Appreciate some great teachers!

One of the best ways to illustrate the inspiring work ABCTE teachers are doing is by letting them tell the stories themselves. We’ve been doing this in the Meet Our Teachers section of our website with written profiles and we recently launched an ABCTE YouTube channel where we’ve started posting video profiles of our teachers.

The first set of videos went online last week to celebrate National Teacher Appreciation Week and we’ll have more going up in the next few weeks.

Leah Dow shares a story about taking her special education class to prom.

First-year biology teacher Nick Gastelecutto talks about making an impact and talking a student out of dropping out of school.

Reading teacher Chuck Foster speaks about helping a student deal with test anxiety and then seeing her scores jump 50 points.

Fixing Teacher Quality

Teaching quality continues to move forward in the news. Mike Petrilli has an excellent write up in the Gadfly from last week and now a new article in the Washington Post about what the newly canonized Michelle Rhee plans to do. But they are all trying to run before we learn to walk.
Management texts will tell you that you need to focus on improving staff. In teaching, the staggering numbers always tell the tale.

There are 3.2 million teachers. Jack Welch, the brilliant CEO of GE, made his managers rank all staff so that they knew the top 20%, middle 70% and the bottom 10%. The top 20% were fast tracked into leadership positions and the bottom 10% got fired.

We would have to fire 320,000 teachers per year. That would double the number of teachers we need to hire each year and since we can’t find enough to fill our positions now, we will never have enough if we start to really push an aggressive approach towards eliminating mediocre teaching.

The other problem with rating teachers is that our principals have not demonstrated that they are really all that great at rating teachers. Here I am siding with the teacher’s unions again - but we would really need some serious evaluation training for principals before we can start this type of approach.

To solve teacher quality we need to do the following:

1. Fix recruitment – have enough candidates for each position so that the principal can hire the right teacher for his/her students – we need more routes to the classroom to increase the numbers
2. Be Selective - less than 40% of our ABCTE candidates make it through the program and we are starting to see great results from our teachers
3. Train principals in hiring – ensure they know how to match the teacher to the students
   Develop great performance evaluations for teachers – outcomes and observations based and ensure the evaluation is more than once a year
4. Train principals on evaluations – ensure they know how to develop teachers
5. Develop truly great professional development for teachers – develop efficacy measure for the professional development to ensure it meets minimum standards
6. Train principals on how to assign prescriptive professional development from performance evaluations

Once that is in place, then you can start to move teachers who do not succeed with students out of the classroom. But we have a lot of work to do learning to walk before we can start running.

Management by Fad

When United States manufacturing companies were getting their collective butts kicked by Japan in the late 70’s early 80’s, they started grasping for straws. They would try anything new to get their edge back and the string of different techniques they tried became known as management by fad. Many of these fads were actually sound ideas. However, when companies went to implement the latest fad, they neglected to properly train staff which created lousy execution.

Fast forward to today where K-12 education is getting their collective butts kicked in the world arena and here we go again: management by fad. Schools are trying anything, as long as it is new, to improve education. Since results are hard (and costly) to measure, we just go forward with things that sound like they should work. And what is usually lacking is proper training which is creating lousy execution.

Technology is big – we are trying to use the the latest technology but we really don’t have any knowledge of how to use that technology to improve education results. So we spend a lot of money and have smart boards and laptops in classrooms – but not a lot training and knowledge for teachers on their use and how it can impact achievement.

Block scheduling - intuitively obvious that it would work but we have no real data and now we read that schools are questioning the unintended consequences of this approach. Having gone through this with both my kids, I often wonder if this is better or worse as it seems better for classes with long set up and clean up (chemistry, art, shop, band, PE), but worse for history, English and math where it might be better for daily classes. Once again, it appears that more training and better execution would create improved results.

Our teachers need better training on how to use the new programs – not just new programs - and we need to find something to measure effectiveness lest we continue to dart in and out of programs without any real long term direction.

Note that in the previous post, the world’s best schools don’t have one way of doing things. They have great teachers who receive great training in delivering great instruction. Buying laptops and moving to block scheduling cannot make up for problems in those areas.

Selectivity

I find the McKinsey & Company analysisof the world’s best performing school systems fascinating. The analysis and comparison of the world’s schools should create some amazing actions to help improve education in the United States. Unfortunately education is not about analysis, it is about politics.

Their number one recommendation is that we need to develop a world-class teaching work force if our schools are ever to regain their rightful place as the best in the world.

It is interesting that selectivity is a prime focus of world class school systems. However, most of the so-called “alternative teacher certification” models in use in the United States allows almost anyone into the classroom to teach. While they are teaching, in their free time, they are expected to take classes to learn the art and science of teaching. At the end of two to three years of this, they are certified teachers. The only selectivity is if you have the stamina to teach all day, do your lesson plans, grade your papers and still have enough energy to attend classes at nights and on weekends to complete your course work. However – in the ABCTE program – you have to complete your study BEFORE you get to in front of kids and only 40% make it through to the classroom. Selectivity.

Part two of the McKinsey study is ongoing professional development. Those who oppose us are worried because they know that the mentoring and professional development our teachers get once they are in the classroom to speed their development on the job is not world class. We are constantly told that the professional development is a joke and the mentoring is sketchy at best. We need a concerted effort to fix both if we ever want a world class teaching workforce.
Finally, we have to stop lowering class size until we achieve selectivity and quality in our teachers and the absolute best continued training. All we are doing every time we lower a class size is diluting the quality of the workforce we have with no solid supply to augment that workforce. The McKinsey report clearly states that you would increase student achievement if we put a few more students with our star teachers as opposed to creating smaller classes taught by mediocre teachers.

This is a great report – but as usual, the politics in education will get in the way of any progress in education.

Title II - No Competition = No Innovation

Dear Chairman Miller, Rep. McKeon, Chairman Kildee, and Rep. Castle:

On behalf of the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence (ABCTE), I am writing to provide comments on the Title II Discussion Draft of your No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Reauthorization legislation.

ABCTE has two programs that work to accomplish the goals of improving teacher quality, teacher retention, and that address the teacher shortage, specifically in math and science. The first is an initial teacher credential that prepares and certifies career changers for the classroom. The American Board’s Passport to TeachingSM program has certified more than 625 teachers and is prepared to deliver significantly more, as more than 4,500 candidates have enrolled in the program. This program attracts candidates with much-needed diversity and life experience into teaching. ABCTE candidates’ average age is 38, 32 percent are male, and 18 percent are minorities.

You can view the rest on our website at:

http://www.abcte.org/blog/2007/09/title-ii-no-competition-no-innovation

STEM needs to start early

Where do young students achieve their passion for math and/or science? It starts from having a great experience in math and science in the early grades. If you have that great elementary teacher who has a passion for math and science, they will pass that on to our young students and ensure they become so proficient that they will actually like math and science in secondary school.

Yet STEM focuses on high school and college. By then it is too late – if students don’t have the basics down, they will fear the math, loathe the science and all the investment in the world won’t change their attitude. People do what they are good at (which should keep me from writing but doesn’t). If you are not good at math and science you are not going to go chose a career in that field. And to be good at those subjects you have to get the basics in elementary school from someone who is outstanding at those subjects.

Are elementary teachers proficient at math and science? Not really. Our own certification demonstrates this time and time again as potential teachers and current teachers struggle with the rigorous math and science sections. Looking at the annual College Board report shows that the only majors with lower math SAT scores of college bound seniors are home economics and public affairs. If we are ever going to regain “the competitiveness”, we have to have elementary teachers who are passionate about math because they have outstanding knowledge - and they will generate that passion in the next generation.

Standards Alignment

We are talking with many states right now and one of the big questions we get concerns teaching standards. Do the ABCTE preparation and testing standards align with the state standards? So, we hire an independent firm to go line by line between our standards and the state standards to ensure that they are properly aligned.

But the greater question that should be asked concerns the actual alignment of the total educational system. Are the student standardized tests aligned to the student curriculum in the state and are the teacher standards aligned to that student curriculum and, ultimately is the student curriculum aligned with the university requirements and/or job requirements. In a perfect world, if students needed to know quadratic equations to succeed in life, that requirement would be in the student curriculum, they would be tested at the grade level required and the teacher for that grade level would be expected to have a thorough knowledge of the subject and how to teach that subject.

I am not making the case for national standards as I firmly believe that it would take way too long and cost way too much money. But I do believe that part of any NCLB legislation should include rewards (not punishment) for states that demonstrate true alignment between their university/job skill requirements, teaching standards, student curriculum and annualized testing standards. No small task – but would certainly create a more focused and functional educational system.

History vs Social Studies: we lose

Two years ago, our test development team began the lengthy process of creating our history exams. Our quest started in a time that now seems like a totally different world. It was a time when the Highly Qualified Teacher aspect of No Child Left Behind had yet to be neutered and (to properly mix metaphors) still had potentially scary teeth. So we listened and were told by “experts” and DC thinkers that “social studies” would not be tolerated. In order to be highly qualified, you needed to be an expert in your subject and therefore we should create separate certifications for U.S. history, world history, civics and geography.

Our History experts whole-heartedly agreed. They told us there was no way that you could possibly test someone’s knowledge of world and U.S. history, civics and geography in 100 questions. In order to create great minds in our schools, we absolutely had to have separate exams.

And so with clear minds and the focused vision of being on the right path, we created the absolute best U.S. history certification - - and right now, there is not a state out there that will use it.

The states know that they are now free to ignore HQT and can just submit innocuous plans each year to DOE demonstrating their road-map to become fully staffed with HQT teachers. If you read these plans, and I have, they are basically a narrative of what each state is currently doing and has been doing for quite some time. Social studies certifications will flourish and in-depth knowledge of history will not be a reality any time soon.

Lesson learned: it doesn’t really matter what the experts and those in DC say - - the only thing that matters is what states are willing to do.

What drives us

Gone are the days of political rhetoric at ABCTE. We exist for one reason – to help states recruit, certify and retain quality teachers. Much has changed here and those changes are radically changing the way we are perceived. Bottom line from NCES numbers:

• 1972: 25% of degrees earned were in education
• 2004: 14% of degrees earned were in education

Labor statistics say that 18-40 year olds will hold 10 different jobs during that time frame of which just over half of the job changes will be career changes

Not enough people are going into education and no one stays in careers for life anymore.