Bold Opportunities for District–Union Collaboration on Teacher Quality

Teachers unions are often cast as at odds with education reform and innovation. But frequently, behind a conservative national agenda, there's a union local working with districts on reforms like performance compensation and better, fairer educator evaluation systems. Even charter schools, where flexibility in staffing decisions is a hallmark, are seeking union support.

 "Bold Opportunities for District–Union Collaboration on Teacher Quality" in the July '09 issue of Education Update (members log in for full access; nonmembers can access an index of links to reports and resources related to this article) looks at some established and potential common ground for union and district leaders: better use of single salary scales, more meaningful use of tenure, voluntary performance pay, and peer-evaluations with a strong mentoring component. Union–district partnerships might not always work, but they're far from the polarities often presented in the media.

Edblog Watch: Hey, Jude!

Given the wealth of information available to students through the Internet and other digital databases, what role does the school library play in the 21st century? School librarian Judy O'Connell tackles this complex question and other related issues in her blog, Heyjude.

Located in Australia, O'Connell writes on a variety of topics, such as emerging technologies, Web 2.0, and the need for educators to keep pace with their students. Recent posts include a meditation on school libraries and the role of memory in the information age and some thoughts on using iPhones as tools for education planning.

"It Was a Privilege to Nominate Marc"

The clock is ticking toward the August 1 deadline to nominate a colleague for ASCD's 2010 Outstanding Young Educator Award. If you're seeking inspiration, check out this profile of one of last year's OYEA honorees, Principal Marc Cohen of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School (MLK) in Germantown, Md. Get acquainted with more OYEA alums, review application criteria, and access our nomination form online.

Teacher Turnover Twice as High in Lowest-Paying Texas Districts

It's an oft-heard phrase: "You don't get into teaching for the money." While the average amount of time and personal sacrifice compared to average teacher salaries certainly bears this out, debates about teacher retention, incentives, compensation, and national attrition figures also show teachers and their advocates are not keen on maintaining a low-paying status quo.

A new article from the International Journal of Education Policy and Leadership (IJEPL), a joint publication of ASCD, Simon Fraser University, and George Mason University, focuses on the connection between teacher salary and turnover rates in the state of Texas. Researchers cite lack of competitive compensation and benefits, along with poor working conditions*, as the primary reason for high teacher turnover in Texas. Not surprisingly, this is a trend that plays out across the United States and in the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Australia.

Teachers gravitate to well-paying districts, and schools lose money continually retraining and recruiting a revolving faculty, perpetuating an inequitable distribution of effective teachers and school budget woes. This article adds one more voice to the call for competitive teaching salaries.

*For more on teacher working conditions leading to burnout and attrition, specifically as an unintended consequence of NCLB, see another recent IJEPL article.

Connecting the Classroom to the Capitol

Educators, bring your message to Capitol Hill!

ASCD's annual advocacy event, the LEAP Legislative Institute, September 13–15, 2009, in Arlington, Va, will bring you up to speed on the status of stimulus funding, pending changes to the No Child Left Behind Act, and other federal initiatives that affect students and schools.

Engaging speakers, including White House education policy advisor Roberto Rodriguez and author and journalist Gwen Ifill will explain today's political scene and the opportunities you have to frame the debate on education issues. Then, ASCD staff will prepare you to take your message to lawmakers on Capitol Hill and continue your policy discussions at the local and state levels.

Don't miss this opportunity to speak out in support of the education policies that are best for kids. Register today!

Tony Miller Takes Your ARRA Questions

This afternoon, Deputy Secretary of Education Tony Miller presented a brief, informative webinar on the K–12 funding programs in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act programs. The presentation, which will be available on the DOE site, covered mostly familiar territory regarding Race to the Top and other components of the ARRA. Check our live tweeting for the abridged play-by-play.

It was evident during the Q & A that a lot of local educational agencies (LEAs) are still really grappling with understanding eligibility and compliance criteria for the competitive grants in the ARRA. Miller fielded several questions—from the eligibility of faith-based groups working to establish virtual schools for at-risk students, to whether wind energy developers could see any of this funding from the DOE. (To the first question, they are most likely eligible under the investment for innovation grant. For the second question, most likely the Department of Energy is their best bet.)

Miller explained that education service providers—small or big, working across multiple districts or just one—are eligible for ARRA funding, but the DOE does not have the infrastructure to provide application support (aside from guidelines, forthcoming criteria, and webinars like this one). Miller suggested that small organizations turn to private foundations for support. 

Although Miller acknowledged the considerable work required to apply for any of these grants, he also emphasized that the DOE had set up planning time lines and application criteria in a model that requires considerable state and district collaboration. (Miller said 95 percent of the K–12 grants in the ARRA required this type of collaboration.) We're still a little confused though about how information will flow between states and districts before and after application: will districts give all the data up-front, or report on follow-through on the four assurances after the state submits its application?

Draft Common Standards Draw Mixed Reviews

Last week, Core Knowledge blog posted a draft of the national English and math standards being proposed by a partnership led by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers.

Though the draft still has several months' worth of comment and review scheduled, Core was quick to give the documents a failing grade. Too little guidance on what literary texts to teach and too much emphasis on skills over content were Core's big problems with the proposed English standards.

Others from the International Reading Association and the education community in general are pleased that this initial draft is not overly prescriptive and incorporates creativity and critical thinking. The standards are expected take on more depth and detail as they are developed. Likewise, the math standards drew some cautious optimism and hopes that K–12, four-year college, and vocational educators will be involved in the review process.

Beside the concern that teachers will not be involved in drafting these standards, others have asked who common standards address: are they a basic bar for all students, regardless of what they will do after high school?

Race to the Top Guidelines Announced

In a press conference today, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan made clear that if states and school districts want a slice of the $4.3 billion Race to the Top, they need to take four major grant criteria to heart.

Race to the Top applicants must demonstrate they're actively pursuing Duncan's "four assurances":

• Increase teacher effectiveness and address inequities in the distribution of highly qualified teachers.
• Establish and use preK-through-college and career data systems to track progress and foster continuous improvement.
• Make progress toward rigorous college- and career-ready standards and quality assessments.
• Support targeted, intensive support and effective interventions to turn around schools identified for corrective action and restructuring.   

To make these points clearer, Duncan brought out a group of speakers who laid the groundwork for the model Duncan wants schools to follow.

Race to the Top Grants Announcement Tomorrow

At noon tomorrow, U.S. Department of Education (DOE) Secretary Arne Duncan will make a high-profile announcement about the Race to the Top grant applications and guidelines to measure the effectiveness of State Fiscal Stabilization Funds. Information and the draft guidelines will be posted on the DOE's Web site. Interested parties will have 30 days to provide feedback on the drafts before they are finalized.

ASCD will be following the announcements as they develop. Please check our Twitter feed and the blog for more information as it becomes available. 

"The Best Resource for Me Is Other Teachers"

Today we learn from other people’s focus groups. Specifically WGBH Educational Foundation's study on how to enhance the social media functions of Teachers' Domain, a free online library of multimedia materials supporting K–12 instruction. Teachers' Domain is supported by funding from the National Science Foundation.

Researchers asked two main questions to understand how to better support professional networking on Teachers' Domain:

1. How do teachers use social media tools in professional contexts, and for what purposes?
2. How are teachers likely to use social media tools in the near future?

#1: How and Why Teachers Use Social Media Professionally

Researchers found the typical range of social media tool use among the teachers they surveyed. Everyone from teachers like my dad, who prints out my e-mails to him and waits to respond to me in person, to Vicki Davis, who uses wikis, blogs, Twitter, Ustream, and so forth to create and share curriculum resources.

While the Vicki Davis group may be small when compared to the overall teaching population, researchers noted that these teachers have a big influence on the habits of other teachers. They are establishing online professional networks within their schools and beyond.

Also not much of a surprise, focus group participants envisioned three main purposes for social media use:

• Finding appropriate rich media resources, activity ideas, and lesson plans more efficiently.

• Learning from and communicating with other educators.

• Storing, organizing, adapting, and sharing rich media resources and related materials in one place.

Researchers found, in general, that teachers tended to be passive users of professional social networking tools. Some reasons:

Back to School with Lighter Backpacks

Author Cathy Vatterott is no stranger to the homework debate. She travels nationally talking about homework policy with all types of educators and parents. "Educators and parents often ask me, 'So, are you for homework or against it?'—as if there are only two choices," says Vatterott. "I think we need to find middle ground. The end result is homework that works—for all students, at all levels."

In her new ASCD book, Rethinking Homework: Best Practices That Support Diverse Needs, Vatterott helps both educators and parents reexamine and reform homework practices but also charges school leaders with implementing a bill of homework rights for students. Her suggested rights, such as de-emphasizing graded homework, granting flexible time limits, and providing access to school-sponsored support programs, respect the important relationship between educators and families—a key component to student achievement.

"I applaud [Cathy Vatterott] for writing such a thought-provoking work," says Sara Bennett, anti-homework advocate. "It'd be great if [teachers] began to differentiate homework, stop grading homework, provide feedback, allow students to stop after working for a certain amount of time, and not punish for late work."

Read a free chapter of the book, or listen to Vatterott on ASCD Talks With an Author.

Gap Data Both "Hopeful" and "Sobering"

A new study from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) looks at several years of National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores for black and white students to determine achievement gap trends on a national and state level. The results show small gains in closing the black-white achievement gap, mostly at the elementary level.

Although these small steps are encouraging, the slow rate of change and lack of significant progress in closing 8th grade reading gaps has some officials doubtful these gains will put much of a dent in the high school dropout rate.

Nebraska and Wisconsin demonstrated particularly grim statistics(from Education Trust's statement on the NCES study) :

• In Nebraska, the black-white gap in 4th grade reading has doubled since 2002, while scores for African American students have declined.
• Wisconsin has among the largest black-white gaps in the country, with African American students trailing their white peers by 45 points in 8th grade math and 38 points in 8th grade reading.

Education Trust says that though some black students enter school behind their white peers academically, schools contribute to these deficits by staffing predominately black schools with less prepared teachers and by providing less challenging curriculum and less funding compared to majority white schools. The trust gave kudos to Delaware and Arkansas for intensive, statewide efforts to raise expectations, tie instruction to standards, and provide professional support to their educators. These efforts contributed to significant gains and provide a lesson to states hoping to follow suit.

Hey Kid, Want to Play Soccer? Better Have Some Money

Everyone knows that school districts have been making cuts and sacrifices since the economy tanked. Jobs have been slashed, belts have been tightened, and frantic administrators are looking at every conceivable option to keep their schools running at an acceptable level. "Nonessential" programs such as art and history have been led to the guillotine one by one, but now sports programs may be sharing the same fate—or are they?

Many school districts, parents, and students feel so strongly about the importance of having kids participate in sports that they came up with another solution to save the programs when they were threatened with being cut from the budget: schools across the country are beginning to charge a fee for students to join softball or soccer teams, and parents don't seem to mind covering the costs.

"It may get expensive, but I would rather give up something myself than I would give up something for our child," said parent David Haase, who dropped $135 for his child to play soccer at her school. He also must provide cleats, shin guards, and a ball. "Those school activities are so important to a child's growth."

Saving sports may not be cheap, but around the country there seems to be a trend of parents willing to pay for their kids to play. A community on Long Island, N.Y., took it a step further and raised $650,000 through fundraisers and charity events so that sports would not be cut. An added bonus was that some of those "nonessential" classes, such as music and art, were also saved through this fundraising effort.

Although many communities aren't raising hundreds of thousand of dollars, they see the necessity of having sports in public schools. Children can learn character building, team work, and other essential aspects to shaping development through participating on a sports team.

"The educational value in school sports in incredible," said Robert Kanaby, director of the National Federation of State High School Associations. "We believe it's an important part of growing and maturing."

Are you willing to pay fees for your children to participate in sports at public schools?

Revisiting Social Responsibility

The all-free, all-online July issue of Educational Leadership revisits EL's May 2009 theme, "Teaching Social Responsibility."

Inside the July EL, you'll find articles on service learning, developing students' good citizenship habits, global ethics curriculum, and character education, and even a video illustrating a unit that integrates the arts and history.

The issue leads off with Stephen Wolk's article suggesting a good book could be the key to inspiring socially responsible students. Wolk offers an extensive list of titles, from picture books to novels, to get your students thinking locally and globally. Check out his list, and tell us what you'd add.

Community Colleges May Get Much-Needed Boost

When students graduate from high school, they can choose from many options and paths. Some go straight into the workforce, while others decide to pursue higher education. Although many attend four-year colleges, millions each year opt to attend two-year colleges, better known as community colleges. Unfortunately, it seems like every time you hear about higher education funding, it's associated with big-name, four-year colleges, while community colleges get left in the dust. President Barack Obama has a plan to change this by allotting $12 billion for improvements in community colleges.

Obama plans to reverse the cycle of neglect that has plagued community colleges for years. The plan, known as the American Graduation Initiative, calls for improving academic programs and facilities, raising graduation rates, and providing funding for more online courses. According to an article in Edweek, Obama feels that after the economy turns around, many jobs will be created that do not necessarily require the skills of someone with a bachelor's degree but will require some skills that can be acquired with an associate's degree.

During the speech in which Obama proposed his plan, he said that jobs that require associate's degrees will grow at a much faster pace than those that require no degree whatsoever. Obama hopes that students will continue their education after community college by pursuing higher degrees but notes that, for the United States to stay competitive in the world, it is imperative that his vision become a reality and students at least finish their associate's degree.

"We will not fill those jobs, or keep those jobs on our shores, without the training offered by community colleges," Obama said during his speech in Warren, Mich.

There has been some criticism of this idea—do you think more funding for community colleges is beneficial to students and the economy? What programs would you like to see better funded at community colleges?

Moving from Highly Qualifed to Highly Effective Teachers: Policy Briefing Highlights

Panelists at today's ASCD policy briefing on Capitol Hill, "Moving from Highly Qualified to Highly Effective Teachers," agreed that teacher quality is critically important for student achievement and that sustained, deliberate, capacity-building professional development is a necessity for educator success. The experts also agreed that policy can provide important levers for ensuring teachers are provided with the support and resources they need to improve their practice and move the needle on student achievement.

Speaker Highlights

Charlotte Danielson, education consultant and author of Enhancing Professional Practice: A Framework for Teaching, emphasized the complexity of teaching and its cognitive demands. She described her framework for teaching, which includes four domains (planning and preparation, the classroom environment, instruction, and professional responsibilities) and provides a structure for organizing the complex work of teaching and its ongoing improvement.

Thomas Guskey, professor emeritus at the University of Kentucky College of Education, discussed the five hierarchical levels of professional development evaluation: (1) participants' reactions to the experience; (2) participants' learning from the experience; (3) organization support and change; (4) participants' use of new knowledge and skills; and (5) student learning outcomes. Too often, he said, policymakers jump immediately to level five, without realizing that each level is important and builds on the previous level.

Ann Cunningham-Morris, director of professional development at ASCD, provided the characteristics of capacity-building professional development and highlighted the need to develop local experts who can support job-embedded professional learning.

Sandra Hodges, retired assistant superintendent of Omaha Public Schools and Patricia Reynolds, principal of I.S. 73—The Frank Sansivieri Intermediate School in New York City, provided important practitioner perspectives on the importance of professional learning, as well as data to show the effect deliberate focus on educator professional development can have on student outcomes.

During the Q&A, Guskey suggested changing the federal policy for the RFP process to require applicants to provide details around how they plan to judge their effectiveness. How can federal policy support capacity-building professional development and teacher effectiveness? What do you think?

(Access live updates from and about the briefing on ASCD's Twitter channel.)

Teaching No Longer Recession-Proof

Growing student enrollment, efforts to reduce class sizes, and a somewhat stable economy (at least, in comparison to the recent economic crisis) had made education-related jobs fairly stable—with employment growing by about 3 percent annually in the last 15 years.

That growth came to a halt in the past 12 months, reports the Wall Street Journal. New teachers and those not teaching math, science, or special ed are the most vulnerable to layoffs. And while Teach for America predicts placements from their program will continue to increase, big districts like New York City and Los Angeles plan on reducing reliance on the induction program.

Still, WSJ reports there's no ebb in the tide of young professionals pursuing teaching credentials. Presumably, if they are following this news, working in high-needs subjects and schools will be part of their career planning.

Has the recession caught up with education-related employment in your district?

My Back Pages: Wanted: A Definition of Teaching

The editorial leading off Educational Leadership's December 1961 issue, on the theme of "What Is Teaching?", shares a number of different perspectives to kick off the exploration of this question. 

Read the article: "Needed: A Valid Concept of Teaching" (PDF)

Professor Herman Frick recalls the following definitions:

"We are all teachers, for what we do and say sets an example for the people around us, and thus our every act is an act of teaching." (From "a brilliant young minister") 

"He is wrong about teaching—to me, teaching is the specific act of one who knows the answer telling or explaining the answer to those who don’t know it. It is that simple." (From "an equally brilliant young lawyer") 

Frick makes the point that teaching means many things to many people, and yet to properly evaluate teaching we must continually reassess what we believe it to be. Finally, he offers his belief that "perhaps teaching is the application of the best-known principles of human behavior in efforts to promote the highest possible achievement of personal adequacy through learning." Of course, he adds that teaching must also continually reevaluate what personal adequacy is.

Why Buy Expensive Textbooks When You Can Rent Them?

While some teachers are getting rid of textbooks in the classroom, one fact of life remains once a person reaches college—very expensive textbooks. Anyone who has signed up for classes in college knows that a list of pricey textbooks awaits them. Students wander bookstores with a heavy wallet and leave with some change in their pockets. And when the time comes to sell the books back, all they get back is a little more change. 

So why not just rent textbooks? This idea seems like a win-win situation for everybody involved. A recent New York Times article reports that renting textbooks has become a reality and the company doing this, Chegg, has seen their revenue skyrocket this past year. It seems that college students would rather rent a textbook for $33 than buy it for $123. Win-win.

Citing Netflix as an inspiration, Chegg founders Osman Rashid and Aayush Phumbhra have seen their company gain steam as more students use their service. Venture capitalists have taken notice, and one company is investing $25 million in Chegg.

"Nobody likes paying for textbooks," said Arizona State University senior and Chegg user Alan Bradford. He's got that right. As I'm writing this post, I'm having horrific flashbacks of being one of those students wandering the campus bookstore with a long list of books to buy, knowing that, in a few minutes, my back pocket would be much lighter.

EdBlog Watch: Ryan Bretag's Metanoia

In his lively blog Metanoia, Ryan Bretag, a high school instructional technology coordinator, brings a curious and open mind to teaching, technology, society, pop culture, and all the intersections between them. 

Bretag shares highlights from a discussion he had with students on tech issues, including concerns from students about how to use technology effectively in the classroom. 

"I really can't explain how powerful it is to sit back and listen to students explain how they don't want technology to be fancy new tools," Bretag writes. "They want it to transform teaching, learning, and leading." 

These posts are interesting both for the insight into students’ thoughts and the model of community dialogue Bretag demonstrates. The blog covers many difficult and exciting technology challenges facing schools, including some that might be off your radar: the cost of Web 2.0 in schools, imploring schools to consider the TCO (total cost of ownership) when weighing social software, and how students should sign their intellectual property posted online.