New Teacher Policy Program at ED (2/15/2008)

On Monday, the United States Department of Education (ED) announced a new program, the Teaching Ambassador Fellowship. The program is designed to improve education programs and policies by strengthening the connection to classroom practices, recognizing and retaining motivated and innovative public school teachers, and providing them the opportunity to expand their leadership roles outside of the classroom. The program will have two tiers of participation: Classroom Fellows and Washington Fellows.

Classroom Fellows will serve their regular teaching contracts within their districts, and will be paid to perform additional Fellowship duties for ED. Washington Fellows will serve as full-time federal employees in Washington, D.C. from summer 2008 through June 2009, placed in appropriate positions within the Department of Education to work on education program development and implementation.

Highly Qualified K-12 teachers, as defined under No Child Left Behind, of all subjects from public schools who have spent at least three years in the classroom are eligible to apply. Potential candidates for the Teaching Ambassador Fellowship should visit http://www.ed.gov/programs/teacherfellowship/applicant.html for further information. Up to 20 Classroom Fellows and up to 5 Washington Fellows will be named by summer 2008.

Resource:
“Teaching Ambassador Fellowship,” United States Department of Education, http://www.ed.gov/programs/teacherfellowship/applicant.html.
Author: DAD

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Forum on Teacher Quality

On Tuesday, the American Institutes for Research (AIR) held a forum on teacher quality. The panelist included:



• Beatrice Briman, Managing Research Scientist at AIR;
• Dan Goldhaber, Research Associate Professor at the University of Washington;
• Susan Moore Johnson, the Carl H. Pforzheimer, Jr. Professor of Teaching and Learning at Harvard University;
• Michele Rhee, the Chancellor for the District of Columbia Public Schools;
• Brad Thomas, Professional Staff Member for the House Committee on Education and Labor; and
• Alice Johnson Cain, Senior Education Policy Advisor to Chairman George Miller in the House Committee on Education and Labor.
Lynn Olson, the Managing Editor of Special Projects at Education Week moderated the discussion.

The conversation made two issues clear. The first point was that human capital is critical, but the federal effort to improve teacher quality has not proven particularly successful. According to research conducted by Professor Dan Goldhaber, it is clear that state certification is not a reliable measure of teacher effectiveness as measured by student academic outcomes. Often teachers who have failed their certification exams have produced tremendous student academic outcomes, while teachers who have passed their certification exams have produced awful results, Goldhaber found. The current proxy for teacher quality and effectiveness, most agreed, needs to be more sophisticated.

The second point of clarity was the disagreement on the proper federal role in this debate. Alice Johnson Cain made a strong defense of George Miller’s Teach Act. The bill, which Chairman Miller partially incorporated into the Elementary and Secondary Education (ESEA) House Discussion Draft, seeks to improve the recruitment, professional development and career development of teachers through a variety of innovative approaches such as merit pay and teacher career academies. But the economist (and Republicans) in the room cringed at the prescriptive approach and the researchers lamented about the lack of reliable research and data underlying such plans. They argued that the current and proposed federal policies, intended to serve as an assurance of basic quality instruction, have the detrimental effect of focusing educators on compliance and not academic outcomes.

The most evident consensus of the event was that those working on teacher quality policy have ample obstacles to tackle as Congress works on the reauthorization of the ESEA.

Resources:
American Institutes for Research, http://www.air.org/.
Dan Goldhaber, Research Associate Professor of Public Affairs, http://evans.washington.edu/fac/Goldhaber/
Author: DAD

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HQT Comes to Forefront of NCLB Debate

Teacher quality was the reauthorization topic of the week in Washington. The Center on Education Policy (CEP) released Implementing the No Child Left Behind Teacher Requirements, a report that examines how states and school districts have implemented the law’s highly qualified teacher (HQT) requirements and whether or not, according to state and district survey respondents, the HQT requirements have been beneficial to instructional practices, student academic achievement and the equitable distribution of teachers as required by the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB).

In summary:
• Most districts, but only about a third of the states, reported that they were on track to be in full compliance with HQT requirements by the end of the 2006-07 school year;
• A majority of state and school district officials believe that the law has had minimal to no impact on student achievement;
• HQT requirements have not had a major impact on teacher effectiveness in the view of state and district officials; and
• States reported varying degrees of progress toward an equitable distribution of experienced, well qualified teachers in high poverty and high minority enrollment schools.
Drawing from the report, CEP made a number of recommendations that fuel the performance pay debate, which has received considerable attention recently. At the center of the recommendations is the conclusion that many state and district officials felt the NCLB definition of HQT was too narrowly focused on content knowledge and not on the ability to effectively teach students. The responsibility for crafting the requirements for effective teachers, concludes CEP, should be driven by a state innovation and not federal requirements. The recommendations include that the reauthorized law should:
• Encourage states to develop methods to measure teacher effectiveness;
• Refine the current federal definition of a highly qualified teacher to address the special circumstances of certain kinds of teachers;
• Adopt a comprehensive approach to recruiting and retaining teachers in high-need schools; and
• Provide federal assistance to states to develop and implement comprehensive data systems.
As policy makers digested the CEP report, they also read about Sonya A Renee v. Margaret Spellings, a complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California by Public Advocates on behalf to a coalition of parents, students, community groups, and legal advocates.
The complaint argues that a regulation issued by the U.S. Department of Education (ED), 34 C.F.R. § 200.56(a)(2)(ii), addressing the requirements of the state certification prong of the law’s highly qualified teacher requirement, is outside the scope of ED’s authority under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). Specifically, the complaint alleges that allowing a teacher who is participating in an alternative route to certification and who has not yet obtained full teaching credential to be a highly qualified teacher violates the APA because the definition of HQT in the regulation is arbitrary, capricious, contrary to law, and exceeds the agency’s scope of statutory authority (5 U.S.C. §§ 701-06). The regulation, according to the complaint, flouts the letter and spirit of NCLB.
As a legal matter, courts grant agencies great deference and the likelihood of success on the merits in this case, if it survives procedural challenges, is not good. Yet, as a political matter, the suits will likely have considerable impact since the Chairman of the House Committee on Education and Labor, Representative George Miller (D-CA), is an original architect of the highly qualified teacher provisions of the law and he has stated his intent to focus his committee’s work on drafting a bill that improves on the existing HQT provisions. On July 30th at the National Press Club, Chairman Miller stated that the bill his committee will introduce this fall will, “ensure that poor and minority students are taught by teachers with expertise in the subjects they are teaching.” That Chairman Miller chooses the word “expertise” is important. As demonstrated by the CEP report and the Public Advocates lawsuit, the focus on “qualified” has not captured the human capital benefits the Miller likely sought when he first drafted the law’s HQT requirements. It is certain, then, that his committee’s reauthorization bill will make considerable revisions to the HQT definition with more attention to expertise and effectiveness.
Resources:
Jennifer McMurrer, Implementing the No Child Left Behind Teacher Requirements (Center on Education Policy: August 2007), http://www.cep-dc.org.
“U.S. Department of Education Waters Down Teacher Quality, NCLB Lawsuit Charges,” Public Advocates, News & Views, August 21, 2007, http://www.publicadvocates.org/
Code of Federal Register, 34 C.F.R. § 200.56(a)(2)(ii), Revised July 1, 2006, http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/waisidx_06/34cfr200_06.html
Author: DAD

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NCLB and Performance Pay

Washington education pundits continue to analyze Chairman Miller’s National Press Club (NPC) speech on the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Last week, we covered the building debate on multiple measures for the purposes of measuring adequately yearly progress (AYP). The debate is critical because the chosen measures will determine the law’s academic rigor. It is also important because the discussion assumes the expansion of the data points gathered by a school and district and those data points could be linked to an analysis of teacher effectiveness and to teacher pay.

The analysis of teacher effectiveness and pay is becoming a contentious topic in the reauthorization debate. In his NPC speech, Chairman Miller stated that the bill under construction in the House Committee on Education and Labor will include considerable support for teachers and principals, including “the performance pay for principals and teachers based on fair and proven models.” All parties involved in the reauthorization discussion would like to increase teacher pay, but how to do it is a matter of vociferous debate. The meaning of a “fair and proven model” depends upon who you ask. For example, the National Education Association (NEA) argues that merit pay, if not carefully done, would provide disincentives for teaching in challenging schools and in subjects that are not tested as frequently as math and reading/language arts. Proponents of performance pay, such as the Commission on No Child Left Behind (Commission), argue that pay for performance and other salary incentives are required in order to provide effective teachers for all students.
The debate remains contentious, but it is no longer the taboo subject that it was just ten years ago. Earlier this year, presidential candidate Senator Barrack Obama (D-IL) told the NEA at their national conference in Philadelphia that, “If you excel at helping your students achieve success, your success will be valued and rewarded as well,” and then mentioned merit pay in the question and answer session. Note that Senator Obama also sits on the Senate Committee on Health Education Labor and Pensions (HELP) which has just begun to draft language for a reauthorized NCLB. Earlier this month, Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) introduced S.2001, a bill to amend the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, which is the vehicle for the Commission’s teacher effectiveness and performance pay proposals. Most important, Chairman Miller and his staff are entertaining creative pay for performance models and the most influential this year has been the report published by the Center for Teaching Quality in Hillsborough, North Carolina, Performance-Pay for Teachers.
The report, which has been presented to the House and Senate Education committees, was drafted by a bipartisan group of 18 teachers who have been district, state and national teachers of the year, Presidential Award winners, Milken honorees and National Board Certified Teachers. It has, in short, bipartisan practitioner clout and it uses that to detail a framework for performance pay that is attracting support from both liberal and conservative education advocacy groups alike. That is no small feat in Washington and that makes it a plan worth monitoring as the education committees in the House and Senate continue to draft and debate reauthorization language that includes the “performance pay for principals and teachers based on fair and proven models” promised by Chairman Miller.
Resources:
Ruth Marcus, “From Barack Obama, Two Dangerous Words,” Washington Post, July 11, 2007.
Performance Pay for Teachers (Center for Teaching Quality: 2007), http://www.teacherleaders.org.
Author: DAD

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House Subcommittee Hearing on Teacher Preparedness

On Thursday, the House Education and Labor Subcommittee on Higher Education, Lifelong Learning and Competitiveness held a hearing on preparing teachers for the classroom. The subcommittee discussed proposals for efficiently using Title II funds to ensure adequate instruction and preparation for those going into the teaching field. The discussion included Title II funding under both No Child left Behind (NCLB) and the Higher Education Act (HEA). With both pieces of legislation slated for reauthorization this year, the education community has the opportunity to amend the provisions under both national programs.

Subcommittee Chairman Ruben Hinojosa (D-TX) opened the hearing by stressing the importance of having effective teachers in public elementary and secondary schools. The process for ensuring effectiveness, Hinojosa conceded, begins with the college and university programs that educate those teachers. The first step, as always seems to be the case, is highlighting the failures of the system. Chairman Hinojosa pointed out that the National Center for Education Statistics’ (NCES) 1999-2000 Schools and Staffing Survey shows that 41.2% of teachers in the country had limited English proficient (LEP) students in their classrooms, yet most are not trained to teach these students. According to the report, only 12.5% of teachers had more than 8 hours of training in how to teach these students.

Together, NCLB and HEA put about $3.6 billion into Title II programs annually, $3 billion under NCLB and $60 million under HEA. The witness testimony at the hearing centered on how to adequately funnel those funds to improve teacher quality. Witnesses at the hearing, representing organizations such as the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, Region One Education Service Center, the Carnegie Corporation, and National Center for Alternative Certification, suggested that the reauthorized laws should authorize funding for:

· Better state data systems, which would be designed to track teachers from their preparation programs into schools;

· Stronger clinical fieldwork experiences, especially in high-need urban school districts;

· Professional development programs tied to specific state standards and curricula;

· Sustained induction programs for new teachers; and

· Performance-based assessments for teachers that include components requiring teachers to reflect upon and change their practices.

All of the suggested reforms attempt to gear the nation’s public education towards more effective teachers instructing the neediest students in elementary and secondary public schools. However, the discussion on Thursday focused more on educating current and future teachers, and did little to address ways to entice already effective teachers to high-need districts. Rep. Susan Davis (D-CA) seemed to be the only subcommittee members to address the issue as a top priority, but was unable to generate more discussion before the subcommittee adjourned. While the hearing is only a preliminary step towards ensuring teacher quality, it is likely the beginning of a controversial debate on ways of measuring teacher effectiveness, a prime concern for NCLB reauthorization.

Resources:
Stephen Sawchuk, “Subcommittee Puts Title II Funds Under Microscope,” Education Daily, May 18, 2007.
Author: SAS

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NCLB: Week In Review

Congress was busy with No Child Left Behind (NCLB) this week. Secretary Spellings sought to distinguish the reauthorization from the Congressional investigations into Reading First and the student loan scandals, the Chairman of the House Committee on Education and Labor hosted other members of Congress for a hearing on the reauthorization and bills were introduced that may have a good chance of working their way into reauthorization language. To be sure, the reauthorization momentum grew this week, even if it remains somewhat disjunctive.

Secretary Spellings is very eager to get the process underway in order to complete reauthorization while President Bush is still in office. One day after the contentious oversight hearings on Reading First and student loans, Spellings sent a cordial letter to the House and Senate education committee chairmen and ranking members asking them to make a distinction between their oversight activities and their reauthorization duties, and to discuss the reauthorization over lunch. She wrote:

I acknowledge your committee’s oversight function. I look forward to answering your questions and those of other members, and to meeting with any members who would like to discuss these matters in further detail. […] I am hopeful that the pursuit of oversight will not delay moving forward legislatively on these two important laws. [….]

I believe the coming weeks afford us the opportunity to collaborate to strengthen NCLB and the HEA. So that we may best prepare for this essential work, I offer to convene, at the earliest opportunity, a working luncheon with you and your staff. Together, we can make progress that will benefit America’s students, parents and taxpayers.

While Spellings warm outreach is welcomed, it does not make the work of the chairmen any easier. They must still negotiate the law’s many technical sections and secure political consensus around the changes. The work around Title I’s accountability sections will be the most contentious and this week’s represen­tatives-only hearing in the House Committee on Education and Labor made that clear.

On Wednesday, members of the House Education and Labor Committee held a bipartisan meeting to hear recommendations from other members of Congress on ways to improve the NCLB. Twenty-five members of the House presented their opinions of the law that covered a wide range of topics, mostly regarding Title I accountability. Most supported growth models, but the meaning of a growth model remained uncertain. Most wanted more flexibility for the assessment of limited English proficient (LEP) students and students with disabilities, but details were sparse. Many felt that the law is too punitive and expressed concerns about expanding the law’s testing provisions. There were so many varying opinions, in fact, that Education Daily described the task of reauthorization as follows: “If the House education committee’s representatives only hearing is any indication, NCLB reauthorization could be a cat-herding contest at best.”

While consensus on many Title I issues remains complicated, there is emerging clarity around Title II. Chairman Miller is a strong supporter of the existing highly qualified teacher requirements and, for years, he has been trying to supplement them with his Teacher Excellence for All Children (TEACH) Act, which he introduced last week. The bill, H.R. 2204, would provide $3.4 billion to improve recruitment, preparation, distribution and retention of public elementary and secondary school teachers and principals. The Washington NCLB intelligentsia believe that the Chairman will fold this bill into a new Title II bill, while retaining many of its existing requirements and allowing for more credentialing flexibility using the High Objective Uniform State Standard of Evaluation (HOUSSE).

This week also provided hope, if not clarity, for Title II (D), the Enhancing Education Through Technology Program (EETT). Under Republican leadership the program has program has fallen from an investment of $700 million to the current $273 million level of funding, but education appropriations chairmen Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Representative Obey (D-WI) are considering more funding for the program in fiscal year 2008. Advocates would like to see funding restored to the 2002 level of $700 million, but the chairmen have yet to subject the request to the give-and-take politics of appropriations negotiations. In addition to more funding for FY08, Congresswoman Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA) is expected to introduce a revamped Title II(D), titled Achievement Thorough Technology and Innovation (ATTAIN). The proposal improves on EETT, including a better acronym, by authorizing $1 billion for fiscal year 2008, of which 40% would go towards rigorous and ongoing professional development and 60% would go towards professional development or technology tools. The bill gives priority to schools in school improvement status with large populations of LEP students or students with disabilities. It would also promote technology literacy by creating a definition of student technology literacy and requiring that states assess technology literacy by the 8^th grade. The bill’s advocates report that the proposal has been very well received and that its language stands a good chance of being incorporated into the reauthorized NCLB Title II (D).

Finally, this week also saw the introduction of a bill that could influence community and parental participation in reauthorization. On Tuesday, Representative Steny Hoyer (D-MD) introduced H.R. 2323, the Full-Service Community Schools Act of 2007, a bill to award grants for the support of full-service community schools, which are defined as schools that participate in a community-based effort to coordinate educational, developmental, family, health, and other comprehensive services through community-based organizations and public and private partnerships and that provide access for students, families, and the community to such services. The bill would authorize $200 million for FY2008, of which 20 percent would go to state educational agencies that collaborate with at least two other state agencies for purposes of planning, coordinating and expanding full-service community schools. Five percent would go to technical assistance, training, data collection and evaluation. Daniel Cardinali, the President of Communities In Schools, Inc. and an architect of the bill, considers it a complement to the law’s current parental involvement requirements and hopes that it will make it as a stand-alone bill or become a part of the reauthorized NCLB. But its fate, he acknowledged, lies with the chairmen of the education committees and the politics of reauthorization ahead.

Resources:
“Secretary Spellings Invites House and Senate Education to Convene on No Child Left Behind,” US Department of Education, Press Release, http://www.ed.gov/print/news/pressreleases/2007/05/05112007a.html
Sarah Sparks, “House cires Usual Suspects for Reauthorization,” Education Daily, May 18, 2007.
David Hoff, “Miller Signals Openness to ‘Substantial Changes' to NCLB in Reauthorization,” Education Week, May 17, 2007.
“Education and Labor Committee Hears from Members of Congress on Ways to Improve No Child Left Behind,” House Committee on Education and Labor, Press Release, May 16, 2007, http://www.house.gov/apps/list/speech/edlabor_dem/RelMay16NCLB.html
Coalition for Community Schools, http://communityschools.org/HOyerleg.html
Author: DAD

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Eduflack - Education Schools Project Coverage

There has been, I think, a direct relationship between Arthur Levines willingness to take on the schools of education and the success of the Harry Potter books. On the verge of the next in the series, Mr. Levine, once again, produces a new and critical study of the field. The folks over at Eduflack provide some nice coverage.

Eduflack: "America's teachers colleges are failing at effectively training a complete cadre of successful educators. That is news coming from a new study from the Education Schools Project, a effort headed by Art Levine. You can see a good write-up of the study in Education Week this week — http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2007/05/09/36levine.h26.html.

These are important conclusions, indeed. But are they news? For more than a decade, education researchers and education reformers alike have raised serious concerns about the quality and effectiveness of teacher training. That's one of the reasons NCLB's architects including HQT provisions in the law. And that's why so many are clamoring for a 'Flexner-style' study of our nation's teachers colleges. (Kudos to Nancy Grasmick for actually attempting to do it in Maryland)."

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Miller and Kennedy Introduce TEACH Act

On Tuesday, Rep. George Miller (D-CA) and Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA) introduced H.R. 2204 and its companion S.1339, the Teacher Excellence for All Children (TEACH) Act. The $3.4 billion bill is designed to improve recruitment, preparation, distribution and retention of public elementary and secondary school teachers and principals.


The bill serves four major functions. First, it addresses the recruitment of excellent teachers by providing institutions of higher education incentives to recruit teachers among students majoring in math, science, foreign languages, special education and English language learners and by providing aspiring teachers with tuition and loan support.

Second, the bill would assure that high poverty students have equitable access to quality teachers by providing local educational agencies the funding to distribute annual bonuses for exemplary teachers and by assuring equitable distribution of excellent teachers by making ESEA funding contingent on meeting the law’s teacher equity provisions.

Third, the bill would reward teacher quality by using robust data systems to recognize exceptional teachers, by funding the establishment of fiscally rewarding career advancement ladders, by requiring schools of education to track the results of their graduates, and by requiring the Secretary of Education to study the validity of teacher certification exams.

Finally, it would try to reduce professional turnover by developing teacher induction programs, peer mentoring and review programs, principal certification and professional development and tax relief for teachers and principles in high needs schools.

What does the bill mean for the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind (NCLB)? The chairmen’s introduction of the bills is a clear indication that the Democrats will focus their efforts on teacher quality issues. Yet, this is not new for George Miller who was an original architect of the highly qualified teacher provisions of NCLB. It also provides a framework for debate and legislative language on this topic. Notably, the bill provides a compromise on the pending debate on measuring teacher effectiveness. The Aspen Institute’s Commission on NCLB recommends tying a teacher effectiveness rating to student test scores, but the push-back has been strong because standardized assessments are, currently, blunt instruments and using them to assess teacher quality raises legitimate political and technical concerns. Yet, the Commission and Miller seem to agree that the technical capacity of school instructional management systems will continue to evolve and will, eventually, provide school leaders with powerful analytical tools capable of cross-analyzing teacher quality and student academic progress. How, exactly, that analysis should play out remains in contention, but that it will play out is nearly certain.
Resources:

“Miller, Kennedy Introduce Comprehensive Bill to Promote Excellence in Teaching,” Committee on Education and Labor, May 8, 2007, http://www.house.gov/apps/list/speech/edlabor_dem/rel050807.html
Author: DAD

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