Group items tagged

A National Education Association commission issued a report today with specific recommendations for upping pre-service requirements, establishing career paths for teachers, and developing new evaluation systems.

In short, the results do reveal some meaningful, potentially policy-relevant associations between pre-service characteristics and future outcomes. From a more general perspective, however, they are also a testament to the difficulties inherent in predicting who will be a good teacher based on observable traits.

This paper contributes importantly to the growing literature on the training of special education teachers and how it translates into classroom practice and student achievement. The authors examine the impact of pre-service preparation and in-service formal and informal training on the ability of teachers to promote academic achievement among students with disabilities. Using student-level longitudinal data from Florida over a five-year span the authors estimate value-added models of student achievement. There is little support for the efficacy of in-service professional development courses focusing on special education. However, teachers with advanced degrees are more effective in boosting the math achievement of students with disabilities than are those with only a baccalaureate degree. Also pre-service preparation in special education has statistically significant and quantitatively substantial effects on the ability of teachers of special education courses to promote gains in achievement for students with disabilities, especially in reading. Certification in special education, an undergraduate major in special education, and the amount of special education coursework in college are all positively correlated with the performance of teachers in special education reading courses.

Virtually everyone agrees that teacher evaluation in the United States needs an overhaul. Existing systems rarely help teachers improve or clearly distinguish those who are succeeding from those who are struggling. The tools that are used do not always represent the important features of good teaching. Criteria and methods for evaluating teachers vary substantially across districts and at key career milestones-when teachers complete pre-service teacher education, become initially licensed, are considered for tenure, and receive a professional license.  A comprehensive system should address these purposes in a coherent way and provide support for supervision and professional learning, identify teachers who need additional assistance and-in some cases-a change of career, and recognize expert teachers who can contribute to the learning of their peers. This report outlines an integrated approach that connects these goals to a teaching-career continuum and a professional development system that supports effectiveness for all teachers at every stage of their careers.

It doesn't matter whether you teach in a suburban, urban or rural school setting, we are seeing many students enter school with diverse academic, social and economic needs. Perhaps they have a vocabulary or language deficit that puts them behind their peers, or they lack the maturity that allows them to fit in socially, schools have been playing the role of caregiver and educator in the lives of children for decades.

Investments in high-quality early childhood programs, particularly those targeted to children at risk, are not just a virtuous service, but can yield a large return for those paying the bill. Study after study has proved that such programs, coupled with training for parents, result not only in economic gains for the children as they grow up, but sizable savings on taxes. For example, graduates from these preschool programs are less likely to need special education, end up being arrested fewer times and spend less time in prison (which means fewer crime victims), require fewer social services, are healthier and wind up paying more in taxes.

The idea that a handful of college instructors and student teachers in the school of education at the University of Massachusetts could slow the corporatization of public education in America is both quaint and ridiculous. Sixty-seven of the 68 students studying to be teachers at the middle and high school levels at the Amherst campus are protesting a new national licensure procedure being developed by Stanford University with the education company Pearson.

Ever since the debacle of Pineapplegate, it is widely recognized by everyone other than the publishing giant Pearson that its tentacles have grown too long and too aggressive. It is difficult to remember what part of American education has not been invaded by Pearson's corporate grasp. It receives billions of dollars to test millions of students. Its scores will be used to calculate the value of teachers. It has a deal with the Gates Foundation to store all the student-level data collected at the behest of Race to the Top. It recently purchased Connections Academy, thus giving it a foothold in the online charter industry. And it recently added the GED to its portfolio. With the U.S. Department of Education now pressing schools to test children in second grade, first grade, kindergarten - and possibly earlier - and with the same agency demanding that schools of education be evaluated by the test scores of the students of their graduates (whew!), the picture grows clear. Pearson will control every aspect of our education system.

You've probably heard that NCTQ president Kate Walsh and new Tennessee Commissioner of Education Kevin Huffman testified in Congress this week on issues related to teacher quality. (Snippets of their testimonies burst into useful sound bites all over Twitter.) One of the most quotable, shared here by Huffington Post, came from Walsh when she said it's "easier to get into an education school than it is to qualify to play college football."

I took the leap in the fall of 2010. With six years of experience as a teacher, I agreed to partner with a local university (my alma mater, as it happened) to mentor my first student teacher.

Everyone agrees that the most important in-school factor in student achievement is the classroom teacher. At the same time, however, everyone has a different proposal for reaching that goal. Rather than recite the entire list, I'd like to examine one recommendation more closely.

This was written by Arthur Levine, president of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation and former president of Teachers College, Columbia University.

Now, it bears noting that "attracting better people," like "improving teacher quality," is a policy goal, not a concrete policy proposal - it tells us what we want, not how to get it. And how to make teaching more enticing for "top" candidates is still very much an open question (as is the equally important question of how to improve the performance of existing teachers).

Disrupting the entrenched education system is daunting. There are 7.2 million teachers in the U.S., 76 million students, and more than 98,000 public schools, according to a government census (as of 2008). So what's the most effective way to unshackle the current archaic system from ineffective tactics that no longer work in the digital age?

I blogged yesterday on Cory Koedel's eye-opening research regarding the inflated grades awarded to undergraduate education majors. In response, several colleagues from the world of teacher preparation have asked what I'd have them do. Not wanting to seem unhelpful, here are a couple suggestions to get things started. (That said, I trust those involved in teacher ed, if they put their minds to it, can readily come up with many more and better.)

The National Council on Teacher Quality, an advocacy group, is to issue a study on Thursday reporting that most student-teaching programs are seriously flawed. The group has already angered the nation's schools for teachers with its plans to give them letter grades that would appear in U.S. News and World Report.

The student-teaching experience offered by many traditional schools of education couples poor supervision with a lack of rigorous selection of effective mentor-teachers, a controversial report issued today concludes.

There will be no courses at the Relay Graduate School of Education, the first standalone college of teacher preparation to open in New York State for nearly 100 years. Instead, there will be some 60 modules, each focused on a different teaching technique. There will be no campus, because it is old-think to believe a building makes a school. Instead, the graduate students will be mentored primarily at the schools where they teach. And there will be no lectures. Direct instruction, as such experiences will be called, should not take place for more than 15 or 20 minutes at a time. After that, students should discuss ideas with one another or reflect on their own.