PD Partners, October 06 - College of Education

PD Partners
Professional Development Partnerships
A Monthly Newsletter for the Professional Development Partnerships
October
2006
Vol. 1, No. 11
Alaska, Florida, and Texas Latest to Tie Cash To Student Test Scores
By Michele McNeil
In Texas this school year, teachers have money riding
on their students’ achievement. Up to $10,000, in fact,
under a new program designed to reward highperforming teachers in high-poverty districts, and encourage other teachers to do better.
Though many states have debated changing the way
teachers are paid, Texas is one of just three that have
succeeded in linking compensation for individual
teachers with student achievement. At the end of this
school year, teachers in about 1,000 Texas schools
will be eligible for cash bonuses, which will likely
range from $3,000 to $10,000, for boosting student
performance. The state has set aside $100 million for
these rewards, which will filter down to more than 10
percent of Texas schools.
The issue of pay for performance—or merit pay, as it
used to be called—isn’t new, but states like Texas are
eyeing bonuses as the easiest way to tie teachers’
paychecks to test scores. Unlike revamping a whole
pay system, bonuses don’t carry the threat of reducing
teachers’ paychecks. So Florida, Texas, and Alaska
turned to cash bonuses this year. But whether an endof-the-year cash bonus will translate into student success is another matter.
Big Mistakes
“There’s no question we need a new professional
compensation structure, but we’re seeing big mistakes
of the past repeated,” said Barnett Berry, the president
of the Hillsborough, N.C.-based Center for Teaching
Quality. “States are still clearly overusing the test to
gauge teacher effectiveness. If people think a 5% salary bonus is really going to make a big difference,
they really don’t understand the teaching profession.”
Yet more states will try this approach during the 2007
legislative sessions. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson
will make it a priority during the next legislative session, said Gilbert Gallegos, a spokesman for the Governor. Details are still being worked out.
Maryland Gov. Bob Ehrlich announced last week that
he wants to spend $800,000 next budget year to craft
a new “quality compensation” system for his state’s
teachers. Whether the new pay system—which would
be voluntary for districts—would involve bonuses or
an alternative salary structure is still to be decided.
In the past decade, Arizona, Minnesota, and North
Carolina have enacted different types of programs
that tie teacher salaries, in part, to student achievement. School systems in Denver and Houston have
also adopted performance-pay programs for teachers.
‘Meaningful’ Amounts
No matter what proponents call such ideas, bonuses, merit pay, or performance pay, unions are
still generally opposed to them. In Texas, teachers’
unions unsuccessfully fought the new bonus program. “First, we need to do across-the-board pay
raises, and then we can come back and look at
things that would be fair for everyone,” said Rob
D’Amico, a spokesman for the Texas Federation of
Teachers, a 53,000 member affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers.
The Texas program is aimed at the schools with the
highest percentage of economically
Continued on Page 2
Inside:
States Giving Performance Pay Through
Bonuses (con’t)
2
MetLife Releases Annual “Survey of the
American Teacher”
States Get Tough on Programs to Prepare Principals
3
States Get Tough on Programs to Prepare Principals (con’t)
Rookie Teachers Will Be Graded By a
'Coach'
District Leaders Said Not to Share Urgency for Education Reform
5
Good Test Scores Mean $42 Million for
Teachers
6
Teacher Education: Out of Step With
Realities of Classrooms
7
4
Poor and Minority Students Not Getting
8
Their Share of Qualified Teachers
States Giving Performance Pay Through Bonuses
Continued from Page 1
disadvantaged students. About 1,170 of the state’s 7,900
schools were eligible to take part, and 1,098 schools have
told the state education department they want to do so. Individual districts will work with teachers to figure out how they’ll
evaluate performance and distribute money. Each plan,
which must be submitted to the state for approval, must be
crafted with significant input from teachers and include at
least three letters of support from teachers, said Debbie
Graves Ratcliffe, a spokeswoman for the Texas Education
Agency.
Next summer, the state will award grants to schools with approved plans based on performance during this school year.
The awards will range from $40,000 for the smallest schools
to $200,000 for the largest. The schools will then hand out
the bonuses to individual teachers based on the approved
plans. Seventy-five percent of the money must go to the
classroom teachers whose students scores go up. The remaining money can go to other teachers and staff members,
such as reading specialists and administrators, who played a
role in students’ success. The TEA is recommending the bonuses range from $3,000 to $10,000 per teacher. “We want it
to be large enough to be meaningful,” Ms. Ratcliffe said.
Schoolwide Rewards
In Florida and Alaska—the two other states that enacted bonus programs for this school year—the rewards apply statewide, and not only to high-poverty schools.
The Florida legislature this year set aside $147.5 million for
its Special Teachers Are Rewarded (STAR), which replaces
an earlier performance-pay system. The top 25% of teachers
in districts that choose to participate will be rewarded with
cash bonuses next summer equaling 5%of their pay. For a
teacher making $40,000, that’s a $2,000 bonus. The money
will be given to individual teachers based on an evaluation
system devised by each district and its teachers’ union and
approved by state officials.
Alaska’s new program follows an older model of rewarding
whole schools. The three-year program rewards all staff
members in a school that shows improvement, based on a
complicated formula, or in the case of an already highperforming school, sustained achievement. Certified staff
members will receive $5,500, while noncertified staff, including classroom assistants and secretaries, receive $2,500.
District-level personnel, such as reading specialists who
serve multiple schools, are also eligible, said Roger
Sampson, the state’s commissioner of education and early
development. “We believe that if we’re going to get substantial improvement,” Mr. Sampson said, “everybody in that
school is responsible.”
2
On Thursday, October 12 MetLife and the Committee for
Economic Development hosted a luncheon to release the
findings from “The MetLife Survey of the American
Teacher, 2006: Expectations and Experiences.” MetLife
has sponsored this survey for two decades, and this year’s
edition looks at the expectations of teachers upon entering
the profession, factors that drive career satisfaction and the
perspectives of principals and education leaders on successful teacher preparation and long-term support.
Key findings include:
• Although teachers’ professional prestige is on the rise,
37% say their professional prestige is worse than they
expected.
• 64% of teachers report their salaries are not fair for the
work they do.
• 27% of teachers say they are likely to leave the profession within the next five years to enter a different occupation.
• Four in 10 teachers work more with special needs students than they expected.
• 58% of teachers find the hours they work each week
are worse than they expected.
• Despite the challenges they face, teachers’ career satisfaction is at a 20-year high: 56% are very satisfied
with teaching as a career, a 70% increase over findings
reported in the 1986 survey.
• Today’s new teachers feel better prepared to engage
families, work with students of varying abilities and
maintain order in the classroom than did their experienced peers when they first entered the career.
• 82% of new teachers were matched with a more experienced mentor during their first year of teaching,
compared to only 16% of veteran teachers.
Dr. Henry Johnson, Assistant Secretary for Elementary and
Secondary Education at the Department of Education, offered some remarks on the survey and the state of teaching
emphasizing its importance. Likening teachers to brain surgeons, he said, “Teaching is brain surgery—at least metaphorically, because teachers must have the right training,
resources and tools to do their job effectively.” Armed with
these tools, the impact of their actions is “life changing.” He
spoke in favor of the provisions of No Child Left Behind,
asserting that the law is making a real difference for all
populations, and hoping for the day when, “It is no longer
possible to predict student success by [the student’s] zip
code.”
MetLife and its Foundation support a number of educational
initiatives. More information on this survey and their other
efforts is available at www.metlife.org
PD Partners
Seeking Better-qualified Leaders, Policymakers are Raising Standards
By Jeff Archer
Impatient to prepare better-qualified school leaders, a
growing number of states are giving their universities an
ultimatum: Redesign your preservice programs, or get out
of the business of training school administrators. State
policymakers in Alabama, Kentucky, and Tennessee have
moved in recent months to require graduate programs in
educational leadership to meet new standards. Iowa and
Louisiana already have done so, prompting a few programs to go off-line.
The aim is to prod universities to produce principals who
are better equipped to lead school improvement. In response, many programs are working with school districts
to jointly select administrator-candidates and to create
new courses with more field-based experiences.
Analysts say the policy push reflects a new recognition
that most education schools are unlikely to update their
programs on their own. Kathy O’Neill, who directs leadership initiatives at the Southern Regional Education Board,
said state action is needed. “Working with individual institutions, we just didn’t see there would be the capacity or
will to make this happen,” said Ms. O’Neill, whose Atlantabased group leads a 5-year-old network of universities
engaged in the redesign of principal preparation.
Some state policymakers also took notice when Arthur
Levine, the former president of Teachers College, Columbia University, issued a sharply critical review of the nation’s university-based programs to prepare administrators
in a report 18 months ago. As states complete the process
of requiring such programs to redesign themselves,
they’re learning more about the challenges involved. Education schools often say getting adequate district participation in the recruitment and support of principal-candidates
can be a problem.
But many education school leaders see value in the effort.
Cleveland Hill, who recently retired as the dean of the education college at Nicholls State University in Thibodaux,
La., said the possibility of being shuttered helped convince
others at the university of the need to change. “Once you
go through the process, and look back, you realize this
was a very tough thing to do, but probably the only way it
could have gotten done,” he said. “If we hadn’t had that
push from the top, it wouldn’t have happened.”
Changing the Rules
States are driving the retooling by changing requirements
for programs that qualify people for school administrator
licenses. In general, states doing so are moving from
stipulations that certain courses be taught to mandates
that specific skills be mastered. In 2003, for example,
October 2006
Louisiana called on all of its universities that prepared administrators to submit proposals for new training programs
that focused on skills such as data-driven decisionmaking, parent engagement, and leadership of staff development. Of the 15 that submitted plans, only one—the
University of Louisiana at Monroe—was fully approved off
the bat. Nine were approved conditionally. And five were
sent back to the drawing board, in some cases more than
once, by the state’s summer 2006 deadline.
Nathan M. Roberts, the director of graduate studies in
education at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, said
the changes demanded were significant. His program—
one of the first to submit a proposal—was approved conditionally, though it had been working on a redesign for
years with the SREB. The SREB redesign network, which
includes 11 universities, is funded by the New York Citybased Wallace Foundation, which also underwrites coverage of leadership in Education Week. A number of states
also use Wallace grants to support redesign efforts.
Mr. Roberts said that in the old structure, Lafayette didn’t
consult with districts about whom to admit. Students took
courses largely in whatever order fit their schedules. And
many, he admits, sought the master’s degree simply to
earn more money, not because they wanted to become
administrators. “So I’m producing these numbers, but I
know it’s not going to help the district,” Mr. Roberts said.
In the university’s new program, which was launched a
year ago, faculty members work with district leaders in
selecting applicants. Students take their courses in a
specified sequence, and in a cohort, over two years.
Classes stress assignments to be completed in the field.
Gwen Antoine could be a poster child for the program. The
curriculum director at Jeanerette Middle School in Iberia,
La., had been taking graduate-level courses in administration on and off at Lafayette for about a decade when she
heard about the new program. “Nothing that I had learned
in those courses prepared me, or gave me any inkling of
what to expect once I became an administrator,” she said.
“It was research, theory, just listening to professors lecture, and reiterating information that wasn’t really useful.”
Now in her second year in the new program, Ms. Antoine
often applies what she’s learning. For instance, she’s doing a study for one of her classes on the effects of benchmark testing to gauge students’ progress throughout the
year—a schoolwide initiative she’s leading. Ms. Antoine
said she likes being in a cohort of 18 people. “It forces you
to stay in the program,” she said. “If you want a master’s
degree, you have to do it on the university’s
Continued on Page 4
3
States Get Tough on Programs to Prepare Principals
Continued from Page 3
terms, which I like, because every course builds on the last
one.”
Some Programs Closed
States are finding, however, that such overhauls take more
effort than initially thought. Louisiana first told its universities
to submit redesign proposals by 2004, but extended its deadline after campuses struggled to meet it. “[At first], they were
taking their existing courses, and looking to see how the standards could fit them, which is not what we wanted to happen,”
said Jeanne M. Burns, the state’s associate commissioner for
teacher education initiatives, who helped to lead the effort.
A sticking point has been involving local school districts.
University leaders say some districts don’t devote enough
time to recruiting candidates, and some are reluctant to allow
classroom teachers in the universities’ programs enough time
to do fieldwork during the day. “The onus has been on the
universities to redesign, and to get the districts to understand
their role,” said Frederick Dembowski, chair, department of
educational leadership and technology at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond. Some districts have been
supportive, however. The 6,300-student Evangeline Parish
district pays tuition for its staff members in the redesigned
program at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. District
leaders say they have a shortage of potential principals.
A few universities haven’t been able to meet their states’ new
expectations. Buena Vista University in Storm Lake, Iowa,
and Centenary College in Shreveport, La., were not approved
by the states’ deadlines, and so cannot admit new students to
their programs. Both are small, private institutions. Sue Hernandez, chair, education department at Centenary, said to
meet the state’s criteria would have required hiring more fulltime faculty. Many of the instructors in the college’s educational leadership program have been adjuncts. “It just didn’t
make sense to increase the size of our faculty in this department,” she said.
Two other institutions in Iowa faced a similar fate: St.
Ambrose University in Davenport, and Loras College in Dubuque, were told that their administrator-preparation programs didn’t pass muster, largely because they lacked
enough full-time faculty. Both Roman Catholic institutions on
the state’s eastern edge, they decided to pool their resources. They hired a faculty member from Louisiana, who
had helped a university there redesign its preparation of
school leaders, to set up a joint program.
The new partnership won state approval late last year, after
two years in which St. Ambrose and Loras couldn’t take new
candidates. Robert Ristow, dean of the education college at
St. Ambrose, admits frustration at having been shut down,
but said the principals now prepared there will be better for it.
“I firmly believe that our program is on much more solid
ground than it was previously, these are the standards;
you’ve got to meet them.”
4
By Tracy Dell'Angela, Chicago Tribune staff reporter
For 100 novice teachers at eight struggling Chicago schools,
an experienced peer--rather than a principal--will determine
if they are cut out for a career in the classroom. A new peer
mentoring and evaluation program was launched this year at
six elementary and two high schools.
If successful over the next four years, the program could be
expanded to other schools where new teachers need the
most support in planning lessons, managing classroom discipline and connecting with parents. Eight specially trained
coaches will work with non-tenured teachers this year. By
next year, the mentors also will work with "problem" veterans ordered into the program by their principals or a committee of teachers.
Teachers union President Marilyn Stewart and schools chief
Arne Duncan agreed the current system of evaluating teachers is "broken" and contributes to an exodus of promising
teachers in their first five years. Stewart said the current
evaluation doesn't help teachers improve in their early years.
Decisions about firing non-tenured teachers are too often
subjective and based on principal "favorites" rather than
honest assessments of ability, she said.
Duncan said he hopes the new program will lead to a more
honest assessment than the current rating system, which he
said has become largely meaningless and doesn't distinguish between mediocre and outstanding educators.
About two-thirds of the 20,000 teachers evaluated in the last
two years received the top rating of "superior, and nearly all
the rest had "excellent" ratings. The new peer review is
modeled after a successful program in Toledo, Ohio, where
about 8% of non-tenured teachers are screened out for incompetence. But the program has never been used on a
wide scale in the nation's largest districts. It works, leaders
say, because it gives top-notch teachers a stake in improving standards and holding colleagues accountable.
The eight coaches will be paid about $5,000 on top of their
teaching salaries to mentor new teachers. After about 20
hours of classroom observation and collaboration, the mentor will make a recommendation on whether to retain or fire
the new teacher. The principal also will offer feedback, but
the final decision will be made by a newly created peer
evaluation board.
Florida Strategic Imperative #4:
Improve the Quality of Instructional
Leadership — Increase the number of
school administrator Leadership Training
Opportunities
PD Partners
By Jeff Archer
Concerns about high school improvement, teacher quality,
and mathematics and science instruction may be grabbing
headlines of late, but they’re not keeping most of the nation’s superintendents up at night, a new survey suggests.
The nationally representative poll, released Sept. 27 by
Public Agenda, shows a majority of district leaders don’t
share many of the worries about public education expressed recently by foundation officials, politicians, and
business leaders.
Susan L. Traiman, the director of education and workforce policy at the Washington-based Business Roundtable, said she wasn’t surprised that district leaders see
their organizations in a better light than employees or
observers do. Still, she said, local education leaders must
come to better grips with the need to change. “I don’t
think we’ve done a good enough job of explaining the
implications of globalization, what it means to communities, what it means to schools,” she said.
Leaders of high-poverty districts were less sanguine than
their peers in more affluent systems, but the study’s authors were struck by how much the views of local education leaders differed from those of many national groups
advocating changes in education. “There seems to be a lot
of cross-talk in the situation,” said Jean Johnson, the executive vice president of Public Agenda. “You can’t help
but think these kinds of disagreements are holding up progress.”
Who Knows Best?
The poll, the latest in Public Agenda’s “Reality Check”
series, isn’t the first by the group to hint at a disconnect
between national calls for improvement and local opinion.
Last February, it reported that few parents were concerned about math and science instruction. Paul D.
Houston, the executive director of the Alexandria, Va.based American Association of School Administrators,
said the response to the apparent disconnect shouldn’t
be to convince the doubters that crises exist, but to listen
to what those being polled are saying. “I think superintendents have a pretty good fix on where the problems are,”
said Mr. Houston. “And I think our answers ought to be
more targeted, instead of saying, ‘Woe is me, the sky is
falling, let’s do something about the entire country.’ ”
The nonprofit opinion-research group, with headquarters
in New York City, based its findings on telephone surveys
of 254 superintendents carried out last fall and winter. The
study also polled nationally representative samples of principals, teachers, and parents.
A Bright Forecast
In general, the poll found district and school leaders
pleased with their own efforts. More than three-quarters of
each said low expectations for students were either not a
problem at all or not too much of a problem in their
schools.
Likewise, 59 percent of superintendents and 66 percent of
principals said their schools had little or no problem teaching students math and science. More than nine in 10 in
both groups were very or somewhat satisfied with their
teachers.
The positive message contrasts with the concerns driving
some recent policy pushes. Over the past year, for example, business groups and the Bush administration, citing
tougher global economic competition, have stepped up
calls for improving instruction in math and science. Philanthropic groups are calling attention to what they say is an
unacceptably high number of dropouts from high school.
And some groups have in recent months argued that
states aren’t adequately addressing the teacher-quality
provisions in the federal No Child Left Behind Act.
The teachers polled by Public Agenda were less optimistic
than the district chiefs, however. More than six in 10
teachers, compared with 27 percent of superintendents,
said too many students go through their schools “without
October 2006
The new survey does suggest where those trouble spots
may be. For example, while 63 percent of superintendents in high-income districts were “very satisfied” with
their teaching staffs, just 31 percent of those in lowincome systems said the same. Asked what they saw as
either very effective or somewhat effective ways to improve teaching, superintendents overall favored professional development (93 percent) and increasing teacher
pay (85 percent) over pay-for-performance policies (57
percent).
Three-quarters of district leaders said it would help if they
could dismiss low-performing teachers more easily, but
the teachers polled were more critical of principals for
tolerating bad teachers than were superintendents.
Business owner Ron Bullock thinks many district leaders
have too rosy an outlook. As the chief executive officer of
Bison Gear & Engineering, a 200-person company in St.
Charles, Ill., that makes electric motors, he said he sees
firsthand how students fail to learn needed skills. About
60 percent of high school graduates who apply to his
company are unable to pass a basic math assessment,
said Mr. Bullock, who serves on a National Science
Foundation panel formed this past summer to advise on
improvement in math and science education.
[Superintendents] may feel that they’re instructing OK,”
he said. “But my question is: What are the kids learning?”
5
Program Set to Issue 16 Grants to Schools Nationwide
BY BEN FELLER
ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration is providing
grant funds for teachers who raise student test scores,
the first federal effort to reward classroom performance
with bonuses. Sixteen grants totaling $42 million will go to
schools in many states. The government has announced
the first grants -- $5.5 million for Ohio -- where Education
Secretary Margaret Spellings made the presentation on
October 23. Schools in Cleveland, Cincinnati, Columbus
and Toledo will share the money.
President Bush's program uses cash as an
incentive and encourages schools to set up
pay scales that reward
some teachers and principals more than others.
Those rewards are to
be based mainly on test
scores, but also on
classroom evaluations.
The grants are also
aimed at luring teachers
into math, science and
other core fields.
Teachers normally are
paid based on how
much time they've
taught and how much
education they have.
Yet more school districts are experimenting
with merit pay, and now
the federal government
is, too.
The grants will range from about $1 million to $30 million. Performance pay has "very little chance of having
impact" because it's done in isolation, said Rob Weil,
deputy director of educational issues for the American
Federation of Teachers. "You have to prepare teachers
properly," Weil said. "You have to have mentoring and
professional development and professional standards. If
you don't have those things, it doesn't matter what you
do with compensation."
Bush has been promoting the Teacher Incentive Fund in
his recent speeches. "It's an interesting concept, isn't
it?" he said during a
school visit in Washington, D.C. "If your
measurement system
shows that you're providing excellence for
your children, it seems
to make sense that
there ought to be a
little extra incentive."
In the Ohio districts,
for example, school
leaders plan to pay
bonuses between
$1,800 and $2,000 to
hundreds of teachers
and principals who
raise achievement.
Bush sought $500
million from Congress,
and received $99 million for the program
this year. More than
half of that will be carried over until next
year because most of
the applications did
not qualify. The department expects to
accept applications again
soon.
It is not always popular.
Teachers' unions generally oppose pay-forEducation Secretary Margaret Spellings endorses the grants
performance plans, saying given out by the Bush administration, which award teachers
and principals who have good classroom performance and test
they don't fairly measure
scores. (EVAN VUCCI/Associated Press)
quality and do nothing to
The agency looked for
raise base teacher pay.
pay plans that outline how schools will get support from
However, Spellings says the money will be a good reteachers and the broader community. Schools with
cruiting tool. The most qualified teachers tend to opt for
higher numbers of poor children get priority consideraaffluent schools, she said. "These grants will work to fix
tion.
this by encouraging and rewarding teachers for taking the
tough jobs in the schools and classrooms where our children need them the most," she said.
6
PD Partners
According to Research Study from Former Head of Teachers College
WASHINGTON – Despite growing evidence of the importance of quality teaching, the vast majority of the nation’s
teachers are prepared in programs that have low admission
and graduation standards and cling to an outdated vision of
teacher education, concludes a new four-year study authored by Arthur Levine, president of the Woodrow Wilson
National Fellowship Foundation and former president of
Teachers College, Columbia University. The report, Educating School Teachers, released late last month by the
Education Schools Project, identifies several model programs but finds that most education schools are engaged
in a “pursuit of irrelevance,” with curriculums in disarray and
faculty disconnected from classrooms and colleagues.
These schools have “not kept pace with changing demographics, technology, global competition, and pressures to
raise student achievement,” the study says.
Equally troubling, state quality control mechanisms focus
too much on process, not substance, and vary dramatically. For example, the amount of field work required
ranges from 30 hours in one state to 300 hours in another,
and the number of required reading credits ranges from 2
to 12, the report says.
A majority of teacher education alumni (61%) reported that
schools of education did not prepare graduates well to cope
with the realities of today’s classrooms, according to a national survey conducted for the study. School principals
also gave teacher education programs low grades, with
fewer than one-third of those surveyed reporting that
schools of education prepare teachers very well or moderately well to address the needs of students with disabilities
(30%), a diverse cultural background (28%) or limited English proficiency (16%). Further, fewer than half of principals
reported that education school alumni are very well or moderately well prepared to use technology in instruction
(46%); use student performance assessment techniques
(42%); or implement curriculum and performance standards
(41%).
Most Teachers Trained in the Weaker Programs
Education schools based at master’s degree-granting institutions have lower admissions requirements, less impressive faculty, and higher student-to-faculty ratios than
those based at research universities. Yet these schools
currently produce a majority of the nation’s teachers. A
study conducted for the report by NWEA indicates that
students of teachers prepared at Masters I institutions had
significantly lower growth in math and somewhat lower
growth in reading than the students of those prepared at
research institutions.
Low Admissions Standards, Lack of Quality Control
The report says that because universities tend to rely on
schools of education as “cash cows,” the quality of teacher
education is compromised by setting low admissions standards to help boost enrollments and revenues. Although
the SAT and GRE scores of aspiring secondary school
teachers are comparable to the national average, the
scores of future elementary school teachers fall near the
bottom of all test takers, with GRE scores 100 points below
the national average.
Majority of U.S. Teachers
Prepared in Lower Quality
Programs; Report Issues
Recommendations to Reform
What It Calls the “Wild West”
of Teacher Education
October 2006
Accreditation does not assure program quality, either. Of
100 graduate schools of education ranked by U.S. News
and World Report in 2005, three of the top 10 are accredited versus eight of the lowest 10. In addition, Levine’s
report found no significant difference in student math or
reading achievement, regardless of whether their teachers
were prepared at nationally accredited institutions. The
study was prepared by the Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA), which controlled for teacher longevity.
The report includes a comprehensive action plan to improve teacher education in America. Recommendations
include:
• Transforming education schools into professional
schools focused on classroom practice.
• Closing failing programs, expanding quality programs,
and creating the equivalent of a Rhodes Scholarship
to attract the best and brightest to teaching.
• Making student achievement the primary measure of
the success of teacher education programs to gauge
student progress from the start of school through
graduation and to judge the quality of education
schools by the performance of their graduates in promoting student achievement in their classrooms.
• Making five-year teacher education programs the
norm and designing them to ensure that students
have an enriched major in an academic subject area
rather than a watered-down version of the traditional
undergraduate concentration.
• Shifting the training of a significant percentage of new
teachers from master’s degree granting-institutions to
research universities.
• Strengthening quality control by redesigning accreditation and by encouraging states to establish common,
outcomes based requirements for certification and
licensure.
Copies of the report is available at the Education Schools
Project’s Web site: www.edschools.org
7
Dates to Remember
Official Notice of Award of
Florida’s State Personnel
Development Grant
Annual Teacher Education
Division Conference
Doubletree Hotel Mission Valley
San Diego, CA
PDP Applications for Florida
State Personnel Development
Grant Projects Due
Professional Development
Partnerships 06-071st Quarter
Reports Due (with DOE 399s)
Florida State Improvement Grant
Technical Support Project
PD Partners
October 1, 2006
November 8-11, 2006
A Monthly Newsletter for the Professional
Development Partnerships
Florida SIG Personnel
Lee Sherry
Director
November 30, 2006
Lori Massey
Evaluator
USF St. Petersburg, 140 7th Avenue South SVB108
St. Petersburg, FL 33701
Phone: 727-553-4853 Fax: 727-553-4380
www.stpt.usf.edu/cspd
January 15, 2007
This electronic newsletter is produced by staff of the Florida State
Improvement Grant (SIG) Technical Support Project at the University
of South Florida St. Petersburg. The Florida SIG Technical Support
Project is funded by the Florida Department of Education, Bureau of
Exceptional Education and Student Services by IDEA, Part B, Project
Number 291-2626A-6C013.
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40 states did not analyze whether minority students
were being shortchanged.
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18 states did not report whether poor kids get an unfair share of unqualified teachers.
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The Education Trust reviewed new plans from every state
and the District of Columbia. The report contends that states
submitted incomplete data, weak strategies for fixing inequities across schools, and immeasurable goals. "We cannot
close achievement gaps if we don't close gaps in teacher
quality," said Ross Wiener, policy director of The Education
Trust.
Virtually no state reported on whether poor or minority students had larger shares of "inexperienced"
teachers. The No Child Left Behind Act uses that
term but leaves it open as to how to define it.
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Only three states reported complete data on the quality of teachers assigned to poor and minority kids.
They are Ohio, Nevada and Tennessee. The report
commends those states for steps they take to get
quality, experienced teachers into at-risk schools.
The No Child Left Behind Act not only requires states to
guarantee that 100 percent of core academic classes are
taught by “highly qualified” teachers, but also to “ensure that
poor and minority children are not taught at higher rates than
other children by inexperienced, unqualified or out of field
teachers.”
To see the full report go to:
http://www2.edtrust.org/EdTrust/Press+Room/
Teacher+Equity+Plans+Embargoed+Release.htm
The Education Trust, an advocating group for poor and minority children, has concluded in a recent study that underprivileged and minority children have a disproportionate
number of teachers who are unqualified, inexperienced or
teaching unfamiliar topics.
Following are some of the findings by Education Trust
researchers:
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