Tag Archives: TNTP

TNTP Launches Blog

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TNTP imageOver the last 15 years, TNTP, a national nonprofit committed to ending the injustice of educational inequality, has shared what they have learned about education policy and effective teaching mainly through publications like “The Irreplaceables.” Recently, they have launched a TNTP blog. TNTP hopes to use the blog to offer a different perspective on the issues and share more of their learning process. TNTP is inspired by the power of great teaching to change lives. This blog shares ideas, research and opinion about how to grow great teachers and build systems that prioritize effective teaching in every classroom.

Some of the topics of the first blogs include:

For more information, please visit: http://tntp.org/blog

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TNTP says Teachers’ First Year is Crucial

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TNTP imageTNTP, a national nonprofit committed to ending the injustice of educational inequality, has released a new report that seeks to help first year teachers become better teachers. TNTP was created by teachers in 1997, so the TNTP team has a vested interested in creating cohorts of new teachers who have the critical dispositions that they need to succeed.

Over the last two years, TNTP has radically evolved the way it trains and evaluates new teachers, becoming an organization that certifies teachers based mainly on their actual performance in the classroom. The experience gained during those two years means that TNTP can now share what it has learned in its latest report entitled, “Leap Year: Assessing and Supporting Effective First-Year Teachers.”

Leap Year explores a simple idea: The first year is the most important year of a teacher’s career, and it should be treated that way. Right now, most schools and preparation programs treat teachers’ first year like a warm-up. Instead, it should be seen as a critical window of opportunity to help teachers develop essential skills and make thoughtful decisions about whether they can make a successful career teaching.

TNTP has put this philosophy into practice in 15 programs across the country with the Assessment of Classroom Effectiveness (ACE), a multiple-measures evaluation system designed specifically to ensure that first-year teachers in the TNTP Teaching Fellows and TNTP Academy programs meet a high standard of effectiveness.

Leap Year explains the development of ACE and what its first year taught TNTP about evaluating and supporting the growth of approximately 1,000 new teachers. Here are some of the key conclusions:

  • New teachers perform at different levels and improve at different rates. Contrary to conventional wisdom, first-year teacher performance is not uniform. Some start strong, while others struggle. Many improve as they gain experience, but some do not.
  • Teachers’ initial performance predicts their future performance. In particular, teachers who struggled from the start rarely came close to becoming effective, even in their second year.
  • A few core skills appear to be important to first-year teachers’ success. TNTP found that first-year teachers who are purposeful, responsive and focused on student understanding develop more quickly.

The report goes on to make the following conclusions based on the experience of ACE and similar programs of the last two years:

  • Certification should be linked to a teacher’s actual performance in the classroom, not just coursework and seat time. Nothing better indicates a teacher’s future success than his or her first-year performance.
  • Teacher preparation programs should stop certifying teachers who are unlikely to become effective, which only does a disservice to those teachers and their students.
  • Schools need to help first-year teachers focus on the skills that matter most for their future success, providing regular useful feedback along the way.

To learn more, please download Leap Year from TNTP’s website:

http://tntp.org/ideas-and-innovations/view/leap-year-assessing-and-supporting-effective-first-year-teachers

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Is DCPS a model urban school district?

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The New Teacher Project (TNTP) has recently released a new report, Keeping Irreplaceables in D.C. Public Schools: Lessons in Smart Retention, which holds up the reforms begun in DC public schools by former schools chancellor Michelle Rhee as a model for human capital reform.  The main thrust of the reforms highlighted concerns good teacher retention through new processes of teacher evaluation and compensation.

TNTP was founded by Michelle Rhee in 1997, and current DCPS chancellor Kaya Henderson is also a former TNTP executive, so it may come as no surprise that TNTP supports the reforms that have been taking place there, but the findings merit serious consideration because DCPS is “the first large school district in the country known to be retaining far more of its Irreplaceables than its low-performing teachers.”

The report claims that schools lose their best teachers due to the combination of “weak school leadership, poor working conditions, and restrictive policies.” Most school districts  retain good and bad teachers at about the same level—bad news for students.  But since the reform began in DC in 2007 under Rhee, according to the report, DCPS has retained 88% of its “Irreplaceables” and kept only 45% of its lower performing teachers (2010-2011); both statistics are markedly better than other similar, large school districts.

These statistics are also important because they contradict the main worry that many had about the reforms put in place by Rhee, namely that in the attempt to remove poor teachers, higher performing teachers would also be driven away.  In fact, the “Irreplaceable” teachers, according to the surveys of teachers, principals, and reviews of teacher evaluation results used in the report, feel more valued and have the chance to achieve compensation to the tune of $100,000 per year after at least four years of experience.

Finally, the report makes three recommendations about how to continue and extend the recent successes in DCPS:

  • Schools should maintain higher expectations for teachers
  • DCPS should do more to evenly distribute its top teachers across the District because DCPS is weaker here than other school districts
  • DCPS should do more to help principals create the sort of healthy learning environments which will retain the “Irreplaceables”

For more information including links to summaries of the report and the full report itself, please visit the following websites:

http://thenewteacherproject.createsend1.com/t/ViewEmail/r/EC8C4848BCB6C6C2/4A7FCE5F9C0A574EB4B1B1F623478121

http://tntp.org/irreplaceables/dcps

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TNTP 2013 Fishman Prize for Superlative Classroom Practice Application

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TNTP PrizeTNTP, a nonprofit organization working to ensure that all students get excellent teachers, has opened the application period for the 2013 Fishman Prize for Superlative Classroom Practice.  The prestigious award is given to no more than five public school teachers a year who demonstrate exceptionally effective teaching with students from high-poverty communities.

Winners each receive $25,000 – one of the largest monetary awards for practicing teachers in the nation – and a seat in a six-week summer residency with TNTP. Eligible teachers can apply online at tntp.org/fishmanprize.

In 2012, four winners were selected from more than 400 applicants in 39 states.  During the summer, the winners traveled to New Orleans, New York, and Washington, DC, to reflect critically on their classroom practices, converse with education leaders including U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, and write Unlocking Student Effort, a collection of personal essays on the practice of effective teaching.

“There is this fire that has ignited a teacher leader voice within me that can no longer be contained,” said Leslie Ross, one of the 2012 winners and 9th grade Biology teacher in Greensboro, NC. “I have learned so much from my fellow winners, and I realize that these types of interactions must occur more frequently among our best and brightest teachers.  I am a better teacher this year, having gone through this process.”

This year, TNTP is offering an early application deadline of Monday, December 3, 2012.  Early applicants will learn whether they have been selected for the next application stage about a month before other applicants.  The final deadline is Monday, January 14, 2013.

For more information on how to apply or to refer a great teacher for the Fishman Prize, please visit tntp.org/fishmanprize.

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Unlocking Student Effort

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TNTP, a national nonprofit organization working to ensure that all students get excellent teachers, recently released a first-of-its-kind resource on effective teaching written by and for practicing teachers.

The resource, Unlocking Student Effort , is a paper that includes five essays written by the winners of TNTP’s 2012 Fishman Prize for Superlative Classroom Practice, a prestigious $25,000 award intended to spotlight excellence in teaching and the practices of the nation’s most effective educators.

Unlocking Student Effort focuses on a common challenge many teachers face: How to engage reluctant students in rigorous academic content. In their essays, the 2012 Fishman Prize winners explain how they overcome this challenge in their classrooms.

Individually, the essays provide a glimpse into five remarkable classrooms where students are achieving at high levels. Collectively, they offer a range of strategies from teachers who are having breakthrough success in some of the nation’s most challenging school settings.

  • Shira Fishman, a 9th-11th grade Math teacher in Washington, DC, and the teacher for whom the Fishman Prize was named, describes how she builds a sense of urgency and community in her classroom during the first five minutes of each class period.
  • Whitney Henderson, a 7th grade Writing teacher in New Orleans, LA, writes about showing students how the seemingly irrelevant academic content they study applies to the futures they dream of.
  • Jamie Irish, an 8th grade Math teacher in New Orleans, LA, vividly illustrates how he rallies students around the challenge of outperforming their peers at a more affluent, selective enrollment school just two miles away.
  • Katie Lyons, a 6th-8th grade Literacy/Social Studies teacher in Chicago, IL, describes how she engages her students in rigorous historical material by connecting it to their own lives and the diverse neighborhood around them.
  • Leslie Ross, a 9th grade Biology teacher in Greensboro, NC, shows how she leads her students to success in her highly rigorous biology course by gaining their trust and building a powerful sense of team spirit.

The paper is intended to be the first of an annual series from TNTP, written each year by a new cohort of Fishman Prize winners on a new topic related to best classroom practices.

The application period for the 2013 Fishman Prize will open early November 2012.

To learn more and download the full paper or request a print copy, visit tntp.org/fishmanprize.

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Education “Game Changers”

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The 2012 McGraw Prize in Education winners have been named. Each winner will be presented with a $50,000 prize during the gala awards ceremony on Tuesday, September 18.

This year, the 25th anniversary of the Prize, honors the following “Game Changers”:

  • John Merrow has spent many years as an education reporter for National Public Radio and The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour and as an advocate exploring major issues confronting U.S. education. Mr. Merrow is honored as an education luminary. As president of Learning Matters, which he founded in 1995, he has drawn attention to the state of education in the U.S., highlighting programs, schools and teachers who are having significant impact on student achievement.
  • Sal Khan‘s creation of Khan Academy has transformed education by creating a free, open-source, world-class virtual school where anyone can learn anything, anytime. For this, he is honored as a rising star in education. A former financial analyst, he began this work in 2004 by tutoring his young cousin in math. Demand for his online videos grew, and in 2009 he committed himself fully to Khan Academy. Its scope is huge: its more than 3,300 instructional videos covering everything from basic math to college level science have been viewed more than 180 million times. Khan Academy’s technology also means students, parents and teachers can track progress as students master new knowledge and skills.
  • Two leaders of TNTP, CEO Ariela Rozman and President Timothy Daly, are honored together as education pioneers. TNTP, a nonprofit founded by teachers in 1997, is pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in public education. Working in more than 25 cities, TNTP partners with educators in schools, districts and states to find, develop and keep great teachers. TNTP has recruited or trained some 49,000 teachers – benefiting an estimated 8 million students – and is advancing a profession that prioritizes and supports effective teaching. TNTP’s groundbreaking studies, including The Widget Effect (2009) and The Irreplaceables (2012), have influenced legislation in more than 20 states.

These winners were selected for their cutting-edge innovations and far-reaching impact on student achievement and teacher effectiveness.

For more information, see http://investor.mcgraw-hill.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=96562&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1733536&highlight=

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The Irreplaceables: Understanding the Real Retention Crisis

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A study released yesterday finds that urban schools are systematically neglecting their best teachers, losing tens of thousands every year even as they keep many of their lowest-performing teachers indefinitely-with disastrous consequences for students, schools, and the teaching profession.

The study by TNTP documents the real teacher retention crisis in America’s schools: not only a failure to retain enough teachers, but a failure to retain the right teachers.

The Irreplaceables: Understanding the Real Retention Crisis in America’s Urban Schools, spans four urban school districts encompassing 90,000 teachers and 1.4 million students. It focuses on the experiences of the “Irreplaceables”: teachers so successful at advancing student learning that they are nearly impossible to replace. Schools rarely make a strong effort to keep these teachers despite their success-and rarely usher unsuccessful teachers out.

As a result, the best and worst teachers leave urban schools at strikingly similar rates. The nation’s 50 largest districts lose approximately 10,000 Irreplaceables each year. Meanwhile, about 40 percent of teachers with more than seven years of experience are less effective at advancing academic progress than the average first-year teacher.

The study attributes negligent retention patterns to three major causes:

  • Inaction by school principals. Less than 30 percent of Irreplaceables plan to leave for reasons beyond their school’s control. Simple strategies, like public recognition for a job well done, boost their plans to stay by as many as six years. Yet two-thirds indicated that no one had encouraged them to return for another year. Similarly, principals rarely try to counsel out low performers, even though replacing them with a brand-new teacher will immediately achieve better academic results 75 percent of the time.
  • Poor school cultures and working conditions. Schools that retain more Irreplaceables have strong cultures where teachers work in an atmosphere of mutual respect, leaders respond to poor performance, and great teaching is the priority. Turnover rates among Irreplaceables were 50 percent higher in schools lacking these traits.
  • Policies that impede smarter retention practices. A number of policy barriers hamper principals from making smarter retention decisions. Because of inflexible, seniority-dominated compensation systems, for example, 55 percent of Irreplaceables earn a lower salary than the average low-performing teacher.

The report notes that current retention patterns stymie school turnaround efforts and prevent the teaching profession from earning the prestige it deserves. It offers two major recommendations:

  • Make retention of Irreplaceables a top priority. Districts should aim to keep more than 90 percent of their Irreplaceables annually, monitor and improve school working conditions, pay the best teachers what they’re worth and create new career pathways that extend their reach.
  • Strengthen the teaching profession with higher expectations. Leaders at all levels should set a new baseline standard for effectiveness: Teachers who cannot teach as well as the average first-year teacher should be considered ineffective and dismissed or counseled out (unless they are first-year teachers). Policymakers should change teacher hiring and layoff policies that discourage schools from enforcing higher expectations.

To read the full report, please visit http://www.tntp.org/irreplaceables

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Fishman Prize Winners Announced

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TNTP has announced the first-ever winners of their Fishman Prize for Superlative Classroom Practice.  This prize was created to recognize excellent teachers across the country and because “we believe our best teachers deserve far more attention for their hard work, dedication, and extraordinary outcomes with students.”  The winners will each receive $25,000 – one of the largest monetary awards for practicing teachers in the nation – and the opportunity to complete a summer residency with TNTP that will help them share their insights and knowledge with educators nationwide.

The winners are:

  1. Katie Lyons, 6-8th Grade Literacy and Social Studies Teacher at National Teachers Academy in Chicago, IL
  2. Jamie Irish, 8th Grade Math Teacher at KIPP Central City Academy in New Orleans, LA
  3. Leslie Ross, 9th Grade Biology Teacher at Ben L. Smith High School in Greensboro, NC
  4. Whitney Henderson, 7th Grade Writing Teacher at KIPP Central City Academy in New Orleans, LA

“These teachers astonished us,” said TNTP President Tim Daly. “They engage their students in dramatically different ways, but they all get amazing results.  It has been so inspiring to spend time with them and to see them at work in their classrooms. We couldn’t imagine a more deserving group of educators to honor with this award.”

To learn more about the winners and the Fishman Prize, please visit http://tntp.org/key-issues/view/fishman-prize

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TNTP Releases “Teacher Talent Toolbox”

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TNTP has released its newest resource—the Teacher Talent Toolbox.  The Toolbox “is a repository of successful strategies and practical resources that schools, districts, and networks can draw on to create effective human capital policies, with the aim of creating sustained, scalable models for effective instruction.”  It is essentially an open-source library of resources that focus on recruiting, hiring, and retaining a highly effective teaching staff.

Tailored to the needs of schools serving high-poverty communities, the tools address six critical areas:

1. Recruitment & Hiring
2. Evaluation
3. Retaining High Performers
4. Performance Accountability
5. Teacher Development
6. Building a Professional Culture

Each area contains a presentation detailing the importance of the topic and best practices from around the country.  There are also embedded tools and examples as you proceed through the presentation.  For example, in Recruitment & Hiring, there are over 30 separate resources, tools, or case studies embedded or attached, such as Louisiana’s DOE candidate screening interview questions and YES Prep’s New Teacher Induction Program overview.

The Teacher Development section focuses almost exclusively on how to use observations (formal, informal, peer, administrator, etc.) for meaningful improvement of teaching practice.  Resources from the Sci Academy, North Star Academy, West Denver Prep, the Indiana DOE, and others are included to give administrators and district leaders models from which to build.

Overall, the Toolbox is a highly valuable resource for educators at all levels, as well as district and state leaders seeking to make fundamental changes in managing teacher talent.  To access the Toolbox, please visit www.tntp.org/toolbox

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TNTP Launches the Fishman Prize for Superlative Classroom Practice

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TNTP, formerly The New Teacher Project, has launched a new prestigious award called the Fishman Prize.  The $25,000 award will be bestowed annually to a select group of public school teachers and will give them the opportunity to complete a summer fellowship with TNTP.

The prize will be awarded to no more than five teachers per year.  These teachers must be working full-time in public school (including public charters) where 40% or more of the students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch.  Winners must also demonstrate their ability to help all children succeed, regardless of background; a keen understanding of effective instructional practice and the ability to articulate it clearly; and a passion for teaching and a commitment to the profession.

“Our greatest teachers go largely unrecognized,” said TNTP President Tim Daly. “And yet they possess the knowledge that can make all teachers better.  They work incredibly hard to master their craft…We created the Fishman Prize to honor these teachers and to broadcast their expertise to all educators.”  U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan also chimed in, thanking TNTP for creating the prize to “honor outstanding teachers and challenge them to share ideas with their colleagues.”

For more information about the prize, please visit http://tntp.org/key-issues/view/fishman-prize.  Applications are due online by February 3, 2012.

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