Jive SBS Syndication Feed

Keep Racing to the Top - How and Why

info@hopestreetgroup.org — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 18:06:58 GMT

Round 1 of the Race to the Top had only two winners, Delaware and Tennessee. But states that did not win can adjust their applications and reapply for Round 2 funding. Democrats for Education Reform (DFER), The Education Equality Project (EEP) and Education Reform Now have gone through each finalist's application to analyze how it might score higher in Round 2. You can check out their state-by-state analysis here.

The co-chairs of the Education Equality Project recently wrote an Op-Ed in the Washington Post about why RT3 and similar school reform efforts are so important even in the context of the significant challenges facing our children outside of school. "Plenty of evidence demonstrates that schools can make an enormous difference despite the challenges presented by poverty and family background," they write.

Teacher Effectiveness Developments

info@hopestreetgroup.org — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 13:09:40 GMT

Teacher Effectiveness continues to be at the heart of efforts to address the nation's achievement gaps. In DC, the Congress is gearing up to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (also known as NCLB). You can read the administration's blueprint for the law here. Also, CAP's Robin Chait has released a memo discussing ways the appropriations process could impact the teacher effectiveness landscape even if ESEA doesn't get reauthorized this year.

One of the most watched local collective bargaining processes is approaching its conclusion. DC Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee and Washington Teachers Union President George Parker have released a tentative contract agreement. The new contract retains teacher tenure and includes a performance pay program funded by private foundations. You can read more about the new contract here.

Tennessee and Delaware, first round winners of Race to the Top funding, promise to be important places to watch with regard to teacher effectiveness. Both have pledged to make significant changes to state teacher evaluation systems. You can read analysis about the other applicants and the process for the second round from The New Teacher Project.

New Report on Improving Teacher Layoff Policies

info@hopestreetgroup.org — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 20:07:40 GMT

In the current economic climate, teacher layoffs may be inevitable. In many cases, collective bargaining agreements force districts to adhere to a "last hired, first fired" seniority based system for making cuts. The New Teacher Project has released a policy brief describing an alternate path. "A Smarter Teacher Layoff System" suggests a "quality-based" approach that could improve current methods for making cuts.

Two big TFA stories

info@hopestreetgroup.org — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 22:03:24 GMT

Teach For America is on the tip of my tongue again (love it or hate it, it does have an annoying way of staying there, doesn't it?) with two big stories. The first is a new study examining the civic activity of TFA corps members, and the second is a big wet kiss from The Atlantic (which it deserves for getting anywhere on figuring out what pre-service indicators are worth worrying about for new teachers).

The Atlantic story is a high profile spotlight on what we already knew - TFA focuses on recruiting corps members with a proven track record of significant accomplishments and leadership. This, along with a relentless focus on improving and ambitious goals for students, helps some TFA corps members achieve remarkable gains in student achievement. The work that Teach For America has done to track its teachers and connect these characteristics to student achievement is absolutely critical. It's also work that states and districts should be doing more (as recommended in "Policy 2.0: Using Open Innovation to Improve Teacher Evaluation Systems." Here's hoping they follow suit.

The second story is about a new study out of Stanford looking at the civic engagement levels of TFA corps members (here's the NYTimes, you can read an abstract and purchase a PDF of the study here). The study found that "graduates" who completed their two years of teaching had lower rates of civic participation than "non-marticulants" (who were accepted but didn't teach with TFA) and "drop-outs," who didn't complete two years of teaching. The headlines about the study are giving Teach For America a bad rap - as Eduwonk points out, all three groups of accepted applicants had high rates of civic engagement when compared to the general population.

Doug McAdam, who authored the study, has also looked at civic engagement of participants in the "Freedom Summer" of 1964 in Mississippi and found the opposite - those participants continue to be involved in activism in later years. Freedom Summer is a fascinating foil for Teach For America, with more contrasts than similarities. It's interesting that Wendy Kopp suggested this study, and I wonder if she's surprised by the results.

Either way, the "burnout" factor comes up in an interesting way in both stories. The first is in The Atlantic piece's introduction to Steven Farr, a TFA alum who rejoined the organization to try to identify characteristics of effective teachers. Of his own time in the classroom, he says "I was not the teacher I want our teachers to be." "Burnout" is also suggested as a contributing factor to low rates of civic participation among TFA alumni in the Stanford study. Anyone who has spent time teaching in our worst schools can tell you that failure, despair, and chaos are part of the learning process. How we react to failure could be an interesting part of the puzzle.

Brain Science and Teaching

info@hopestreetgroup.org — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 13:24:53 GMT

In Sunday's New York Times, Benedict Carey turns in an especially rosey take on cognitive science and education.

Do I think early grades need better, more algebraic math? YES. Without question. Do I buy the idea that cognitive science is going to suddenly and dramatically improve the curriculum?

Well...

The trouble is that too often limited studies become the basis of gadgets and curricula and dreaded "programs" that have their own sales force. This means what teachers end up being asked to do in the classroom in the name of brain science may not be validated by what actually happened in the lab.

Sophisticated imaging and experiment structures may be new, but I have a feeling this sentence, "the teaching of basic academic skills, until now largely the realm of tradition and guesswork, is giving way to approaches based on cognitive science," could have been written 50 or 75 years ago. Maybe we'll get lucky and Diane Ravitch will tell us. And there are some serious skeletons in the cognitive science closet when it comes to determining what some kids can or can't do. Cheers to the brain science community for landing this on the front page, but color me skeptical.

What are your thoughts? Register or Login to join the conversation. Or check out more in our Discover - Education community.

The Race is On!

info@hopestreetgroup.org — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 14:07:55 GMT

ED has released the list of states who have submitted "intent to apply" letters for the Race to the Top fund, part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Which states are on the list? It might be more important which ones are not. Alaska, the District of Columbia, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Texas, Vermont, and Washington have not submitted letters of intent. More fun with the list to come...

Proving positive professional development - the wrong incentive for teacher evaluation reform?

info@hopestreetgroup.org — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 16:31:32 GMT

One of our most important recommendations for improving teacher evaluation systems is that they be designed to provide meaningful feedback that can be used to streamline and target professional development. We can all agree that scattershot professional development is a waste of time and money. But as districts spend federal money to revamp and improve supports for teachers, how will they be accountable and prove that professional development is working?

The bottom line here, of course, is student achievement. But it could be difficult to untangle the impact of new professional development from other reforms, especially if that change is system-wide. Instead, it seems likely that districts would look for improvements in teachers - both in their self assessment and their evaluations.

That's a problem, because our current evaluation systems have a distribution that's skewed heavily towards the higher ratings categories. In order to differentiate excellent teachers from good teachers from not-so-good teachers, we need to shift the ratings curve so that teachers are distributed among different ratings categories - down the ratings scale, not up. If we ask districts to make this difficult correction at the same time they need ratings to go up to prove new professional development is working, are we setting ourselves up to fail?

Nifty 990 mining from GothamSchools

info@hopestreetgroup.org — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 14:46:36 GMT

Over at Gotham Schools, Kim Gittleson has analyzed just released 07-08 990 forms for charter schools in NYC. What she found about executive and principal compensation may surprise you.

Charter schools are typically staffed by less experienced teachers, which makes comparing salary data to traditional district schools a little tricky, but there's no question that charters compete with each other for teaching talent. There's more on charter school teacher compensation from CAP.

Turkey and Choice

info@hopestreetgroup.org — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 16:13:34 GMT

Thanksgiving is like any other meal with my family, a kind of Bizarro Table where religion and politics are the only topics. Well, that's not quite true, but I did get into a spirited debate with my father (a high school English teacher) about whether or not school choice, be it among district schools, charter schools, vouchers, or some combination, has the effect of removing the brightest and most motivated kids from struggling schools and leaving the students who remain in an even worse environment than before. That particular argument went around and around, but with an ever-expanding body of research based on school choice lotteries, we can see where kids given the opportunity to attend a better school do better than kids who aren't, even when both groups' parents were motivated enough to apply to a school choice program and even when they start off comparable in terms of economic status and academic achievement.

Jay P Greene has picked out two studies based on data from Charlotte, NC that suggest the benefits to school choice lottery winners expand beyond academics to other indicators like rates of arrest. Would but I could find a less staunchly pro-choice critic than Jay P. Greene, I would post her review of the studies here, but the findings look exciting to me. Please register or login to share your thoughts below.

Of course, personally, I would be better off today had I not been given the choice to eat that extra slice of pie on Thursday...

Jay Mathews on DC's new teacher evaluation system.

info@hopestreetgroup.org — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 18:39:45 GMT

Be sure to check out Jay Mathews's latest about a teacher's experience with Michelle Rhee and Jason Kamras's long-awaited teacher evaluation system. I won't recap the nitty gritty about what the observer, a "Master Educator," had to say, but I found this comment from the teacher about how his evaluator repeated critical comments about Rhee fascinating "I guess confidentiality is out. How can they help me if I can’t express frustration and anger?"

Does an instructional leader, master educator, observer, etc. have any role to play as a sounding board or confident? If it's true, I think repeating those comments was tacky. Teaching can be isolating and frustrating, and occassional lapses into venting are best absorbed and forgotten.

In addition, the teacher felt his observer's experience teaching AP Government didn't qualify him/her to assess the teaching of AP US History. That strikes me as a pretty good match and more than close enough to satisfy our recommendation that instructional leaders know a subject, but I'm curious about what our policy team or new commenters have to say about that.

Ranking Teacher Preparation Programs

info@hopestreetgroup.org — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:30:24 GMT

During our work on “Policy 2.0: Using Open Innovation to Reform Teacher Evaluation Systems,” the policy team heard from quite a few folks that we ought to think beyond classroom performance to pre-service indicators and differentiating among teacher preparation programs. They’re right.

Personally, I’m of the opinion that even the ideal set of pre-service indicators wouldn’t be a silver bullet – witness pro sports drafts. There are enough 1st round duds and come-from-nowhere heroes to make me wary of relying too much on pre-service stats.

That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be doing better, and differentiating among teacher preparation programs is a great place to start. Louisiana has been out ahead on this, and it looks like Florida is launching a new initiative.

How do I think you make it work? Include common sense checks and qualitative assessment. Especially as a program like this is getting started, I think it’s worth the money to have people on the ground backing up statistics about student achievement gains with qualitative observations.

Ensure a reasonable distribution among rating categories – labels are useless if quality within the same category varies dramatically. See New York City’s school progress reports and teacher evaluation as a whole for cautionary tales.

Educate the public and stakeholder groups with thoughtful, careful leadership. Differentiating among teacher preparation programs can be thornier than one might assume. Institutions of higher education have long histories and fierce pride. Leadership that can bring everyone to the table around common goals will increase the chances of meaningful and positive change.

What do you think is important when it comes to differentiating among teacher preparation programs? Register or Login to add your comment below!

Race to the Top aligns with Hope Street Group's Recommendations

info@hopestreetgroup.org — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:49:49 GMT

The finalized guidance for the Race to the Top fund is out, and the definition of effective teachers is now aligned with Hope Street Group's recommendations.

In the draft guidance, the Department defined an effective teacher as one who increases student achievement by at least one grade level. The Department has since responded to comments by clarifying that student growth data should be a significant part of a comprehensive assessment of teaching. Check out our recommendations 1 and 2 for more on measures of student growth and teaching practice we can use to accurately assess teachers.

New Reporting Requirements for State Fiscal Stabilization Fund

info@hopestreetgroup.org — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:22:18 GMT

The Department of Education has released the reporting requirements states will have to meet to receive the second round of State Fiscal Stabilization Fund money, part of ARRA.

This is the biggest pot of education money in the ARRA, it is paid out using existing funding formulas, and it has the least amount of reform "bite." But the reporting requirements around teacher evaluation will get us a long way towards understanding the problem, which is critical to creating a national understanding of the urgency of reform.

You can read the new reporting requirements and take a look at the state application from this press release.

SMHC makes human capital recommendations

info@hopestreetgroup.org — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 13:25:44 GMT

Strategic Management of Human Capital, a Gates and Carnegie funded task force of education reform leaders, is having it's annual conference in Washington, D.C. today. They are (or will be soon, check the website) releasing a report that is not, apparently, sitting well with the AFT's Randi Weingarten. Steven Sawchuk has the story on his blog - apparently the letter from Weingarten (who was on the task force). It sounds like one of the issues Weingarten has is that the report doesn't place enough emphasis on teachers' environments.

This is one of the big challenges of doing effectiveness reform right. In our report, you can find where we landed in Recommendation 5. The challenge is to acknowledge that school dysfunction will impact teacher effectiveness - that's just common sense. In one of the nation's most watched school turnarounds at Locke High School, for example, many teachers stayed through the transition to Green Dot management. If the school improves, we'll expect those teachers to be more effective in the new environment. But we also know that our worst schools need "whatever it takes, no excuses" teachers who are willing to commit to raising student achievement despite the challenges.

So how do we acknowledge teaching environment without letting teachers off the hook and while ensuring a "whatever it takes" culture?

Eduflack paints the bigger picture

info@hopestreetgroup.org — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 13:43:35 GMT

Over on Eduflack, Patrick Riccards juxtaposes Hope Street Group's new report, "Policy 2.0: Using Open Innovation to Reform Teacher Evaluation Systems" with the Forum for Education and Democracy's broader look at teacher effectiveness.

This is a great way to kick of the conversation of "what else?" What else should we prioritize as we work to ensure an effective teacher heads every classroom? Improving teacher preparation? Incentivizing teachers to work in low-performing schools to address inequitable distritbution?

If we can get to a point where we can identify effective teachers, what should we do next?