Higher expectations for student achievement are a must — but today’s education news is rife with contradictions about setting and reaching them.  

The National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers have just offered their draft of much-needed college and career readiness curriculum standards for students, reflecting the demands of the 21st century world in which students will live as adults. Thus far, however, the Common Core State Standards Initiative is paying too little attention to the context in which these standards will be firmed up. And while the group led by NGA and CCSSO acknowledges the need for new investments in higher quality performance assessments and the spread of teacher expertise, we do not hear how sorely these investments are needed.

Next we look to the latest MetLife Survey of the American Teacher, which reveals that fewer teachers in schools with high proportions of low-income students strongly agree that their schools uphold high standards for all students. Teachers in these schools are also less likely to be confident that they have the necessary knowledge and skills to help their students succeed academically. That shouldn’t surprise us: More and more of the teachers who enter high-needs schools have less and less high-quality teacher preparation. Too many are flying solo in classrooms with only a few weeks of training — mostly tips on how to manage classrooms — when they need serious preparation to help our most challenged students master the 21st century skills called for by the Common Core student standards.

And then there's the recession. As the need to make deeper investments in students and teachers becomes ever clearer, we are now learning the extent to which the current economic crisis is forcing districts to lay off teachers and cut back on the number of days students attend school. Yesterday, the Kansas City Board of Education voted to close almost half of its schools and cut 700 of 3,000 jobs directly related to student achievement, including almost 300 classroom teachers. When a school district like Kansas City with many high-need students has to cut $50 million from its budget, one wonders how our nation will muster the extra resources to help millions of American children on the wrong side of the achievement gap reach new global standards of achievement.

And then there’s the media hysteria.

Newsweek blares a cover page story claiming that the key to saving America’s “failing public schools” is to fire all of the bad teachers protected by their unions. Yes, there are unfit teachers and we shouldn’t let them teach anybody’s children. But few experts would suggest that the number is very high — and certainly not so high that by removing them we will instantly solve the complex problems that plague high-needs schools and communities. Newsweek’s editors never once reflect on root causes — like the large numbers of ill-prepared teachers who enter and exit teaching quickly, or the many high-needs schools led by a revolving door of ill-trained principals who botch teacher evaluation and undermine the potential for effective teachers to work together to solve the problems in their own schools. Most blatantly, the article fails to consider just how our present mechanisms for teacher recruitment and preparation will replace teachers lost in wholesale firing frenzies. With laid-off journalists, perhaps?

If we expect all students to jump the bar of higher expectations now being raised by the Common Core Initiative, we will first have to own up to the contradictions that are impeding progress in our most challenged schools. Serious investments. Teacher preparation and support. Better leadership development. These are the things that will strengthen our schools. Not a teacher witch hunt.

A guest blog from CTQ staffer Ali Kliegman

Imagine a school without a principal. Not the kind of school whose principal is gone for the day, resulting in mad chaos, children roaming the halls and little instruction taking place. Instead, imagine the opposite: high achieving students who are hungry to learn, and steadfast, accomplished teachers who are eager to teach, and, well that’s it.

 
This is exactly the kind of school that teachers in Los Angeles are hoping to create at Hillcrest Drive Elementary, reported NPR’s Marketplace recently. “When we win,” LAUSD President, AJ Duffy declared, “then the world will say that we can do a far better job than a private school or a charter school or an education management company.” It’s no surprise, though, that many are threatened by this prospect and somehow suggest outside charter organizations as a superior alternative. Too bad for students, the debate is cast over whether or not to hire union teachers at these schools, rather than how to place the best teachers—those who will lead the way toward an effective 21st century teaching profession—in the highest needs schools.
 
Not only are Hillcrest’s teacher leaders ready to assume the responsibilities of their administrators, but they are moving full speed ahead to transform their school. These teachers champion a number of reforms requiring changes in their union contract, including longer school days, after school activities, and individual learning plans for every student in the building. What’s more, these teachers are offering suggestions for their own evaluation (in this case, through the peer evaluation model, which has proven successful).
 
Cynics of this alternative brand of leadership should visit the Math and Science Leadership Academy in Denver, Colorado. As a teacher-led school, MSLA has no principal. Instead, two lead teachers work on instruction, discipline and any other area typically managed from the top down.  As a 1st grade teacher, Julie Variot says, MSLA decision-making fits within a “round circular structure where everyone has a voice.” Though hundreds of teachers applied this year to become a part of MSLA, only 10 were selected. Watch this video to learn more about how strategies like teachers evaluating as well as helping each other have allowed its students to flourish. All too often charters, staffed with non-unionized teachers, are pitted against public schools, staffed with those who are. It does not have to be such a stark either/or. For proof that it does not, listen carefully to the principal of the neighboring KIPP school (non-unionized) endorse the work of MSLA (unionized).

The point is, effective leadership matters. In my own experiences as a Teach for America corps member in New York City, my colleagues (both TFA and non-TFA) were far more instrumental in my growth than my principal. My former principal (also a former corps member) was the first to admit she never learned to teach effectively in her first years of teaching. When I asked her to model lessons, though she was expected to be the instructional leader, she politely recommended our literacy coach instead. It’s no wonder then, why MSLA’s model works. Who better to learn from than those confident and experienced enough to lead, while wise enough to continue bettering their practice in a room full of students?
 

Last week, the L.A. school board, following the recommendations of Superintendent Ray Cortines, denied many of the charter requests and gave priority to teacher-led initiatives like Hillcrest. The concept of a teacher-led school isn’t new, nor is it naïve. Perhaps it’s time to ask ourselves what we are waiting for.

Ali Kliegman taught seventh grade Humanities in the Bronx for two years as a Teach for America corps member. She holds an M.S. in Teaching from Pace University and worked previously in education policy for the legal reform coalition Common Good.

Policy pundits and journalists who weigh in on the teaching effectiveness debate should take note of the latest MetLife Survey of the American Teacher — whose theme Collaborating for Student Success  speaks volumes to the issue of how to identify effective teachers.

While researchers continue the search for methods to isolate individual teacher effects, the MetLife survey reveals that over 90% of the nation’s teachers believe their colleagues contribute to their own teaching effectiveness. New teachers, in particular, were more likely to strongly agree that their success in the classroom hinged on the effectiveness of others.  
 
For me, this finding calls to mind the 2009 study by Jackson and Bruegmann highlighting the importance of peer learning for teachers. Using 11 years of matched teacher and student achievement data in North Carolina, these scholars (from Cornell and Harvard, respectively) were able to isolate and quantify the added value brought about by teachers’ collective expertise — finding that most value-added gains are attributable to teachers who are more experienced (and qualified) and stay together as teams.*
 
The results reported in Part 1 (Effective Teaching and Leadership) of MetLife's new survey offer additional insights. Teachers in schools that report more collaboration are more likely to point out that:

• other teachers contribute to their classroom success

• there are higher levels of trust among teachers and principals,

• there are more opportunities to watch each other teach, and

• they are more satisfied with their careers.
 
The MetLife data confirms the powerful effects of deep teacher collaboration. Policymakers who seek to improve student performance should pay attention to the international PISA research, which found that teachers in nations with high-performing schools have somewhere between 10 and 20 hours a week to work with their colleagues — critiquing lessons, examining student work products, and developing and adapting curriculum. Strikingly, the MetLife survey also reveals that the average American teacher spends less than 3 hours a week working with his or her fellow teachers — and almost one in 5 teachers has less than one hour per week of “structured collaboration.”
 
Want to improve teaching effectiveness? Listen to teachers — and make it possible for teachers to spend substantive time listening to each other. Kudos to Metlife for providing important new evidence to support this much-needed reform strategy.

* Jackson, C. K. & Bruegmann, E. (2009, August).  Teaching students and teaching each other: The importance of peer learning for teachers.  NBER Working Paper 15202.  Washington, DC: National Bureau of Economic Research.

The Center for American Progress just released an interesting paper on teacher tenure reform — suggesting that tying job security to student test scores is the linchpin to improving teaching effectiveness. It’s interesting but oddly incomplete.

No doubt, as the CAP report noted, “Legislated and bargained contractual protections make the process of dismissing an ineffective teacher with tenure prohibitively lengthy and expensive in most states, and teacher tenure evaluation processes remain largely disconnected from teachers’ performance in the classroom or student achievement.”

And there is no question that something is askew when “virtually every single tenured teacher” in a recent study was “rated satisfactory (or higher), and less than 1 percent received a negative evaluation.” This does not make sense.But here is what I believe to be curiously absent in the CAP report.

1. Many ineffective teachers remain in their tenured positions not because of tenure but because of poor evaluation systems managed by either overworked administrators or those who are not very effective at rating teachers.

2. Many tenured teachers are not teaching effectively not because of archaic tenure laws but because administrators have forced them to teach out of field. Almost 50 percent of the nation’s math teachers are teaching out of field.

3. Our own studies of high performing, high poverty schools reveal a number of conditions undermine teachers opportunities to teach effectively. They include:

• principals who do not cultivate and embrace teacher leadership;

• the lack of time and tools for teachers to learn from each other;

• the lack of high quality, specialized teacher education for the highest needs schools, subjects, and students;

• the lack of preparation in working with second language and special needs learners, and

• increasing student mobility as families, due to economic distresses, move in and out of school communities.

The CAP report on tenure reform raises important issues, but by choosing to concentrate only on the behaviors and actions of teachers and not the system as a whole, the CAP analysis is of limited use in shaping better teacher policies. Without a comprehensive assessment, we surely cannot find the best solutions to teacher evaluation, tenure, and effectiveness.

As the Race to the Top competition heats up, the conversation about how America should measure teacher effectiveness is also coming to a boil. It’s a critically important conversation. There’s no question that teaching must become a results-oriented profession.

In this context, a recent survey from Public Agenda and Learning Points Associates is timely. It surfaces how teachers view a variety of teaching effectiveness policy reforms, suggesting that the conventional wisdom held by policymakers and pundits often is out of synch with those who teach students every day.

The survey results (which offer up a treasure trove of insights from the classroom), reveal that only 8 percent of the nation’s teachers believe that teacher pay should be tied to their students’ performance on standardized tests. The pollsters attempted to see if those teachers who might be characterized as “effective” viewed this complex issue differently. They did not.
 
It’s interesting to compare these poll findings with the views of accomplished teachers who have spent considerable time sorting through the issues of performance pay. Many of the expert educators in our Teacher Leaders Network and New Millennium Initiative indicate that they are ready to create a much more accountable profession that focuses on outcomes for students. CTQ's 2007 TeacherSolutions report on performance-pay, written by 18 outstanding teachers from across the U.S., outlined a bold framework for teachers to be compensated quite differently — with a focus on rewarding those who help students learn more, spread their expertise to colleagues, and take on significant and far-reaching leadership roles inside and out of their schools.
 
The difference in point-of-view has to do with the metrics of effectiveness. I'm not surprised that a random sample of American teachers are not keen to be judged by a single arms-length assessment. Yet our longstanding work with teachers (and our own research) reveals that many teachers are ready to consider performance pay as part of the teaching profession. But it has to be done right. Student achievement measures should be used — but sole or even primary reliance on today’s multiple-choice standardized tests makes most teachers extremely suspect. As far back as late 2004, The Teaching Commission (led by former IBM CEO Lou Gerstner) found in a poll that the vast majority of teachers and the public do not trust standardized tests as a sound measure of student learning.
 
Teachers are ready to create and use new achievement measures — and drive new performance-pay systems that elevate teaching, help colleagues learn from each other, and reward those who do the most for students. As Linda Tyler of the Educational Testing Service noted yesterday in an Education Week commentary, in identifying effective teachers “we can use multiple measures, including student-performance data, classroom observation, feedback from students, and other evidence, to provide well-rounded, fair, and valid input into important decisions.”

Well-rounded. Fair. Valid. I’m confident that’s what parents and citizens expect as policymakers look for a better way to measure the effectiveness our nation’s public school teachers. Creating such a system will require leadership from our most accomplished teachers. It’s time for policymakers and the pundits to listen to them and let them lead.

Guest blog by Alesha Daughtrey, CTQ Research and Policy Associate, and Ali Kliegman, CTQ Policy Assistant

With the reauthorization of ESEA looming, the debates over how to measure teacher effectiveness are heating up. Pundits and education reform leaders increasingly call for disbanding university-based teacher education and state certification regimes in favor of recruiting talented individuals from competitive colleges with the right “personality” or dispositions to teach effectively.

A January 2010 article in Atlantic Monthly by Amanda Ripley cited a variety of individual characteristics that a new Teach for America study associates with effective teaching. Many of these (such as Ivy League diplomas and personal “grit”) cannot be taught to or supported in developing teachers. Thus, proponents of these positions suggest that—contrary to conclusions supported by rigorous research—there is little that schools or preparation programs can do to improve teaching effectiveness.

It was surprising, therefore, that the article highlighted the effective teaching of William Taylor, a product of an education school where he was “well prepared” and ready to culturally connect to the students he is teaching. He, like other superstar teachers identified in the TFA study, “constantly reevaluates what [he is] doing.” But that means teachers have to know what they are doing, and have access to a wide range of pedagogical strategies to use when their students do not learn as they are expected.

In many ways, debating the comparative effectiveness of teachers prepared through traditional teacher education, Teach for America, or other “short-route” preparation programs distracts us from our central challenge in creating effective 21st century public schools. There is more variation within traditional teacher education and alternative routes like TFA than between them.(1) And indeed, a close examination of research on TFA cohorts suggests that their teaching effectiveness gains are likely due not to their individual dispositions or test scores, but to the additional training and support they receive over their two years in the classroom.(2)

In her Atlantic article, Ripley cites a study that found no correlation between prior experience teaching in disadvantaged neighborhoods and teaching effectiveness. But this study misses a key variable: context-specific preparation for high-needs classrooms, which is rare in many university-based programs and far too brief an experience in TFA and other alternative routes.(3) This problem is compounded when the school and district offer few if any systemic supports such as professional development, collaboration, and assistance navigating school communities. These systemic supports are what are needed for talented teachers to teach effectively. And many effective teachers, over the long haul, are exactly what students in high-needs schools most need and deserve.

Yes, there are a few superstar teachers who can do it alone—but only for a short period of time, as they usually burn out and give up teaching. Our public schools, which hire over 250,000 new teachers a year, cannot improve over time if they are staffed with a revolving door of underprepared teachers.

(1) Boyd, D., Grossman, P., Lankford H., Loeb, S. and Wyckoff, J. (2006.) How changes in entry requirements alter the teacher Workforce and affect student achievement. Education Finance and Policy 1,no.2 (Spring):176-216.

(2) Berry, B. (2005, October 19). Teacher quality and the question of preparation. Education Week. Retrieved April 1, 2009 from http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2005/10/19/08berry.h25.html.

(3) Rice, J. K. (2008, Spring). From highly qualified to high quality: An imperative for policy and research to recast the teacher mold. Education Finance and Policy, (3)2, 151-164.  Retrieved January 19, 2010 at http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/edfp.2008.3.2.151.

Alesha Daughtrey holds a Master’s in Public Policy from Duke University and brings extensive policy analysis and advocacy experience to her work managing CTQ’s research initiatives.

Ali Kliegman taught seventh grade Humanities in the Bronx for two years as a Teach for America corps member. She holds an M.S. in Teaching from Pace University and worked previously in education policy for the legal reform coalition Common Good.

 

 Jay Mathews seems a bit humbled by the recent University of Michigan study finding that teachers in schools governed by comprehensive reform models and scripted approaches to instruction end up teaching very differently from one another — with no consistent impact on student achievement. In his recent blog post, the prominent education journalist says the research  (reported in a recent Harvard Education Letter article by Bob Rothman) should “rip a big hole” in how policymakers view reforms that simply focus on test-based accountability.  Some might suggest that the problem is that our current approaches to accountability set too low of a curricular bar over which students and their teachers need to leap.

But the bigger problem is the low quality of the tests themselves and the ever-growing incentives (including perverse ones) that put higher and higher stakes on the outcomes. No wonder, with blunt-instrument testing as the measure, that the University of Michigan researchers found “the student gains from highest level practices, such as examining literary techniques and sharing writing with others, were no better than those produced by low-level practices, like asking questions that have answers at the back of the textbook chapter and summarizing story details.”

Other high performing nations use far fewer external accountability-based tests and invest more heavily in recruiting, preparing, and supporting high quality teachers who have more responsibility in judging each other’s instructional practices.

In these nations, teachers are not just drawn from the top tiers of talented college students, but the government pays for their teacher education programs — ones that demand extensive preparation, not short-cut training over a few weeks in the summer. Other nations also offer teachers substantial time for professional development practices like “lesson study.” The lack of such approaches in the U.S. seems to be the root cause of the “teaching gap.”
 
Although many nations send their children to school for more days per year than we do here in the U.S, their teachers actually spend less time teaching and invest that time in learning to teach better (from each other). Classrooms are not private domains and expert teachers are expected to spread their expertise among their colleagues.

In Singapore, the government fully pays for all teachers to engage in 100 hours worth of high-quality professional development each year — and on top of that, teachers have 20 hours a week to work with each other, doing things like reviewing each other’s pedagogical approaches and their impact on student learning (not just what is on a standardized test). In Singapore and many other nations teachers are expected to actually help develop and score the few external exams that are used. 

If Jay Mathews wants to figure out the deeper reason why some “high-end (teaching) methods don’t work better than low-end” ones, then he should read Linda Darling-Hammond’s recently published book, The Flat World and Education, which unpacks these issues and many more. It calls for investments in the teaching profession — not fly-by approaches to teacher training and more high-stakes testing that many so-called reformers clamor for.  

Mathews closes his column with these words: "...(W)e ought to resist what history shows is our instinct to forget inconvenient results and keep doing what we are doing. Ignoring hard truths is not the best way to help our kids."

Jay Mathews and others need not “ignore the hard truths.” Darling-Hammond has put them all together for easy reference.

Much has been said about teachers and how to “get them” to teach more effectively. Anyone interested in finding effective strategies to drive a results-oriented teaching profession might want to take a look at Daniel Pink’s new book, Drive, where he posits that using a “carrots and sticks” approach alone will do more harm than good.

For a quick review of Pink's important insights, go to the Learning First Alliance Blog and check out Claus von Zastrow's fascinating interview with the business author and future-thinker. Pink believes we need to upgrade our teaching policy “operating system” to “Motivation 3.0” — a concept built around “the elements of autonomy, mastery and purpose.” This does not mean we do not use student performance data to drive our teacher development system. We must. But we need to use the data to identify high performers AND the reasons why they are high performing — and then our accountability system must ensure that those conditions are in place so teaching expertise can spread and students can learn.

This past weekend Bob Herbert of the New York Times offered a glimpse into how new generations of education leaders for America’s public schools might be developed. In his op-ed piece, Herbert offers a refreshing description of the Harvard Graduate School of Education's new doctoral program (the first in 74 years):
The three-year course will be tuition-free and conducted in collaboration with faculty members from the Harvard Business School and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. The idea is to develop dynamic new leaders who will offer the creativity, intellectual rigor and professionalism that is needed to help transform public education in the U.S.
What's refreshing is the new program's perspective that 21st century schools will require administrators who know how to manage like a MBA while still having knowledge of teaching and telling. That's just common sense, some might say. However, for the last decade the conventional wisdom has been those who run school systems do not need to know much about pedagogy.  Kudos to the Wallace Foundation for investing in Harvard’s more balanced approach to preparing senior leaders for school systems, government agencies, nonprofit organizations, and the private sector.

As the leader of an organization committed to making accomplished teachers full partners in school reform, my next thought is: Where is the high-profile approach to developing senior education leaders who still teach students? My New York City colleague Ariel Sacks, a young teacher in our Teacher Leaders Network, explores this same question in her blog On the Shoulders of Giants, drawing on the example of her father, a doctor who combines health research and consulting with a small patient practice "to keep it real." As is so often the case, Ariel's post has attracted thoughtful comments from her blog readers and from within our TLN Forum discussion group.

Ariel, by the way, is one of 12 talented teachers working on a book about the future of teaching to be published by Teachers College Press next year. Read Ariel’s blog and consider the possibilities of developing a cadre of "teaching leaders" who work in hybrid roles (in less hierarchical school systems) and are able to lead from within and without the classroom.

John Merrow’s latest blog post on charter schools and teacher education is worth a read — especially if you are interested in how journalists can get real loose with the facts. I have always been a fan of the Merrow Report, where John has spent the time to dig deep into complex issues of teacher quality and school reform. But his latest blog entry ignores the research that shows charters, on average, are less effective in advancing student achievement than their more traditional school relatives. He goes on to opine — with no evidentiary basis whatsoever — that there are only 50 decent education schools (out of about 1200) across the nation. (He doesn’t name them but that would be an interesting list to see him publish.)
 
Yes, we should promote charter schools as incubators of new approaches in education and poor education schools should be closed down. But John’s sloppy analysis obscures the facts and fuels the kind of dysfunctional dualism that defines most of the school reform debate (charters staffed with non-unionized teachers vs. publics staffed with teachers who are protected by union work rules; teacher education the way its always been done vs. short-cut alternative certification that allows teachers to bypass pedagogical training, etc.) It's "war" journalism and it's not the kind of thing we expect from the nation's best broadcast education reporter.
 
I’m certain John knows which nation produces the highest student achievement worldwide — Finland. Guess what? Finland’s teachers are among the most highly unionized anywhere worldwide.
 
Teachers in charters are now unionizing because they are seeking the working conditions that will allow them to be successful with students (Read Claus von Zastrow’s comments on Merrow’s blog). Growing numbers of university-based teacher education programs are working with school districts to jointly prepare teachers for high needs schools (see Secretary Duncan’s recent Title II grantees). These programs are very much focused on the knowledge and skills teachers need to be effective AND on the working conditions that are critical to a teacher's success, however effective she or he may be.
 
PS: Will charters go to scale and save our public schools? Ask Tom Toch.