Getting the Best Teachers into the Toughest Jobs

Posted on May 14, 2013 by coreeducation

Even though it has been known for some time that teachers and principals play the largest role in student success, it is only recently that districts and schools have started making requisite changes to their strategic management of talent. This is the central contention of Allan Odden’s new report, Getting the Best People into the Toughest Jobs: Changes in Talent Management in Education, which delves into detail about how those changes began, just what those changes are, and how that process of change is progressing.

Allan Odden is the director of Strategic Management of Human Capital, professor emeritus of educational leadership and policy analysis at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and co-director of the Consortium for Policy Research in Education. His recently authored report was written for the Center for American Progress.

The executive summary states the following:

The issue of strategic talent management in education leapt onto the policy and practice agenda quite recently. Yet in a short time period, huge changes in policy and practice have occurred. From a set of disjointed policies and even-worse practices, a comprehensive and holistic view of strategic talent management in education is developing, supported by new and ambitious federal and state policies and rapidly changing local practices. Admittedly, policy design still needs significant calibration, and local implementation is far from complete. But the landscape of how teachers and principals—the education talent—are managed is dramatically changing. A once-haphazard mix of approaches is moving toward many more strategic systems that are designed to ensure that only effective teachers and principals are recruited, tenured, retained, and well-compensated—particularly in urban and poor rural communities.

This paper examines the evolving landscape of talent management in education, broken in five sections:

Section one: Talent management, or lack thereof, in education at the close of the 20th century
Section two: Educational change that began at the dawn of the 21st century
Section three: Rumblings of change that evolved into comprehensive new federal and state human-capital management policies and local practices
Section four: Rumblings of change that coalesced into a foundation of change across the country and the new world of talent management
Section five: Why the focus on talent evolved and quickly assumed such a prominent role in the nation’s education policy and practice agendas

In part, due to positive state and local response to federal requirements for new education programs such as Race to the Top, School Improvement Grants, the Teacher Incentive Fund, and No Child Left Behind waivers, states and districts are identifying and using new channels for recruiting better talent into the nation’s schools, especially high-poverty schools in urban and rural areas. States and school districts are also developing new ways of evaluating teachers—methods that use a measure of instructional practice and evidence of student learning, and in some cases student surveys on the academic environment. States and districts are then using these new metrics to determine whether or not to tenure teachers, as a condition for promotion, to implement new salary schedules, and for dismissal—instead of seniority.

Though there is steady progress toward designing and implementing all these new policies and practices across the country, there is also opposition, and the road forward will certainly be bumpy. To be successful, these initiatives need to solve some major challenges such as making the new evaluation systems affordable; ensuring that the scores that teachers receive on their evaluations derive from “cut” scores that are set at rigorous levels in order to accurately identify the most effective and most ineffective teachers; deciding where to put the toughest requirements for entering the teaching professions so the talent that flows from the new recruitment sources are not shut off; and embedding all this in an effective school improvement strategy that is linked to the new Common Core State Standards Initiative.

Among the recommendations is adjustment of entry standards to the profession to ensure that only the top talent meets the entry standards—based on rigorous assessments of content knowledge and by implementing a rigorous “bar exam,” which should assess both instructional expertise and impact on student learning—as well as standards for full professional license to be required of every novice teacher at some point after three to five years of teaching. This approach supports both traditional and alternative pathways into the profession, while also ensuring that only demonstrably effective teachers earn the full professional license and then tenure—whatever their pathway into the profession.

For access to the full report, see: http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education/report/2013/04/04/58474/getting-the-best-people-into-the-toughest-jobs/

Related video from the Center for American Progress is available at the following link: http://www.americanprogress.org/events/2013/03/26/58049/getting-the-best-people-into-the-toughest-jobs/

California: Hot Seat for Contentious Education Issues

Posted on May 7, 2013 by coreeducation

Last month, the Democratic Party in California held a three day convention. The convention, at which the California Teachers Association was prominently represented, sparked a wave of rhetoric that reveals at least a temporary rift among some members and former members of the Democratic Party in California. The rift concerns how much school choice and student testing as part of teacher evaluations should be part of the Democratic platform for education reform.

On one side, those who disagree with both of these movements, stand the younger leaders of the Democratic Party in California, such as Atty. Gen. Kamala D. Harris, and the California Teachers Association. On the other side, those who favor school choice and teacher evaluations that include student test scores, stand prominent education groups StudentsFirst and Democrats for Education Reform.

The first group, which had the chance to make its views known at the recent California Democratic Party Convention, charges the latter two education groups with being fronts for Republican and corporate interests because of their agenda which supposedly jeopardizes public schools and its teachers.

The second group, represented most prominently by Michelle Rhee, charges the first group with not being true to their Democratic ideals because they seek to obstruct measures that focus on helping students, especially minority students, have access to better education.

Below are some selected sections from a Los Angeles Times article about the debate:

“People can call themselves Democrats for Education Reform – it’s a free country – but if your agenda is to shut teachers and school employees out of the political process and not lift a finger to prevent cuts in education, in my book you’re not a reformer, you’re not helping education, and you’re sure not much of a Democrat,” said state Supt. of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson, a registered Democrat whose office is nonpartisan.

California Teachers Assn. President Dean Vogel argued that the organizations are working to eliminate workers’ rights and “hellbent on turning students into test-taking machines. I’ll tell you right now, they want to do that, they have to come through us,” Vogel said. ”Let’s be perfectly clear,” he added. “These organizations are backed by moneyed interests, Republican operatives and out-of-state Wall Street billionaires dedicated to school privatization and trampling on teacher and worker rights.”

Gloria Romero, a former Democratic majority leader in the state Senate who leads the California chapter of Democrats for Education Reform, called the Sunday resolution “stupid.” ”They drank some Kool-Aid that has been fresh squeezed for them by the most powerful political interest in California, the California Teachers Assn.,” she said, adding that improving schools for minorities and the poor should be a priority for the party. ”They beat their chest,” she continued, “they get some money into their campaign coffers, but they walk away having abandoned the call for quality education for children of color.”

The clash over education had been building throughout the three-day convention, underscoring a larger debate taking place in education circles. A spokeswoman for StudentsFirst said the party failed over the weekend to discuss any concrete steps to improve education.

“The heated rhetoric … is especially disappointing because it reveals an abject refusal to tackle the most important issue: ensuring that every California student goes to a great school and has a great teacher,” said the spokeswoman, Jessica Ng.

StudentsFirst, founded by former Washington, D.C., schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee, has spent nearly $1.5 million since 2012 on efforts to elect Democrats. Rhee is married to Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson. An early hint of the convention controversy came when party officials, who had initially approved Johnson’s request that his advocacy group have a booth at the convention, reversed course and said no.

A spokesman for the party said the decision not to provide space for the Democratic mayor of the host city had nothing to do with his group’s message. ”We simply experienced a higher demand for exhibitor booths than initially anticipated,” Tenoch Flores said.

For more information, please visit:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-democrats-20130415,0,2919125.story?utm_source=feedly

Reflections on the 2013 International Summit on the Teaching Profession

Posted on May 1, 2013 by coreeducation

Back in mid-March, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, hosted the third International Summit on the Teaching Profession. This particular summit focused on teacher quality, including professional standards and teacher appraisal. The past two took place in New York City at the invitation of Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

Marc Tucker of the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE) composed a summary of his thoughts on the event. About the purpose of the event, he said, “The aim was to provide a venue in which the top officials involved in making policy for teachers and teaching in their countries could, aided by analyses provided by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and Education International (EI), compare notes on strategy and implementation, and by so doing, further improve their own education systems. Nothing quite like this had ever happened before.”

Despite not having attended himself, his comments reflect conversations with several attendees. His goal in the comments was to address some of the differing opinions of those who attended.

It was broadly agreed that teacher evaluation and appraisal is very important and that it could be effective only in systems also designed to:

Make teaching an attractive profession,
Provide very high-quality initial teacher education,
Create a school management system in which teachers could act as autonomous professionals within a collaborative culture, and
Engage teachers in developing the evaluation system.

And that was frame with which OECD and EI opened the third summit.

This is a very sensible approach. It could potentially provide a roadmap leading to sound policy that would also provide an opportunity for all parties to claim victory, but it would have been too much to expect that it would relieve all the tensions with which the second summit ended.

In the eyes of several observers, no one at the table at the third summit was advocating that teacher evaluation and appraisal be used to weed out bad teachers. And everyone agreed that teachers both needed and wanted feedback. But, with that off the table, there was still tension between those who are most comfortable with the use of evaluation for professional growth and development, on the one hand, and those who see it as a vital tool in the design and implementation of tough-minded accountability systems on the other. And, in the middle were those who were naturally inclined to the position apparently so well articulated by Andreas Schleicher at the meeting, namely that teacher evaluation is best thought of as an important component of a much larger system built around a conception of teachers as highly capable professionals, not as cogs in a Tayloristic management design.

That vision assumes that the criteria against which teachers are being judged is not limited to student performance on basic skills in a narrow range of subjects but on their ability to help students succeed against the full range of outcomes now widely referred to as 21st century skills, many of which are difficult if not impossible to measure. In Tayloristic systems, everyone assumes that management will assess the workers in any way they see fit, usually according to fairly simplistic criteria; in professional environments, the direction of accountability is at least as much to one’s colleagues as to one’s superiors in the organizational structure. So who is to devise the criteria for judging teachers and who is to decide whether an individual teacher meets them? In blue collar environments, all workers are regarded as equal, if not interchangeable. But, in a professional environment, the professionals acquire increasing responsibility, authority and compensation as they demonstrate increasing competence and skill. Perhaps, as nations move toward conceptions of teachers and teaching grounded in the idea of teacher as professional, the idea of teacher evaluation and appraisal should be inextricably connected to the development of formalized career ladders for teachers.

The third summit did indeed address these and other issues. This made for some tough conversations. It became very clear that it was going to be hard to resolve these issues without some real trust among the parties, both at this table, and, by implication, within the countries represented.

For Tucker’s full comments, see: http://www.ncee.org/2013/04/tuckers-lens-the-2013-international-summit-on-the-teaching-profession/

For the summit website, see: http://www.teachersummit2013.org/

Following is a link to a blog post about the summit from the Education Department’s website: http://www.ed.gov/blog/2013/03/third-international-summit-on-the-teaching-profession-sitting-at-our-table/

Evaluation for Educators in Non-Tested Grades and Subjects

Posted on April 29, 2013 by coreeducation

With news that 7 teachers in Florida, with the support of the National Education Association, are suing the Florida State Education Department, the issue of how to evaluate teachers is again making headlines. The teachers in Florida assert that their due process and equal protection rights are being violated because they were given evaluation scores based on students other than their own—students with different teachers, in different grades, and in different schools.

The source of this confusing situation is the fact that the standardized tests which are linked with teacher evaluation systems do not take place in every grade. One of the litigants was given an unsatisfactory score despite being chosen as teacher of the year by her colleagues. This teacher, Kim Cook, teaches first grade, and the state education department in Florida chose to evaluate her based on 4^th and 5^th graders, who do take a state of Florida standardized test.

Another source of confusion concerns teachers of older students in classes for which there are no standardized tests. These “non-tested” subjects include art, music, science, health and social studies. School districts are currently contemplating methods by which they could evaluate these teachers, thereby avoiding lawsuits similar to those in Florida.

A researcher at the Value-Added Research Center, a research evaluation firm and contractor located at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Wisconsin Center for Education Research, offers summaries of three proposed models for evaluation that fairly include teachers in non-tested grades and subjects:

Under option 1, states expand the number of grades and subjects in which students are assessed annually. This model’s costs would come from procuring and administering commercially available standardized exams in those subjects. The development and administration of new data systems also add to the cost.

Under model 2, states would convene educators to develop assessments in the non-tested grades and subjects. Costs here would come from hiring facilitators to train educators on the process of developing the tests, the actual test development, and the cost of a platform to host the assessments so that districts can administer them.

Finally, under model 3, states would implement student learning objectives, a particular kind of goal in which each teacher sets growth goals with his or her principal, and selects a way of measuring growth on those based on some examination of student work. (For a discussion of the research on SLOs and some of the tradeoffs associated with using them, see this blog item.) This option, the paper notes, has fewer direct costs associated with procuring or developing tests, but higher indirect costs to provide districts, principals, and teachers with guidance and training on how to craft and score the SLOs.

For more information on the lawsuit in Florida, please visit: http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/teachers-in-florida-sue-state-claiming-job-evaluation-system-is-unfair/2013/04/16/32fbb400-a6c4-11e2-8302-3c7e0ea97057_story.html

For more on the teacher evaluation models and their costs, download the report at the following link:

https://aefpweb.org/sites/default/files/webform/Cost%20of%20Implementation%20Draft%2003.13.13.docx

Core Education, LLC is pleased to support states and districts in the design and implementation of evaluation systems that include teachers in non-tested grades and subjects.

Bill Gates on Teacher Evaluations

Posted on April 23, 2013 by coreeducation

Through the influence of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has provided money for many different educational studies in recent years, Bill Gates has become an influential name in education.

It might be expected that Gates would support educational reforms more along the lines of the privatization-corporatization model as well as support reforms that involve technology, and that may be generally true, but in a recent op-ed piece in the Washington Post, Gates calls for balanced teacher evaluations that incorporate factors beyond simply student test scores.

Gates first highlights what he sees as an over-zealous attitude by some states to develop standardized tests. For example, he mentions how “in one Midwestern state, for example, a 166-page Physical Education Evaluation Instrument holds teachers accountable for ensuring that students meet state-defined targets for physical education, such as consistently demonstrating ‘correct skipping technique with a smooth and effortless rhythm’ and ‘strike consistently a ball with a paddle to a target area with accuracy and good technique.’ I’m not making this up!”

Gates believes it is this over-zealous approach to standardized testing that has engendered the backlash against it: “This is one reason there is a backlash against standardized tests — in particular, using student test scores as the primary basis for making decisions about firing, promoting and compensating teachers. I’m all for accountability, but I understand teachers’ concerns and frustrations.”

In summary, Gates wants a teacher evaluation system that incorporates multiple measures, including standardized tests, and that actually helps teachers know how to make improvements. Gates predicts that teachers will be more supportive of such initiatives: “If we aren’t careful to build a system that provides feedback and that teachers trust, this opportunity to dramatically improve the U.S. education system will be wasted. The fact is, teachers want to be accountable to their students. What the country needs are thoughtfully developed teacher evaluation systems that include multiple measures of performance, such as student surveys, classroom observations by experienced colleagues and student test results.”

Following is the link to the op-ed: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/bill-gates-a-fairer-way-to-evaluate-teachers/2013/04/03/c99fd1bc-98c2-11e2-814b-063623d80a60_story.html

And a link to the Gates Foundation education page: http://www.gatesfoundation.org/What-We-Do/US-Program/College-Ready-Education

Evaluating the new Teacher Evaluation Systems

Posted on April 17, 2013 by coreeducation

Data from states that have recently begun using teacher evaluations aligned with student performance suggest that the numbers can be deceiving. Very high percentages of teachers are receiving “effective” or higher scores on their teacher evaluations—above 97% in Florida, Michigan, and Tennessee. Depending on whom you talk to, this can mean a number of different things.

Randi Weingarten of the AFT hopes that people will begin to respect the teaching profession more because the numbers are showing that most teachers are good teachers. “Maybe this information will debunk the myth about bad teachers,” she said.

Along these same lines, some others look at the actual numbers of teachers who leave voluntarily, will be forced to enter training programs, or will be fired based on their low ratings, and argue that the teacher evaluation systems are doing their job well. In Michigan, Dr. Joseph A. Martineau, executive director of Michigan’s Bureau of Assessment and Accountability, said that even with all the system’s flaws, many of which will be corrected under new legislation, the 0.8 percent of teachers deemed ineffective last year translated to nearly 800 teachers who will be in jeopardy of losing their jobs. “There’s a possibility, a real possibility, that students will have a more effective teacher,” he said.

Some education reformers are saddened by the results, feeling that reform of teacher evaluation systems that include student performance data will have little impact if the ratings systems are not more rigorous. “It is too soon to say that we’re where we started and it’s all been for nothing,” said Sandi Jacobs, vice president of the National Council on Teacher Quality, a research and policy organization. “But there are some alarm bells going off.”

Still others argue that it is truly too early to judge the new systems. Because of the oft changing testing systems within states (and another change coming next year in most states as a result of Common Core implementation), the student data to which the ratings are tied to are often up for debate. “We have changed proficiency standards 21 times in the last six years,” Jackie Pons, the schools superintendent for Leon County, Fla., said. In the county, 100 percent of the teachers were rated “highly effective” or “effective.” “How can you evaluate someone in a system when you change your levels all the time?” Mr. Pons asked.

Furthermore, as the new evaluation systems are so new in most states, school and district leaders are often loath to be the first to bring the hammer down on their underperforming teachers. Instead, these leaders are more likely to adjust the ratings system such that more teachers fall under the effective rankings. In Alachua County, Florida, district officials originally set scores relatively high, but when only 78 percent of teachers were deemed highly effective or effective, and when they saw how lenient other districts were, they set them much lower. Ultimately, 99.4 percent of teachers were rated effective or highly effective.

Over half of the states in the US have now begun incorporating teacher evaluations that employ a mixture of student performance and observation of teachers. Some states have done this more on their own, but many have jumped on board in order to comply with federal standards in order to receive Race to the Top grant money. Even as some states move forward, many are skeptical of these types of teacher evaluations, leading to situations such as that in Montgomery County, Maryland. MCPS may sue its own state education board in order to block a statewide move to incorporate student data in teacher evaluations. MCPS currently employs a system that uses observations by principals as well as by other veteran teachers.

It is possible that looking at a school system like Washington DC Public Schools, which has employed teacher evaluation systems tied to student data for three years, may provide a glimpse into the future for the other states who are employing similar systems.

If you listen to DPCS leadership, early numbers that included higher percentages of underperforming teachers (2% ineffective and only 82% effective or above) spurred higher rates of teacher turnover (400 fired and hundreds of others leaving voluntarily). Now, more effective teachers have been brought in, and the numbers of underperforming teachers have decreased (only 1% ineffective and 89% effective or above). Of course, this message is only acceptable if you first give credibility to any system that connects teacher performance to standardized test data and second, believe that the ratings systems have not simply been altered to corroborate DCPS’ human capital strategy.

In short, it seems that until there is more uniformity and accountability in the way that student performance data is used to create teacher ratings, teacher evaluations may mean about as much as they always have.

For more information on states like Florida which have recently released data on teacher evaluations, please visit this link: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/31/education/curious-grade-for-teachers-nearly-all-pass.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&smid=tw-share

AIR offers Helpful Recommendations on Teacher Evaluation

Posted on April 8, 2013 by coreeducation

In “Flexibility for Fairness: Crafting Business Rules for Student Learning Objectives” AIR’s Amy Potemski explores the ways in which states are creating “business rules” to allow for flexibility in the SLO process.

SLOs, or Student Learning Objectives, are being used across states as a way to provide a student growth measure in non-tested grades and subject areas. But although SLOs are more flexible than other student growth measures like Value-Added Measures, they are still complex.

What, for example, should an evaluator do with a student who has missed more than 20% of the school year? Should they be included in the teacher’s SLO calculation? What about for a teacher who has had an extended leave of absence during the instructional interval? What special considerations should be made for resource teachers who do not have a static caseload of students?

AIR explores each of these situations and summarizes guidelines that are in place in various states and districts.

To view the brief, see http://www.tqsource.org/pdfs/GTL_AskTeam_FlexForFairness.pdf

AIR also recently released another brief—this one focused on what to do if your district lacks capacity to implement new teacher observations and evaluations.

First, to “lighten the load” districts could consider requiring fewer observations for those teachers who have scored highly on most of their recent observations, or they could also focus on a more limited set of competencies for each observation.

To “leverage your talent, technology, and teams”, districts should scrutinize their rules for observations carefully, because they may be able to use others besides principals for evaluations or at least delegate certain other aspects of the principals’ work load to other employees. It might also be possible to use video recordings of teachers to simplify the observation process and to employ existing teacher service days for teachers to work together to understand results of observations.

Finally, to “streamline processes across districts”, groups of districts or all of the districts in a state should strive to have as much clarity and consistency among them as possible so that less time is spent discerning what exactly is required. This top-down approach must be balanced, however, with offering enough leeway to account for local circumstances.

To view this brief, see http://www.tqsource.org/pdfs/GTL_AskTeam_LackingCapacity.pdf

A Pragmatic Look at the Future of Teacher Evaluation Systems

Posted on April 2, 2013 by coreeducation

Michael Hansen of AEI Education, has penned a new report examining teacher evaluations systems. Hansen believes that, whether or not student test scores continue to be demanded as the gold standard for teacher evaluations, data analysis will be the crucial factor in the future of teacher evaluations.

As more states and districts have moved to teacher evaluation models that include student performance (often called value-added models), there has been just as much pushback against these systems. Their validity is a particular concern to many, with many believing that any model that places standardized tests at the bottom of the pyramid is fundamentally flawed one. Michael Hansen, in the AEI Teacher Quality 2.0 Special Report 4, moves beyond this tension to the recognition that teacher evaluations will need to involve more “process-based evaluations” by state and district leaders. This will mean more time, money, and effort from those in higher positions—none of which are easy to come by. As a result, Hansen speculates, “data-driven” evaluation systems will become increasingly crucial.

From the executive summary to the report:

The growing prominence of value-added models for measuring teacher effectiveness has prompted a recent surge in policies that consider students’ classroom performance part of a teacher’s evaluation. Yet, in light of the criticism and limitations of the current models, whether and how evaluation systems will adapt over time is unclear. This paper considers how teacher evaluations may likely evolve in the near future, which will have implications for state and district policy adoption.

The future shape of evaluation systems will be determined by who bears the cost of controlling the quality of the teacher workforce. Until now, teachers and students have largely born these costs. But if states and districts are serious about improving workforce quality, they must take on a greater share. Consequently, the current orientation of input- and output-based evaluations will be supplemented with more rigorous process-based evaluation. Heightened cost pressures for school leadership will likely lead to more automated, data-driven evaluation systems.

Improvements in four specific areas will particularly influence teacher evaluations moving forward:

Small-scale measurement;

Implementation issues;

Workforce monitoring;

Paradigm shifts in education research.

Data analysis plays a key role across all four areas, and will be the necessary precursor to improvements in public school teacher evaluation systems.

For more information and to download the full report, please visit:

http://www.aei.org/papers/education/k-12/teacher-policies/anticipating-innovation-in-teacher-evaluation-systems-lessons-for-researchers-and-policymakers/

Teacher leadership crucial to teacher development

Posted on March 21, 2013 by coreeducation

Two new reports from the New Teacher Center and the Aspen Institute both highlight the importance of rigorous training for new teachers. By looking at the work currently being done by certain model school districts, both reports highlight models through which novice teachers become master teachers. Interestingly, both reports also assert the importance of incorporating teacher-leaders into a rigorous teacher training system that goes far beyond simply tying student test results to teacher evaluations.

The press release for the Aspen Institute report provides a summary:

A new report by Rachel Curtis for the Aspen Institute explains how school systems can thoughtfully design and advance teacher leadership efforts to improve teacher performance, increase student achievement, and meet the heightened expectations ushered in by the Common Core. Finding a New Way: Leveraging Teacher Leadership to Meet Unprecedented Demands, articulates critical issues, and offers recommendations for systems interested in developing teacher leaders and career pathways. Teacher leadership work in Achievement First Charter Schools, Denver Public Schools, District of Columbia Public Schools, and Singapore are compared and contrasted to illustrate common approaches and areas of divergence in these systems.

Finding a New Way provides timely advice and guidance on how to replace the anachronistic and incredibly flat structure of the teaching profession with dynamic career opportunities. By recognizing the deep of well of leadership potential that currently lies fallow in effective teachers, public education can take advantage of existing talent, expand high-quality feedback and development opportunities, and increase the number of students taught by effective teachers.

New, more rigorous teacher evaluations create an unprecedented opportunity by identifying the most effective teachers; public education must respond to this opportunity with more deliberate systems for retaining top talent and developing leadership potential. Distributing leadership responsibility to teacher leaders can elevate the status of the profession, improve recruitment and retention of talent, and make the job of principals more manageable – all in service of increasing student achievement.

Finding a New Way establishes a clear process for establishing shared purpose for pursuing teacher leadership and for designing, implementing, and learning from teacher leader work. Throughout the report, examples from the field are woven together with advice and guidance on how to launch teacher leadership work that is strategic and sustainable.

In addition to the report by the Aspen Institute, the New Teacher Center has released a new report, Cultivating Effective Teachers Through Evaluation And Support: A Guide For Illinois Policymakers And Educational Leaders, which “explores whether a new state teacher evaluation law – Illinois’s Performance Evaluation Reform Act – provides sufficient growth and learning opportunities for beginning teachers. It concludes that evaluation alone cannot inform and accelerate new teacher development. Teacher learning must be supported through an aligned talent management system that includes the induction of beginning teachers.”

While the Guide is customized for policy and school leaders in Illinois, its content may potentially interest a national education audience. The Guide raises important questions about whether teacher evaluation as currently construed and designed provides a depth and frequency of feedback to meet the learning needs of beginning teachers. It offers three examples of school districts (Hillsborough County, Florida; Montgomery County, Maryland; Pleasanton Unified, California) that have implemented teacher evaluation systems that are purposeful about developing and supporting new teachers.

Following are direct links to the reports:

http://newteachercenter.org/products-and-resources/policy-reports/illinois-guide-policy-makers-educational-leaders

http://www.aspeninstitute.org/publications/finding-new-way-leveraging-teacher-leadership-meet-unprecedented-demands

New Study Corroborates State SLO Plans

Posted on March 11, 2013 by coreeducation

From the press release by the Boston-based Community Training and Assistance Center:

As states and school districts increasingly use Student Learning Objectives (SLOs) in high stakes teacher evaluation and compensation systems to measure student academic growth, a new five-year study reports that high quality SLOs do improve teaching and bolster student growth.

The national SLO momentum has resulted in part because states and school districts receiving federal Race to the Top funding and federal waivers must include student academic growth as part of teacher evaluation. The problem has been fairness—that is, how to fairly measure student growth for all teachers, especially when only 20-25% of subjects and grades are covered by state tests. SLOs help solve this by providing a means of measuring growth that is not dependent on state tests and can incorporate multiple measures of student learning.

But until now only one other major study— CTAC’s evaluation of SLOs in Denver in 2004—has comprehensively examined the impact of SLOs on student achievement and teacher practice.

The new study, It’s More Than Money, conducted by the Community Training and Assistance Center (CTAC), analyzed 4,000 teacher-developed SLOs as part of a performance-based compensation initiative implemented from 2007-2012 in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS) in North Carolina.

The initiative was supported by a U.S. Department of Education Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) grant. It focused on improving student achievement and educator effectiveness in a select group of 20 high need schools. Key measures determining educator bonuses were SLOs and a Value Added Measure (VAM).

Overall, the study found that students of teachers with student learning objectives had growth rates significantly higher than students in a group of comparison district schools. This, despite the disruptions of recession-prompted budget cutting as well as turnover in school and district leadership.

While many factors beyond incentive pay contributed to this success, the most notable positive correlations link student growth to teachers’ use of SLOs. Early on, CMS leaders perceived the value of using the TIF initiative as a lever for making systemic changes—for example, for shifting emphasis from student proficiency to support and accountability for student growth—and SLOs supported that change in mindset and attendant organizational shifts.

In effect, SLOs put CMS teachers in charge of analyzing their practice in relation to student growth. As that happened, multiple elements of the system needed to be realigned to better provide the support that teachers identified as required for them to improve their knowledge and instructional skills.

Key SLO findings. The CMS analysis corroborates and expands on findings from the Denver study, which was also conducted by CTAC. It finds that:

• SLOs lead to statistically significant student gains in mathematics and reading. There is a positive, statistically significant association between students reaching the SLO learning target set by the teacher and student achievement academic growth. In math, on average, the growth rate over a 3-year period for students in the TIF schools is 12% greater than students in comparable district schools. In reading, on average, the 3-year growth rate is 13% greater.

• SLO quality is key. The higher the quality of a teacher’s SLO, the greater the likelihood that student academic growth objectives will be met. This statistically significant, positive association was found in elementary school math and reading as well as in middle school math.

• Teachers grow annually in their ability to develop quality SLOs. Year by year, teachers develop higher quality SLOs and more of their students reach growth targets. The relationship between quality and years of SLO teacher practice is statistically significant.

• SLO success correlates with VAM findings. Only teachers of tested subjects received a VAM score. The subset of those teachers who received a VAM bonus is more likely to have high quality SLOs.

“These findings are exciting because they show that SLOs help more teachers do a better job with more students,” says William J. Slotnik, executive director of CTAC and co-study author. “The CTAC study shows that quality SLOs are an effective means of tying teacher practice to student learning. That makes the case for including SLOs in educator evaluation and compensation systems. But careful attention must be paid to defining and supporting SLO quality.” As our report title indicates, meaningful reform is about more than money.

The findings also show that bonus pay matters to teachers but is less important to them than the support provided to improve their practice. “The teachers value the support they’ve received to think differently about planning and individualizing instruction, especially through the SLO process,” says CTAC senior associate and report co-author Maribeth Smith.

For a copy of the CTAC report, It’s More Than Money, go to:

http://www.ctacusa.com/morethanmoney.html

The "Core" of Education

Tag Archives: teacher evaluation