Negative negativity

If you have never seen Sherman Dorn’s blog, then you are missing a great perspective on education. I wish that I could write as well as he does and create such well though out ideas. But I guess that is why he is a college professor.

He is also a member of the NEA and he is not pleased with the NEA response to Race to the Top. As I pointed out before, it is a shame that some movement on reforms from the NEA are masked by such negative language.

In any argument, when one side goes so extremely negative, it undermines their point and marginalizes the organization. Sad.

Simple math: RTTT Chances > with ABCTE

I have been asked many times in the last few weeks if we are ‘going for’ Race to the Top (RTTT) funds as if I could just jog down to the US DOE and grab a few bags of cash. But people are right to ask about having ABCTE in the mix because the guidelines specifically say that states must have alternative teacher certification programs that are not based in higher education.

Now comes this NCTQ report that specifically recommends that Colorado adopt ABCTE to better their chances of getting access to these funds.

I hope that many more states will take a similarly hard look at their chances for tapping into these funds. This is an easy requirement for them to meet. Just adopt ABCTE for math and science teachers and your state wins, the teachers win and, most important of all, the students win with better math and science instruction.

Shortsight is as shortsighted does

I have been trying to keep up on the stimulus dollars to see if it is really going to prevent teacher layoffs etc. First my amazing ABCTE team got word last week from Utah that there is a hiring freeze on teachers right now. After a four year pilot using our math program, we were recently approved in Utah for all ABCTE certifications because they were constantly facing teacher shortages and knew they had looming teacher retirements. One district that normally hires 300 teachers will hire less than 50 next year. Most districts are eliminating educational programs and using those teachers to backfill any new hires needed. The final blow in Utah is that the state board approved a reduction to the school year by 5 days for 2009 – 2010.

Looking bad for stimulus dollars providing a positive impact for schools – Utah is actually slipping.

Then in my own backyard in Virginia (and my daughter’s school system), the Washington Post reports that Loudoun County Supervisors, upon hearing that Loudoun schools would get $11.8 million in stimulus, promptly cut $7.3 million from the school budgets. Not painful since it keeps them whole and no teachers will lose their jobs, but it certainly doesn’t create any reforms. And since Loudoun is still growing, it still creates problems.

The main issue is that state and district budgets are worse than initially thought. So the hole is much deeper and the stimulus is going to only fill it so far. Right now that is causing some panic and to twist a phrase – shortsighted is as shortsighted does. States and districts are looking to just get by next year so the dollars are not really driving any reforms.

The problem is that all this panic will dry up our teacher pipelines are really at the same time staffing is getting exceptionally lean. In two years districts will find themselves scrambling to find the talent they need. Those districts that think long term and really look to tap into the talent out there now and get that talent into teaching programs will be those that really do right by their students.

More to come……

FEAR THE TSUNAMI

Pretty interesting day for education in the press as they are finally breaking the story that I broke on March 20, 2009 about the pending “tsunami” of teacher retirements. USA Today has a piece about it quoting Tom Carroll from NCTAF saying that “we will lose one third of our teachers in the next 5-6 years”. The New York Times uses another quote from Mr. Carroll - “The traditional teaching career is collapsing at both ends,” the report says. “Beginners are being driven away” by low pay and frustrating working conditions, and “accomplished veterans who still have much to contribute are being separated from their schools by obsolete retirement systems”

It is great to see this getting some press. They did, however, gloss over the one of the major issues in the report which is that our retirement system for teachers actually provides a disincentive to delay retiring. While the rest of the working world has already delayed retirement in their minds by 2-3 years based on the collapse of their IRA’s or 401k’s, teachers in many states would financially lose if they delayed retirement. So the stock market collapse has no impact on our retirement issue.

South Carolina actually passed a law allowing teachers to retire and then come back without facing a financial penalty on their pension. I expect that we will see more states looking to follow suit as this tsunami builds over the next three years.

Since the beginning of this blog I have been sounding the alarm on retirements as my readers know from my favorite statistic: in 1972, 21% of the bachelor’s degrees in this country were in education and today that number is less than 7%. Unfortunately, most states have such restrictive teacher certification requirements dominated by Ed schools so that as those 1972 teachers retire, they are left with gaping holes. Those states without solid alternative teacher certification routes will be the ones who feel the greatest pain in the next few years. .

We have a unique opportunity today to mitigate this crisis. We have displaced workers with incredible skills who could become teachers and fill the void that will soon cripple our schools. The naysayers, and there are so many of those in education, will say that once the economy turns around, those people will leave. But they won’t leave if you have solid preparation programs like ABCTE’s that realize an 85% retention rate.

Secretary Duncan tells us that what we do in the next three to four years will have a lasting impact on our education system for the next thirty years. In the case of teacher recruitment, it is both what we do to attract more teachers and what we don’t do to change needlessly restrictive teacher certification that will have the greatest impact on our future students.

The unprecendented leading to the dramatic

I was invited to attend the ARRA briefing over at the US DOE today. For us, the briefing actually provided a little more information than previous top line discussions. In times of great change, effective organizations over-communicate. With ARRA, the US DOE is definitely making sure that they do that and it is appreciated by many. This extra communication is certainly keeping people from finding things not to like about the recovery money (see – I didn’t call it stimulus so their communication plan is working).

There are two great things about these briefings that are very noticeable. The first is that Secretary Duncan is so careful to always start with the positives. Whatever he is talking about, he always starts with the positive and continues to prefer the carrot to the stick. In this case, states forgoing the carrot (in this case the carrot takes the form of billions of dollars) will feel like they actually got the stick since they will lose billions. The second is John Schnur – if someone in the audience brings up something they don’t like, rather than debate, he asks for input on how to handle it better. It is so refreshing to have people admit that they don’t have all the answers and really seem to want everyone involved in making the program better. It is really disarming to the questioner which makes it quite enjoyable to watch since most questions are really just a ploy to get your organization noticed (disclosure: I have done this in the past).

However, they have got to find some new words. I wish that I would have written down how many times “unprecedented” and “dramatic” were used. No one would argue that the amount of money is unprecedented and that for that much cash we do need to see dramatic results – but it became a little funny towards the end as it seemed to be used in every third sentence.

The big take away for ABCTE is the Race to the Top funds (should we call this RTTT or R3T). There are $5 billion to fund this race. Approximately $4.35 billion will be given to the states that, through their ARRA spending, really demonstrated that they are working towards true reform with increased student success. The remaining $635 million will be distributed through the Office of Innovation and Improvement(OII) through existing programs and some new programs. It is clear that Jim Shelton, formerly of Gates, is now fully in charge of OII and ready to go since he stepped up and did a lot of the talking on RTTT. We should see some RFPs flowing here over the few months. I believe that they want to have the RFP process completed by end of the fiscal year and the money distributed in spring and summer of 2010. Very ambitious.

The Secretary also continued his theme of wanting to see more local courage and less adult dysfunction. He is correct. If that actually happens maybe the unprecedented will actually lead to the dramatic.