Three Ways to Improve America's Teachers

Wendy Kopp is the founder and CEO of Teach For America and Dennis Van Roekel is president of the National Education Association. They got together to write this in USA Today:

Teaching is one of the most challenging jobs in the USA— and one of the most vital. According to the Census Bureau, about one in five American children live in poverty, and they face enormous obstacles as they journey through the public school system. Despite these challenges, skilled teachers manage every day to change the trajectory of students' lives.

As the leaders of the National Education Association and Teach For America, we know from experience that great teachers are made, not born. Continuous learning, reflection and improvement are the building blocks of a successful teaching career. Unfortunately, not all teachers are getting the high-quality preparation they need to excel with students in the classroom.

In recent years we have seen increased emphasis on teacher quality and evaluating teacher performance. As a logical next step, we must measure the effectiveness of the programs that prepare teachers. That's why we're glad to see that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and the Department of Education are tackling this issue head-on with a recent blueprint for teacher education reform.

As the architects of school policy begin implementing this blueprint, we urge them to keep the following in mind:

•Use data to improve teacher preparation. In Louisiana, a state aggressively tackling the question of teacher quality, studies have found significant differences in student outcomes based on where their teachers trained. As described in the Education Department's blueprint, Louisiana is using a three-tiered system to assess whether a teacher preparation program's graduates perform at, above or below the level of the average new teacher. States such as California and Maryland are evaluating programs based on multiple measures, including student, principal and alumni surveys. The common thread is a system for evaluating training programs that prepare teachers for today's classrooms and students for today's information age.

•Bring new talent to the teaching profession. There is an increasing breadth of talent and experience among new teachers — from recent college grads to career-changing professionals — and it is critical that they all have access to high-quality training for a smooth transition into the classroom. One viable path is the proposed Presidential Teaching Fellows, a federal program that would give funding to states that commit to improving teacher training, as well as provide merit-based scholarships for candidates entering teaching through traditional or alternate routes. The Presidential Teaching Fellows places a priority on scholarships for candidates from low-income backgrounds, and also helps recruit and train more teachers of color.

•Give teachers opportunities for continuous professional development. Even after teachers reach the classroom, they need a strong support network and continuing opportunities to hone their skills. The most successful teacher preparation programs recognize this by helping facilitate mentoring relationships with veteran teachers during student teaching and encouraging ongoing professional development opportunities for their graduates. High-quality programs also offer leadership opportunities to their teachers, allowing them to build their skills in areas like curriculum development and peer mentoring. If we expand professional development, new teachers will be much more likely to stick it out past the first challenging years.

One in three K-12 students will be assigned a teacher who is in the first three years of his or her career. As a new generation embarks on a career in teaching, we must commit to giving them the best preparation possible. Secretary Duncan's blueprint is a much-needed catalyst for change. Now schools of education and other teacher education programs must band together and reform practices to better prepare educators for classroom success.

Setting a Higher Standard for Teacher Entry While Paying Less

Iowa Foreshadows Kentucky's Plan

20%, including minority candidates, likely to be turned away

from Teacher Education Programs

In the not-too-distant future teacher education candidates in Kentucky will be required to have a 3.0 GPA for admission to teacher education programs. What is the potential impact on the teaching force? Will the field of education be able to attract the brightest and best when the competition for salaries is still being won by private industry?

As Nicholas Kristof argued in the New York Times earlier this year, the idea the teachers are overpaid is a "pernicious fallacy."

Until a few decades ago, employment discrimination perversely strengthened our teaching force. Brilliant women became elementary school teachers, because better jobs weren’t open to them. It was profoundly unfair, but the discrimination did benefit America’s children.

These days, brilliant women become surgeons and investment bankers — and 47 percent of America’s kindergarten through 12th-grade teachers come from the bottom one-third of their college classes (as measured by SAT scores). The figure is from a study by McKinsey & Company, “Closing the Talent Gap.”

Changes in relative pay have reinforced the problem. In 1970, in New York City, a newly minted teacher at a public school earned about $2,000 less in salary than a starting lawyer at a prominent law firm. These days the lawyer takes home, including bonus, $115,000 more than the teacher, the McKinsey study found.

This from State EdWatch:

Securing a place in the teaching profession will become a bit tougher in Iowa, if Gov. Terry Branstad and the state's school chief, Jason Glass, have their way.

Branstad, a Republican, has proposed requiring a minimum 3.0 grade-point average for admission to teacher-education colleges in the state, as part of a package of proposed changes to school policy unveiled earlier this year, many of which would require legislative approval.

He's also called for creating a more rigorous screening process for candidates for teacher education programs; establishing new teacher-education scholarships with the goal of luring more educators into high-need subjects; requiring teachers to take more subject-specific coursework and classes in core academic subjects; and placing more of an emphasis on in-class training for aspiring teachers, and giving them access to mentors, among other changes. Selective admissions requirements for aspiring educators—coupled with ongoing training and support—is a staple of some high-performing countries' systems, as Ed Week has reported.

The governor has also called for overhauling the compensation system for educators more broadly, and raising starting teacher pay—though he recently said he wants to hold off on trying to get that piece through the legislature, as he seeks to build support for the plan.

This week the Des Moines Register takes an interesting look at the implications of the minimum GPA requirement.

By the newspaper's analysis, one of five teachers would have been turned away last year at teachers' colleges in the state, had the requirement been in effect. The Register was able to obtain information on applicants from three public university programs, though the vast majority of private institutions refused to provide it.

Critics of Branstad's proposal say it would exclude teacher-candidates who may have struggled as undergraduates but could still be effective teachers; others wonder if it will exclude a higher number of minority candidates, the paper noted.

Kristof concludes,

Starting teacher pay, which now averages $39,000, would have to rise to $65,000 to fill most new teaching positions in high-needs schools with graduates from the top third of their classes, the McKinsey study found. That would be a bargain.

Indeed, it makes sense to cut corners elsewhere to boost teacher salaries. Research suggests that students would benefit from a tradeoff of better teachers but worse teacher-student ratios. Thus there are growing calls for a Japanese model of larger classes, but with outstanding, respected, well-paid teachers.

Teaching is unusual among the professions in that it pays poorly but has strong union protections and lockstep wage increases. It’s a factory model of compensation, and critics are right to fault it. But the bottom line is that we should pay teachers more, not less — and that politicians who falsely lambaste teachers as greedy are simply making it more difficult to attract the kind of above-average teachers our above-average children deserve.

Teach Your Teachers Well

This from the New York Times:

Arne Duncan, the secretary of education, recently called for sweeping changes to the way we select and train teachers. He’s right. If we really want good schools, we need to create a critical mass of great teachers. And if we want smart, passionate people to become these great educators, we have to attract them with excellent programs and train them properly in the substance and practice of teaching.

Our best universities have, paradoxically, typically looked down their noses at education, as if it were intellectually inferior. The result is that the strongest students are often in colleges that have no interest in education, while the most inspiring professors aren’t working with students who want to teach. This means that comparatively weaker students in less intellectually rigorous programs are the ones preparing to become teachers.

So the first step is to get the best colleges to throw themselves into the fray. If education was a good enough topic for Plato, John Dewey and William James, it should be good enough for 21st-century college professors.

These new teacher programs should be selective, requiring a 3.5 undergraduate grade point average and an intensive application process. But they should also be free of charge, and admission should include a stipend for the first three years of teaching in a public school...

To fix our schools, we need teaching programs that are as rich in resources, interesting, high-reaching and thoughtful as the young people we want to attract to the profession. Show me a school where teachers are smart, well-educated, skilled and happy to be there, and I’ll show you a group of children who are getting a good education.

NCATE Bids Bye Bye to Bureaucratic Baloney

This from Ed Week by way of EdNews:

NCATE Offers Multiple Paths to Reaccreditation

As part of the first major overhaul of its system in nearly a decade, the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education will give education schools a choice of two different pathways for seeking reaccreditation, officials for the group announced [last week].

Under the first option, schools must commit to working toward a higher level of performance on NCATE’s six standards. Alternatively, institutions can propose and undertake a major research project, or a partnership with a school district, to further the knowledge base on effective teacher preparation.

The changes will come concurrent with a reduction in the amount of paperwork and data schools must submit for review as part of reaccreditation.

“This is not a minor tinkering,” James G. Cibulka, the president of the group, said in a recent interview. “It is a major redesign to accomplish some ambitious, but essential, goals.”

The plans have already won applause from some high-profile figures in teacher education circles, including some critics.

The redesign “hits on a lot of the right issues,” said Arthur E. Levine, a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, who released a 2006 report lambasting the quality of most education schools and recommending that NCATE be replaced with a new accreditation body.

“I also think it’s bold, to the extent that NCATE is a membership group and has a board of people who aren’t necessarily unhappy with what existed before,” Mr. Levine added.

The Washington-based group...accredits about half the nation’s schools of education.

“What happened before with the one-size-fits-all system is that it aimed at the middle,” [said Richard L. Schwab, the dean of the Neag School of Education at the University of Connecticut]. “It didn’t really help anyone as much as it could have.”

The two pathways attempt to respond to those issues. Under the first pathway, a school can earn reaccreditation by engaging in a cycle of “continuous improvement.” ... Under the redesign, schools seeking reaccreditation would submit data over time showing how they are striving for the “target,” or highest level of performance, on the NCATE standards.

Moving to the target level on the clinical-fieldwork standard, for instance, would require programs to expand student-teaching to yearlong experiences and to integrate teacher-candidates into professional-learning communities in schools.

Under the second of the reaccreditation pathways, deemed the “transformation initiative,” institutions could propose and undertake a major research project or a partnership with a local school district to address the specific needs of that district.

The projects must be designed to build the field’s knowledge base of effective teacher-preparation practices, and will push especially the research institutions toward applying their expertise in local communities. They could work, for example, to try to address the problem of high rates of attrition in challenging urban environments.

NCATE will permit consortia of schools to apply for the transformation initiative to allow the schools to pool their resources and benefit from collective expertise.

The group is already piloting some model examples of the transformation initiative. ...In Tennessee, the state board of regents has proposed moving its education schools toward a teacher-residency system, in which candidates have yearlong clinical experiences in schools supplemented by coursework.

...All schools will also face fewer paperwork requirements. Data reporting will focus on outcomes, rather than on processes.

“[The redesign] takes out a lot of the bureaucratic baloney, and is going to hold us accountable for actually walking the walk,” said Mr. Schwab, the Connecticut dean. “That’s a big-change leap from the old days of NCATE when they’d count the number of books in the library and look at the syllabuses you taught.” ...