Institute for Leadership in Learning and Teaching—Strategic Plan (April 2008-draft)
Outcomes for the Institute
The institute will create opportunities to encourage reflection, dialogue, and exploration of learning and teaching.
Outcomes for Teachers
The Institute will develop programs to assist people in designing and delivering effective learning experiences.
Outcomes for Students
The Institute will support students in understanding how to benefit from the learning-centred experience.
Outcomes for Administrators
The Institute will develop programs to support a learning-centred approach to curriculum development and quality assurance.
Outcomes for Staff
The Institute will establish a support framework to encourage the growth of “communities of practice” around learning and teaching.
The Institute will recognize and celebrate excellence in learning and teaching.
Values
1. Self knowledge as the foundation of learning and teaching
2. Risk and vulnerability are central.
3. Learning as transformational, empowering, self-directed, and life-long.4. A diverse, democratic, and personal approach to learning and teaching.
5. A scholarly and applied understanding of effective learning and teaching.
6. A mastery approach to the design and delivery of learning experiences.
7. A just and fair environment for all.
Principles
1. The Institute will be learning-centred, in alignment with the mission, vision, and values of Okanagan College.
2. Everyone in a learning-centred organization is a learner.
3 A learning-centred approach requires well-designed lessons and effective lesson delivery.
4. Informal “communities of practice” are an effective way to share knowledge and skills.
5. A learning-centred approach continually reviews its outcomes and assessment strategies.
Long Term Strategies (over three years)
1. Create Fellows from eight areas who will guide and develop the Institute. Fellows will be selected from International, Trades, Technology, Health, Arts, Science, Aacp, and Business.
2. Create a course for new instructors and professors developed around learner-centred learning and teaching.
3. Use the number of peer-visitations as an important early measurement of success.
4. Develop a newsletter for the Institute.5. Celebrate excellence in student achievement.
Short Term Strategies (in one year)
1. Develop theme of “the first week” in Connections 2008.2. Develop curriculum for a course for new instructors and professors.3. Model “first week best practices” through posters and video.4. Develop training for small group instructional feedback.5. Develop a mentor program for new instructors and professors.
Other Strategies: brainstorming only
1. Two hour block of time for learning and teaching activities
2. Create “fellows” who belong to the Institute
3. One fellow in 8 areas: Business, health, science, arts, aacp, trades, international, technologies
4. Create incentives for people to participate
5. Explore required attendance on a semester long course for all new teachers
6. Improve the orientation for new teachers to include more “learning and teaching” skills
7. Explore mini-conference every term on learning and teaching
8. Develop regular teaching tips in college newsletter
9. Develop a food budget for those informal learning groups
10. Create a budget for external speakers
11. Explore creates uses of the scholarly release provision for faculty
12. Resource an inventory of skills and learning objects for teachers to reference
13. Develop a small group instructional feedback program
14. Encourage and measure numbers of peer-to-peer classroom visits
15. Develop a mentor program with trained mentors
16. Allow teachers to model their best practices using video
17. Use tv screens to showcase learning-centred staff
18. Explore You Tube as a vehicle of sharing instructional expertise
19. Explore learning and teaching radio station
20. Showcase professors like Jake Kennedy in action using multimedia resources
21. Share interviews with students so that students can view their point of view
22. Create a success channel on closed circuit or community television
23. Re-create the power of the learning centre inside our classrooms
24. Celebrate community successes beyond the classroom
25. Inspire people.
26. Create a semester event where we share success stories
27. Design a program to help students understand their learning processes
28. Provide a common first two weeks program to help teachers learn about the strengths of their students
29. Inform students about the benefits of belonging to a learning community
30. More student and teacher relationship building opportunities.
31. Improve relationships through more social events
32. Pot of coffee or tea upon request to every 8:30am morning classroom
33. Establish furniture to meet learning-centred needs
34. Encourage teachers to understand the benefits of alternative strategies such as circle time.
35. Explore the use of music to facilitate learning experiences.
36. Explore the use of humour in the classroom.
37. Provide adequate funding for faculty and staff development
38. Support case studies on instructional excellence
39. Encourage interdisciplinary practices
30. Create a newsletter or journal for the Institute
31. Collate evidence on the benefits of learning-centred practices
32. Create a trial or pilot on pass/fail grading.
32. Create a journal that focuses on the process success. Ie. Focus on the obstacles and how they were overcome
33. Address the needs of term instructors and faculty
34. Make certain there are good web resources
35. Create a repository for instructional artifacts
36. Provide an alternative web universe for experimentation
37. Create opportunities or a program that supports self-assessment of one’s personal and professional emotional intelligence resources38. Explore the use of portfolios for teachers and students
Monday, April 14, 2008
Friday, February 29, 2008
UBCO Conference Free to Okanagan College
May 7 & 8, 2008
UBC Okanagan’s fourth annual Learning Conference theme “Teaching and Learning in a Changing World” invites educators to share their research and practice in sessions that will explore the role of student research, learner engagement, critical thinking across disciplines, and the use of new technology in teaching and learning.
Dr. Joy Mighty, President for the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education will open the conference with the keynote “Preparing Global Citizens: Educational Reform in the 21st Century”. The second day will begin with a keynote address “Where is the Community in Web 2.0?” by Dr. Richard Schwier, 3M National Teaching Fellow (2005).
Register here:http://01.cms.ubc.ca/Page1560.aspx?PageMode=Hybrid
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Our First Project!
Here's a great link on how to make your first day really great. We'll be creating more materials to help instructors develop a wonderful first week experience for students. Take a look at these videos!
http://babar.cdl.edu/pachydermelixr/presentations/00-126-99-11171007-455450011979-37-58-9103737953/
http://babar.cdl.edu/pachydermelixr/presentations/00-126-99-11171007-455450011979-37-58-9103737953/
Educational Developers Conference
February 22/23 2008, Vancouver B.C.
My name is Paul Stephenson. I am a career teacher and my passion is teaching. I have a B.Ed, two Master’s degrees and I am in the midst of an interdisciplinary Ph.D. I work as an ESL Instructor and Learning Centre Coordinator at Okanagan College.
Last week I attended this conference with the intention of participating in a polite exchange of ideas which would assist me in supporting Okanagan College faculty in their career-long quest to continually improve their teaching skills.
The purpose of this Conference is to provide an opportunity for those interested and/or involved in educational development to meet and interact. We discussed techniques, strategies and methodology for working with faculty. The participants included Directors of Teaching and Learning Centres from universities and colleges across Canada, professors and instructors from various subject areas, administrators, and support staff.
As with all conferences that I attend, there are always concurrent sessions which give me new ideas and make me re-think about what I do. A fresh perspective always leads to new possibilities which enables teachers to reach more students.
What I was not prepared for was the emotional reaction I experienced as the Conference progressed. Some of the work which is being done in other colleges is truly career- altering for faculty. The support they receive directly influences the quality of their teaching, their ability to reach more students…in essence their skill development as learner centred educators. In today’s society, customers expect more and they deserve more. However, what many people overlook is the fact that this is a winning situation for all involved: students are more engaged, faculty are more satisfied and the reputation of the institution spreads quickly. I reflected on the situation at my own institution, Okanagan College. We currently have the opportunity and ability to develop an infrastructure of teaching leadership which would establish an exemplary level for British Columbia. In order to bring this to fruition, we need to move our committee forward to the next level which involves a substantial financial commitment to translating our potential into reality.
If you have any comments or questions please contact Paul at 762-5445 ext. 4647 orpstephenson@okanagan.bc.ca
February 22/23 2008, Vancouver B.C.
My name is Paul Stephenson. I am a career teacher and my passion is teaching. I have a B.Ed, two Master’s degrees and I am in the midst of an interdisciplinary Ph.D. I work as an ESL Instructor and Learning Centre Coordinator at Okanagan College.
Last week I attended this conference with the intention of participating in a polite exchange of ideas which would assist me in supporting Okanagan College faculty in their career-long quest to continually improve their teaching skills.
The purpose of this Conference is to provide an opportunity for those interested and/or involved in educational development to meet and interact. We discussed techniques, strategies and methodology for working with faculty. The participants included Directors of Teaching and Learning Centres from universities and colleges across Canada, professors and instructors from various subject areas, administrators, and support staff.
As with all conferences that I attend, there are always concurrent sessions which give me new ideas and make me re-think about what I do. A fresh perspective always leads to new possibilities which enables teachers to reach more students.
What I was not prepared for was the emotional reaction I experienced as the Conference progressed. Some of the work which is being done in other colleges is truly career- altering for faculty. The support they receive directly influences the quality of their teaching, their ability to reach more students…in essence their skill development as learner centred educators. In today’s society, customers expect more and they deserve more. However, what many people overlook is the fact that this is a winning situation for all involved: students are more engaged, faculty are more satisfied and the reputation of the institution spreads quickly. I reflected on the situation at my own institution, Okanagan College. We currently have the opportunity and ability to develop an infrastructure of teaching leadership which would establish an exemplary level for British Columbia. In order to bring this to fruition, we need to move our committee forward to the next level which involves a substantial financial commitment to translating our potential into reality.
If you have any comments or questions please contact Paul at 762-5445 ext. 4647 orpstephenson@okanagan.bc.ca
Monday, February 18, 2008
Time: How to Make Great Teachers by Claudia Wallis
Wednesday, Feb. 13, 2008
We never forget our best teachers—those who imbued us with a deeper understanding or an enduring passion, the ones we come back to visit years after graduating, the educators who opened doors and altered the course of our lives. I was lucky enough to encounter two such teachers my senior year in a public high school in Connecticut. Dr. Cappel told us from the outset that his goal was not to prepare us for the AP biology exam; it was to teach us how to think like scientists, which he proceeded to do with a quiet passion, mainly in the laboratory. Mrs. Hastings, my stern, Radcliffe-trained English teacher, was as devoted to her subject as the gentle Doc Cappel was to his: a tough taskmaster on the art of writing essays and an avid guide to the pleasures of James Joyce. Looking back, I'd have to credit this inspirational pair for carving the path that led me to a career writing about science.
It would be wonderful if we knew more about teachers such as these and how to multiply their number. How do they come by their craft? What qualities and capacities do they possess? Can these abilities be measured? Can they be taught? Perhaps above all: How should excellent teaching be rewarded so that the best teachers—the most competent, caring and compelling—remain in a profession known for low pay, low status and soul-crushing bureaucracy?
Such questions have become critical to the future of public education in the U.S. Even as politicians push to hold schools and their faculty members accountable as never before for student learning, the nation faces a shortage of teaching talent. About 3.2 million people teach in U.S. public schools, but, according to projections by economist William Hussar at the National Center for Education Statistics, the nation will need to recruit an additional 2.8 million over the next eight years owing to baby-boomer retirement, growing student enrollment and staff turnover—which is especially rapid among new teachers. Finding and keeping high-quality teachers are key to America's competitiveness as a nation. Recent test results show that U.S. 10th-graders ranked just 17th in science among peers from 30 nations, while in math they placed in the bottom five. Research suggests that a good teacher is the single most important factor in boosting achievement, more important than class size, the dollars spent per student or the quality of textbooks and materials.
Across the country, hundreds of school districts are experimenting with new ways to attract, reward and keep good teachers. Many of these efforts borrow ideas from business. They include signing bonuses for hard-to-fill jobs like teaching high school chemistry, housing allowances ($15,000 in New York City) and what might be called combat pay for teachers who commit to working in the most distressed schools. But the idea gaining the most momentum—and controversy—is merit pay, which attempts to measure the quality of teachers' work and pay teachers accordingly.
Traditionally, public-school salaries are based on years spent on the job and college credits earned, a system favored by unions because it treats all teachers equally. Of course, everyone knows that not all teachers are equal. Just witness how parents lobby to get their kids into the best classrooms. And yet there is no universally accepted way to measure competence, much less the ineffable magnetism of a truly brilliant educator. In its absence, policymakers have focused on that current measure of all things educational: student test scores. In districts across the country, administrators are devising systems that track student scores back to the teachers who taught them in an attempt to apportion credit and blame and, in some cases, target help to teachers who need it. Offering bonuses to teachers who raise student achievement, the theory goes, will improve the overall quality of instruction, retain those who get the job done and attract more highly qualified candidates to the profession—all while lifting those all-important test scores.
Such efforts have been encouraged by the Bush Administration, which in 2006 started a program that awards $99 million a year in grants to districts that link teacher compensation to raising student test scores. Merit pay has also become part of the debate in Congress over how to improve the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), triggering an outcry from teachers' unions, which oppose federal intrusion into how teachers get paid and evaluated. The subject is a touchy one for the Democrats, who count on support from the powerful teachers' unions. Last summer, Barack Obama endorsed merit pay at a meeting of the National Education Association, the nation's largest teachers' union, so long as the measure of merit is "developed with teachers, not imposed on them and not based on some arbitrary test score." Hillary Clinton says she does not support merit pay for individual teachers but does advocate performance-based pay on a schoolwide basis.
It's hard to argue against the notion of rewarding the best teachers for doing a good job. But merit pay has a long, checkered history in the U.S., and new programs to pay teachers according to test scores have already backfired in Florida and Houston. What holds more promise is broader efforts to transform the profession by combining merit pay with more opportunities for professional training and support, thoughtful assessments of how teachers do their jobs and new career paths for top teachers. Here's a look at what's really needed to improve teaching in the U.S.—and what just won't work.
The Leaky Bucket
There's no magic formula for what makes a good teacher, but there is general agreement on some of the prerequisites. One is an unshakable belief in children's capacity to learn. "Anyone without this has no business in the classroom," says Margaret Gayle, an expert on gifted education at Duke University, who has trained thousands of teachers in North Carolina. Another requirement, especially in the upper grades, is a deep knowledge of one's subject. According to research on teacher efficacy by statistician William Sanders, the higher the grade, the more closely student achievement correlates to a teacher's expertise in her field. Nationally, that's a problem. Nearly 30% of middle- and high school classes in math, English, science and social studies are taught by teachers who didn't major in a subject closely related to the one they are teaching, according to Richard Ingersoll, professor of education and society at the University of Pennsylvania. In the physical sciences, the figure is 68%. In high-achieving countries like Japan and South Korea, he says, "you have far less of this misassignment going on."
Other essential skills require on-the-job practice. It takes at least two years to master the basics of classroom management and six to seven years to become a fully proficient teacher. Unfortunately, a large percentage of public-school teachers give up before they get there. Between a quarter and a third of new teachers quit within their first three years on the job, and as many as 50% leave poor, urban schools within five years. Hiring new teachers is "like filling a bucket with a huge hole in the bottom," says Thomas Carroll, president of the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, a Washington-based nonprofit.
Why do teachers bail? One of the biggest reasons is pay. U.S. public-school teachers earn an average annual salary of less than $48,000, and they start off at an average of about $32,000. That's what Karie Gladis, 29, earned as a new teacher in Miami. She scrimped for 31⁄2 years and then left for a job in educational publishing. "It was stressful living from paycheck to paycheck," she says. "If my car broke down or if I needed dental work, there was just no wiggle room."
But money isn't the only reason public-school teachers quit. Ben Van Dyk, 25, left a job teaching in a high-poverty Philadelphia school after just one year to take a position at a Catholic school where his earning prospects are lower but where he has more support from mentors, more control over how he teaches and fewer problems with student discipline. Novice teachers are much more likely to call it quits if they work in schools where they feel they have little input or support, says Ingersoll. And there's evidence that the best and brightest are the first to leave. Teachers with degrees from highly selective college are more likely to leave than those from less prestigious schools. In poor districts, attrition rates are so high, says Carroll, that "we wind up taking anybody just to have an adult in the classroom."
How Do You Measure Merit?
To the business-minded people who are increasingly running the nation's schools, there's an obvious solution to the problems of teacher quality and teacher turnover: offer better pay for better performance. The challenge is deciding who deserves the extra cash. Merit-pay movements in the 1920s, '50s and '80s stumbled over just that question, as the perception grew that bonuses were awarded to principals' pets. Charges of favoritism, along with unreliable funding and union opposition, sank such experiments.
But in an era when states are testing all students annually, there's a new, less subjective window onto how well a teacher does her job. As early as 1982, University of Tennessee statistician Sanders seized on the idea of using student test data to assess teacher performance. Working with elementary-school test results in Tennessee, he devised a way to calculate an individual teacher's contribution, or "value added," to student progress. Essentially, his method is this: he takes three or more years of student test results, projects a trajectory for each student based on past performance and then looks at whether, at the end of the year, the students in a given teacher's class tended to stay on course, soar above expectations or fall short. Sanders uses statistical methods to adjust for flaws and gaps in the data. "Under the best circumstances," he claims, "we can reliably identify the top 10% to 30% of teachers."
Sanders devised his method as a management tool for administrators, not necessarily as a basis for performance pay. But increasingly, that's what it is used for. Today he heads a group at the North Carolina�based software firm SAS, which performs value-added analysis for North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and districts in about 15 other states. Most use it to measure schoolwide performance, but some are beginning to use value-added calculations to determine bonuses for individual teachers.
Sanders' method is costly and complicated, however. Under steady pressure from NCLB to raise test scores, some districts have looked for quicker, easier ways to identify and reward teachers who boost achievement. In some cases, they have made the call largely on the basis of a single year's test results—a method experts dismiss as unreliable. In Florida, for instance, one of Governor Jeb Bush's final initiatives before he left office in January 2007 was to push through a merit-pay program that offered a 5% bonus to teachers in the top 25% in each participating district, with selection based at least 50% on how much their students' test scores jumped from one year to the next. Houston had a similar initiative, though without the 25% cap.
Both schemes met with fierce resistance. Teachers rebelled against the notion that a year's worth of instruction could be judged by how students did on a single test on a single day. They objected to the lack of clarity about how teachers of subjects not tested by the state would be assessed. And they railed against a system that pitted one colleague against another in a competition for bonuses. To make matters worse, there were gruesome glitches. In Houston, a newspaper website identified which teachers got bonuses. Later, 99 employees were asked to return about $74,000 in bonus checks issued by mistake. In Florida, one county ran short of bonus funds while another had an embarrassing discrepancy between the number of awards given in predominantly white schools and the number that went to schools with mainly black students. Both Florida and Houston have improved their programs, but local teachers remain wary. "The new plan doesn't have clear goals," charges Gayle Fallon, who heads the Houston Federation of Teachers. She fully expects "all hell to break loose again."
Beyond Merit Pay
There are better ways. Florida and Houston might have avoided their mistakes if they had examined some of the more thoughtful approaches to rewarding good teaching that are being tried elsewhere—programs that actively involve teachers and look at more than one measure of how they do their job. In Denver, for example, Professional Compensation, or ProComp, is the product of a seven-year collaboration among the teachers' union, the district and city hall. Rolled out last school year, ProComp includes nine ways for teachers to raise their earnings, some through bonuses and some through bumps in salary. New hires are automatically enrolled, while veterans have the option of sticking with the old salary schedule. But in just one year, half of Denver's 4,555 teachers have signed on.
For Taylor Betz, the program is a no-brainer. A highly regarded 15-year veteran who teaches math in the city's struggling Bruce Randolph School, Betz can rack up an additional $4,268 this school year if she and her school meet all their goals. That includes $1,067 for working in a high-needs school, another $1,067 if students in her school exceed expectations on the state exams, $356 if she meets professional academic objectives she helped set in the beginning of the year, $1,067 if she earns a good evaluation from her principal and $711 if her school is judged to be a "distinguished school," on the basis of a mix of criteria that includes parent satisfaction.
Before ProComp, Betz had reached the top of the district's pay scale at $53,500 and, despite high marks from her bosses, was looking at nothing more than an annual cost-of-living raise (currently $260) for the rest of her career. "I've worked in hard-to-serve schools my entire career," says Betz. "I make home visits. I make phone calls. I'm looking at ProComp as compensation for the things that are above and beyond." Betz didn't expect performance pay to change anything about how she does her job but says it has made her even more driven. "Now I refuse to let kids fail," she says. "I'm going to bulldoze whatever the problem is and solve it." The bonus money is simply a just reward. "I'm not a money grubber. Most teachers aren't. But people in other professions get raises," she says. "Why shouldn't we?"
There's little research on what makes for a successful merit-pay system, but several factors seem critical, says Matthew Springer, director of the National Center on Performance Incentives at Vanderbilt University. Denver's program includes many of them: a careful effort to earn teacher buy-in to the plan, clarity about how it works, multiple ways of measuring merit, rewards for teamwork and schoolwide success, and reliable financing. In fact, Denver's voters agreed to pay an extra $25 million a year in taxes for nine years to support the program.
It's too soon to say if ProComp will raise achievement in Denver, but a pilot study found that students of teachers who enrolled on a trial basis performed better on standardized tests than other students. The program is already successful by another measure: raising the number of teachers applying to work in Denver's most troubled schools. Jake Firman, 22, who joined Teach for America right out of college in 2007, says he chose Denver from a list of 26 cities largely because of ProComp. "I thought it was a very cool idea," says Firman, who stands to earn extra pay for filling a hard-to-staff spot (middle-school math) at a high-needs school.
Another impressive model is the Teacher Advancement Program, or TAP, created by the Milken Family Foundation in 1999 and now in place in 180 schools in 14 states and Washington. TAP is more than a merit-pay program. At TAP schools, some of which are unionized, raises are based on the teachers' performance—which is measured by a combination of structured observations made four to six times a year and student test results, using a Sanders-style value-added formula. The best TAP teachers can climb the professional ladder in three ways: remaining in the classroom but becoming a mentor to others; leaving one's own classroom to become a full-time teacher of teachers, or master teacher; or taking the traditional route into administration.
The element of TAP that gets the most praise from teachers is its rigorous approach to helping them build and refine their skills and learn from one another. To do this, TAP teachers meet in small groups led by a master teacher for one to two hours a week, generally during the school day. That degree of supervision can be a tough sell to veteran teachers. "I hated it tooth and nail," says Cathy Dailey, who has been teaching science at Bell Street Middle School in Clinton, S.C., for 21 years. "All of a sudden I had to articulate my goals and know that someone was going to come in and watch me." Dailey particularly disliked being forced to reflect in writing on how well her lessons went. "I'd rather you beat me with a stick!" she says. But six years after TAP was introduced, Dailey admits that it has made her more versatile and effective. "I wouldn't be nearly the teacher I am today if it weren't for the big T-A-P," she says. "I do many more labs and more hands-on lessons. I'm always looking for new ideas on the Internet." She even likes writing the reflections. "You really evaluate what you did and how effective you were," she says. "Sometimes I give myself a pat on the back, and sometimes I think, Oh, boy, you've got to change that."
Since Bell Street Middle School adopted TAP in 2001, it has doubled the percentage of students scoring at an advanced level in math and reading and reduced the percentage scoring "below basic" in math 46%. Meanwhile, teacher turnover has fallen from a disastrous 32% a year to less than 10%. Jason Culbertson, who heads TAP in South Carolina, says such improvements in student achievement, quality of teaching and teacher morale are typical. A recent analysis involving 610 TAP teachers in six states, conducted by the National Institute for Excellence in Teaching, the nonprofit that runs TAP, found that 38% of TAP teachers produced above-average gains in student achievement in a single year, vs. 26% of teachers in a control group.
This school year South Carolina extended the program from 18 schools to 43, including all 10 schools in rural, impoverished Marlboro County, where 20% of teachers are not even certified. The challenge is funding, says Culbertson. South Carolina's TAP schools draw on a variety of federal, state and foundation funds to pay for stipends of $10,000 for master teachers and $5,000 for mentors and bonuses that range from $350 to $9,500. Culbertson is always looking for ways to attract more talent. His latest project: refurbishing an old Marlboro County mansion as an almost rent-free home for top teachers. "I treat the job more like a crusade," says the 28-year-old former social-studies teacher. "My goal is systematic change across the state."
It's a good goal for an entire nation in need of better-quality teaching. As U.S. school districts embark on hundreds of separate experiments involving merit pay, some lessons seem clear. If the country wants to pay teachers like professionals—according to their performance, rather than like factory workers logging time on the job—it has to provide them with other professional opportunities, like the chance to grow in the job, learn from the best of their peers, show leadership and have a voice in decision-making, including how their work is judged. Making such changes would require a serious investment by school districts and their taxpayers. But it would reinvigorate a noble profession.
—With reporting by Rita Healy/Denver, Hilary Hylton/Houston and Kathie Klarreich/Miami
We never forget our best teachers—those who imbued us with a deeper understanding or an enduring passion, the ones we come back to visit years after graduating, the educators who opened doors and altered the course of our lives. I was lucky enough to encounter two such teachers my senior year in a public high school in Connecticut. Dr. Cappel told us from the outset that his goal was not to prepare us for the AP biology exam; it was to teach us how to think like scientists, which he proceeded to do with a quiet passion, mainly in the laboratory. Mrs. Hastings, my stern, Radcliffe-trained English teacher, was as devoted to her subject as the gentle Doc Cappel was to his: a tough taskmaster on the art of writing essays and an avid guide to the pleasures of James Joyce. Looking back, I'd have to credit this inspirational pair for carving the path that led me to a career writing about science.
It would be wonderful if we knew more about teachers such as these and how to multiply their number. How do they come by their craft? What qualities and capacities do they possess? Can these abilities be measured? Can they be taught? Perhaps above all: How should excellent teaching be rewarded so that the best teachers—the most competent, caring and compelling—remain in a profession known for low pay, low status and soul-crushing bureaucracy?
Such questions have become critical to the future of public education in the U.S. Even as politicians push to hold schools and their faculty members accountable as never before for student learning, the nation faces a shortage of teaching talent. About 3.2 million people teach in U.S. public schools, but, according to projections by economist William Hussar at the National Center for Education Statistics, the nation will need to recruit an additional 2.8 million over the next eight years owing to baby-boomer retirement, growing student enrollment and staff turnover—which is especially rapid among new teachers. Finding and keeping high-quality teachers are key to America's competitiveness as a nation. Recent test results show that U.S. 10th-graders ranked just 17th in science among peers from 30 nations, while in math they placed in the bottom five. Research suggests that a good teacher is the single most important factor in boosting achievement, more important than class size, the dollars spent per student or the quality of textbooks and materials.
Across the country, hundreds of school districts are experimenting with new ways to attract, reward and keep good teachers. Many of these efforts borrow ideas from business. They include signing bonuses for hard-to-fill jobs like teaching high school chemistry, housing allowances ($15,000 in New York City) and what might be called combat pay for teachers who commit to working in the most distressed schools. But the idea gaining the most momentum—and controversy—is merit pay, which attempts to measure the quality of teachers' work and pay teachers accordingly.
Traditionally, public-school salaries are based on years spent on the job and college credits earned, a system favored by unions because it treats all teachers equally. Of course, everyone knows that not all teachers are equal. Just witness how parents lobby to get their kids into the best classrooms. And yet there is no universally accepted way to measure competence, much less the ineffable magnetism of a truly brilliant educator. In its absence, policymakers have focused on that current measure of all things educational: student test scores. In districts across the country, administrators are devising systems that track student scores back to the teachers who taught them in an attempt to apportion credit and blame and, in some cases, target help to teachers who need it. Offering bonuses to teachers who raise student achievement, the theory goes, will improve the overall quality of instruction, retain those who get the job done and attract more highly qualified candidates to the profession—all while lifting those all-important test scores.
Such efforts have been encouraged by the Bush Administration, which in 2006 started a program that awards $99 million a year in grants to districts that link teacher compensation to raising student test scores. Merit pay has also become part of the debate in Congress over how to improve the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), triggering an outcry from teachers' unions, which oppose federal intrusion into how teachers get paid and evaluated. The subject is a touchy one for the Democrats, who count on support from the powerful teachers' unions. Last summer, Barack Obama endorsed merit pay at a meeting of the National Education Association, the nation's largest teachers' union, so long as the measure of merit is "developed with teachers, not imposed on them and not based on some arbitrary test score." Hillary Clinton says she does not support merit pay for individual teachers but does advocate performance-based pay on a schoolwide basis.
It's hard to argue against the notion of rewarding the best teachers for doing a good job. But merit pay has a long, checkered history in the U.S., and new programs to pay teachers according to test scores have already backfired in Florida and Houston. What holds more promise is broader efforts to transform the profession by combining merit pay with more opportunities for professional training and support, thoughtful assessments of how teachers do their jobs and new career paths for top teachers. Here's a look at what's really needed to improve teaching in the U.S.—and what just won't work.
The Leaky Bucket
There's no magic formula for what makes a good teacher, but there is general agreement on some of the prerequisites. One is an unshakable belief in children's capacity to learn. "Anyone without this has no business in the classroom," says Margaret Gayle, an expert on gifted education at Duke University, who has trained thousands of teachers in North Carolina. Another requirement, especially in the upper grades, is a deep knowledge of one's subject. According to research on teacher efficacy by statistician William Sanders, the higher the grade, the more closely student achievement correlates to a teacher's expertise in her field. Nationally, that's a problem. Nearly 30% of middle- and high school classes in math, English, science and social studies are taught by teachers who didn't major in a subject closely related to the one they are teaching, according to Richard Ingersoll, professor of education and society at the University of Pennsylvania. In the physical sciences, the figure is 68%. In high-achieving countries like Japan and South Korea, he says, "you have far less of this misassignment going on."
Other essential skills require on-the-job practice. It takes at least two years to master the basics of classroom management and six to seven years to become a fully proficient teacher. Unfortunately, a large percentage of public-school teachers give up before they get there. Between a quarter and a third of new teachers quit within their first three years on the job, and as many as 50% leave poor, urban schools within five years. Hiring new teachers is "like filling a bucket with a huge hole in the bottom," says Thomas Carroll, president of the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, a Washington-based nonprofit.
Why do teachers bail? One of the biggest reasons is pay. U.S. public-school teachers earn an average annual salary of less than $48,000, and they start off at an average of about $32,000. That's what Karie Gladis, 29, earned as a new teacher in Miami. She scrimped for 31⁄2 years and then left for a job in educational publishing. "It was stressful living from paycheck to paycheck," she says. "If my car broke down or if I needed dental work, there was just no wiggle room."
But money isn't the only reason public-school teachers quit. Ben Van Dyk, 25, left a job teaching in a high-poverty Philadelphia school after just one year to take a position at a Catholic school where his earning prospects are lower but where he has more support from mentors, more control over how he teaches and fewer problems with student discipline. Novice teachers are much more likely to call it quits if they work in schools where they feel they have little input or support, says Ingersoll. And there's evidence that the best and brightest are the first to leave. Teachers with degrees from highly selective college are more likely to leave than those from less prestigious schools. In poor districts, attrition rates are so high, says Carroll, that "we wind up taking anybody just to have an adult in the classroom."
How Do You Measure Merit?
To the business-minded people who are increasingly running the nation's schools, there's an obvious solution to the problems of teacher quality and teacher turnover: offer better pay for better performance. The challenge is deciding who deserves the extra cash. Merit-pay movements in the 1920s, '50s and '80s stumbled over just that question, as the perception grew that bonuses were awarded to principals' pets. Charges of favoritism, along with unreliable funding and union opposition, sank such experiments.
But in an era when states are testing all students annually, there's a new, less subjective window onto how well a teacher does her job. As early as 1982, University of Tennessee statistician Sanders seized on the idea of using student test data to assess teacher performance. Working with elementary-school test results in Tennessee, he devised a way to calculate an individual teacher's contribution, or "value added," to student progress. Essentially, his method is this: he takes three or more years of student test results, projects a trajectory for each student based on past performance and then looks at whether, at the end of the year, the students in a given teacher's class tended to stay on course, soar above expectations or fall short. Sanders uses statistical methods to adjust for flaws and gaps in the data. "Under the best circumstances," he claims, "we can reliably identify the top 10% to 30% of teachers."
Sanders devised his method as a management tool for administrators, not necessarily as a basis for performance pay. But increasingly, that's what it is used for. Today he heads a group at the North Carolina�based software firm SAS, which performs value-added analysis for North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and districts in about 15 other states. Most use it to measure schoolwide performance, but some are beginning to use value-added calculations to determine bonuses for individual teachers.
Sanders' method is costly and complicated, however. Under steady pressure from NCLB to raise test scores, some districts have looked for quicker, easier ways to identify and reward teachers who boost achievement. In some cases, they have made the call largely on the basis of a single year's test results—a method experts dismiss as unreliable. In Florida, for instance, one of Governor Jeb Bush's final initiatives before he left office in January 2007 was to push through a merit-pay program that offered a 5% bonus to teachers in the top 25% in each participating district, with selection based at least 50% on how much their students' test scores jumped from one year to the next. Houston had a similar initiative, though without the 25% cap.
Both schemes met with fierce resistance. Teachers rebelled against the notion that a year's worth of instruction could be judged by how students did on a single test on a single day. They objected to the lack of clarity about how teachers of subjects not tested by the state would be assessed. And they railed against a system that pitted one colleague against another in a competition for bonuses. To make matters worse, there were gruesome glitches. In Houston, a newspaper website identified which teachers got bonuses. Later, 99 employees were asked to return about $74,000 in bonus checks issued by mistake. In Florida, one county ran short of bonus funds while another had an embarrassing discrepancy between the number of awards given in predominantly white schools and the number that went to schools with mainly black students. Both Florida and Houston have improved their programs, but local teachers remain wary. "The new plan doesn't have clear goals," charges Gayle Fallon, who heads the Houston Federation of Teachers. She fully expects "all hell to break loose again."
Beyond Merit Pay
There are better ways. Florida and Houston might have avoided their mistakes if they had examined some of the more thoughtful approaches to rewarding good teaching that are being tried elsewhere—programs that actively involve teachers and look at more than one measure of how they do their job. In Denver, for example, Professional Compensation, or ProComp, is the product of a seven-year collaboration among the teachers' union, the district and city hall. Rolled out last school year, ProComp includes nine ways for teachers to raise their earnings, some through bonuses and some through bumps in salary. New hires are automatically enrolled, while veterans have the option of sticking with the old salary schedule. But in just one year, half of Denver's 4,555 teachers have signed on.
For Taylor Betz, the program is a no-brainer. A highly regarded 15-year veteran who teaches math in the city's struggling Bruce Randolph School, Betz can rack up an additional $4,268 this school year if she and her school meet all their goals. That includes $1,067 for working in a high-needs school, another $1,067 if students in her school exceed expectations on the state exams, $356 if she meets professional academic objectives she helped set in the beginning of the year, $1,067 if she earns a good evaluation from her principal and $711 if her school is judged to be a "distinguished school," on the basis of a mix of criteria that includes parent satisfaction.
Before ProComp, Betz had reached the top of the district's pay scale at $53,500 and, despite high marks from her bosses, was looking at nothing more than an annual cost-of-living raise (currently $260) for the rest of her career. "I've worked in hard-to-serve schools my entire career," says Betz. "I make home visits. I make phone calls. I'm looking at ProComp as compensation for the things that are above and beyond." Betz didn't expect performance pay to change anything about how she does her job but says it has made her even more driven. "Now I refuse to let kids fail," she says. "I'm going to bulldoze whatever the problem is and solve it." The bonus money is simply a just reward. "I'm not a money grubber. Most teachers aren't. But people in other professions get raises," she says. "Why shouldn't we?"
There's little research on what makes for a successful merit-pay system, but several factors seem critical, says Matthew Springer, director of the National Center on Performance Incentives at Vanderbilt University. Denver's program includes many of them: a careful effort to earn teacher buy-in to the plan, clarity about how it works, multiple ways of measuring merit, rewards for teamwork and schoolwide success, and reliable financing. In fact, Denver's voters agreed to pay an extra $25 million a year in taxes for nine years to support the program.
It's too soon to say if ProComp will raise achievement in Denver, but a pilot study found that students of teachers who enrolled on a trial basis performed better on standardized tests than other students. The program is already successful by another measure: raising the number of teachers applying to work in Denver's most troubled schools. Jake Firman, 22, who joined Teach for America right out of college in 2007, says he chose Denver from a list of 26 cities largely because of ProComp. "I thought it was a very cool idea," says Firman, who stands to earn extra pay for filling a hard-to-staff spot (middle-school math) at a high-needs school.
Another impressive model is the Teacher Advancement Program, or TAP, created by the Milken Family Foundation in 1999 and now in place in 180 schools in 14 states and Washington. TAP is more than a merit-pay program. At TAP schools, some of which are unionized, raises are based on the teachers' performance—which is measured by a combination of structured observations made four to six times a year and student test results, using a Sanders-style value-added formula. The best TAP teachers can climb the professional ladder in three ways: remaining in the classroom but becoming a mentor to others; leaving one's own classroom to become a full-time teacher of teachers, or master teacher; or taking the traditional route into administration.
The element of TAP that gets the most praise from teachers is its rigorous approach to helping them build and refine their skills and learn from one another. To do this, TAP teachers meet in small groups led by a master teacher for one to two hours a week, generally during the school day. That degree of supervision can be a tough sell to veteran teachers. "I hated it tooth and nail," says Cathy Dailey, who has been teaching science at Bell Street Middle School in Clinton, S.C., for 21 years. "All of a sudden I had to articulate my goals and know that someone was going to come in and watch me." Dailey particularly disliked being forced to reflect in writing on how well her lessons went. "I'd rather you beat me with a stick!" she says. But six years after TAP was introduced, Dailey admits that it has made her more versatile and effective. "I wouldn't be nearly the teacher I am today if it weren't for the big T-A-P," she says. "I do many more labs and more hands-on lessons. I'm always looking for new ideas on the Internet." She even likes writing the reflections. "You really evaluate what you did and how effective you were," she says. "Sometimes I give myself a pat on the back, and sometimes I think, Oh, boy, you've got to change that."
Since Bell Street Middle School adopted TAP in 2001, it has doubled the percentage of students scoring at an advanced level in math and reading and reduced the percentage scoring "below basic" in math 46%. Meanwhile, teacher turnover has fallen from a disastrous 32% a year to less than 10%. Jason Culbertson, who heads TAP in South Carolina, says such improvements in student achievement, quality of teaching and teacher morale are typical. A recent analysis involving 610 TAP teachers in six states, conducted by the National Institute for Excellence in Teaching, the nonprofit that runs TAP, found that 38% of TAP teachers produced above-average gains in student achievement in a single year, vs. 26% of teachers in a control group.
This school year South Carolina extended the program from 18 schools to 43, including all 10 schools in rural, impoverished Marlboro County, where 20% of teachers are not even certified. The challenge is funding, says Culbertson. South Carolina's TAP schools draw on a variety of federal, state and foundation funds to pay for stipends of $10,000 for master teachers and $5,000 for mentors and bonuses that range from $350 to $9,500. Culbertson is always looking for ways to attract more talent. His latest project: refurbishing an old Marlboro County mansion as an almost rent-free home for top teachers. "I treat the job more like a crusade," says the 28-year-old former social-studies teacher. "My goal is systematic change across the state."
It's a good goal for an entire nation in need of better-quality teaching. As U.S. school districts embark on hundreds of separate experiments involving merit pay, some lessons seem clear. If the country wants to pay teachers like professionals—according to their performance, rather than like factory workers logging time on the job—it has to provide them with other professional opportunities, like the chance to grow in the job, learn from the best of their peers, show leadership and have a voice in decision-making, including how their work is judged. Making such changes would require a serious investment by school districts and their taxpayers. But it would reinvigorate a noble profession.
—With reporting by Rita Healy/Denver, Hilary Hylton/Houston and Kathie Klarreich/Miami
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Feb 13 2008 Meeting
We just had a superb meeting! Our outcomes was to continue from our December 7th 2007 meeting where we began brainstorming strategies to support the aims of the Institute for Leadership in Learning and Teaching.
The most exciting potential project we discussed? It was a campaign to launch the Institute based on an issue that can truly surprise, inspire, and sustain us. This campaign might be called "Project First Week."
"Project First Week" is all about providing instructors with a wonderful set of tools, ideas, and strategies to help make the first week of classes welcoming, exciting, engaging, and meaningful. Here are some of the ideas we kicked around:
1. Providing a binder and online resources cataloguing all the wonderful activities and ideas we are already providing students in the first week. Perhaps in the spring of 2008 we can launch a request for all the best practices used by instructors and staff in that all important first week of classes. Prizes?
2. Providing a resource of video clips, blogs, lesson plans, and newsletters to showcase all our great home grown Okanagan College ideas so that we can share with eachother all the ways we can help make students understand the expectations of college life--both academically and culturally.
3. Providing a workshop during Next Steps 2008 and perhaps a small course designed for instructional staff on how to make the best of the first week of classes. Topics covered might include how to present your course outline, fun ice-breaker activities, ways to build a learning community, and strategies to help student develop positive relationships.
4. The first week of classes are also an opportunity for us to begin building and strengthening a learning community around learning and teaching. Ideas for discussion include a mentoring program, an online lesson plan swapping service, and a guest lecture registry.
We talked about so many exciting and inspiring potential activities. Thanks so much to the committee members!
The most exciting potential project we discussed? It was a campaign to launch the Institute based on an issue that can truly surprise, inspire, and sustain us. This campaign might be called "Project First Week."
"Project First Week" is all about providing instructors with a wonderful set of tools, ideas, and strategies to help make the first week of classes welcoming, exciting, engaging, and meaningful. Here are some of the ideas we kicked around:
1. Providing a binder and online resources cataloguing all the wonderful activities and ideas we are already providing students in the first week. Perhaps in the spring of 2008 we can launch a request for all the best practices used by instructors and staff in that all important first week of classes. Prizes?
2. Providing a resource of video clips, blogs, lesson plans, and newsletters to showcase all our great home grown Okanagan College ideas so that we can share with eachother all the ways we can help make students understand the expectations of college life--both academically and culturally.
3. Providing a workshop during Next Steps 2008 and perhaps a small course designed for instructional staff on how to make the best of the first week of classes. Topics covered might include how to present your course outline, fun ice-breaker activities, ways to build a learning community, and strategies to help student develop positive relationships.
4. The first week of classes are also an opportunity for us to begin building and strengthening a learning community around learning and teaching. Ideas for discussion include a mentoring program, an online lesson plan swapping service, and a guest lecture registry.
We talked about so many exciting and inspiring potential activities. Thanks so much to the committee members!
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