Archive for the ‘teacher preparation’ Category

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More Pay for More Performance?

Wednesday, December 16th, 2009

School districts are looking for new ways to compensate teachers.  The most common system of steps and levels rewards teachers for longevity and additional education.  This method does not distinguish excellence or discourage mediocrity, which troubles some educators and many taxpayers.

I see two challenges in changing the system:  inertia and educators uneasy with compensation based on student learning, annual goals, and management observation.

Traditional teacher compensation systems

Most school districts have compensation contracts with teacher’s unions based on time on the job and amount of education credits.  This method is straightforward and objective.  It does not rely on observation of teaching skill or on results of student learning.  Management doesn’t have to haggle over whether a teacher is effective - if the teacher has ten years and a master’s degree, it’s easy to check on a grid to see how much the teacher will be paid.

New assessment tools available

This 90 year old system has simplicity and universal coverage in its favor, which was a plus before we had testing tools to measure student learning and annual growth.  Colorado now administers the CSAP, a statewide, annual student learning assessment.  The state test measures student proficiency in reading, writing, math, and science, and can compare students of “like” learning levels from one year to the next to determine “annual growth.”  This tool enables schools to identify which students have grown more or less than their peers in learning.  Schools with high growth are seen as “good schools”; schools with low growth are supposed to improve.

Some caveats

These tools make objective assessment of teacher effectiveness possible.  But where’s the money to use this assessment as a compensation mechanism?  And what about those teachers whose children are not given a statewide test - music, art, physical education, vocational teachers?

How would districts support additional teacher education?

If “levels” or additional education is taken out of the compensation formula, then there’s room for shifting pay toward effectiveness.  But then there’s no money to reward for additional education.  Would teachers pursue more graduate level training if the reward is not inevitable?  Will districts agree to tuition assistance plans to pay up front for additional education to replace levels?  Will a district that removes levels be able to compete for staff with districts that keep levels?

If school districts replace “levels” with effectiveness measures, will those measures only include student learning progress and growth?  Should other elements, such as teacher leadership, special projects, coaching and mentoring, parent relations, etc. also play a part?

How will teachers be evaluated?

A merit pay or pay for performance or pay for effectiveness system requires teacher performance evaluation.  My experience is that principals are concerned about doing annual appraisals, surely a must for merit pay.  Annual appraisal requires principals to be in classrooms observing teachers and children many times during the year.  Do principals have time for that level of oversight?  An alternative method involves “peer” evaluation, in which teachers evaluate teachers.  Will the public see that as an accurate assessment or as a means for teachers to take care of each other’s compensation?

Who will set evaluating metrics?

In the business community, companies set up performance evaluation criteria and metrics which managers use to assess their employees. Typically this system also involves setting goals each year that will merit additional compensation.  When companies have enough money for bonuses, this method enables extra pay.

Will principals sit down with each teacher at the beginning of each year to establish goals?  Will principals work with teacher teams to establish goals?  Will principals and staff establish school goals?  Will districts work with principals to evaluate the merit of school goals?  If teachers do not meet goals, will their compensation be confined to “steps,” or time on the job, and cost of living increases?

Pay for performance is not easy

A merit pay or pay for performance system is possible, but it will be more complicated.  The biggest question is whether it will produce better results for kids.  If it creates more “effectiveness” conversations between principals and teachers, if goals focus on genuine needs, and teachers work better up and down the grade level structure, then a merit system may do its job.  And it may give taxpayers more confidence when compensating teachers.  But it won’t be easy.

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Posted in program improvement, public schools, successful schools, teacher preparation |
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The Changing Teacher

Wednesday, November 11th, 2009

Change has become the well-used mantra in the past year, often as the start of a taunt or wisecrack.

Columnist David Brooks, however, is glad about change in the 21st century education world.  He’s on the side of President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan in their determined push to keep education reform as a top priority.  See “The Quiet Revolution,” New York Times, October 23, 2009.

Though I completely disagree with Brook’s despair that a District of Columbia Schools voucher program has been tossed, I do concur that the Obama administration is pushing for change in school districts and schools of education.  (See post 11-4-09).

A Policy Information Report, December 2007, distributed by the Educational Testing Service, confirms the anecdotal changes I saw already underway in new teacher preparation before I retired.

The report’s findings looked at several factors about new teachers and experienced teachers taking courses to satisfy the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) mandate for highly-qualified teachers.  It found that students who passed the exam in the second cohort studies (2002-2005) had higher GPA and SAT scores.  Students from all ethnic groups and both genders showed consistent improvement in academic work.

The most interesting conclusion of the study suggested “that when policies target a common objective and employ a variety of strategies, real change can happen.  …seldom have policy changes been associated with such positive impact in so little time.”  Finally, a good thing from the NCLB legislation.

Problems still remain, of course.  The second cohort had a lower number of passing students, attributable to the increased difficulty of the exam.  Middle-school teachers, both new and experienced, had special difficulty passing the test.

The report looked at 20 states with teachers who take Praxis tests as part of their teacher preparation.  They must pass all parts of the exam or they do not receive certification.  Only 3 of the states, Nevada, Hawaii, and Oregon are in the west.

Some states have identified their own tests.  California, for example, uses the California Basic Educational Skills Test (CBEST) when determining new teacher and highly-qualified teacher certification.  The exams must be passed before teacher preparation classes are completed.

While the study demonstrates that teachers entering the profession are better prepared to do well in schools of education, other studies share additional issues that must be addressed to turn out excellent teachers for the variety of students in the 21st century United States.

Let’s look at two other reports Eduflack blogger Patrick Riccardo has noted.

Hope Street Group, a business group interested in better learning outcomes, released “Using Open Innovation to Improve Teacher Evaluation Systems.”  While the report, developed mostly by teachers, is concerned with accountability in the classroom, some of its proposals could be part of further improvement in teacher preparation, attracting new professionals with good academic backgrounds.  Here are several examples:

* Education schools should use clearly defined standards of quality instruction and assessment of a student teacher’s classroom performance.

* Student teacher evaluations that rely on observation and discussion must be in the hands of instructional leaders who have sufficient expertise and training.

* Information from teacher preparation evaluations should be comparable across schools of education and available to districts, and similar evaluations used to address new (and experienced) teachers.

The Forum for Education and Democracy’s Rethinking Learning Now group released its report “Effective Teachers, High Achievers,” outlining another model of high-quality teacher education.  The government pays all expenses for teacher preparation; the student teacher receives a year of practice teaching in a clinical school; all beginning teachers are mentored; and ongoing professional development is embedded in the work week.

These guidelines would surely change the outlook for the teaching profession.  If so, keep in mind President Obama’s key question-who is all this change for?

Kids, I hope.

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Posted in NCLB, No Child Left Behind Act, highly qualified teachers, public schools, schools of education, teacher preparation |
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Getting Ready

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009

Rumbles about teacher preparation keep surfacing in the newspapers, on TV, on teacher internet websites, in union magazines.

The concern engulfing the education world is not just teacher quality, but how to improve schools of education, whether undergraduate or graduate programs.

Impressive statistics describe the dilemma.  Of 3.2 million teachers in 95,000 schools in the United States, half are Baby Boomers who will soon retire.  The data estimates that within four years schools will lose 1/3 of those veteran teachers.  By 2014 almost 1 million new teachers will be needed, roughly 200,000 new teachers a year.

Those numbers stood out when Arne Duncan, U. S. Secretary of the Department of Education, in an October speech at Teacher’s College, Columbia University, New York, addressed mediocre-his words-teacher preparation in the United States.

Veteran teachers may shake their heads.  A long line of famous educators, Horace Mann, William James, John Dewey among them, have despaired of weak teacher preparation.

My favorite quote is from Jacques Barzun, a revered philosopher and educator from Columbia University, who disparaged teacher education as having “a strong anti-intellectual bias, enhanced by a total lack of imagination.”

The good news from the second half of Duncan’s speech is that over the past ten years a few “rigorous practice-spaced initiatives to adapt to the reality of preparing instructors, to teach to diverse students in our information age” have developed.

Sounds like good news for young men and women in schools of education, until those that oversee teacher education look at the kinds of students for which their programs must prepare new teachers.

English Language Learners, isolated rural children, high poverty-high need urban students, kids who need excellent math and science teachers, diverse ethnic groups that would do well to see a diverse teacher population.

What to do about these disparate needs?

A number of options for schools of education have surfaced.  One essay by Susan Engel, “Teach Your Teachers Well,” New York Times, November 2, 2009, suggested more time student teaching, not just sitting at lectures about class management or the latest reading research.  Next, she suggests videotaping and analyzing the lessons taught, similar to training for therapists who analyze good points and difficult moments in therapy sessions.

Also, she suggests more study about watching children learn, not merely memorizing Piaget’s theories, for example, but in-depth study.  Last and best, is Engel’s suggestion to provide financial incentives to public schools to hire several teachers from a similar training program.  With this strategy, called a teacher residency, participants will have backup and camaraderie that may be a boost during difficult moments which any veteran teacher knows will occur.

PACT, Performance Assessment for California Teachers, has been pioneered by a wide-ranging consortium of teacher education programs in California.  It offers some of Engel’s strategies for the aspiring teacher.  Fourteen states are piloting similar performance assessments based on PACT.

One caveat: in California, as well as many other states, the current fiscal budget deficit and the solution of pillaging money from education places a pall over success.  However, there are those who will never say die.  Veteran teachers count on that determination.

Get ready!

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Posted in Arne Duncan, PACT, public schools, schools of education, teacher preparation |
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Am I Highly-Qualified?

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009

Sometimes I wonder what the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation means when it requires all teachers to be highly-qualified.  It’s still the law.  No changes yet.  No matter how often my union (CTA) brings it up in its magazine.

3rd grader reads at home

3rd grader reads at home

In the latest issue of California Educator, September 2009, the problem is seen in the Race to the Top requirements: “paying teachers based on a single test score will increase the likelihood of teaching to the test and make it harder to recruit and retain teachers.” (p. 30)

I read those words and think how does my training make me want to be paid only for teaching to make sure students pass a test?  Is that what a highly-qualified teacher does?

I spent two years taking classes in the latest research before I was credentialed.  None of it was about teaching to a test.  In reading/language arts, the curriculum focused on the best practices known to show students how to figure out unknown vocabulary and to read for meaning so that no matter what text, fiction or non-fiction, is found in the test booklet, they will be able to show what they have learned.

For mathematics, we were trained to use the most up-to-date strategies to teach students beginning set theory for little kids through pre-algebra for upper elementary students.  In my current class, the students are very strong in mathematical understanding, so I spend my time assembling enrichment materials.

In California, the same as many other states, I wrote my own research papers, using the students in my student-teaching classes as subjects to test the strategies I was studying.  I took the CBEST, the exam that new teachers must pass before being credentialed.  I observed and student-taught at three different grade levels.  I was evaluated on my lesson plans and classroom management skills for those weeks.  Even in my second year, I’m still observed and evaluated, being a probationary teacher.  I get good remarks for my work.

Doesn’t it sound like I’m highly-qualified?  I know, however, that I’m fortunate to teach students that are highly motivated and who have parents who encourage them and spend a great deal of time giving them after-school opportunities.

What if, like some teacher friends from my credentialing program, I was hired in a low-income neighborhood where the students don’t have the advantages my students enjoy?  What if the students were struggling with another language?  Enough food?  Illness?  Parents who worked all the time and still didn’t have enough money for trips to museums or the beach or the sights of San Francisco, much less a home library?

And what if, no matter all the best practices of the teachers and enthusiasm of the students, the yearly test scores improve, but only little by little, and it takes relentless struggle to reach the benchmarks set by the state each year.  Some years, the benchmarks aren’t met.

Do those teachers not deserve recognition just like the teachers in schools where most students surpass the benchmarks every year?

So how is this ‘pay based on test scores’ evaluation plan supposed to fairly identify highly-qualified teachers?

Will this be another mandate with no guidelines and no money behind it?  Please say no.  In fact, put forward other well-documented ways to help students succeed, not pay-for-test-score-performance at all.

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Posted in California Teachers Association, NCLB, No Child Left Behind Act, Race to Top, highly qualified teachers, public schools, teacher preparation |
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OMG, What To Do?

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009

So you see (post 7-14-09), everyone in the education world is accountable for helping students become proficient in reading and math.

It turns out that some schools are doing well. They continue to turn out plenty of qualified applicants for high ranking universities. In addition, many schools are still able to hit their targets - just enough students can read at grade level and perform well enough on math exams to reach the yearly benchmark.

The question might creep into your head-what about the students that haven’t reached the yearly target?  Despite NCLB, some schools chronically under-perform.  No matter how stringent or how lax the state standards and exams, a large group of students do not do well in school. Many drop out before they finish high school.

Those students are the ones that schools must figure out how to be accountable for.  NCLB says nothing about how to save those students.  It leaves the nature, depth, and quality of any needed reforms entirely up to schools, school districts, and states.

This blog summarized studies that have analyzed what improving schools look like (post 6-30-09).

To begin a turn-around the federal administration and department of education have enumerated specific basic principles to improve the school day and year for the nation’s children.  For instance, on the Education Agenda of the current White House website, the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind legislation specifically states that money should be provided to support programs to retain and train teachers; provide mentoring and planning time; as well as address compensation for work in schools with high need students.

Teachers examine data

Teachers examine data

With those principles in mind, the blog reader should go to the Partners in School Innovation Foundation, based in San Francisco, for information about the ‘cycle of inquiry,’ one model based on the business model suggested in the previous post which supports mentoring and planning time.

Such a strategy helps teachers and other school professionals be accountable.  For a former “program improvement” school like Grant Elementary in San Jose, California, a continuous ‘cycle of inquiry’ strategy was a major thrust to meet AYP goals.  As of 2008 data, school’s performance was 12% higher in reading/language arts and 22% higher in math than the state benchmarks required.

Ted Lempert, former assemblyman in the California legislature, heads a group called Children Now, which has useful recommendations about teacher compensation.  The group also strongly recommends transparency of funding resources and stable funding for schools, especially those working with high need students.

Speaking of money and teacher training, remember that there are many programs available, even in these tough economic times, to provide inexpensive, but valuable, professional development.  See the flexible DVD model Take Care! on the blog’s website.

The NCLB approach for holding schools accountable is clear.  The expected educational outcomes are clear.  Given the need, it’s unclear why the multitude of models available to achieve student success are so difficult to implement.

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Posted in Annual Yearly Progress, Children Now, Education, NCLB, No Child Left Behind Act, Partners in School Innovation Foundation, cycle of inquiry, school accountability, teacher preparation |
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