Education Week - July 10, 2013 - 33

EDUCATION WEEK
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JULY 10, 2013 www.edweek.org
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33
LETTERS to
the EDITOR
Parent Revolution: We
Need to Work Together
success in a specific job. We do this not as
a philosophical stance but a practical one,
based on our own data tracking and analysis
of our candidates. We find great teachers
every year in this category.
Hard as it is for those who insist on a single
answer, both approaches work for us because
the program design, supports, and demands
are different. Other teacher-preparation programs
likely make the call based on their specific
designs.
Ultimately, the important criteria are not
based solely on entry standards, program design,
content of syllabi, or even clinical practice.
They are a series of outcomes: How effective
are the graduates? How ready are they for
the challenge of today’s classrooms, no matter
what the school context?
For many institutions, including ours, this is
a daunting challenge. And we know it is important.
New teacher-preparation programs that
provide candidates to a select group of specific
charters have only reinforced our drive to connect
to alumni data. Their “closed loop” system
allows these prep programs to track the effectiveness
of their graduates back to decisions
made along the candidates’ program of study.
Our partnership with the Urban Teaching Center
has directly shown us the power of such a
feedback system. It has driven quick and powerful
improvements to our joint programs.
But that is only a small part of our work. Like
any large teacher-preparation institution, we
produce graduates who find their first job in a
wide variety of settings. We need great models
of “open loop” feedback systems, that collect
alumni-performance results concretely and accurately,
while accounting for dramatically different
contexts.
Solving that challenge is where we all need
leadership, from AACTE and others. Support
for progress in this area can come in many
forms: competitions, identification of new
data-collection systems, pilots funded by a
variety of sponsors. What doesn’t help is a
retro-debate about inputs and well-paid ad
campaigns ginning up public skepticism of a
key part of the education field.
It would be nice to simply ignore the debate
ignited by the NCTQ, to pretend it doesn’t matter.
But it does. It diverts attention, resources,
and even basic understanding away from institutions
like mine so that the work we do
gets tarred with one brush or the other. No
single set of standards is right for the diversity
of teachers we need.
Preparing effective teachers is challenging
enough. It is essential to have policy leadership
that takes us forward toward meaningful
outcomes, rather than the sideshow of a
Beltway brawl. n
JACK GILLETTE is the dean of the graduate school of
education at Lesley University in Cambridge, Mass.
Formerly, he was the director of the teacher-preparation
and education studies program at Yale University.
To the Editor:
Three years ago, California
enacted a groundbreaking
new law called the “parent
trigger” that gives parents
the power to transform their
failing neighborhood schools.
From the start, opponents of
the parent-trigger law have
argued that the secret agenda
behind it is a conspiracy to
convert public education into
a national for-profit charter
school movement. And they
see parents as well-meaning
pawns in this effort.
All this changed on May 14,
when the parents of Weigand
Avenue Elementary School
in Los Angeles won the first
entirely in-district reform
parent-trigger campaign.
These parents have proved the
critics and conspiracy theorists
wrong. Their campaign for
Weigand, which ranks as the
16th-worst elementary school
in the Los Angeles Unified
School District, calls for
keeping the existing teachers
and their union contract in
place and bringing in new
leadership.
odology to obtain reliable and valid knowledge relevant to education
activities and programs.”
The quality of research by the IES has also climbed over the past 10
years, and recent competitive federal Investing in Innovation grants
have advanced the adoption of research-based programs. These are significant
federal accomplishments that could contribute to the formation
of a new national education R&D infrastructure that fosters a sustained
working relationship between researchers and state-level administration
and program managers.
A state-based infrastructure.Each state education
agency operates within a unique set of political and
economic conditions, and each needs to prioritize
its strategic school intervention strategies. Recognizing
the diversity of states and the varied
approaches they take to policy, policymakers
should consider creating a new R&D infrastructure
that is state- rather than regionally based.
The advantages are obvious when it comes
to building more direct links between the
nation’s education research infrastructure
and individual states. A state-centered infrastructure
would also enable researchers and
technical-assistance professionals to develop
sustained relationships with state officials to better
understand and interpret longitudinal-data collections.
States and their districts would also benefit
from gaining a single independent research laboratory and
technical-assistance center; each one would be tasked with bridging
the education research and relevance gap and strengthening a state’s
capacity to make more productive use of its longitudinal data.
State officials acknowledge that the basic arrangement of the public
education enterprise and the educational research community is extraordinarily
weak for effectively translating and using good research. They
accept the evidence of independent surveys and investigations that infer
there must be better ways to improve the coordination of the disparate
that promotes a genuine
collaboration between
“
A system
independent researchers and
educators needs to be
state-based.”
education research and technical-assistance support-service agencies.
Interestingly, federal legislators appear to have been influenced
by evidence suggesting there are better ways to allocate ESEA funds
for improving education for our lowest-performing schools and students.
Yet, few, if any, officials seem aware of studies that should
guide the writing of new provisions for the ESRA, including those
that could improve the states’ capacity to access and use research
and evaluation findings.
Having sufficient funds for a 50-state-based R&D infrastructure
should not represent a major problem.
Thanks to the ESRA, the regional-lab and -center
programs receive a combined annual appropriation
of more than $100 million. Moreover, this
level of federal funding could be increased, if,
for example, states were encouraged to match
their federal grant awards with private contributions,
or authorized to contribute part of
their ESEA administrative dollars for evaluation
and technical assistance.
The next set of ESEA and ESRA mandates
should not assume that most state and
local education reform initiatives are being
influenced by the availability of high-quality
research. A system that promotes a genuine collaboration
between independent researchers and
educators needs to be state-based. A new national
network of state-based research and technical-assistance
centers managed by the IES could advance the goal of sharing research-related
information that is more timely, relevant, and useful
to the states and the jurisdictions they serve. n
ARTHUR D. SHEEKEY retired in 2012 as a project director at CNA, formerly the Center
for Naval Analysis, an independent research organization in Alexandria, Va. He previously
served as a specialist for educational technology at the Council of Chief State School
Officers and a research-program manager at the U.S. Department of Education.
The decision to bring in
new leadership was not made
rashly or in a vacuum. The
effort to replace Weigand’s
principal began two years ago,
when parents and teachers
joined together to sign a noconfidence
petition calling for
new leadership.
Parents recognize the rights
of teachers and administrators
to unionize and bargain
collectively on behalf of their
interests. Parents just want
teachers and administrators to
recognize that same right for
them.
Parents trapped in failing
schools across America want to
work with good teachers, good
principals, and progressive
unions to transform their
schools for their kids. But some
entrenched interests refuse to
engage in constructive dialogue
and resort to name-calling and
conspiracy theories, instead of
focusing efforts on helping turn
our failing schools around.
School leaders and education
advocates on all sides owe
it to our children to comport
ourselves as mature adults
and model behavior that we’d
want to see on the schoolyard.
It’s time to put aside our
differences and work together
in the interest of our children.
Ben Austin
Executive Director
Parent Revolution
Los Angeles, Calif.
PAGE 34 >
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Education Week - July 10, 2013

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