We Educate America

Over 8,000 teachers and eduction support professionals, elected by their peers to represent them, gathered in Washington D.C at the beginning of a hot July, to attend the 150th National Education Association (NEA) meeting, the 91st Representative Assembly (RA). This makes the gathering the world's largest democratic deliberative assembly.

We Educate America, wasn't just the theme, but the reality, emphasized throughout the almost week long event.

On the first day, and with one of the first pieces of business, delegates reiterated their priorities, and affirmed their commitment to leading the profession by:

• Support Association and member led school transformation efforts and pursue state and district policies that help create great public schools for all students;
• Offer intensive support to struggling schools (including NEA Priority Schools) and share lessons learned at the local and state levels;
• Work in partnership with parents, community organizations, and allied coalitions with the goal of improving student outcomes;
• Lead efforts to fund and establish a coalition of teachers’ professional organizations, higher education professional associations and faculty, education support professional organizations, specialized instructional support personnel organizations (e.g. school social workers, psychologists etc.), and other organizations promoting standards of professional practice with the goal of identifying a universally accepted body of standards for all of the education professions;
• Advocate for including educators and association leaders in all school and district decision-making bodies, including the areas of policy, personnel, and budgets. Use collective bargaining and other multi-party processes to help accomplish this goal;
• Create a network of organizational advocates at the local, state, and national level to convey the over-arching goals and strategies as well as the actions, the desired outcomes, and the value propositions of leading the professions.

The second from last point being one we have repeatedly called for here at JTF. Their second order of business was to overwhelmingly reject the misuse of standardized tests

• Call on governors, state legislatures, state education boards, administrators, and assessment system consortia or developers, to reexamine public school accountability systems in the state, and work with educators to improve them based on fair testing standards promulgated by experts in testing practice;
• Call on states and districts to develop systems based on multiple forms of evidence of student learning that do not require extensive standardized testing, are used to support all students and improve schools; and are not used for purposes for which they have not been validated;
• Share the NEA Policy Statement on Teacher Evaluation and Accountability with relevant stakeholders in order to inform conversations about the appropriate use of assessments in evaluation systems to support instruction and student learning.
• Disseminate criteria regarding the validity of assessments and promote the productive use of high quality, valid, and reliable standardized assessments as part of robust, authentic accountability systems that include multiple forms of evidence of student learning and school quality designed:
• to improve learning by identifying students’ strengths and challenges,
• to identify successful practices in schools,
• to support struggling schools, and
• to inform educators’ practice.
• Uphold our belief as stated in Resolution B-66 and shall support parents’/guardians’ rights to opt out of standardized testing.

The second day's business was dominated by the Vice President addressing the RA

Jill Biden also an educator, introducing her husband, the Vice President, captured the essence of the RA, “I know that you all understand. Being a teacher is not what I do, it’s who I am.”

The Vice-President then went on to capture the essence of the Presidential race, and more, “My Dad used to say ‘Don’t tell me what you value, show me your budget,’” Biden told delegates, that obviously resonated with the Ohio delegation who are suffering from the worst budget assault Ohio public schools have ever seen, due to Governor Kasich and his legislature's budget.

Speaking of Ohio, educators at the RA had not forgotten about SB5

The third day of the RA was set aside for association business, but the highlight turned out to be a speech by teacher of the year, Rebecca Mieliwocki.

“If we want real change, lasting change, if we want back the power, the pride, the soaring achievement that is an exceptional public education, then the revolution begins with us.”

The Final day of the RA, saw, or rather heard from President Obama, who made a surprise call while on a campaign trip through Ohio.

He told the more than 8,000 cheering educators gathered, “You can’t help the American people without helping education,” he went on to comment that Mitt Romney’s vision of education is a system that only benefits the richest Americans. “Michelle and I wouldn’t be where we are today if it weren’t for great parents, great grandparents, and a great education.”

After the call, the huge convention center erupted into chants of "4 more year, 4 more years".

This opening article graf sums up the 2012 NEA RA very well

If public education is to remain a basic right for every child, rather than a privilege for only the wealthy, educators will have to lead their profession not just in their schools but in their communities and in political campaigns. That was the recurring message from President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Teacher of the Year Rebecca Mieliwocki, and the more than 8,000 educators at the 2012 National Education Association (NEA) Representative Assembly

Amen.

Teacher Evaluation Reform - Report from NBPTS

The The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards has released their "Getting it Right: A Comprehensive Guide to Developing and Sustaining Teacher Evaluation and Support Systems" report.

The National Board’s framework for developing and sustaining a teacher evaluation and support system includes four major stages:
1. Developing an Evaluation and Support System
2. Implementing and Managing the Evaluation and Support System
3. Conducting Collaborative Evaluations that Enhance Teaching Practice and Student Learning
4. Supporting Teachers

The report also notes "While those who evaluate teachers could take student test scores over time into account, they should be fully aware of their limitations"

Getting It Right

Van Roekel: The NEA Plan for Teacher Accountability

By Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association

This summer, the National Education Association took a historic vote and adopted a new policy statement. It put us on the record, for the first time, as calling for a comprehensive overhaul of both teacher evaluation and accountability systems to improve professional practice and advance student learning.

Why now?

The myopic focus of the current education reform debate promotes lowering professional standards, finding quick and cheap ways to rate teachers based solely on tests, and making it easier to fire “bad” teachers while lowering the bar to enter the profession.

The irony is that teachers themselves have long complained that evaluation systems are broken. They have been some of the most forceful advocates for better evaluations linked to meaningful feedback and support. What’s been missing is sufficient guidance – developed by and for teachers – to help navigate this challenging and complicated environment.

The policy statement is an opportunity for NEA and our members to assert ourselves in a debate that has been raging for years. We know that current systems for teacher evaluation and accountability can be improved, but too often in the past we have simply taken a defensive posture, trying to prevent damaging policies instead of promoting those that will actually raise student achievement.

We have heard all of the bad ideas. Now it’s time for us to take the lead, and draw on our experience to propose policies that will actually work for students. This is our profession and our responsibility.

Our new policy statement lays out rigorous standards and delineates the multiple indicators of teacher practice that must be taken into account in an evaluation and accountability system. It clearly articulates the link between teacher accountability and student success and defines an appropriate evaluation system. And it signals a commitment to a new, more prestigious profession of teaching:

• It includes student learning and growth indicators as one of three key components of evaluation systems.  
• It calls for a well-designed system for improving a struggling teacher’s practice, and should that teacher not improve within a specific time, the policy statement provides for a fair and expedient dismissal process. 
• It calls for support for beginning teachers so that they will not just stay and survive, but thrive in the profession.

In adopting this policy statement, our members said loud and clear that we want to raise standards for the teaching profession, not lower them. And we want to provide leadership on one of the toughest education issues today.

Now the real hard part begins, as we start to translate this policy into action. We have a chance to define the teaching profession for the next generation, and we will not let that opportunity slip through our grasp.

Dennis Van Roekel is president of the National Education Association and a 23-year teaching veteran.

Trust the Evidence, Not Your Instincts

Consider this scenario. You have a serious illness. Your doctor prescribes an intrusive, painful, and expensive treatment— and you have to pay for it. What she doesn’t tell you—because she has not consulted the research – is that most studies show the treatment is ineffective and fraught with negative side-effects. You go through the procedure, suffer severe pain, and spend a lot of money. Unfortunately, as with most patients, the procedure proves ineffective. You later uncover the research your doctor failed to consult. When you ask why she didn’t use this evidence, she answers, “Who pays attention to studies? I have years of clinical experience. Besides, the protocol seemed like it ought to work.”

Does that sound like malpractice? It does to us. Fortunately, pressures to practice evidence-based medicine are reducing preventable errors. Not so in most of our workplaces, where failure to consider sound evidence repeatedly inflicts unnecessary damage on employee well-being and organizational performance. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

No workplace practice is as important—and apparently vexing—as pay. Many people believe that pay for-performance will work in virtually any organization, so it is implemented again and again to solve performance problems -- even in settings where evidence shows it is ineffective. Consider the recent decision to end New York City’s teacher bonus program after wasting three years and 56 million dollars. As this newspaper reported in July, a Rand Corporation study found this effort to link incentive pay to student performance “had no effect on students’ test scores, on grades on the city’s controversial A to F school report cards, or on the way teachers did their jobs.” This bad news could have been predicted before squandering all that time and money.The failure of such programs to boost student performance has been documented for decades. A careful review of pay for performance in schools in the 1980s showed these programs rarely lasted more than five years and consistently failed to improve student performance. The 300 page Rand report emphasizes that (although exceptions exist) evidence against the efficacy of teacher incentive pay in U.S. schools continues to grow stronger and is especially evident in the most rigorous studies.

This practice doesn’t just waste money. As Chicago economist Steve Levitt and others show, strong incentive programs can entice – or scare -- teachers and administrators to “cheat” on the tests, either by providing students with questions and answers in advance or changing student’s answer sheets to increase apparent performance. Recent well-publicized cheating scandals in Atlanta, Baltimore, Washington D.C., and elsewhere could have been foreseen by anyone who read and heeded this research. Building a culture of cheating in schools corrupts both students and teachers for no good purpose.

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Two Sides of the School Staffing Coin

An interesting panel discussion titled Two Sides of the School Staffing Coin: Innovative Models and Class Size Reduction Policies"

Featured presenters:
Matthew Chingos, Fellow, Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution
Julie Kowal, Senior Consultant, Public Impact

Featured panelists:
Michael Hansen, Research Associate, Education Policy Center at the Urban Institute
Donna Harris-Aikens, Director of Education Policy and Practice Department, National Education Association

Moderated by:
Raegen Miller, Associate Director for Education Research, Center for American Progress

Teach for America not education's cure-all

An Op-ed by Thomas M. Stephens, reprinted with his kind permission. First appeared in the Columbus Dispatch.

Imagine that Gov. John Kasich and Ohio legislators take on a real problem: the difficulty Medicare patients have in finding physicians who will treat them. To fix it, they pass and Kasich signs the Ohio Medicare Fair Practice Act, after pro forma hearings and over the objections of the medical schools and professional associations. This new law allows college graduates to obtain a special license to practice medicine following completion of a five-week course. These bright young people, full of energy and idealism, will practice only a few years before migrating to less-onerous and more-lucrative careers.

Think this is far-fetched? Well, the Republican-controlled Ohio Senate, with the help of 10 Democrats, passed a bill requiring the Ohio Department of Education to issue a resident-educator license based solely on a bachelor's degree and five weeks of training. This license will be available to a very select few: those recruited by the much-hyped Teach for America program, another ill-conceived hope for saving inner-city public-school students.

Teach for America, founded in 1989, has a noble mission. It tries to address the educational inequalities of children in low-income schools by recruiting high-achieving college students, who aren't prepared professionally as classroom teachers. But after only five weeks of summer training, they qualify. They must agree to teach for a minimum of two years in urban schools, sort of like Peace Corps' volunteers in Third World countries. But in this case, Ohio is considered the destitute land.

But all is not well with this approach. Kevin R. Kelly, dean of the School Of Education and Allied Professions at the University of Dayton, reviewed the research that purports to support the superiority of TFA teachers. And in February, he testified before the Ohio House Education Committee.

Kelly told the committee that TFA teachers are as challenged during their first two years in the classroom as are regularly prepared teachers and that the wunderkinds' students overall had worse test results than did those of the professionally certified teachers. After two years, TFA teachers' students lagged in reading achievement but did better on math. But most significantly, he found that by their third year, 80 percent of TFA teachers left their schools.

Classroom teaching is not for amateurs; it's not an easy adjustment even for pros and certainly not for those who aren't well prepared professionally. Altruistic motivation is good but it isn't enough, as those TFA teachers who fled their classrooms can testify, because the reality of managing groups of challenged students can be overpowering.

Our children deserve and need professionally prepared teachers who are committed for the long haul, who view teaching as a career and who are willing to meet all standards of their profession.

For those who see Teach For America as an economic bargain, Kelly cautions that it isn't -about 33 percent of their costs are paid with federal, state and local funds and the rest by tax-subsidized foundations.

Teach for America, like other "solutions" before it, will run its course, leaving our elected officials with the same problems they sought to solve. This won't change until lawmakers, governors - all of us - view public schools not as factories that are expected to produce students who test well and meet artificially contrived standards, but as places where future citizens are taught well despite the limitations of their life circumstances. And that requires teachers who are both professionally prepared and committed.

Thomas M. Stephens is professor emeritus in the College of Education and Human Ecology at Ohio State University and is executive director emeritus of the School Study Council of Ohio.