The national debate about school reform has a “back to basics” ring to it. Effective schools are made up of effective classrooms. Effective classrooms depend on effective teachers. Simple, right?

A big deal?  Sure, but…

The recently encouraging big conversations and Race to the Top hullabaloo going on in Washington and state capitals are producing ideas, policies, incentives and laws that will make a difference in teacher quality.   But why should we wait?  Local districts need to be working in the here and now to improve the effectiveness of the teachers who are working with our students (and my kids) today. Many district leaders have, in effect, abdicated the power they have to improve teaching within the current systems.

Get to work, Rochester

According to one district data source, principals completed and filed observations/evaluations for just over 1/3 of all teachers during the last school year. (For the record, some may have been completed and not filed—if so, then that’s another problem.)  And of those completed & filed, only 1% were rated “below standards” or “unsatisfactory.” This mirrors national trends (see last week’s post).

I’ve two reactions to this.

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The New York Times story is titled “The Teachers’ Union Last Stand” (see http://goo.gl/wF0e).  The headline oversells the content rather a bit—Randi Weingarten is unlikely to suffer the fate of George Custer. Yet the thread of the story is that the least desirable trait of teachers’ unions—their one-for-all-and-all-for-one-ness—is under attack.

This is the challenge of collective bargaining. Union contracts often act like the Euro Zone. The currency’s four year low against the dollar (time for that trip to Tuscany!) is largely a consequence of Greece spending beyond its means. Oh, and lying about it. But in a bargain many—particularly the Germans—have come to regret, Euro-zone countries are all pledged to come to the rescue, even if the rescued party is wholly to blame.

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I’ve been thinking a lot about teacher evaluation—even before the Regents’ proposal to the  NYS Legislature was released. See my reaction to the proposal below. First, some thoughts:

• Our system for evaluating teachers is broken.
• Few of us learn without specific and regular feedback on our work—and our teacher evaluation system provides little.  My first year of teaching, I desperately craved something more helpful than, “Great job,” “Your students love you,” and “Your handwriting on the board should be in cursive.”  Broad observations like, “You need to work on classroom management,” or “Create more engaging lessons,” do the struggling teacher no good.  I wanted to know what was expected of me and given some concrete ways to  improve.
• It makes no sense to evaluate teachers solely on student test data, or even solely on student performance.  There are too many factors that teachers don’t control and too many questions about how to measure that performance.
• It makes no sense to evaluate teachers without student performance data.  If you aren’t willing to be somewhat responsible for student learning, why teach?  Effort matters, but it’s not enough.
• Teacher evaluations can be a joke.  Often the evaluator doesn’t show up or stays for about 15 minutes.  There may or may not be a specific rubric or list of criteria on which you are judged.  There may or may not be a chance to discuss the lesson afterwards.  You may or may not be observed by anyone who knows the curriculum, instruction or your content area.
• Evaluation currently is about compliance, not learning.  I’ve been asked to sign my observation forms when no observation was done, and had perplexed administrators wonder why I wanted them to actually come and observe. This “surface over substance” mentality infects teachers too—for my first observation, the mentor assigned to first year teachers advised me to “prepare” by cleaning my desk and arranging for my “troublemaker” students to spend the observation period in a colleague’s classroom.
• Annual performance ratings don’t mean much.  There are often only 2 choices—unsatisfactory or satisfactory. Is it any surprise that the vast majority of teachers (some studies say over 95%) receive satisfactory ratings?  And the ratings don’t have any consequences—there’s little direct link to professional development, differential pay, termination, or career development.

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Suppose I’m moving to the Rochester area and I’d like to know the graduation rate for the Rochester School District. I start Googling, and I find the district’s March presentation on graduation rates. It gives a rate of 46% for 2009. But then I come across the State Education Department’s PowerPoint presentation from a few days later (found here) that cites a 42% rate for the same year. Huh?

Welcome to the world of graduation rate reporting, where nothing is ever as simple as it should be.

The difference that explains the apparent discrepancy is that the district is counting students who graduate in August (they needed summer school to make up a course or pass a required test), and the state is not, including only students who graduated by June.  (The state does present August graduation rates separately.)  Each rate is perfectly legitimate in its own context, but the existence of both rates can obviously lead to confusion.

And there’s more, so much more, that even the casual observer should understand before drawing conclusions about graduation rates. Unfortunately, there are few places to go for a good explanation of what’s happening, and not enough attention being paid by most news outlets to the nuances

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Due to New York’s contingency budget provision, voting down a school budget often has hardly any impact on your tax bill.

Under the provision, even if voters shoot down a proposed budget, districts can proceed with a “contingency” budget that increases spending at a rate up to 120% of inflation. So if inflation is 4%, districts can hike spending at nearly 5% without voter approval. (As many readers know, school budgets go up for votes in most but not all districts; the Big 5 districts including Rochester are exempt.)

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The NYS Regents put traditional schools of education on notice in April as they took a step to address the need to attract and retain effective teachers in high-needs schools.   The decision launches a pilot program (effective May1, 2010 – 2016) allowing organizations such as cultural institutions or not-for-profits like Teach for America to certify their own teachers by creating a “clinically rich teacher preparation program.”  Under the new plan, organizations selected by the Regents will be able to design their own Masters programs, and the Regents will award the degree.  Currently, both of these powers are held exclusively by higher education.  Graduates of these programs will commit to teach in high-needs schools for at least four years.

This is important because nationally, about 50% of teachers in high-needs schools leave within the first three years.  In any profession, a revolving door of staff is problematic (think recruitment, professional development, stable workplace morale).  But in schools it’s hard to quantify the resulting psychological toll and disruption of learning.  Worst-case scenario I’ve seen—which sadly isn’t that unusual—was the 7th grade class of 32 kids that in the course of one year had seven different math teachers, five different English/Language Arts teachers and three science teachers, not including substitutes.  Want to guess what these students learned that year?

The Regents’ action is a public admission that the education schools in NYS are not doing their job well enough to deserve the exclusive right to do so—particularly in preparing teachers in high-needs areas/schools.  The National Council on Teacher Quality grades each state’s policies on teachers; in 2009, NYS earned a D+ in the category of  “delivering well-prepared teachers.”

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