Education Week - September 19, 2012 - 30

EDUCATION WEEK

SEPTEMBER 19, 2012

www.edweek.org

LETTERS to the EDITOR Readers Respond to Article On Teacher Incentive Fund
Grant Aids Teacher Advancement
To the Editor: I read with interest “Districts Abandon Grants Targeting Teacher Quality” (Aug. 22, 2012), describing three urban districts returning their 2010 Teacher Incentive Fund grants due to a lack of union support. Ascension Parish receives funding under a 2010 tif grant to the state of Louisiana, and we are using these funds to implement the Teacher Advancement Program system. Tap has enabled us to take a comprehensive approach to building and sustaining teaching talent, which tif regulations have always allowed. Our approach has two equally important goals: attracting more effective educators to high-need schools, and building the talents of educators already in these schools. Tap enables us to create leadership teams that offer teachers new roles as evaluators and providers of school-based professional development. We find that our most accomplished teachers want to teach in our high-need tap schools, thanks to more accurate and meaningful evaluations; school-based professional support to act on these evaluations; the ability to take on new leadership roles; and opportunities to earn additional pay for improvements in their performance, their students’ performance, and their schools’ growth. The strong student-achievement growth in these schools reflects a higher level of teaching talent. We are now moving to bring elements of this successful reform into schools districtwide, including the evaluation system. Many of the 2010 grant recipients are taking a similarly comprehensive approach to improving teaching and learning. Leveraging these funds to create sustainable reform is indeed making a significant difference in the quality of instruction for the students in Ascension and in other districts throughout the nation. Patrice Pujol
Superintendent Ascension Parish Schools Donaldsonville, La.

focused on attracting high-quality new teachers and retaining our highly effective teachers who have been with us for many years. While pay is an important part of our approach under tif, performance-based compensation is based on multiple measures of effectiveness, not single tests. For example, we conduct four observations of classroom performance for every teacher as well as look at student growth at the classroom and school levels. A cornerstone of our success has been the creation of new roles and responsibilities for teachers, allowing them to become master and mentor teachers. These roles allow us to provide specific support to improve teacher practice and student learning, making the connection between evaluations, support, and learning for both the teacher and the students. These teacher-leaders join administrators in a leadership team that takes explicit responsibility for driving improvements in teaching, learning, and transforming the school culture to create reflective teachers and administrators who consistently strive to improve. The teacher-effectiveness challenge in rural areas is acute, and tif is enabling us to take a new and innovative approach that is making a difference for our students. Matt McClure
Superintendent Cross County School District Cherry Valley, Ark.

‘Thoughtful Review’ Crucial For Decisions on Charters
To the Editor: Your article about charter school closures raised some critically important questions (“Debate Revs Up Around Closing Low-Achieving Charter Schools,” Aug. 22, 2012). Here in Maryland, we are saddled with a state law on charter school approval and renewal that is too vague and provides little useful guidance to the local school systems that make these crucial decisions. But at the local level, the Baltimore city district, under the law the only charter school authorizer in Baltimore, is moving forward on the issue on its own. The school system, in partnership with nonprofit organizations and representatives of charter schools themselves, recently established a promising new process for evaluating and deciding whether to renew charter school contracts in Baltimore. This new process will rely heavily on data and facts about each charter’s performance, coupled with qualitative observations. The Charter and New School Advisory Board—made up of school officials and community representatives—will make recommendations on renewals to the district’s leadership. Having this kind of thoughtful review is critical. Baltimore’s 33 charters are an important part of our portfolio of school options and meet the needs of many families. The bottom line is we must be transparent and rigorous in evaluating all Baltimore schools; we can’t afford to have any low performers. This new process can ensure that the city’s charter schools are each doing a great job of educating our children. Nothing less should be acceptable— here in Baltimore or throughout the country. Carol Beck
Director Supporting Public Schools of Choice Baltimore, Md.

Teacher Preparation Lacking In Emphasis on Rigor
To the Editor: Regarding the article “Task Force Formed to Sway Teacher-Prep Rules” (Aug. 22, 2012), it is no surprise that education schools would complain long and hard about any effort to reform their moneymaking diploma mills and provide a modicum of value. The rules proposed are typical baloney, and the response by the schools is baloney squared. The measurement that makes the most sense is our scores on international achievement testing. The glaring weaknesses in the current education school training regimes are two-fold: teaching an anti-curriculum pedagogy that can’t work, as our current test results make abundantly clear, and not teaching rigorous subject knowledge. Fix those two things and performance will improve radically, especially if they are coupled with teacher subject-knowledge testing for current teachers and new graduates that is required every two years for teachers to remain certified. No research is needed, as every country that beats us in the world uses directinstruction pedagogy and requires strong teacher subject knowledge. Paul Richardson
Colorado Springs, Colo.

Teacher Compensation Is ‘One Piece of the Puzzle’
To the Editor: Laura Overdeck, Arthur Levine, and Christopher Daggett are exactly on target in “Rethinking Teacher Compensation” (Aug. 22, 2012). Indeed, we must reassess and front-load how we pay teachers as a first step toward attracting and keeping the most effective candidates. However, frontloading compensation is incomplete. Compensation is only one piece of the puzzle in attracting, retaining, and motivating the quality and type of teachers we need. Study after study tells us that working conditions trump or equal compensation when teachers consider the qualities of their profession. In addition, simply raising salaries on top of current structures that do not differentiate based on performance and labor-market contexts neglects the significant impact of these two factors on teacher retention and the ultimate quality of the workforce. Current compensation structures that mostly differentiate based on years in the job and education attainment provide financial incentives for less effective individuals to enter and stay. Meanwhile, teaching becomes a less attractive option for individuals with higher salary opportunities in the labor market. Rethinking teacher compensation is a first step. But restructuring the teaching job is the way to truly have an impact on the bottom line: student performance. Karen Hawley Miles
Executive Director Education Resource Strategies Watertown, Mass.

COMMENTARY

ONLINE

n Read Diane Ravitch’s farewell

Politicians, Not Teachers, at Fault For Education Problems
To the Editor: The teacher-bashing has got to stop (“Teachers’ Unions, Federal Spending Slammed at gop Convention,” Politics K-12 blog, edweek.org, Aug. 29, 2012). I am an Independent/swing voter. I was deeply saddened to see the Republicans blaming teachers’ unions for the difficulties in education. In the past 100 years, the most harm to education has probably been done by two Bush administration initiatives: the No Child Left Behind Act and Reading First, which translated the recommendations of the National Reading Panel into the so-called “science of reading.” Please see what Joanne Yatvin had to say about the panel’s recommendations in her well-written National Reading Panel minority view. I am not a teacher, but I am the daughter of a retired teacher, and I work with educators. The nation is in trouble—and politicians are the reason, not teachers. Rhonda Stone
Shelton, Wash.

post on the edweek.org blog Bridging Differences. Deborah Meier will continue to write for Bridging Differences with a still-to-be-named co-blogger. Stay tuned. www.edweek.org/go/bridge

n Commentary has pulled together

Positive Experience in Rural Arkansas
To the Editor: Three urban districts may be returning their Teacher Incentive Fund grants before even starting their projects, as described in “Districts Abandon Grants Targeting Teacher Quality,” but we are one of the more than 60 recipients in 2010 using tif grants to make substantial changes in teaching and learning. Located in rural northeast Arkansas, Cross County doesn’t have the teacherrecruitment pool of an urban area. We have used our tif grant to develop a comprehensive and long-term approach

a collection of opinion pieces, news stories, blog posts, tweets, and images from the Chicago teachers’ strike. For more on the strike and its impact, check out our newest Storify. www.edweek.org/go/StrikeStorify

n Follow Commentary on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ edweek n Follow Commentary on

Twitter: @EdweekComm

http://www.edweek.org http://www.edweek.org/go/bridge http://www.edweek.org http://www.edweek.org/go/bridge http://www.edweek.org/go/StrikeStorify http://www.edweek.org http://www.edweek.org/go/StrikeStorify http://www.facebook.com/edweek http://www.facebook.com/edweek http://www.facebook.com/edweek

Education Week - September 19, 2012

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - September 19, 2012