Good luck, Jake -- and good luck, kids

In the wake of an upbeat Urban Institute report on the performance of Teach for America high school teachers (or rather the performance of their students on end-of-course tests in North Carolina)…

…and the news that TFA, after a year of “prodigious growth” in its supply of newly graduated Ivy League volunteers (11% of the graduating class at Yale applied), will place 3,700 new teachers this fall, a 28 percent increase…

…and a policy brief by Arizona State prof Gene Glass calmly making the case that alternative teacher certification programs have been oversold, lack much evidence of demonstrated success, and will damage America over time by degrading the complex work of teaching…

…comes “Meet Jake,” a blog post by urban California teacher TMAO, who announces his plans to resign and introduces his likely replacement, a well-intentioned but naïve Yale senior who doesn’t have a clue what he's getting into.

TMAO, a.k.a. Kilian Betlach, is a Teacher for America alum himself. He's been “Teaching in the 408” long enough to know the odds on the “smart-and-excited-trumps-experienced gamble” that TFA represents.

Kilian's credo is included in the banner of his blog (which is up for Best Ed Blog at today's Edin08 blogging summit). It reads:

We must reject the ideology of the "achievement gap" that absolves adults of their responsibility and implies student culpability in continued under-performance. The student achievement gap is merely the effect of a much larger and more debilitating chasm: The Educator Achievement Gap. We must erase the distance between the type of teachers we are, and the type of teachers they need us to be.

TMAO's selected image of himself (above) depicts a bound and blindfolded captive of pirates, about to walk the plank.

The Teaching Penalty

We can’t recruit and retain excellent teachers on the cheap, says a new report from the Economic Policy Institute. The authors’ analysis of professional pay scales (to no one’s great surprise) finds that “public school teachers earn considerably less than comparably educated and experienced people, and less than people in occupations with similar educational and skill requirements.”

Specifically, teachers earn an average of 14 percent less (about $150 a week) than such professionals as accountants, reporters, registered nurses, computer programmers, members of the clergy, and personnel officers. The “teacher pay penalty” is found in all 50 states, and some states have a gap as high as 25 percent. Why should non-teachers care?

These findings are disturbing for two reasons. First, researchers agree that good teachers are the single most important factor in kids' school success. Second, because the baby boomers are beginning to retire while their grandkids are crowding the classrooms, America needs to attract and keep a whole new generation of teachers -- 2.8 million over the next eight years.

Be sure to check out the press kit that accompanies the free report. It includes downloads displaying the “teaching penalty” state-by-state, the pay gap for both male and female teachers, and a chart showing that annual wages for woman teachers went from a nearly 15% advantage over other female college graduates in 1960 to a more than 13% deficit in 2000.

What's ominous for attempts to retain good teachers, says the EPI news release, is the finding that the teaching penalty is severest among our most experienced teachers. "The brunt of the widening pay gap" has fallen on teachers in the 45-54 age group, whose pay deficit has grown by 18 percentage points among women (who comprise the vast majority of teachers) since 1996.

"Teachers are the single most important ingredient in educational success –- and it’s important for schools to compete for and keep the best qualified teachers,” said co-author Lawrence Mishel. “But this widespread and systemic devaluing of teaching sabotages those efforts. If you deliberately set out to design a plan to drive away your most experienced teachers, this would be a good way to do it.”

Another new report that hit the streets this past week comes from Education Sector and the Farkas Duffett Research Group. Waiting to Be Won Over analyzes a survey of 1000 randomly selected teachers which probed their views on unions and school reform. An ES policy analyst says the results suggest teachers are “a little all over the place.”

The number of teachers calling unions “absolutely essential” rose 8 percentage points since 2003, to 54 percent. But the proportion of teachers who agreed that the working conditions and salaries of teachers would be much worse without collective bargaining fell 7 percentage points, to 74 percent.

The study also found a sharp division in views about the notion that superior teachers should receive extra pay for outstanding performance (48% yea, 40% nay). But pretty much everybody agreed that basing rewards on standardized test results alone was a bad idea.

Education Week's report on the study notes that "About half the teachers surveyed said their unions had protected teachers who shouldn’t be in the classroom. But about the same percentage also said they preferred that their union continue to protect teachers’ jobs and compensation, rather than put more emphasis on student achievement and teacher quality." (Presumably, one could have both?)

The report's authors conclude that the "findings suggest support among teachers for a system that has more flexible work rules, more trust in teachers’ judgment and professionalism, and where decisions about teacher quality are not dependent on rigid rules, weak evaluations, and faulty tenure systems."

It might be instructive to place these two reports -- one on pay, one on quality issues -- side by side, and see if any light bulbs begin to incandesce.

TLN Writes Stuff

TLN members were busy freshening up the Web with new content this past week.

Anthony Cody dips into his Best Practices bag of tricks in this essay for Teacher Magazine. "Here we are in May, testing is done, and we are breathing a sigh of relief, looking forward to a few months of rest. The students need a change of pace, but we do not want them going on vacation just yet! Now is the time for some creative writing." In science, no less. (You can see all our TLN-TM essays here.)

Kansas middle grades teacher Marsha Ratzel stopped by The Faculty Room, hosted by Grant Wiggins, and found her comment on a recent blog being promoted to blog status. In response to an earlier post by teacher Dan Meyer, Marsha likened teachers more to internists than surgeons who simply assess and repair. The best teaching professionals, she said, take student performance data and "blend it with what we know as contextual information about that student, all the ins and outs that reflect who that student is as a learner and as a person."

Susan Graham, a Family and Consumer Science teacher in southeastern Virginia, offers a vignette to demonstrate the high level of teaching and learning going on in her classroom. Don't Be Quick to Label Me is the tagline for her newest post at her Teacher Magazine blog. "Do we stitch things and stir things in my room? You bet! We also do a lot of thinking, and use learning strategies...to build 21st Century knowledge and know-how."

John Holland is a pre-school NBCT in inner-city Richmond who paints professionally when he gets the chance. He dares to make the case that teaching is an art in his blog Lead from the Start.

TMAO, up for a top education blogging award, slowly reveals that he's under fire for alleged testing improprieties. Not misbehavin', he says -- in fact, just the opposite. And saving his venom for HR.

TLN Bloggers Find Fertile Ground in May

Ariel Sacks (On the Shoulders of Giants), the newest (and youngest) blogger on the TLN website, draws connections between the recent controversy over police violence in New York City and her own inner-city classroom. “I want my students to believe that if they continue on in school and go to college, the world holds unlimited opportunities for them,” she says, “(but) how can my students not feel betrayed by this decision?”

Music teacher Nancy Flanagan (Teacher in a Strange Land), who once played a seventh grade math teacher in a pinch, reflects on the finding of a recent federal study that “research does not show conclusively which professional credentials demonstrate whether math teachers are effective in the classroom.” While she doesn’t find this reassuring, she was pleased to learn that the researchers placed a high value on pedagogical content knowledge – “knowing how to teach something, over and above simply knowing something.” So, why, now, this report in the New York Times questioning the value of hands-on math teaching strategies?

Renee Moore (TeachMoore) extends some conversation that began at the ASCD Inservice (aka Community) blog, spinning off a presentation at the Association’s annual conference. Author Allison Zmuda presented three common myths that haunt students when it comes to learning. “The one that seems to resonate the most with readers,” Renee writes, “was that students see learning that comes quickly as a sign of intelligence and learning that requires effort as a sign of their own lack of ability.” This agrees with her own experience, says Renee. “How many students (and not a few teachers) labor under the false notion that fast equals smart?”

Middle grades teacher Bill Ferriter (The Tempered Radical) has been puzzling over the extent to which his own classroom practices meet the developmental standards set out in the National Middle School Association’s “This We Believe” document. He’s especially concerned about a standard that reads, in part: “Young adolescents reveal growing capacity for thinking about how they learn, for considering multiple ideas, and for planning steps to carry out their own learning activities.” Has the quest for high scores on end-of-grade tests made that standard more difficult to achieve and “hurt pre-teens more than anyone else”?

In our group blog, TLN Teacher Voices, we’re pondering professionalism, in response to a comment by blogger Matt Johnston (“Going to the Mat”) that “teachers themselves have the power to change the perception of their occupation, from one where they don't get the respect they demand and perhaps deserve, to one on par with the respect paid to doctors, lawyers, accountants, engineers etc.” The consensus among TLNers: Teaching has a different history.

ASCD's Take on Incentive Pay

A new InfoBrief from ASCD (the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development) explains the Association’s position on teacher incentive pay:

(L)ocal school districts should have this option to attract the best and brightest educators. We believe schools should have the support and resources to pay incentives or bonuses to educators who increase student achievement or teach in high-poverty, high-need districts.

However, ASCD supports the concept as a locally determined decision that involves all stakeholders in the development and implementation of the incentive program. Most important, ASCD believes that the overarching goal for any incentive program must be a focus on the education of the whole child.

The InfoBrief, Rewarding Educators, cites recent research attempting to link incentive pay programs with gains in student achievement and draws the distinction between performance-pay approaches that rely mostly on standardized test scores and those that take a more comprehensive approach to determining student and teacher success. It also considers the design of several large merit and incentive pay programs and notes that while “the programs vary considerably in structure and application, most of their compensation plans provide incentives based on one or more of the following: pay for performance, pay for the attainment of knowledge and skills, and pay for filling positions in hard-to-staff schools.”

ASCD’s paper is quite clear about the need to involve teachers in program design and to “determine rewards on the basis of student growth evaluated throughout the year instead of scores from a single test.” However, while the Association calls for placing “the best educators in the highest-need districts,” there’s little consideration of how that should happen, how teachers should be recruited and prepared for such work, or even what it means to be “the best” in the context of teaching in a high-needs school. For more reflection on that subject, from accomplished teachers themselves, see the 2007 report from the TLN TeacherSolutions team, Performance-Pay for Teachers: Designing a System that Students Deserve (see esp. pp. 31-32).

Gap Widest for African-American High Achievers

Education Week reports that “new research into the black-white achievement gap suggests that the students who lose the most ground academically in U.S. public schools may be the brightest African-American children.”

As black students move through elementary and middle school, these studies show, the test-score gaps that separate them from their better-performing white counterparts grow fastest among the most able students and the most slowly for those who start out with below-average academic skills.

The reasons, says Ed Week, are still unclear. Among the possible explanations are negative peer pressure (‘don’t act smart’), the disproportionate number of African-American students in schools with inexperienced teachers, and a tendency in such schools to aim instruction at the “average level,” offering fewer “cognitively stimulating opportunities.”

Said a Harvard researcher commenting on the studies: ““We care about achievement gaps because of their implications for labor-market and socioeconomic-status issues down the line. It’s disconcerting if the gap is growing particularly high among high-achieving black and white students.”

Be sure to read the comments that follow the Ed Week story, for additional insights and pushback.

Let's Just Call It 'Education Policy Blog'

Unable to contain all of her ideas and viewpoints in a single blog space, our Teacher in a Strange Land (Nancy Flanagan) is contributing blood blog content to Education Policy Blog, a group grok* (is that redundant?) that features posts from the likes of Sherman Dorn, Craig Cunningham, Barbara Stengel, and Jim Horn.

Nancy's first official post (outside of the Comments areas) is titled "Get Out Your Pom-Poms: Prep Assembly," in which she reflects on the reasons for the disconnect between teachers and the policy development processes that control much of their work. The post led to a lively exchange between Nancy and Horn about the degree to which NCLB has been a successful conspiracy to tear down public schools and promote vouchers and private education.

If you enjoy policy debate and wish more bloggers pursued policy discussions in-depth, this is the wonky blog site you've been looking for. Nancy, who brings 30 years of K-12 teaching experience to the conversation, is sure to liven things up. She's already forced us to visualize the image of teachers putting on cheerleader outfits and conducting pre-testing pep rallies. Something she's no doubt personally witnessed!

[*Robert Heinlein, who coined the term grok in his sf classic Stranger in a Strange Land, described grokking as (quoting from Wikipedia) "the intermingling of intelligence that necessarily affects both the observer and the observed." Kinda works.]

Still Risky After All These Years

It's the silver anniversary of what was arguably the most influential education report in modern US history -- A Nation at Risk. You'll find no shortage of commentary this week about the 25-year old Mayday call from a national blue-ribbon panel (it shook up the country more than we can quite imagine today, in our current climate of daily education-bashing). One of the best responses to this irresistible anniversary "hook" comes from the Forum for Education and Democracy, titled: Democracy at Risk: The Need for A New Federal Policy in Education.

In some recent TLN conversation about the Forum report, a member wrote that "€œit addresses the fact that our education system and democracy are even more at risk than they were a quarter of a century ago."

Reading the 10-page foreword, skimming the graphs (which are shocking and sad) and perusing the four priority recommendations will give you an overview. And, perhaps, some sense of hope about what might be accomplished even now, given the right leadership.

The policy recommendations for improving teaching, our member wrote, are "a refreshing contrast to the ongoing blogger discussions on tracking bad teachers through value-added data."

They appear in Priority Two: Develop a World-Class Cadre of Skilled Educators:

• Create incentives for recruiting teachers to high-need fields and locations.

• Strengthen teachers' preparation by focusing on how to teach diverse learners, evaluating teacher performance, and creating professional development schools.

• Launch teaching residency programs in high-need communities.

• 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.

Do these sound like worthwhile goals to you? You can read the Forum press release and download a complete copy of the report at the Forum's website. Printed copies are available for $10, including shipping.

Ed Week Chat: Awaken the Teacher Leader in You

The transcript of today’s “live chat” at EdWeek.org -- Moving Beyond the Classroom: The Growing Role of Teacher Leaders -- is already posted on the Teacher Magazine website and well worth your time. It's a text-based format (no extra software needed) -- participants submit written questions to the guests and they answer them. It's amazing how much got said in 60 minutes.

Despite the phrase “beyond the classroom” in the chat title, guests and participants quickly made the point that teachers still at work full-time in the classroom can play many important leadership roles -- not only in schools and district s, but in the larger policy arena where expert teacher voices desperately need to be heard. Guest Anthony Cody, a teacher leader in Oakland CA and a member of the Teacher Leaders Network, commented:

One thing I learned in 18 years in the classroom is that there are lots of different ways students come to shine. Some are great speakers, others great artists, and others great writers. Teacher leadership is similar, in that there are lots of different ways teacher expertise can emerge and be of value, and it is going to look different for each teacher. So I think we need to build as many different avenues to leadership as possible, and see who gravitates to each one.

Cody was joined at the virtual podium by educators Gayle Moller and Marilyn Katzenmeyer, co-authors of the TL classic, Awakening the Sleeping Giant: Helping Teachers Develop as Leaders (Corwin Press) which will soon appear in its third edition.

Stealing Online Minutes for Learning

No one will ever suggest that TLN Forum member Bill Ferriter has a thready voice. He's a robust kind of guy. Voice threads, on the other hand, definitely fit our Bill -- as you'll learn in this new feature story at the Edutopia website, highlighting his Web 2.0 teaching strategies.

The story describes the active learning going on in Bill's sixth grade classes using the free Voicethread web software. If you haven't had a chance to play around with it, here's how the story's author sums up its functions.

VoiceThreads might best be described as interactive media albums. They are essentially online slide shows of images, documents, or videos that enable viewers to comment on any slide (or at any point in the video) by typing, recording an audio or video comment, or drawing on the image itself.

In his award-winning blog The Tempered Radical, Ferriter regularly makes the case for integrated teaching of language arts and social studies. Voicethread is one of several ways (blogging is another) that he ties free writing to social studies topics. For the most part, his students participate in Voicethread activities outside of class time. Ferriter, an NBCT and former NC regional teacher of the year, says his goal is to "steal some of their online minutes" that might otherwise be devoted to more trivial pursuits.

Here's a wiki where Bill describes some of what he's learning about using Voicethread to increase student engagement and learning. Scroll down to sample several Voicethreads, including one which engages his middle schoolers in discussions about the genocide in Darfur through an examination of political cartoons.

The enthusiastic  promotion of Voicethread by Ferriter and other digitally savvy teachers has prompted the tool's creators to develop EdVoicethread, a secure site for educators and students. Who says teachers are powerless?