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A reform agenda for 2011

Thursday, January 13th, 2011

Robert Reichardt is director of the Center for Education Policy Analysis, School of Public Affairs, at the University of Colorado at Denver.

The drumbeat for school reform will continue through 2011 as we figure out what it means to run an education system defined by standards and accountability.  With this in mind here is my Colorado-centric education reform agenda for 2011.

Federal Agenda: The vehicle for federal efforts will shift from Race to the Top to the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind.  A key NCLB priority is starting over on the definition of Highly Qualified teachers.  At a minimum Highly Qualified should not include certification. There is no doubt that teachers need training and content knowledge to be effective, however the current Highly Qualified system is too focused on inputs and puts too much power over hiring in the hands of state and district administrators.

The new NCLB should provide a system of waivers from the Highly Qualified requirements, immediately releasing very effective districts and schools from all Highly Qualified requirements and giving the same authority to less effective districts if they meet certain performance goals over time.  A second NCLB goal is to make Adequate Yearly Progress similar to Colorado’s accreditation system with a mixed model of both a value-added or growth models, mixed with status measures.

A third federal priority is not NCLB related, but about pensions.  We know we have a funding crisis for our public pensions.  But, pensions also contribute to human capital problems.  Too many educators stick with teaching to reach the large pay-off of the defined benefit plan.  A solution to this problem is to switch our pensions from defined benefit to defined contribution plans (such as 401ks).  However, this switch could only happen with a large revolving loan fund that would sustain the current defined benefit obligations as people began to build up the their 401k plans.  The federal government should help with this switch by creating this revolving loan fund.

State agenda: Our state policy system is overloaded with major reforms:  New standards, new teacher effectiveness systems, new approaches to turning around low performing schools, new accountability systems, and new connections between early childhood, K-12 and higher education. All this during a funding crisis and a search for a new commissioner.

Without the benefit of Race to the Top funds we need to prioritize our reform efforts. State leadership needs to establish a clear, shared understanding of how each of these reforms fit together with realistic and logical implementation timing.

We need to make sure the foundation to all of our reforms, the new common core standards, are done right.  If we don’t make sure teachers and schools are able to select and use classroom materials that are aligned with the new standards, then the rest of our reforms will be built on a house of sand. We won’t know whether our new measures of performance and accountability are measuring poor performance or simply teaching the wrong curriculum.

So we need to push forward with the plans contained in our Race to the Top application to build capacity to identify, create, verify, and share aligned class, course, and subject materials.

A second priority is reworking the framework for our new teacher effectiveness system as laid out in SB 191.  As I have blogged earlier, the current framework depends on student growth measures that don’t exist.  We need to use the existing growth measures as a way to hold systems accountable.

A third priority is education finance.  Our state is going to face significant financial pressure over the next five years.  The fact that 16 of 23 mill levy overrides passed in the November elections suggests to me that communities are willing to support their schools.  If we are faced with a choice of cutting overall K-12 funding or asking communities to pick up more of the tab, I think we need to create more opportunities for communities to support their schools.

This agenda is all part of getting standards based reform right. This is not a partisan agenda, but can easily be derailed by partisan politics.  In the end, our education system needs to have aligned curriculum and assessments, be able to allocate resources towards effectiveness and need, and have effective and nuanced accountability systems.

We have made a lot of impressive progress.  This agenda would be very different if we did not have the choice and charter options we already have in Colorado.  I am confident we can continue to move in the right direction.

Popularity: 12% [?]

Posted in Legislature 2011, Reform, The national stage | No Comments »

Fix SB 191 before it dies

Tuesday, November 30th, 2010

Robert Reichardt is director of the Center for Education Pollcy Analysis, School of Public Affairs, at the University of Colorado at Denver.

Senator Mike Johnston’s Bill on educator effectiveness (SB 191) is slowly dying, weighed down by its technical impossibilities.  The absurdity of rating teachers on student growth when no measures of growth exist for two-thirds of teachers is an insurmountable roadblock.

This technical impossibility has gummed up the work of the Council for Educator Effectiveness. The lost time and effort will be greatly magnified if we push the implementation of the current law down to districts and schools. Imagine what you would do as a principal if you were told you had to rate teachers using a statistical measure with little or no relation to actual “true” value. A good principal would delay, distract, and obfuscate as she worked to keep teachers focused on teaching.

This is not to say SB 191 does not have valuable components.  Some parts should be implemented without modification or delay:

  1. Districts should implement new teacher evaluation systems by 2013-14 that have at least three levels: Highly effective (top 10 percent of teachers), effective and ineffective (bottom 10 percent of teachers).
  2. Districts should use the information from evaluations to inform decisions about compensation, hiring, placement, promotion, professional development, and retention.
  3. Probationary teachers should have three years of good evaluations to become non-probationary (i.e. tenured).
  4. Tenured teachers (non-probationary) with low evaluations for two years lose their tenure.
  5. Placement of teachers in schools should be based on the mutual consent of both the school and the teacher.

The changes to growth score component of SB 191 should focus on using good information, when it is available, to evaluate both teachers and systems.  When available, growth data should be used as part of teacher evaluations, along with measures that apply to all teachers such as peer and supervisor observation, as well as student and parental feedback.

At the same time, teacher growth scores should be used as a yardstick to judge evaluation system integrity.  Districts should publicly report the proportion of teachers in tested subjects who fall in the top and bottom 10 percent of growth scores statewide.  At the same time districts should also report the proportion of teachers in non-tested subjects that are evaluated to be highly effective and in-effective.

This public reporting will create pressure on districts for rigor and alignment of evaluation systems.  For example, if districts have relatively more highly effective teachers in non-tested subjects districts will need to explain why their most effective teachers are not in tested subjects.

Developing these evaluation systems is important.  However, this hard work is only one component of an even larger change.  Districts and schools need to embrace continuous improvement to be able to incorporate the information developed through evaluations.  We must push through these technical challenges and keep our eyes on the larger prize of improving instruction and student learning.

Popularity: 9% [?]

Posted in Legislature 2010, Teacher evaluation | 20 Comments »

We can’t win

Thursday, August 26th, 2010

Colorado can’t win; that is lesson of the Race to the Top (R2T) competition.  Actually the lesson is that states that can’t enforce compliance by schools are not going to win in national competitions. This means Western states where local control means something very different than in does east of the Mississippi will always be left out.  (Hawaii is a singular case with a single statewide school district).

At the same time, Colorado districts have proved they can innovate with the best of them.  Two Colorado districts (DPS and St. Vrain) won in the much more competitive Investment in Innovation (I3) competition where there were 49 winners out of over 1,600 applications.

It is not that Colorado lacks the ideas or the innovators at the state level, but when we can’t draw that straight line of authority from the Colorado Department of Education to classrooms, we won’t win…at least as long as the current top-down perspective on how education systems work prevails among education thinkers and leaders.

The problem is not just that the bureaucrats at the Department of Ed don’t get the West; the reviewers don’t get it either. The scores for both of our R2T applications showed wide variation among reviewers.  This means Colorado’s tight-accountability, loose-compliance model is understood and supported by only some in the corps of evaluators. A significant number of education thinkers and leaders believe that top-down command and control is the way for states to get things done in school systems, regardless of how far that drifts from reality.

Colorado and the rest of the West will never win unless we can make the case that the tight-accountability, loose-compliance model can support innovation and improve student outcomes.  This should not be a hard case to make.

The success of Colorado districts in the I3 competitions as well as the innovations from our charter school sector clearly show the benefit of being firm on outcomes but loose on means. The fact that the U.S. Department of Education continues to support charter schools while also pushing top-down models suggests there is (or at least should be) a debate in their own hallways on valid theories of action at the district and state level.

So what do we do next?  There is plenty of work for everyone.

For our Washington representatives (that means you Sen. Bennet and DPS alum now Senior Advisor in the Department of Education Brad Jupp), repeat every day: “Local control is different in the West” and “Students are well served when schools and districts are allowed to innovate.”  Equally important, if the reauthorization of NCLB moves towards more competitive grants, do not set up Colorado to compete with other states. Focus the competition between districts and schools, where we can win.

The research and journalism community must get better about explaining how local control looks in the West and that it is not a bad thing for kids.  We all know that the words “local control” often are used to stall reform.  But researchers need to highlight our successes throughout the state and show that with accountability for outcomes local control also can lead to innovation, creativity, and better outcomes for kids.

The foundation community should continue to support Colorado reform AND support those researchers, journalists and bloggers who can make the case to the nation that we are different from the East Coast and that our students are better off for it.

Finally, the education community must demonstrate that we can raise student achievement and close the achievement gap in Colorado. Our reform plate is full with new standards, teacher evaluation systems, and approaches toward low-performing schools.  If we try to do too many things without enough resources, we are guaranteed to fail. We should slow down on teacher evaluation systems and focus on getting classroom fundamentals right by ensuring that teachers are implementing curricula that are aligned with our new standards.

AND we all should remember the core lesson from this: Stop trying to compete with other states. We can’t win.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Posted in Politics, Reform, School funding and finance, The national stage | 3 Comments »

The promises and pitfalls of SB 10-191

Thursday, May 6th, 2010

As the legislature makes progress and, hopefully, passes the Johnston Bill (SB 10-191), which adds to the authority of school and district leaders to remove teachers deemed ineffective, it is important to reflect on what it is, is not and should become.

The bill is an opportunity to move the lowest 5 percent of teachers out of the classroom.  We know that there is a wide range in teacher effectiveness and that ineffective teachers can severely hamper children’s progress.  We have evidence that poor and minority students are more likely to have ineffective teachers.  We also know that with training, teachers and school leaders can identify those teachers who are not effective.

What we don’t know is whether we can implement these types of systems across the state because the bill is not just about teachers; it is also about schools, districts and community leaders.

Our principal workforce is in flux.  A new generation of principals is entering the labor market at the same time that we are redefining the job.  Many schools will not have stable leadership over the next five to 10 years.  That means district and community leaders are under increased obligation to make sure schools attract and retain effective teachers.

This week’s report on the Cesar Chavez School Network, as well as the experiences of Tresa Waggoner, at a minimum, make it clear that personnel decisions can be made for reasons other than effectiveness.  You may recall that Ms. Waggoner was a music teacher in Bennett who was asked to leave after teaching the opera “Faust” to her students.

Communities will get what they expect out of their schools.  If they do not support leaders as they do the hard work of developing and implementing systems to identify and support effective teachers, then they should not be surprised when their schools do not meet their expectations.

This bill is not about assessments.  We do not have, nor do I expect us to develop assessments that will reliably identify effective teachers in the majority of our classrooms.  More importantly, good educational practice means that many teachers are responsible for each student’s learning.  I am deeply grateful to the three teachers who have helped my first-grade daughter learn to read this year. There is no magic statistical method to identify which teacher should get that credit, just as there is no way to know who added to a secondary student’s science scores.  Should science teachers get all the credit, or should we thank the social studies teacher who taught her kids how to read critically and answer complex questions?

In a related vein, this is not about statistics.  The idea that 50 percent of a teacher’s evaluation should depend on student learning should be taken as a policy statement not a technical statement.  If a teacher’s students are not learning, then he should not be rated as effective, no matter what else he does.

We do not want the pursuit of technically valid determinations of an individual teacher’s contributions to a students learning to overwhelm our primary goal of helping all students learn.  We must ensure that implementation of this bill does not impede the development of effective teams of teachers working to help groups of students learn and grow.

Finally, this bill should not be about cruelty.  Forcing ineffective teachers upon students is very cruel.  However, firing teachers who are well into their careers but do not qualify for significant retirement under PERA and don’t have access to Social Security is also cruel.  We must examine our teacher retirement system to ensure that it’s fair to teachers who leave their classrooms at all stages of their careers, not just those who persevere for 25 years.

This bill is not a silver bullet.  While we know that teachers are critical to student learning, we also know that effective teaching is enhanced by aligned curricula and good colleagues.  And we know that assembling and maintaining a team of effective teachers requires ensuring that schools are good places to work where people feel they can be effective.  This is just a step in the process of building a system that supports effective teaching in all of our schools.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Posted in Reform, Teacher evaluation | 6 Comments »

The price of capricious evaluations — in D.C. and in schools

Monday, April 19th, 2010

Reading the Race to the Top (RttT) reviewer comments and the recent analysis of scoring by The New Teacher Project is a painful thing for someone, like me,  who worked hard on the application. What is clear is that our fate depended upon a group of five reviewers with radically different views on the quality of our application.  According to New Teacher Project, Colorado’s application had the widest differentiation in scores across all of the 16 finalists.

The irony is that my anger, frustration and disappointment with the evaluation process is exactly the situation we are asking our teachers to enter with the RttT plan under consideration by the legislature.

Just as Colorado’s fate in the RttT competition suffered from wildly divergent and poorly defined views on what a quality application looks like, we are asking teachers to accept an evaluation system that is based on a nebulous understanding of what quality teaching looks like.  And just like those of us who are frustrated with our outcome hinging on the wildly divergent views of our reviewers, teachers in the new evaluation scheme will be frustrated with evaluations, pay, and employment decisions that depend on the wildly divergent views of principals.

This boils down to a question of what is fair and reasonable.  Is it fair and reasonable to expect the RttT reviewers to grade proposals consistently, to expect different people to award  the similar scores to a proposal?  Is it fair and reasonable for a teacher to expect different supervisors to give the same evaluation ratings?

The bottom line is no, it is not fair and reasonable to expect absolute consistency. As I say to my six year old daily, “Life is not fair” nor is it reasonable.  The reality is we all have bosses whose evaluations of our performance (and subsequent decisions about our pay and employment) can be wildly divergent based on nebulous, poorly defined views of quality.

The more important question is what is the price we pay as taxpayers for making teachers accept the frustrating and nebulous world in which many of us already live?  We can see some of that price in the public doubt about whether to go for round 2 of the RttT.  I, and I think others, asked themselves, “Is it worth it?” when our application may be judged capriciously in Washington.

We should expect teachers to make the same calculation: Is it worth it to work in schools when evaluation, pay and employment are not judged consistently?

I think the end result will be teachers who are less attached and committed to working in our schools.  We will see higher turnover with the largest problems at high poverty schools.

And this will raise a new question for taxpayers:  Will we make all of our schools places where it is worth it for teachers to come back year after year when employment security is no longer a factor?  Who will own the problem of low-performing schools when less of the responsibility can (fairly or unfairly) rest on the shoulders of teachers?

Ultimately, more responsibility will rest on the communities’ shoulders, which raises the real question: Are we ready to carry that weight?

Popularity: 2% [?]

Posted in Accountability, Politics, Reform | No Comments »

Is this the best we can do?

Tuesday, March 9th, 2010

A February 27 Denver Post editorial and a related article on Colorado higher education funding were frustrating in an amazing number of ways. Both barely touched upon the single most important issue: Our higher education funding levels are not sustainable.

In 2008, before the current crisis, Colorado ranked 48th in the nation in per pupil funding. Since then our funding level has dropped.  As the February 24th School of Public Affairs event (Ungovernable States: Prospects for Constitutional Reform in California and Colorado) made clear, at the present rate within 10 years the entire general fund will be spent on K-12, health care and corrections, leaving no funding whatsoever for higher education.  Without that context, the rest of the conversation is, at best, misleading.

I sure hope this is the first salvo in a longer campaign by our leadership to discuss the value of higher education with Colorado taxpayers.  But inaccurately characterizing the system as inefficient and suggesting that competition is bad for government seems like a foolish way to start the conversation.  How about a proactive discussion about how to make competition spur improvements in our system, or how our higher education institutions serve our communities, or what we as a state need from higher education?

I wonder why this story even made the paper.  Is this the best thinking we can expect to get from leaders in our state?

The chair of the Higher Education Steering Committee Dick Montfort is quoted  saying, “Maybe not all the business classes are going to be at one university, I get that, but we’ve got to come up with ideas. My biggest frustration is that no one wants to change.”

The reality is we are going to get change whether we like it or not.  But does he or the editorial board of the Post honestly believe increased efficiency can get us out of this funding mess?  This is like focusing on a burnt-out headlight when the engine is shot.

Efficiency is important.  Heck, we are already efficient, graduating more students than the U.S. average while spending less. (See www.higheredinfo.org for information on Colorado relative to other states.)  But what is the use of efficiency when the ability of the system to meet the needs of all students is in peril?

As a conversation about efficiency, this one seemed particularly empty.   Efficiency has two components: How much you spend and how much you get in return.  This argument was mostly about numbers of programs (as a proxy for how much we spend) and had very little about what we get from those programs.  One output cited was the small number of math and biology majors at Adams State College.  Does that mean we should seriously consider shutting down the math or biology departments at Adams State?  Do we believe that students can get an adequate college education in, say, business or teacher training without mathematics and biology?

Finally, I question the whole premise that having multiple programs compete in one geographic area is inherently inefficient.  We have learned from initiatives in the K-12 arena that competition leads to innovation and makes consumers happy.  We have also learned that to support improvements through competition, we need to provide good information to consumers and sophisticated tools for evaluating programs.

The debate about duplicate programs is a red herring being tossed into a pool of sharks (one of several red herrings the Post has tossed out lately on education funding). It makes for titillating headlines, but ultimately misleads Coloradans about the crisis we face.

I expect more from our state’s leadership than leading us down a dead end that cannot possibly solve the critical problems of a higher education system that has been starved for funds for nearly two decades.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Posted in Higher ed, Newsletter guest article | 1 Comment »

Teacher identifier is not just a hammer

Monday, March 23rd, 2009

Depending on your point of view, the teacher identifier is either a valuable new tool for improving student learning or just another way to punish teachers. One thing’s for sure, we’ll all be hearing a whole lot more about it in the coming weeks and months.

The teacher identifier is the central component of data systems that connect information on teachers’ preparation, their work and, most important, their students.  At a recent symposium hosted by the Center for Education Policy Analysis and the Colorado Children’s Campaign, state and national presenters described how it can help teachers learn about incoming students, how it can map the progress of students in the classroom, and how it can help determine the effectiveness of district or state policies. (You can see slides, notes, and links to recordings of the symposium webinar here. )

Most Colorado districts have teacher identifiers, and some have invested in technology to use them for educational improvement.  The teacher identifiers offer insights into which teachers can help us learn about effective practice, if we have the right teachers, and help reward teachers who are working in challenging places.   Teacher identifiers have also helped state policymakers (outside of Colorado) answer such questions as: Is Teach for America a good source of teachers? Does our licensure test work to improve our teacher workforce? And do all students have access to effective teachers? (more…)

Popularity: 2% [?]

Posted in Accountability, Teaching and learning | 3 Comments »

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