Will Seniority-Based Layoffs Undermine School Improvement Efforts in Washington State?
Posted on 04 May | 0 comments
A centerpiece of U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s school reform agenda, School Improvement Grant (SIG) funds are intended to transform or turn around chronically failing schools. Analyzing Washington State personnel files, researchers at the Center on Reinventing Public Education found that teachers at risk of layoff are concentrated in schools receiving SIG funds. Many teachers in these schools are newly hired, chosen on the basis of high ability and commitment to education of disadvantaged children.
A new analysis by the Center on Reinventing Public Education, "Will Seniority-Based Layoffs Undermine School Improvement Efforts in Washington State?" finds that policies known as “last in, first out” may disproportionately affect schools receiving SIG funding. In Washington’s SIG schools, about 23% of teachers are in their first three years of teaching. That’s nearly twice the proportion of new teachers in other schools in the same districts. This analysis concludes: “Under current policy, teachers in these schools will face a higher risk for layoffs, potentially destabilizing schools and undermining turnaround efforts.”
Passing Muster: Evaluating Teacher Evaluation Systems
Posted on 03 May | 0 comments
U.S. public schools are in the early stages of a revolution in how they go about evaluating teachers. In years past there was little more than intuition and anecdote to support the view that teachers vary in their quality and, as such, it has been nearly impossible to discover and act on performance differences among
teachers when documented records show them all to be the same.
A new generation of teacher evaluation systems seeks to make performance measurement and feedback more rigorous and useful. These systems incorporate multiple sources of information, including such metrics as systematic classroom observations, student and parent surveys, measures of professionalism and commitment to the school community, more differentiated principal ratings, and test score gains for students in each teacher’s classrooms.
This report, "Passing Muster: Evaluating Teacher Evaluation Systems," by Brookings tackles some of the tough questions that states and districts will face as they implement a new teacher evaluation model. Including: how a state or the federal government could achieve a uniform standard for dispensing funds to school districts for the recognition of exceptional teachers without imposing a uniform evaluation system on those district? How can individual school districts benchmark the performance of their teacher evaluation system against the performance of evaluation systems in other districts or against the previous version of their own evaluation system? In other words, how can teacher evaluation systems be compared, one to another?
What Does Washington State Get for Its Investment in Bonuses for Board Certified Teachers?
Posted on 07 Apr | 0 comments
Washington State is set to spend nearly $100 million in the next two
years on pay bonuses for teachers who receive national board
certification. This investment is supposed to improve the state’s
teaching force and encourage the most capable teachers to work in
high-poverty schools. Does it accomplish those goals?
The Center on Reinventing Public Education's most recent report, What Does Washington State Get for Its Investment in Bonuses for Board Certified Teachers?, examines the available evidence in an effort to shed light on what the NBCT bonus program set out to do—namely, to reward strong teachers across the state and encourage them to teach in high-poverty schools—and whether it is achieving the desired effects.
Teacher Tenure Reform: Applying Lessons from the Civil Service and Higher Education
Posted on 15 Mar | 0 comments
Discussions about tenure nearly always fall into the “keep it" or "scrap it” camps. This new report from Public Impact, Teacher Tenure Reform, examines lessons from higher education and the civil service and applies fresh thinking to offer new “elite” and “inclusive” tenure designs that could improve student learning and help grow the size and power of an elite teaching corps that reaches far more children.
The report also provides a framework for policymakers who want to make tenure meaningful. 
A Smarter Teacher Layoff System
Posted on 25 Feb | 0 comments
Amid signs that the economy will force school districts across the
country to lay off teachers in the coming months and years, The New Teacher Project's has released a policy brief, A Smarter Teacher Layoff System, that demonstrates strong teacher support for ending “quality-blind” layoff policies
based strictly on seniority.
Nearly 3 out of 4 of the 9,000 teachers surveyed in two large urban districts agree that factors other than seniority should be considered in layoff decisions. A Smarter Teacher Layoff System details that the teacher support for this alternative approach to layoffs and the methodology that would help schools retain their best teachers and reduce the impact on students when layoffs become unavoidable.
National Council on Teacher Quality Report: Restructuring Teacher Pay to Reward Excellence
Posted on 22 Dec | 0 comments
The most recent report released by The National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ), "Restructing Teacher Pay to Reward Excellence", provides a strong base argument for wholesale innovations in teacher compenstation. NCTQ makes the case that truly effective teacher pay reform is best achieved by compensation with a district's primary needs: improving student achievement and place the best teachers where they are needed most.
Closing the Talent Gap: Attracting and retaining top third graduates to a career in teaching
Posted on 15 Nov | 0 comments
Improving teacher effectiveness to lift student achievement has become
a major theme in U.S. education. Most efforts focus on improving the
effectiveness of teachers already in the classroom or on retaining the
best performers and dismissing the least effective. Attracting more
young people with stronger academic backgrounds to teaching has received
comparatively little attention.
McKinsey’s experience with school systems in more than 50 countries suggests that this is an important gap in the U.S. debate. In a new report, “Closing the Talent Gap: Attracting and Retaining Top-Third Graduates to Careers in Teaching ,” McKinsey reviews the experiences of the top-performing systems in the world—Singapore, Finland, and South Korea. These countries recruit, develop, and retain the leading academic talent as one of their central education strategies, and they have achieved extraordinary results. In the United States, by contrast, only 23 percent of new teachers come from the top third, and just 14 percent in high poverty schools, where the difficulty of attracting and retaining talented teachers is particularly acute. The report asks what it would take to emulate nations that pursue this strategy if the United States decided it was worthwhile.
The report also includes new market research with nearly 1,500 current top-third students and teachers. It offers the first quantitative research-based answer to the question of how the U.S. could substantially increase the portion of new teachers each year who are higher caliber graduates, and how this could be done in a cost-effective way.
The New Teacher Project Releases "Teacher Evaluation 2.0"
Posted on 06 Oct | 0 comments
Almost everyone agrees that teacher evaluations are broken, and fixing
them is critical to building a thriving teacher workforce. In 2009, The Widget Effect
documented how poorly-designed teacher evaluation systems rate all
teachers as “good” or "great" and provide little useful feedback on
classroom performance.
Since then, states and school districts have begun to revamp outdated systems by passing new legislation and forging groundbreaking collective bargaining agreements with teachers’ unions.
The dilemma education leaders now face is, “How?” How can they avoid the pitfalls of past evaluation systems and create new ones that become useful tools for teachers and school leaders?
Teacher Evaluation 2.0 tackles this key question. It proposes six design standards that any rigorous and fair teacher evaluation system should meet. It offers a blueprint for better evaluations that can help every teacher succeed in the classroom—and give every student the best chance at success.
The New Teacher Project R...
Seattle Wins TIF Grant, Washington Wins New Graduation Requirements
Posted on 30 Sep | 0 comments- State Board Adopts College and Career Ready Diploma
- Seattle Wins Federal Teacher Incentive Fund Grant
"Teacher Quality: What You Need To Know" Guidebook and Website
Posted on 29 Sep | 0 comments
The Joyce Foundation has released "Teacher Quality: What You Need to Know," a guidebook and website for improving the performance of our nation's school teachers. This resource provides tools and materials to assist parents, community leaders, teachers, school administrators, and policy makers in identify excellent teaching and, in additon, outlines steps to take to improve teacher quality.
Using Competency-Based Evaluation to Drive Teacher Excellence: Lessons from Singapore
Posted on 27 Sep | 0 comments
In collaboration with the Joyce Foundation, Public Impact has released an in-depth comparative analysis of the teacher evaluation systems used by the United States and Singapore. This report highlights the stark differences between the two systems and the grasp results that are seen when a comprehensive student competency-based evaluation model is implemented, as is the case in Singapore.
As Washington state engages in the two-year pilot study to develop a new teacher and princpal evaluation model, it is reports like this that the state must carefully analyze and consider during the design and implementation phase of the pilot study.
Washington Wins Assessment Grant, Seattle Wins Contract Reform
Posted on 13 Sep | 0 commentsWashington State High Schools Pay Less for Math and Science Teachers than for Teachers in Other Subjects
Posted on 18 Aug | 0 comments
In
a new analysis from the University of Washington’s Center on Reinventing Public
Education (CRPE), "Washington State High Schools Pay Less for Math and Science Teachers than for Teachers in Other Subjects", researchers demonstrate that the average pay for math and
science teachers in Washington state lags behind other teachers. In the two
subject areas the state seeks to prioritize, nineteen of the thirty largest
districts in the state spend less per math or science teacher than for teachers
in other subjects.
NCTQ Releases "The Final Stretch in the Race to the Top"
Posted on 09 Aug | 0 comments
With $3.4 billion in Round 2 Race to the Top funds up for grabs, and 19
finalists making their final pitches in Washington, D.C., this week, the
National Council on Teacher Quality
asseses the "Great Teachers and Leaders" sections of their proposals
and recommends which states should be given green, yellow, and red
lights.
Learning From Leadership: Investigating the Links to Improved Student Learning
Posted on 23 Jul | 0 comments
In the largest in-depth study of school leadership to date, the Wallace
Foundation's report, "Learning from Leadership: Investigating the Links
to Improved Student Learning,"
gathers and analyzes quantitative data confirming that education
leadership has a strong impact on student achievement, as measured by
student test scores. The study shows that leadership makes its mark largely by strengthening a
school’s “professional community” – an environment where teachers work
together to improve classroom instruction. It also finds that rapid
turnover of principals reduces student achievement. In addition, the
study shows that although the principal remains the central source of
leadership in schools, he or she is far from the only source. Indeed,
the highest performing schools operate by a “collective leadership” that
involves many interested players – including parents and teachers – in
decision-making. The Impact of Effective Teachers and Principals
Posted on 08 Jul | 1 comment- The Impact of Effective Teachers and Principals
- State Board to Rule on New Graduation Requirements
- Federal Education Jobs Bill Under Fire
The Impact of Effective Teachers and Principals
Posted on 08 Jul | 0 comments
Partnership for Learning is pleased to announce the first in a series of reports on how Washington state can build an education system that prepares all students to succeed in college and the world of work. Stay tuned throughout the summer as we release a new report every few weeks.
This week: The Impact of Effective Teachers and Principals
What matters most when it comes to increasing student achievement? Small class sizes? Whether a child lives in poverty? A fair and equitable state school finance formula?
While the above, and much more, play a role in raising student achievement, teacher and principal effectiveness has a greater impact on student learning than any other factor in a school system.
To learn more, read the report.