From the City to the Suburbs

I've often wondered what it would be like to teach in the suburbs.  I have in my head the unsubstantiated notion that it would be easier, more pleasant, and less overwhelming.  But that's all conjecture - I have no personal friends who have made the switch.  I have, however, stumbled upon this article by Brett Rosenthal, who left Jamaica High School for a Long Island high school.
He notes differences in parent involvement, the lack of student sorting at his new school, discipline, leadership, and hiring.  His notes on leadership are interesting.  At South Side High School, leaders are experienced educators who are committed to not only education but also their school.
I think about City Prep, and I wonder how many of our staff will leave before next year.  I wonder how long our leadership will be in place.  And I wonder about the things that make people leave.  In an urban school, there's so much movement of personnel that if I were to walk into CP of three years ago I would know perhaps two people.  If I were to walk into CP three years from now, I wonder who would still be there.  CP has recently seemed to turn a corner in its ability to get teachers to stay, I think we're approaching the point where there might be some restlessness growing and turnover on the horizon.
I'll admit it:  reading Rosenthal's article makes me tempted to take my teaching to the suburbs.  If I remain in the classroom, I think there's a very good chance that's where I end up.

50 Hour Weeks

Charles Blow cites a study that says high school teachers work 50 hours per week, and that figure suggests they're undercompensated compared to teachers in other OECD countries.

50 hours?  I've hit the 50 hour mark by mid-Thursday (as have all my coworkers), and that excludes all the weekend hours.

Surely we at CP aren't the only ones...

Technology and other Gimmicks

This article seems to provide some data to what I, and others, have long suspected.  Expensive investments in technology don't seem to be worth the cost from an educational perspective.  I fully appreciate using an iPad to blog about a social studies topic can really invest students in learning, but nobody ever failed to learn math for lack of a laptop.  Most teachers (and most adults) are ill-equipped to use much of the latest technology, let alone teach it or use it to teach.  The tens of millions of dollars invested by districts gives leaders something to identity as a change or improvement from the past, but I don't think anyone is substantively better off because of that investment.  That money could go a long way toward paying teachers more, recruiting better teachers, or improving one of the many metrics that correlate with student success.

On a somewhat related note, I've learned all current Teach For America corps members are going to get a free iPad from apple.  As an alum, I'm kinda bummed I don't get one.  Where's the love, Teach For America?!

Starting the School Year

As the school year begins, it's been a hectic series of weeks.  I caught this piece regarding principal burnout  at charter schools just as I was recovering from an incredibly hectic week at work.
I'm fortunate to teach at a school that is, in urban education, a good school.  I'll call it "City Prep", or CP for short.  I've had enough experience at CP that I've been thinking a lot about what teachers from my former school would say about my classroom and my school if they saw it.  They would probably notice the following.

1.  Teachers are teaching rigorous and well-planned lessons.
2.  Students are paying attention.
3.  There is no inappropriate noise in the hallway.
4.  Students are generally on task in the classroom.
5.  Students are FAR more respectful to teachers and follow directions.

The big visible difference at our school is that students are doing much better than students at the school I came from.  But the students are basically the same.  They come from similar neighborhoods, face similar pressures, are distracted by the same things.  What's different is what the adults are doing.  At CP, we have a consequence system that the teacher simply has to utilize, not create.  We have consequences for student actions, and students face them every time - no student is sent to the office only to return 10 minutes later because the vice principal "spoke to them," as was frequent at my former school.  There are very clear expectations - talking back to an adult is simply not tolerated, and thus it doesn't happen.  And finally, adults are incredibly proactive in trying to build great lessons to make sure that students are engaged.  One think I'm working to improve is my proactive management - the process by which a teacher sets up small student actions that promote behavioral and academic compliance.  For example, the English teacher at CP shouts "pencils up" every time students are about to begin independent practice.  After waiting for compliance (2-3 seconds), which is easy to observe, the teacher shouts "go", and all students immediately get writing.  That's a big improvement from just saying "Okay, now we are writing independently.  Begin."  In the latter example, it's difficult to monitor student compliance, and there's no easily observable action that makes a student feel pressured to follow along (nobody wants to be the one without their pencil up.)

All of this relates to the article about principal burnout because I've been wondering how sustainable  14 and 15 hour workdays are.  14 hours is a lot, and each day is draining physically and emotionally.  And then there's always weekend work to be done.  Which reminds me, it's about 9:30 on Saturday and I need to get to work.

National Council on Teacher Quality Finds Flaws in Student Teaching Programs

The National Council on Teacher Quality recently rated over 100 teacher preparation schools and concluded that three-fourths did not meet expectations for student teaching.  The report has generated controversy amongst officials, who remain skeptical of the methodology used to evaluate and grade programs.  The Times reports on the issue here.

Teach For America Corps Members Implicated in Atlanta Cheating Scandal

Per 11 Alive in Atlanta, Teach For America corps members are among the teachers guilty of cheating in Atlanta schools.  Three teachers confessed and it seems there are others who may be identified.  Kwame Griffith, the Executive Director of Teach For America Atlanta called the teachers' actions "unacceptable."

Hat tip @BobSikes

Another Perspective on the Atlanta Cheating Scandal

Kevin Carey of The New Republic writes that perhaps the Atlanta cheating scandal shouldn't just be blamed on standardized testing.  After all, teachers are choosing to act inappropriately.  In other industries, we don't blame the entire system for the actions of a small minority of individuals.  Excerpts below.

TO BE SURE, people (and teachers) will succumb to dishonesty. They cheat on their taxes, spouses, and golf partners. Cheating corrodes trust in all things, especially education. Students whose test scores are manipulated upward don’t the get the extra attention they need. And, since teachers are increasingly being evaluated by how much their students’ test scores improve, a teacher who inflates scores could potentially cost her colleagues in the next grade of their job performance.

But cheating also means that public schools finally care enough about student performance that some ethically challenged educators have chosen to cheat. This is far better than the alternative, where learning is so incidental and non-transparent that people of low character can’t be bothered to lie about it. Blaming cheating on the test amounts to infantilizing teachers, moving teaching 180 degrees away from the kind of professionalization that teacher advocates often profess to support.

Indeed, it’s not a coincidence that cheating scandals tend to erupt in municipalities whose public institutions suffer from corruption. 

Teach For America Alumni - Return to Teaching! (Or Just Stay)

Something that I wonder about is why so many teachers - good teachers - leave the classroom so soon into their teaching career.  I see great classroom teachers who feel the only next step is to move on to something else, and I wrote briefly about how Teach For America recruits its outgoing corps members extensively and what some studies have indicated about teacher attrition.  Many of the successful teachers in programs like Teach For America or various teaching fellows programs actually join the staff of those programs after teaching for two years.  I was fortunate enough to have interviews with a number of well-known charter schools in New York after I decided I wanted to return home and teach.  All of the recruitment team members I met were Teach For America alumni who taught for two years, were successful, and obviously feel enough passion for education that they continue working for schools.  But they left the classroom for non-teaching positions.  Why?

Part of the reason must be that that teaching is hard.  I haven't worked as in recruitment, but without weekend grading, early evening phone calls to parents, lessons plans, observations, and everything else that comes with teaching, I suspect it's less hectic that working in a classroom.  There aren't chronic misbehavior problems to deal with, and I don't think it's a job where you get cursed out with any regularity.

Teach For America also doesn't set up alumni to stay in teaching as well as they could.  Understandably, their focus is on placing their incoming corps members.  But Teach For America teachers are at their most effective just as the majority of them are looking to leave teaching, and the national movement of Teach For America would be positively impacted by having more experienced TFA teachers in the classroom.  Students would be hugely better off.  Maybe keeping 10% more rising third year teachers in the classroom would mean Teach For America has to reduce the size of the incoming corps by 8-9%, but such a move would put better teachers in front of students, increase the impact corps members have on children, and better prepare teachers for an eventual transition into non-teaching positions in education.  Surely the teaching force in cities with corps members would be strengthened by such a move.

When I first met my program director, we talked about what our relationship would look like.  They explained to me that they chose to work as a PD because they felt that doing so would allow them to have a greater impact because they would be affecting many more children.  I feel like that overstates the impact PDs have on students, and sounds more like a post-hoc justification than a driving factor for leaving teaching.  We need great teachers in the classroom and in schools (some schools brilliantly have members of their administration teach a class) where they directly touch the lives of students.

Finally, it seems a little disingenuous to hear a recruiter discuss how much they love teaching, their students, and the work their school is doing when they so recently left that role.  I'm in no position to make somebody else's life plans, but I found it a bit off-putting to be told how great teaching at a particular school was was by someone who just jumped ship.  I almost feel like having a group of people say "You know, I left the classroom because it was so difficult/tiring/frustrating..." would open up a useful conversation about what it takes to make turning into a lengthy and fruitful career.  Part of that useful conversation could very well be a study of how effectiveness would be impacted by having greater support for corps members from mentors, staff, and veteran teachers or through changing the institute framework to better prepare teachers for their placements.  And keeping great people in the classroom with our students would make it all a worthwhile endeavor.  (I don't mean to suggest everyone who leaves the classroom thinks those things or feels that way.  I'm speaking for a decently-sized sample of people, the exact size of which I can't determine.  Majority?  Plurality?  Minority? Not sure - but perhaps others can weigh in.)

I can't be alone in thinking along those lines, am I?  I'm interested in hearing from teachers, especially Teach For America alumni and staff and veteran teachers, who have seen this sort of thing firsthand.  And, of course, sometimes we need an outsider to tell us what we're missing.

Washington Post Roundtable on Cheating

"You are what you measure", according to a Washington Post article from a leadership roundtable on education.  Dan Ariely, a behavioral economics professor from Duke, argues that by measuring a particular statistic and including it in employee evaluation, employees will devote a disproportional amount of their effort to maximizing that measure.  His analysis from the corporate word seems to support this.

Steven Pearlson writes that based on the actions of other employees across a whole host of sectors, we shouldn't be surprised to find teachers cheating.  His solution is to punish the offenders so as to deter others from engaging in similar behavior.  Certainly that's true, but I hope there can be structural changes to reduce cheating because it impacts not only data and things that matter to adults but also the futures of children.  Cheating has consequences for kids, and actively minimizing such dishonesty requires a multi-pronged approach.

Reevaluating Collective Bargaining Agreements to Benefit Students and Teachers

The School Turnaround Group has published a guide to reevaluating collective bargaining agreements in failing schools to facilitate increased student achievement.  They identify four reasons changing existing agreements is important - they claim that CBAs...

1.  Restrict a school's decision-making abilities with respect to human capital.  (Hiring is taken out of their hands, and evaluation systems don't allow for staffing changes when necessary.)
2.  Prevent schools from setting up classroom structures that respond directly to their needs.
3.  Makes teacher performance a secondary consideration to teacher's years of employment.
4.  Rob schools and teachers of valuable time and money due to lengthy arbitration provisions.

The report seeks changes in a variety of areas, including:

1.  Focusing staffing decision on effectiveness, not seniority; evaluating all teachers each year; and using student outcomes as part of the evaluation process.
2.  Allowing schools to give financial incentives to high-performing teachers based on their successes and reward results rather than years in the district.
3.  Increasing student learning time and giving schools the ability to create a schedule that addresses their needs.
4.  Making instructional decisions at the building level and utilizing data in creating staff professional development programs.

I'm a firm believer that student results should play a part in a teacher's evaluation.  Students need the most effective teachers, not the longest-tenured ones.  And unions ought to agree as well - if experienced educators are better than newcomers, their data should reflect that.  I do not, however, think student data should be the entirety of a teacher's evaluation.  There are too many variables that determine the gains students make, and a teacher is only one of them.  Take the same teacher and put them in two different classes, two different schools, and you get very different results.  As someone who has experience in a traditional public school and a well-run charter school, I have seen this firsthand.

I'm sympathetic to the idea that teachers should be protected from the whims of an administration that may not like them.  I don't think this is often a problem, but during my first year teaching the best teacher on my floor did not have a great relationship with some members of our administration.  I don't know if that would endanger her job, but I could see where in some cases it could be a concern.  The solution lies, and the report mentions this, in creating an evaluation system that does not consist of just going through the motions of an observation.  This may mean more frequent observations, somewhat regular conferences, and more rating options than satisfactory/unsatisfactory.  Teachers should be paired with mentors for meaningful development opportunities, and should be able to observe their peers to learn best practices as frequently as they wish.  But this means changing the way teachers are hired, employed, and, if needed, let go from their positions.

I think some of the report's recommendations with respect to money are good while others aren't.  One thing that's absolutely necessary is compensation for meeting attendance goals.  I know, I know, teachers shouldn't need additional funding to be at work.  But the difference between 95% teacher attendance and 99% teacher attendance is a big one and in my former district a teacher had twelve days per year they could use as needed - and older teachers had many more, as they rolled over from year to year.  The district paid teachers for unused sick and personal days when they left the district for any reason - at a rate of a few cents on the dollar.  When dozens of teachers were told they were not going to be rehired, attendance took a hit.  This structural issue could be fixed by providing a bonus (even a modest one) for reaching a specific attendance goal.  Teachers aren't necessarily doing something wrong by using the days off they're allowed in their contract, but if there were incentives for teachers to not use the days they're allocated, schools would be better off.

I'm hesitant to support giving schools greater autonomy over their budgets.  There's potential for misuse, and I think a school needs to demonstrate financial acuity before expanding their control over budgets.

I do think the way teachers are employed by districts needs to change for there to be meaningful, system-wide improvement.  The current system has failed for decades and isn't working - ask anyone who has stepped into a large number of urban classrooms.  Reforms like these would be a meaningful step toward setting teachers up to succeed.

Atlanta Schools Cheating Details

The AP provides details of exactly how cheating in Atlanta schools occurred.  Teachers actively changed students' wrong answers to right ones, and also sat struggling students next to their high-scoring peers so they could copy answers.  172 teachers were identified in a report on the matter, and 82 have admitted their guilt.  They may face a variety of charges.

The article quotes teachers describing the intimidation they faced from principals who threatened their job security.  It's clear that there was incredible pressure from school administrators to raise student scores, regardless of how far behind students were when the year began.  And now it seems the district may have to repay hundreds of thousands of dollars earned for good test scores at a time when funds were short to begin with.

It's disheartening to think that faced with thousands of struggling students in a huge urban school district in a major city with millions of people, educators put all their heads together, used the wisdom of their professional experiences and all of their schooling, took advantage of whatever resources they had access to and decided the best way to bring scores up would be... to hope everyone cheated off the smart kids and to rebubble the tests of the kids who didn't.

Five Percent of DC Teachers Fired

Just over 200 teachers in the DC school system were released for performance reasons.  The evaluation mechanism set up by former Chancellor Michelle Rhee, known as IMPACT, measures teachers based on the results of classroom observations, compliance with nine teaching strands, and standardized test results.

206 teachers were fired in all, 65 of whom were rated ineffective and 141 of whom were rated marginally effective for the second consecutive year.  (For comparison, last year 72 teachers were judged to be ineffective.)  663 teachers were rated highly effective, and may receive bonuses of up to $25,000.  Because the design of evaluation systems is not covered by collective bargaining agreement, Rhee was able to reform teacher evaluations during her time as Chancellor.  Around 70% of teachers are rated effective, though the union claims the evaluations do not offer development opportunities and are simply a mechanism to push older teachers out of the classroom.

Teach For America Placement in Memphis

Memphis schools are in the process of laying off teachers - including veterans and four from Teach For America.  New hires were to be restricted to placement in only four schools (the lowest performing schools in the district, per the article) - I'll return to that later.  The superintendent anticipated having over 500 job openings for this fall, but ended up with fewer than 200, meaning 60 out of 100 2011 Teach For America corps members who were to be in the district are still unplaced.  The placement landscape looks somewhat bleak, but if you're a 2011 corps member in Memphis (or elsewhere) I'd love for you to comment and update others on what the latest information is.  I wrote a post that can be found here about my experience with placement, and as I said, the process is a fickle one and can shift quickly.  If I had to guess, I would guess that TFA may try to place teachers in the surrounding area or in charters to make up for the decreased demand from Memphis schools.

Something that concerns me each year is that each corps gets larger and larger while teaching positions get harder and harder to secure.  I know of people who have gone unplaced and had to take the emergency release, which means that they packed their bags and moved home - in essence, setting themselves back a year in their professional development.  Overestimating open positions by more than 300 is definitely surprising, and now there appears to be a number of corps members who are currently at institute with a lot of job uncertainty.

Finally, I want to return to the fact that the union negotiated an agreement that new hires would be hired only in the city's four lowest-performing schools.  That's just... frightening.  Unions argue (vehemently) that more senior teachers are more effective, and by sequestering themselves in the more manageable schools in the city, the union's members are protecting themselves from having to teacher where they're most needed, essentially saying "We give up on those students - our members don't want to teach there."  This setup prevents young teachers from building relationships and learning from veterans and seems likely to foster an us-versus-them mentality that can't be a good work environment.  Wow.

National Council on Teacher Quality responds to the NEA

The National Council on Teacher Quality reacts to the NEA opposing TFA.  The NEA claimed TFA is often used to reduce teacher costs, but the NCTQ responds that if TFA teachers are paid standard wages and benefits, savings would be marginal.  (As an aside, many unions are outraged that districts pay TFA for each teacher placed, claiming that's wasted money.  Well, which is it?  Is TFA bad because their teachers are more expensive or bad because their teachers are less expensive?  You can't argue both.)

Other NCTQ musings:

The number of TFA teachers across the country is so small that their impact is unlikely to alter unions.
95% of corps members' principals viewed them as effective as other beginning teachers coming from traditional certification programs.
While the NEA claims programs like TFA lower the standards for entry into teaching, it's clear that's just not true.

In my experience, many teachers are misinformed about Teach For America.  In my second year at my placement school, I had teachers who thought that Teach For America paid for my housing expenses, that the school district didn't pay me, and that all Teach For America teachers were told not to join the local union.  All untrue (though I wish the first one were reality!).  In fact, the majority of my Teach For America friends who taught in my school district were union members.  In our schools we were regular teachers.  The divide between traditionally trained teachers and teachers who come through alternative programs (TFA, various teaching fellows programs) isn't there.  All answer to the same people and work for the same cause.

Teacher Attrition

After teachers at Opportunity Charter School wanted to unionize, they were berated by their school's leader.  Now, the union organizers are out of a job.  Thirteen pro-union teachers, including five who were part of a group that organized the union vote, were let go.  As charter school employees, their employment is at will and based on annual contracts.  Attrition at the school - both students and teachers - has been rising.

There are a number of directions to take in a discussion on this article, but I want to talk about teacher attrition.  (I don't mean to ignore the situation at Opportunity Charter.  There are likely legal questions to be raised, and as I'm not a lawyer, I'll refrain from adding my footsteps to what will be well-walked ground.)  Teacher attrition figures are included in city reports on individual schools, and colleagues of mine report that their schools actively try to recruit teachers who seem inclined to stay beyond a few years.  That's logical - it costs money to recruit new employees, and it takes time for new teachers to get up to speed in an unfamiliar system.  Experienced, effective teachers make meaningful contributions from Day 1 of the school year (and over the summer, as they tie the ending year into the beginning one).  I recall from my own experience beginning at my school that the first few weeks overload the senses and that it takes time to ramp up and become a contributor in an existing framework.

Naturally, high attrition rates suggest that something is amiss.  If a school is functioning well, fewer teachers will want to leave (though some may be let go for performance reasons).  If it isn't, the teachers who can get out will get out.  And teachers aren't generally leaving for financial reasons; a 2005 report indicates that teachers are leaving because they lack planning time, have too heavy a workload, and are frustrated with student behavior.  Some unsurprising findings regarding attrition and transfers:

1.  Attrition is 50% higher in poor schools than wealthy ones.
2.  "The best and brightest teachers are often the first to leave."
3.  Beginning teachers leave more frequently than experienced ones (perhaps because they are assigned lower performing students).
4.  New teachers who are mentored by an experienced teacher have more effective classrooms and lower attrition rates.
5.  Experienced teachers who mentor new teachers actually improve their own classrooms due to the nature of their work as mentors.
6.  Teacher attrition costs over $2 billion annually.

If I'm designing a school where I want to keep my best teachers from leaving, I take a few lessons from this.  I pair younger teachers with either full-time mentors (who have experience and successful classrooms) or master teachers.  I provide ample feedback that is focused on identifying areas for growth and the means to improve, and encourage new teachers to observe other teachers in action to see examples.  I provide more than sufficient planning time for teachers and streamline their schedules so that they teach 1-2 courses throughout the day instead of 3-5 different topics.  I make sure that I recruit people with the drive to push their students and the willingness to take feedback, and I may tend to favor hires with classroom experience.

I also want to apply this to Teach For America.  As an alumnus of Teach For America, I'm invested in the organization and want to help it continue to do good things for students and improve its practices.  Teach For America generally recruits staff members after their corps experience, and I think they would be well advised to try to recruit more candidates with 3-7 years of experience.  I know the have a pipeline of talent with two years of experience who are able and willing to join staff, but the study I linked to above has quantified what I have believed about the importance of mentors.  With experienced mentors, corps members would be better able to lead their classrooms and will be more likely to stay in the profession.  During my first year teacher, I had a great mentor teacher and a fantastic science teacher who taught just a few doors down from me.  I used them so much and I know that the insight they had due to their experience had a big impact on my year and my students' year.  We need more great teachers like them working with new teachers.

National Education Association

The New Republic reports on last week's NEA convention.  Offers a simple explanation of the development of testing in classrooms and the contradiction of unions extolling the skill and impact of their teachers as a whole (to justify protections and benefits) but downplaying the need to analyze the impact of individual teachers (protecting individual teachers for whom that analysis could be professionally damaging).

Teacher Education

I did not go through a traditional education program.  Should I have?  Here, it's argued that teacher education is a "low-status field in universities" with weak admissions standards.  The New America Foundation cites studies that suggest there is a relationship between teacher's verbal ability and student success and also a teacher's education and student success.  (As an aside, it makes sense to recruit teachers from among the top students at a diverse set of colleges.  This report confirms that doing so would be good for students.)  The report then gives examples of the low admissions standards for education schools, which is concerning because setting low standards for entrance to programs that don't prepare their students seems like a terrible path to funnel would-be teachers through.  Even though states are required to identify low-performing preparation programs, most states have never identified a single such program.  That's alarming.

Teacher experience and preparation are important.  But many classes are not relevant to the classroom, and teacher education programs do a poor job of attracting the best candidates to go into teaching.

It's also noteworthy that in 2009, 60,000 new teachers were hired through alternative certification programs.  Teach For America provides only a small number of those new hires, though the percentage may be higher in the current economy.

Teacher Placement in LA

In this article from the LA Times, the author describes how teachers leave certain low-performing schools and cannot find jobs elsewhere because of the stigma of being associated with failing schools.  It's an interesting two way issue:  perhaps principals rightly pass on hiring teachers who were on the faculty of a failed school because they have concerns about their performance.  One principal said that despite interviewing many candidates, he did not find any teachers who seemed truly invested in their work.  He said all candidates seemed desperate for a job.  On the other hand, who's to say those candidates aren't well qualified?  Schools don't fail only because of bad teachers.  For many teachers, being moved to a more supportive environment where they are given the tools to succeed by their coworkers can make a huge difference.

Before I moved back to New York, I taught in an urban school district in another city.  I was told repeatedly by veteran teachers that if I wanted to job in another district in the area, particularly a suburban one, I would probably be better off leaving my experience in the district I worked in and trying to get hired as someone without experience.  While I never thought to actually do that, the fact that it seemed to be an advisable practice is something I find shocking.