place? What is ED planning on replacing AYP with for the long haul? How do we ensure that dollars are being invested to change practice for the long term, and that RTT reforms will stay in place and have impact long after the funding is gone?
A lot of questions, I know. Hopefully, others are asking these questions as well as part of the review process. Or are these just the rants and musings of an education agitator?
Eduflack By Patrick R. Riccards 