The Tempered Radical

Need MORE Proof that PLCs Work?

Regular Radical readers know that PLCs have been front-and-center in my mind for the past few days.  After all, we’re going to spend time talking about the nuts and bolts of restructuring traditional schools as professional learning communities with Rick and Becky DuFour next week (see here, here and here). 

That’s why a new study released in August by the National Bureau of Economic Research caught my eye this week.  Titled Teaching Students and Teaching Each Other:  The Importance of Peer Learning for Teachers, the report documents the impact that adding high-quality teachers to a school community has on student achievement across an entire grade level. 

What study authors C. Kirabo Jackson and Elias Bruegmann discovered after plowing through eleven years of data on North Carolina schoolchildren is something that experts have long documented in other professions:  There is a significant “spillover effect” in teaching, meaning that educators benefit from being exposed to the knowledge and skills of their more accomplished peers. 

  by  Kyle May 

And those benefits translate into statistically significant learning gains for students.  “For the average educator teaching in a grade with three other teachers,” writes Education Week’s Debra Vaidero, who reviewed Jackson and Bruegmann’s study in this online article, “replacing one peer with a more effective one has a spillover effect of .86 percent of a standard deviation on students’ test scores.”

For those of us who have spent the better part of the past decade working in professional learning communities, these results are no great surprise.  We know that exposure to the instructional strategies of our peers has an impact on student learning across our hallways.

But (still more) concrete, statistical evidence of the impact that teachers can learn from their peers might just be the lever that we need in order to encourage education's holdouts---from skeptical teachers to doubtful professional developers---to believe in the power of professional learning communities.   

Perhaps these results will lead to a willingness on the part of superintendents and building principals to set aside their penchant for programs and to invest in collaborative teams as the only form of “professional development” in their schools and districts.  Perhaps it will lead to a willingness on the part of parents and community leaders to make more time on-the-clock for teachers to work closely with their peers.

And perhaps---as the study authors suggest---it will lead to efforts to refocus the way that we evaluate performance in schools.  Instead of looking at the effectiveness of individuals, which creates inherently isolated or competitive situations, we’ll begin to look at the effectiveness of collaborative teams, which will encourage the kinds of cooperation that can lead to higher levels of learning for all students.

Anyone else happy to have more tangible proof that PLCs work?

Denny and the Overpriced Retreads. . .

Cranky Blogger Warning!  This post is a heavy dose of emotion mixed with a splash of rational thinking.  Take it for what it's worth, which may be next to nothing when I look at it again in a week.  I'm too worked up to tell right now. 

Not long ago, NEA President Dennis Van Roekel (aka: Ol' Denny) took some time to wax poetic about his first days as a classroom teacher in Iowa.  He wrote:

As I entered my first classroom in Iowa, I recall the anticipation, anxiety, and fun in store! The learning curve was steep—I remember feeling overwhelmed by all the paperwork and forms. And there were 160 students counting on me—quite a culture shock from my student teaching days.

So I jumped in with both feet.

I took seating charts home every night and by the end of the first week of school, I had memorized every student's name. I was more tired after my first week of teaching than after working 2 full-time jobs all summer. It's a tough job, but it's also where I loved to be.

Today, I work in new surroundings as NEA President. But I still get the same rush from being part of such a unique and awesome profession. My new experiences will be special in their own way.

But those "first days" are always memorable!

Beautiful, ain't it?  Ol' Denny almost brought a tear to my eye. 

Heck, I could almost smell the chalk as little Hawkeyes pounded classroom erasers trying to please their heroic teacher, who sat smiling behind a desk littered with apple knick-knacks and graded papers sporting enough "You're Just Plain Super!" stickers to make an entire grade level beam with twelve-year-old pride.

  by  House Of Sims 

You'd have to be a cold-hearted soul NOT to love warm reminiscences from a school teacher---especially when that one-time teacher now leads the most powerful organization representing educators in the nation, right?

Wrong.  You'd just have to be a first year teacher in districts like mine in 2009.  Faced with almost impossible budget numbers, schools across the country are cutting the contracts of non-tenured colleagues----including those who are the newest to our profession---faster than the Little Ceaser's guy preparing $5 pizzas in Munchietown. 

Where Gates Gets it Right on Education. . .

First, many apologies for slogging this week.  I usually only slack off over here on the Radical when school is a complete zoo---and the weeks leading up to the holiday break definitely qualify as high-pressure times for any teacher.  I just couldn't find any free minutes to write!

I did find time, though, to read this interesting Newsweek interview between Jonathan Alter and Bill Gates on the best ways to reform education.  What surprised (impressed?) me the most was that ol' rich Billy is using some of his considerable clout to push for changes that I think I can believe in.  Most interesting is Gates' insistence on reforming how teachers are rewarded for their work.

As Alter describes it:   

Betraying his own professional background, Gates shakes his head in dismay at the idea of secondary schools and colleges trying to function at all without simple software that offers them basic statistical information about how students and teachers are performing over time (for-profit colleges are an exception). Everyone in education knows why: unions have simply prevented teachers from being judged, even in part, on whether their students improve during the course of the year. It's no surprise that Gates is a believer in merit pay and incentive pay and has little use for teachers colleges as presently constituted because there's no evidence that having a master's degree improves teacher performance. You never hear Gates or his people talk about highly qualified teachers, only highly effective ones.

I couldn't agree with Gates more.  Our commitment as a profession to master's degrees as a form of identifying--and then differentiating pay for---accomplished teachers has simply outlived its usefulness.  While there may have been a time when elevating the academic accomplishments of classroom teachers served to elevate the profession in the eyes of critics and to elevate the qualifications of those who'd chosen to spend their careers in the classrooms, differentiating pay for master's degrees at this point is an inefficient and under-informed practice.

Let me give you an example (which I've mentioned on the Radical before):  My master's degree is in "advanced teaching techniques."  I earned it in 1997.  Do you think that the strategies I learned from college professors who hadn't been in classrooms since the early '80s in 1997 would still qualify as "advanced teaching today?"

I sure don't. 

Yet I'll continue to collect a 10% salary supplement from my state---one of the only ways teachers can differentiate their pay here in North Carolina---for the remaining 14 years in my career.  As a classroom teacher scraping nickels together to adopt a child, I'm thankful.  As a fiscally conservative taxpayer, though, I'm miffed!

Tapping Your Inner Superhero. . .

One of my favorite quotes about teacher leadership comes from my longtime friend and colleague, Tammy King.  Tammy spent the better part of the past ten years working in the Ed Policy world for the Center for Teaching Quality and the Wake Education Partnership. 

While she loved her work with the wonks, she never lost her faith in teachers---and in our ability to drive change in our profession.  You can hear that passion in her words:

(Original image by JMV and licensed Creative Commons: Attribution)

I'm using Tammy's words in an upcoming session with a new group of teacher leaders here in my district.  I've decided to try to convince them that they're all Superheroes with hidden powers and weaknesses.  You can check out the descriptions of each Superhero---and the questions that I'm asking groups of teachers to reflect on---in this document:

Download STAC_Superheros.rtf

Designed as an introduction to the different types of leadership strengths and weaknesses that we all possess, this should be a fun conversation.  While I know that many teachers are bored by "get to know you" activities, I still think it's important for teams of teachers who are working together over longer periods of time to recognize and respect the varying strengths and weaknesses of their peers.

Understanding strengths and weaknesses is the first step towards accepting one another---and towards maximizing the potential of collective action.  Teams that overlook the personalities of their members end up frustrated and ineffective. 

Anyway...Just figured I'd share these materials.  Hope they're helpful to someone!

The Wrongheaded Quest for Cheap and Easy. . .

If you haven't had the chance to check out the comment section of my recent post on Barack Obama's thoughts regarding education and technology, then you're missing out on a pretty interesting conversation about accountability in education between two regular radical readers---Mike and K. Borden.

K.'s pushing the idea that educators should take ownership over their profession and design alternative methods for evaluating performance that can be used to supplement standardized tests.  She (he?) wrote: 

We agree that the standardized tests alone (without other measures) are inadequate to fully measure teacher or student performance.

The rub is, what other measures? This is where I as a parent look to you the teaching community to offer answers. I want to learn and hopefully be able to advocate with you for acceptable, reliable accountability. I want to know that you as a community of teachers recognize some in your profession are failing and some are blazing trails we all may be wise to follow.

I'll jump in this conversation, K, and I'll lay out a vision for holding teachers accountable that might blow your mind----but before I do, I want to give you three non-negotiables that are required from the general public before holding teachers "accountable for results" is even possible:

1.  You've got to delineate and prioritize your expected outcomes:  This is probably the source of greatest frustration---and resistance---for teachers involved in conversations about accountability because it is impossible to deny that communities are asking schools to tackle more tasks than it is possible to achieve. 

Once a community can clearly define exactly what it is that they most want their children to learn in schools, we can start to have meaningful conversations about how to measure mastery of those skills and delineate between successful and unsuccessful educators. 

2.  You've got to make a commitment to providing necessary resources to meet expected outcomes:  One of my favorite quotes about accountability comes from Richard Elmore, who is responsible for the term reciprocal accountability.  Elmore writes:

Accountability must be a reciprocal process. For every increment of performance I demand from you, I have an equal responsibility to provide you with the capacity to meet that expectation. Likewise, for every investment you make in my skill and knowledge, I have a reciprocal responsibility to demonstrate some new increment in performance. This is the principle of "reciprocity of accountability for capacity." It is the glue that, in the final analysis, will hold accountability systems together (Elmore, 2000).

I'm not certain that most communities can honestly say that they are providing enough capacity to meet the litany of expectations that they have set for schools.  New demands and expectations are placed on schools---and teachers, in particular----without any additional time or training to meet those expectations. 

Here's a simple example from my classroom:  In our data driven world, I'm expected to collect and manipulate numbers about student performance in order to make informed decisions.  This is a completely reasonable expectation---and one that can help to document the "bang for the buck" that taxpayers get from my services.

But my school and system struggle to find the funds to provide me with the kinds of ongoing, job embedded professional development that it takes to develop the skills necessary to manage data effectively.  What's more, they struggle to find the funds to provide me with the tools that data managers in other industries take for granted. 

So I collect "data" on post-it notes, move those results to my paper and pencil grade book and then try to identify trends in my 85-student class load with a yellow highlighter.  The entire process is frustratingly inefficient---taking away time that I should be spending on planning and providing students with meaningful feedback----and would simply not be tolerated in the business world.   

"For every increment of performance I demand from you, I have an equal responsibility to provide you with the capacity to meet that expectation," is a powerful idea that communities need to embrace before most teachers will embrace accountability.

3.  You've got to differentiate compensation for teachers in high needs schools no matter what:  The biggest failure that our society currently makes is rewarding teachers equally regardless of the kinds of schools they choose to work in.  As a result, students in high needs communities are consistently exposed to higher numbers of inexperienced or ineffective teachers----and we do nothing to make work in high needs buildings more attractive.

That should be a source of great shame for everyone---from policy makers to taxpayers.  We're knowingly putting students who need the most help in buildings where that help is unlikely to ever arrive. 

Crazy. 

Once communities narrow and prioritize their expectations for schools and commit themselves to providing the capacity to meet new expectations, I'd propose that all teachers be held accountable for working through yearly cycles of action research conducted at the classroom level, documenting the impact of their instructional decisions on the learning gains of their students. 

Here's how it could look:  At the beginning of each school year, teachers---with the guidance of school leaders---should set specific areas of instructional focus for the upcoming year based on learning data available at the school level.

Over the course of the school year, teachers should be expected to research instructional practices that have been effective at addressing identified weaknesses, implement those strategies in their classrooms, and document the results of their instruction.  Next, they should be expected to revise their instructional practices and work through a second cycle of implementation and documentation.

At the end of each year, teachers should be expected to present their findings to a school/community based committee.  While the findings may not always show that a teacher has identified instructional practices that are worth continued exploration---remember that failures are an accepted result of attempts at innovation in other professions----he/she must be able to show that they've made responsible decisions based on an awareness of the impact that their actions were having on the students of their classrooms. 

And here's the good part, K:  After collectively reviewing the work of an individual teacher, the school/community based committee of parents, policymakers and education professionals can make recommendations about a teacher's continued employment and compensation.

Yup---I said it:  Let's get rid of tenure and put teachers on terminating contracts that are open to review by members of the communities that they serve every few years. 

That's gotta make teachers cringe, huh?! 

But when I think about my own efforts at reflection, I'm pretty confident that I could convince a review committee that I was worth keeping on board.  While my instructional practices don't always hit pay dirt, I'm at least constantly looking for ways to improve----and I think that kind of persistence is valued and respected by most families in the neighborhood that I serve. 

I'm also certain that tenure is a permanent scar on our profession.  No one takes us seriously because EVERYONE has a story about some miserable old bat that had been teaching for too long yet was making serious cabbage.  Worse yet, the kind of job security teachers have is non-existent in other professions. 

Mike's going to hate this, but what makes us any different from any other "profession" where people have to prove their worth to keep their gig? 

For you, K., this system gives community members control over teacher quality---and an inside look into the kind of work that the teachers in your schools are doing.  Transparency would be absolute---and the standards of judgment would be completely in the hands of the people footing the bill. 

Here's why my ideas will never fly, though:  This whole process is going to cost a helluva lot more than running a bunch of bubble sheets through a scantron machine.  School boards and state elected officials---the folks that would be responsible for driving this kind of change---are constantly counting every nickel and dime in an effort to keep tax bills down. 

It's about re-election, right?

It's also going to take a whole ton of time!  I seriously doubt that most schools could find enough interested community members to be involved in the evaluation and review process.  While people like to complain about not having input in public schools, who's got the time to sit in on dozens of teacher review meetings each year? 

So trying to sell a program of evaluation that carries inherent rewards for the community----the ability to have direct input in the kind of teachers who remain employed in their schools---and for teachers---the ability to be evaluated based on their own professional actions and decisions---will probably never happen because it ain't cheap and easy!

Does anyone see anything in my pipe-dreams that is worth embracing, though? 

Are there starting points that we might be able to agree on?

(Image credit:  IMGP2933ac43x.jpg by Bosela, licensed Creative Commons Attribution)

Scrapping the Sacrosanct Salary Schedule. . .

That's the title of a relatively interesting article written by Jacob Vigdor, an associate professor of policy studies and economics at Duke University that was recently run in Education Next---the journal of the Hoover Institution. 

Arguing that the current salary schedule in education is flawed because it rewards teachers for credentials that are not tied to increased performance and because it drives new teachers---who struggle for years to reach peak earning potential---away from the profession, Vigdor makes a few points that I think are legitimate. 

First and foremost, Vigdor's assertion that additional degrees don't necessarily translate into increased performance is one that I wholeheartedly embrace.  When blanket rewards are given for life to teachers who work through master's or doctoral studies, taxpayer dollars are wasted---and that's coming from a guy who earns a 10% stipend on his salary each year for a master's degree! 

How could I argue against rewarding teachers for advanced degrees?

Easy---the information that I learned in my "Advanced Teaching" program from 1992-1997 is hardly advanced today!  Not only have children changed, requiring me to constantly tailor my instructional practices, the tools for teaching have changed (I didn't have Internet access in my first three classrooms, people---and I'm not that old!), and the outcomes of education have changed.  In the early '90s, there were still industry jobs and assembly lines for struggling students to fall back on.

That translates into a rather astonishing admission:  My master's degree means little to me today, and yet I'll be rewarded for it for the next fifteen years that I spend in a classroom. 

As a teacher, I'm thankful---I couldn't remain in the classroom without that 10% supplement to my already low compared to my peers in other professions salary.  As a professional, I'm ashamed because I know that I'm being rewarded for something that has little impact on my teaching today.

As a taxpayer, I'm just plain peeved!

I also like Vigdor's desire to front-load teacher salaries and completely agree that teachers reach their peak performance within the first 5-10 years of their careers.  To rapidly increase salaries early in a career will definitely help with recruiting and retaining teachers, simply because their compensation will finally reflect their growth in performance and put them on equal footing with peers---both in the schoolhouse and beyond.

I can't tell you how discouraging the last 10 years have been for me professionally because I've invested my whole self into improving as a practitioner, and yet I've watched my salary creep up by two or three hundred dollars a year----while teachers that who had been working in classrooms since I was born were racking in several thousand dollars more than me each year simply because they were older than I was. 

Maddening.  Made me want to quit more than once.  (Still makes me want to quit, actually!)

But Vigdor's plans---like nearly every other proposal that I've ever read to change teacher compensation---have a handful of very obvious flaws.  First and foremost, Vigdor bases all increases in compensation on increased scores on standardized tests.  Consider this quote:

So now we have some basic principles on which to build a better model: Reward characteristics associated with greater effectiveness; do not reward those that have no evidence linking them to effectiveness. To launch the system, all we need to do is pin down the increment of compensation for a given increase in effectiveness. There are several ways to do this, but let’s consider just one. Suppose that we reward a characteristic associated with an improvement in test scores of 1 percent of a standard deviation with a 1 percent increase in salary.

Wow, Jacob---you make it sound so easy!

There are dozens of problems with tying teacher compensation to standardized test results.  I've written about them time and again.  On a philosophical level, they include a narrowing of the curriculum that produces misleading results and a constant drift away from the kinds of teaching that students most need in order to succeed in an increasingly complex world driven by knowledge creation.

On a practical level, what are we going to do about the 60-80% of teachers in any school who don't teach a tested subject?----or to school professionals beyond the classroom like guidance counselors and media specialists?  The way I facetiously see it, there are two options: 

1. Develop more tests for more subjects to be given to more kids over the course of more years in their school careers----which will wipe out any savings that states and districts might find in your proposal, as well as the joy out of life for 5 year olds who will be drilled and killed from day one.
2. Only give pay raises to teachers of tested subjects.  Heck, let's get rid of any subject in a school that we can't test.

(It's kind of frightening to consider where thinking like Jake's can land us, isn't it?  Gotta love economists.  The only thing that matters are numbers to those guys.)

My second beef with Vigdor's plans is the swipe that he takes at National Board Certification as a semi-useless tool for identifying accomplished teachers and a waste of cash.  He writes:

To a large extent, the jury is still out on the importance of NBPTS certification. Studies have shown that teachers nominated for this certification have a legacy of superior classroom performance, but there is less evidence that the process of certification actually improves their performance.

I guess it is only natural for me to support National Board certification---after all, I earned certification in 1997 (my third year of teaching) and have been collecting a 12% salary stipend from the state of North Carolina ever since.

But I also support National Board certification as a taxpayer, too. 

You see, teachers who work through the certification process are forced to spend a year reflecting on their practice.  They document the impact of their instruction on students, videotape their lessons, and articulate the connections between the choices that they make and the children that they teach.

Oh yeah, they also take a big ol' exam to gauge their mastery of the content that they teach AND their certificate expires after 10 years, at which time they must document the impact of their work on student achievement in their schools, districts and states over the course of their entire license cycle in order to earn recertification. 

I call that a fail-safe system, protecting the investment that a state is willing to make into a teacher who works through certification. 

Not only is the process rigorous (my initial portfolio was nearly 400 pages long and took me about 300 hours to create), it is ongoing.  Unlike my master's degree---which I set aside as soon as I was finished with my last blue book, I'm constantly looking for ways to improve as a teacher because I know that I need to in order to recertify!

Like many critics of the current pay scale, Jake seems to suggest that revising teacher compensation is something that is completely opposed by educators and their unions. 

In some ways, I agree with him:  Unions fought hard to get our profession to the point where teachers can make a living wage.  For the first 70 years of the century, taxpayers were only too happy to short-change those who chose to work in a profession dominated by women---and letting go of what was once a major success is never easy to do.

But our profession is changing with the times.  As more young professionals enter our unions, they push for change to a system of compensation built for long-term stability in a time when long-term stability is somewhat foreign to most workers.  Conversations are being had at all levels of every teacher organization about "scrapping the salary schedule."

What we'll never go for, though, are proposals that fail to take into account consequences for the curriculum when standardized testing is placed at the center of efforts to evaluate teachers---and it's important to know that our opposition doesn't stem from a fear of being held accountable for results.

Instead, it stems an intimate understanding of what such systems will do to the children who sit in our classrooms. 

Whew----glad I got that off my chest!

(Image Credit:  Quiet Please by Taliesin, licensed Creative Commons:  Attribution)

Holding Teachers Accountable Ain't That Easy. . .

My boy Bob---who reads the Radical regularly and pushes me with provocative comments---has me thinking about teacher accountability this week.  In response to a recent post about the characteristics of inspirational teachers, he wrote:

I, too, hold similar thoughts, but find mixed results to the following Q: How do you see these ideas translating into student learning rates, the teacher's central duty?

And then in response to my thoughts on preservice educators, he wrote:

As for teacher prep, make it clear that individuals learn, not aggregates. Require student teachers to demonstrate that they can increase measured individual student learning rates before signing off on teaching certificates. Yes? :)

Now, few would mistake me as an apologist for teachers who push back at efforts to hold educators accountable for results.  In fact, I tend to rub colleagues the wrong way more often than not simply because I've grown tired of our resistance to accountability.  It's almost embarrassing to me to hear teachers complain about not earning "professional respect," yet refuse to take responsibility for producing gains in student learning. 

But Bob's comments leave me worried because they illustrate one of the most harmful over-simplifications in education.  The idea that teachers should be held accountable for increasing "measured individual student learning rates" seems obvious, right? 

But it ain't ever that easy.  Here's why:

1.  The term "student learning rates" is poorly defined:  Ask ten parents what kinds of outcomes they most value from schools and you're likely to get ten different answers.

Some will care most about academic achievement measured by standardized tests.  Others will care more about seeing their students learn life skills like how to collaborate.  Society expects schools to prepare students to participate in our democracy.  Public health organizations want us to address challenges ranging from childhood obesity to teenage pregnancy.   

In the end, we need a clear definition of the "student learning rates" that people expect us to increase before we can make any guarantees to anyone----and because of the range of interests that people have in public schools, I'm afraid we'll never get clarity on the outcomes that should be valued the most. 

2.  Defined curricula border on the ridiculous:  Most would agree that teachers should be held accountable for student mastery of their state-defined curriculum, right?  How can we have confusion about what to hold teachers accountable for when there are sets of standards that students are supposed to master in every grade level and content area?

The answer is simple:  State-defined curricula contain far more content than it's actually possible to teach.  Researcher Bob Marzano---in his 2003 book What Works in Schools---determined that the average curriculum for a K-12 student contained nearly 200 standards, which would take nearly 15,000 hours over the course of a child's school career to adequately address. 

The problem:  During the typical 180-day school year, there is an average of about 1,008 hours available for instruction---of which, 69% is actually used for instruction (fire drills and discipline takes time too, you know)----leaving about 9,000 hours of time for student learning between kindergarten and college.  Is it really fair to hold teachers accountable for student mastery of a curriculum that simply won't fit into the teaching hours that we have available to us?   

3.  Testing results in a narrowing of the curriculum and score inflation:  For many, "increasing measured student learning rates" translates to higher scores on standardized tests because standardized test results carry great currency in conversations about education right now. 

They just seem so trustworthy and scientific!

The hitch is this:  Standardized tests only measure student mastery of a small range of skills within a curriculum.  With a little bit of mathematical magic, extrapolations are made and conclusions are drawn about a student's mastery of the entire curriculum based on his or her answers on end of grade exams.

In theory, this should work just fine.  Demonstrated mastery of the subset of skills tested on standardized exams should allow for reliable conclusions about student understanding of the entire curriculum.

In reality, though, it doesn't.  As Daniel Koretz of Harvard University recently showed in his new book Measuring Up, teachers, schools and districts----withering under the pressure to produce results on exams----focus their instruction solely on the skills that they expect to see on standardized tests.

This narrowing of the curriculum produces score inflation.  While results suggest that students have mastered the content for their grade level or content area, they have really only mastered the small set of skills that end-of-grade exams actually test.  Parents and policymakers end up with a false sense of what their kids actually know.

I'm ready for accountability to be introduced to education, primarily because I want the opportunity to be rewarded differently based on my abilities as an educator.  The single-salary schedule has frustrated me since day one because it ensures that my compensation will remain the same regardless of how hard I work to improve my practice. 

But real barriers must be addressed before teachers can be fairly held accountable for "student learning."  We deserve clear definitions of the kinds of learning that communities value the most.  We also deserve to have a manageable curriculum that can be adequately taught in the time that we have available.  Finally, we deserve more complex measures of "achievement" than we currently have. 

Does this make sense to anyone besides me?

(Image credit:  Why Not by Kevin Collins, licensed Creative Commons:  Attribution)

Teacher Accountability from Dina's Eyes. . .

One of my favorite edubloggers is my girl Dina Strasser over at The Line.  Dina's brilliant, and she regular pushes my thinking about all things education---and she's done it again in a recent post about teacher accountability.  She starts by writing:

So where do we get off, really, thinking that we are beyond the accountability measures we impose on our own kids? Seriously. If they get a quarterly review, then that’s the least we can ask of ourselves.

I’m also tired of waiting for my employers to walk in here– be that a supervisor, a principal, a superintendent, or a parent– and ask me questions about my practice that I am unprepared to answer because my implementation is generally solid, but my documentation sucks.

She goes on to lay out a ten point plan for what she'd like to be held accountable for that includes student performance scores, family outreach, professional reading and writing, and collaboration with colleagues.  It's really an impressive collection of indicators that I believe would challenge any accomplished teacher to improve---as opposed to most current teacher evaluation programs which reward the bare minimum. 

I think Dina left out a key point in her accountability plan, though---and I told her so.  Here's what I wrote:

Missing, Di?

I don’t think you’re missing a thing. In fact, I’d venture to say that you’ll kill yourself just trying to keep up with the tasks that you’ve listed!

What’s funny to me is that the Vanilla Icing is all that your district probably evaluates you on, right? As long as the kids are quiet and you sign in on the morning sign in sheet, you’ll probably earn “Above Average” ratings on the ol’ evaluation and get your union-mandated pay raise.

But if you’re really looking to add to the list, why don’t you consider getting involved in some heavy duty policy advocacy stuff at the district level.

I’d love to see you at school board meetings every month, making your voice heard. Maybe consider embracing the backwards board member that believes teachers are best seen, not heard. Take him out for coffee every now and again. Fill his ears with brilliance.

I think policy advocacy is one of those things that classroom teachers tend to overlook because it seems intimidating to us. Besides, half the time, we don’t know where to begin.

But in reality, policy advocacy is nothing more than developing relationships with the right people. Becoming the “go to” guy or gal for those who hold formal organizational power is the lever that we can use to drive change from the classroom.

Whaddya’ think? Are you going to add it to your list?

If you did, would you remove something that already exists?

So what do you think? 

Should advocacy be something that all teachers are expected to engage in?  Does accomplishment carry the responsibility for elevating voices and shaping decisions beyond our classrooms?

Or can one be accomplished without ever trying to reach beyond their classrooms?

Would you want to be held accountable for being an advocate for education?  How would that change your work?  Better yet, how would it change our profession?

(Image credit:  Teacher Paperwork by Ladyheart, licensed Creative Commons:  Attribution)

Pay Me My Monies. . .

Scott McLeod over at Dangerously Irrelevant started an interesting strand of conversation today when he shared a collection of facts showing that the smartest teachers often leave the classroom first, leaving schools with collections of "low ability educators" who have little impact on student achievement. 

Scott's central question:

Let’s assume that, generally speaking, these studies are correct: 1) smart people are less likely to stay in teaching (thus resulting in a concentration of teachers with lower academic ability), and 2) the academic ability of teachers impacts student learning outcomes. Now what?

The conversation in the comment section of McLeod's post has been lively to say the least, drawing out some of the edusphere's most active thinkers.  For me, the Eduwonkette's comments had particular resonance.  Among other things, she wrote:

Re what to do: Teachers with high scores have better salary options out of teaching, so we will need to change compensation practices if we want to keep these folks in education.

Do you think this is the key issue in the whole conversation? Are we woefully unprepared to keep top performers in education because we have a stagnant compensation system---and our professional organizations fight to protect that system at every turn?

Think about the benefits that teaching offers: affective rewards, job security, pensions (in most places). Pretty attractive to a candidate in 1973, right? After all, that was an era when pretty much everyone got one job and held onto it for life.

Today's professional has no expectation of the 30 year career at all. What's the statistic? Most people have 8 different jobs by the time they're 30?  The top performers in education today don't find inherent value in the kinds of perks offered by our profession----and they don't have any qualms about walking away from job security and a pension.

The kicker, then, seems to be redesigning the compensation (which includes more than simply salary) system in education to more accurately reflect today's vision of a "career."

Does this resonate with anyone else? Is it a pipe dream that we'll never be able to bring to reality?

What's the first step towards seeing compensation redesigned---and who's got to take it?

(Image credit:  Mo Money Mo Problems by greggoconnell, licensed Creative Commons:  Attribution)

It's All About the Benjamins. . .

One of my favorite conservative bloggers is Matt Johnston, who writes over at Going to the Mat.  Matt tracked down my recent post on the impact that testing has had on teaching and learning in my classroom and asked the following question in the comment section:

Bill, I think your rant (well grounded as it is) raises a couple of very difficult questions. I will have to assume that all teachers of subjects on standardized tests have experienced the same frustration as you. That leads to the question, should teachers who teach in subjects tested on standardized tests (i.e. math, science, English, etc) be evaluated in terms of professional development and annual reviews differently than those who teach non-standadized tested subjects, art, music, social studies, etc. If so, how would that be done so that it is equitable? Could tested subject teachers be rewarded more for success? Should they be disadvantaged for lack of success (as defined by your students' peformance)? What impacts would you see for the recruitment/retention of teachers in both tracks?

Interesting questions, Matt---especially because they operate from the basic assumption that we've made the right decision by using standardized tests as an effective indicator of "success" and "failure" in schools.  While I think that you're right to assume that standardized tests are the "indicator du jour" for the forseeable future, I'm personally holding out hope that we'll become more sophisticated in our assessments of children in the upcoming decade. 

That being said, I think that teacher evaluation is completely ineffective as it currently exists for all teachers!  Administrators---who are often completely overworked and under prepared---are asked to provide "instructional leadership" to teachers who span incredibly diverse curricula and ability levels.  It's an impossible task, to say the least. 

The results:  No one is evaluated particularly well.

And that's actually quite shocking to me as an "insider."  Let me give you an example:  I'm a pretty reflective guy who has a solid understanding of what I do well and where I struggle.  My personal weakness as a classroom teacher is providing differentiation for students of different ability levels.  Considering how academically diverse our classrooms are becoming, that's a HUGE weakness.

But I'm not sure that any of my principals or supervisors have ever noticed that weakness.  Why?  Because they simply can't effectively judge my entire skill set in the two 20-minute observations that they do "on me" each year.  Instead, they typically come in my room, look to see if objectives are posted on the board, decide whether my instructional plans are appropriate for the grade level I'm teaching and then move on to another room. 

It has always been a surface-level evaluation of my performance at best---and in 15 years, no one has ever mentioned the lack of differentiation in my room.

Now, when it comes to evaluating tested v. untested teachers equitably, I'd argue that it'll never happen.  Tested teachers have numbers attached to their names---and right or wrong, we seem to put a lot of weight in those numbers.  In fact, I'd argue that most administrators tend to trust those numbers more than their own observations when determining who is an "effective teacher" and who is an "ineffective teacher." 

The numbers just seem so darn reliable, don't they?  After all, we live in a "data-driven world." 

But non-tested subjects will never have numbers attached to them.  Instead, their performance is always going to be judged by performances---How does the teacher look in action?  How do the students perform in the upcoming band concert?  How does the artwork look in the hallway?  How does the dance performance go off?

Don't get me wrong:  I truly believe that those kinds of assessments are more reliable---and more reflective of effective assessment.  When you can actually see a child applying skills from the standard course of study in performance based situations, you can truly begin to understand what they're capable of.  It's a more sophisticated measure of ability, don't you think? 

But those kinds of performance measures are never extended to teachers of tested subjects.  No one comes in my room and watches my students interact in meaningful conversations with one another.  No one ever sits down and challenges their thinking about a particular novel or piece of text to see if they can analyze an author's purpose or notice elements of bias. 

Instead, they count on the test to do those things---which I'd argue is simplistic at best. 

In many ways, this dichotomy between the ways we're willing to evaluate teachers of tested and untested subjects is almost ridiculous!  If a test is an effective method for judging English and math teachers, why haven't we developed standardized tests for dance and drama teachers too?  Why don't we have tests for the band teacher or the media specialist? 

And if we're willing to admit that testing in those areas is ineffective practice, then why aren't we willing to embrace the idea that testing in ALL areas is ineffective? 

As far as compensation goes, I am a firm believer that it is time for us to begin to reward teachers differently based on "performance."  Honestly, as a young-ish teacher who works 90 hours a week, I'm completely burned by the fact that I get paid based on years of experience only.  To know that there are teachers sprinting to the parking lot at 3:30 every day while I'll be plugging away until 7:30 or 8:30 is probably the biggest "hurt" there is in teaching. 

This recurrent pain is easily one of the biggest barriers to teacher recruitment and retention.  Do you have any idea how hard it is to encourage young teachers to stay in the classroom when they are making barely $30,000 a year---and when they know they'll get a 2% raise every year until they die regardless of how hard they work?  Worse yet, imgaine trying to stay positive when you know there are people in your building making twice as much as you are even though they make no meaningful contributions to teaching and learning.      

Where's the motivation to improve?!

Somewhere I read a statistic that the average young adult today will have held 13 jobs by the time they are 32.  That willingness to move flexibly between positions is a part of the professional fabric of today's worker---and it means that teaching has to change dramatically in order to compete for the best employees. 

New teachers aren't going to be as satisified with the "perks" that earlier generations embraced.  Tenure and job security mean nothing to today's employee.  Guaranteed raises over time and a "retirement" account don't either. 

What new teachers want is the chance to be rewarded for accomplished practice in the same ways that their peers will be rewarded in other professions.  The vision of the altruistic teacher who embraces the "I don't do it for the money" mantra is a thing of the past.  Today's teacher loves kids as much as their predecessor----but they expect to be paid for performance as well.

The never-ending barrier to this entire conversation, however, is that we have yet to effectively define what "accomplished performance" means.  Complicating matters is the fact that our nation is constantly changing the outcomes that they expect schools to produce.  Some people want higher test scores.  Others want improved graduation rates.  Still others want "kids of character" or "twenty-first century learners." 

Perhaps the first step in any attempt to establish alternative compensation packages for teachers should be a focused conversation about what exactly we want schools to produce.  Once we've got that vision established, we can start to "measure" the contributions of educational professionals and reward them appropriately.

My thinking in this post feels incomplete---but I'm due at the gym in 10 minutes for a workout.  I suppose I'll continue to polish this thinking in upcoming entries, but I'd be interested in hearing feedback from readers. 

Does anything I've written here make sense to anyone besides me!