The Future of Teaching

There is a very important article on teaching by Rick Hess in EducationNext this month. He has some outstanding facts and great suggestions on what has to happen in teaching in order to maximize talent and increase student learning.

First the background – he uses one of my favorite stats about our society of career changers: by 30, most people have held 4 different jobs. So assuming that every kid in college going into teaching is going to stay in teaching through retirement is ludicrous.

Career-changers are the problem and the solution. Taking at look at the huge shift in talent in grades 9-12 based on when people entered the teaching profession:

1990: 75% entered by age 25 and 6% entered by age 35
2004: 56% entered by age 25 and 16% entered by age 35

A study in Mississippi found that people entering the profession later stayed longer. Here at ABCTE where the average age of our teachers is 39, we have an 85% retention rate after three years. That is much higher than any other route.

Rick’s conclusion: more alt cert, more specialization and more technology so that we can get the talent we need and fully leverage that talent for better results.

We could not agree more.

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.

Teachers rule

I was pondering what to write about for our Friday blog when I received the email below from on of our scholarship recipients. ABCTE has a Transition to Teaching grant which provides a full scholarship through our program. This is why we fight so hard for alternative teacher certification programs:

"Yes, today was my first day with the students. And yes, I am crazy busy, but I will make time to keep you updated because I would not be here if not for you. It turns out that I am teaching 7th and 8th grade English and Reading. I found out (from a parent) that I was also teaching 8th grade Tuesday night! There seems to be quite a bit of confusion at my school about many things, but I am sure it will all work out eventually. I am just doing what I think should be done until I am given more direction. I have learned quite a bit about frameworks, pacing guides, and more. I have been assigned a mentor – she has been very helpful. I really like her.

My room looks fantastic. My sister-in-law and I painted a mural on the back wall that says, “Language is your transportation … to your dreams, your goals, your future. “ My principal loves it. She used my syllabus at the grade level meeting as an example of what she wants from everyone. She has given me a lot of encouragement.

I fell in love with my students today (already). I am swamped, overwhelmed, confused, but very happy.

It was great to hear from you.

Tracey"

There will be shrieking

It happens every June here at ABCTE – I get yelled at because people fail their exams and are in danger of losing their jobs. About 40% of our candidates respond to our surveys that they are currently working in education. A full 20% are actually the teacher of record and they came in on an emergency license or some other license. Because of their situation, they now have until June 30th or July 31st to complete their ABCTE program or they cannot teach next year.

The problem is that people wait until the last minute to take their exams. So if they don’t pass, there isn’t a lot of time to get things done. In some cases the automatic response by these teachers is to shriek loudly at all levels of the organization hoping that someone will just miraculously pass them. Obviously this doesn’t work. So we all scramble around to get them some help and then in to re-test.

The automatic response you may have is that these people are procrastinators, at worse lazy, and don’t deserve our help. But I take a different view – they don’t have time during the year to get things done. If you have ever taught, you know that first year teaching is physically and mentally exhausting and at night you still have to tweak those lesson plans, grade papers and run your life outside of school. This doesn't leave much room to study which is why we prefer, and strongly encourage, that all alternatively certified teachers get their work done BEFORE entering the classroom. But that is not always the case with the teacher shortages out there today.

So next year we are going to push a little harder in April to reduce the shriekage in June – but knowing how hectic the end of the school year can be, I won't hold my breath.

No difference.

Mathematica Policy Research, Inc has a new study out on teacher certification comparing traditional versus alternatively certification teachers.

The conclusion:

"This study found no benefit, on average, to student achievement from placing an AC teacher in the classroom when the alternative was a TC teacher, but there was no evidence of harm, either. In addition, the experimental and nonexperimental findings together indicate that although individual teachers appear to have an effect on students’ achievement, we could not identify what it is about a teacher that affects student achievement. Variation in student achievement was not strongly linked to the teachers’ chosen preparation route or to other measured teacher characteristics."

Important stuff. More to come on this but this is the third study to come to the same conclusion - there is no benefit to teachers going through traditional routes. Having a route like ABCTE's gives you more potential teachers and does nothing to the quality of teaching in schools.

North Carolina needs a change and Tennessee makes one!

Great opinion piece in the Fayetteville Observer from Terry Stoops of the John Locke Foundation. There are a growing number of education thought leaders like Terry who understand the benefits of alternative teacher certification and are advocating for states like North Carolina to get on board. He also advocates for ABCTE as a way for North Carolina to get there.

It is also great to see Tennessee joining the number of states who will move to having genuine alternative teacher certification. The state board recently passed regulations that will allow approval of programs like ours to help improve quality and increase the numbers of great teachers for their classrooms.

These are exciting times in education!

More on alternative certification

Matt Ladner does it again on the Jay Greene's Blog with a great post looking at the Brooking's data on teacher certification and the Paul Peterson paper. Similar to what I did back in November with this post - but with a lot more gusto.

Take a look - it is worth the read.

Alternative Certification Works

Last week, representatives from the McCain (Lisa Graham Keegan) and Obama (Linda Darling Hammond) campaigns met at Columbia University for a debate on education. Later in the week, in an open letter on The Huffington Post in response to the debate, Stanford University professor Martin Carnoy took issue with several of Senator McCain’s education policies, including his stance on teacher recruitment.

I’m not looking to take sides or to support one candidate’s proposed policies over those of the other. But I do take issue with the fact that Carnoy sells alternative certification programs short in his letter, as he only focuses on Teach for America and expresses his doubts about whether or not “alternatively certified teachers staying an average of two plus years in the classroom are going to make a serious long-term dent in improving education for academically shortchanged kids.”

What Carnoy neglects to mention is that Lisa Graham Keegan also named other alternative certification programs, including the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence (ABCTE), during the same segment of the debate when Teach for America was discussed. Anyone who has taken a close look at ABCTE knows that we’re not looking to plug teachers into the system for the short term as a quick fix (nor do I think that is Teach for America’s goal).

By focusing our efforts at ABCTE on recruiting mid-career professionals, we’re seeing that our teachers have staying power. After three years, 85% of ABCTE’s graduates are still teaching. Our rigorous program takes 8 to 10 months to complete on average and only 40% of ABCTE candidates pass our Professional Teaching Knowledge (PTK) exam the first time. Our candidates must also hold a bachelor’s degree from an approved college or university and pass a subject area exam as well as a background check. We’re not simply giving people “a quick course” and throwing them into the classroom, and I hope Carnoy understands that.

Carnoy also claims in his letter that “there just aren't enough highly skilled, relevantly prepared educators trained to work” in high need schools. I agree completely and that’s why ABCTE introduced the Teach & Inspire Scholarship Program in late 2007.

ABCTE’s Teach & Inspire Scholarship Program recruits, certifies, and supports highly effective new teachers of diverse cultural and professional backgrounds to work in high-need schools, districts, and subject areas. Teach & Inspire is already active in Florida and Mississippi (by the way, the deadline for the program’s current application period is November 15, 2008), and we’re looking to expand it into other states.

There are many phenomenal alternative certification programs out there, Teach for America among them, and Carnoy’s seemingly blanket dismissal of them all—intentional or not—is unfortunate. All programs need to be looked at independently and it very well may be a mix of these alternative certification methods that helps solve our teacher shortage problems over the long haul.

The Downward Spiral

Joanne Jacobs has an excellent post on the academic issues with college students and college graduates. I wholeheartedly agree with many of the viewpoints listed and it is well worth your time to read through the article. At ABCTE we continue to see this problem first hand.

Last year we received a grant for our Teach& Inspire scholarship program which is designed to recruit teachers locally for high needs school districts in high needs subject areas. For this first cohort, we received over 400 applications for 300 slots. Unfortunately we were only able to fill 195 of those 300 slots because we could not find enough qualified people in those 400 applicants.
What we saw was incredibly poor writing and communications skills of people who had a earned college degree. How do you earn a college degree and not know how to write at even the most basic level? Our scholarship review team was stunned at the lack of knowledge in many of these college graduates.

My ultimate fear is that the people we rejected will apply for other “alternative certification” programs that allow you to start teaching and then take course work at night. Since the selectivity of these programs is non-existent with the exception of course work and since they have already proven that they can pass that without any real academic skills, we can assume that they will pass and continue to teach.

And the downward spiral continues……….

The irony of high teaching standards

Interesting day in Richmond yesterday speaking with education leaders from all over the state. I keep hearing from all around the country – no one can find high school teachers and this was certainly evident in Virginia. It is rapidly reaching crisis level. The irony is that states claim that they don’t want to lower standards and try other alternative ways to recruit, prepare and certify teachers while districts continue to just ignore the current standards to fill critical positions any way they can.

One superintendent said that over 75% of his new high school teachers are coming from alternative routes – it is not what he wants at all but it is the only way to staff his schools. He has no one coming from the ed schools.

We also learned that there is a serious lack of experience in our high schools. During one discussion on mentoring, a special education teacher said that she doesn’t have anyone to be a mentor in her schools because no one has over 3 years experience! Even if they do have the experience, teachers have so many extra duties now that they do not want to take on mentoring as well. This sentiment was backed up by all the teachers in the room. They cannot even find retirees to come back and mentor.

States continue to put in place regulations that uphold what they perceive is high standards while the people who actually have to implement those standards have to go around them in order to give the students a teacher. Teacher groups continue to fight against alternative methods which in essence is degrading the teaching profession by increasing the use of long term substitutes and placing untrained “warm bodies” in the classroom.

And every year we wait to do something, this is going to get much worse.

Teaching: eating their young

Great post over at Joanne Jacob's site on some TFA teachers struggling to survive. As is usually the case, people find their political point in the article and in the comments use that point to push their case instead of looking at the big picture presented.

Here are the key points as I see it:

1. We don’t have enough teachers coming through standard routes (here)
2. Therefore we have to have TFA and other recruitment programs or use long term subs with no training
3. First year teaching is physically and mentally exhausting no matter what route you went though
4. Adding course work and other requirements in addition to all the other first year teaching work can push someone over the edge.

Every time we partner with a state to set up an alternative certification program, the specter of course work inevitably comes up. We are constantly battling the desire for states to have their Alt Cert route become a regular route done at night after teaching all day. The TFA blogs point out that adding 3 hours of study on a Monday night after working all day in a school is cruel and unusual punishment.

The solution:

1. Offer course work should only 1 or 2 Saturdays a month – max
2. Require course work that research has shown to be effective in helping teachers in the classroom with student achievement - practical and useful

If you prove in #2 they need more course work then can fit on every other Saturday – then provide it during the summer between the first and second year of teaching.

We have to stop doing everything in our power to force out new teachers by making the job so overwhelming that no one could survive.

The Fox Guarding the Hen House

Yesterday in Nevada, I again was subjected to the harsh conflict of interest that exists in Teacher Certification. Many states, like Nevada, have professional standards boards to approve changes to teacher certification that are made up of - SURPRISE - Ed School Deans and professors!! Woohoo. Now, normally they try to take the high ground and not appear blatant about protecting their monopoly – but yesterday was an extreme exception.

The chairman of this task force, Dr. Luft, Associate Dean of Education, University of Nevada Reno, stated that if he voted for approving ABCTE he would be “hung from the elms in the quad” at his school. Later in the discussion he said that they couldn’t vote for this as it would hurt the ed schools financially. Now if your conflict of interest is that deep, don’t you think maybe you should recuse yourself from the proceedings – not preside over them.

If anybody wonders why alternative certification programs end up looking like regular certification programs you only have to look at the make up of state agency set up to approve the programs. I don’t want to be too subtle here so let me explain it in layman terms:

IF YOU PUT ED SCHOOLS IN CHARGE OF APPROVING PROGRAMS – THEY WILL ONLY APPROVE ED SCHOOL-LIKE PROGRAMS.
Duh.

Alternative Certification Isn't

Obviously we are thrilled with the recent study by Fordham and NCTQ revealing that Alternative Certification in the US really isn't. I remember back a few years when I briefly thought about going to law school and looked into a couple of night schools. I found out that they basically consisted of the day time program crammed into the night - it wasn't spread out or really designed for busy professionals to complete their course work. It was designed to work well for the university.

So to with Alternative Certification programs - and it is not surprising since most states put union members and ed school professors on their certification approval committees. Can anyone really be surprised that the programs they approve all include course work? The sad thing is that most of the course work is done during the first year of teaching. So this new teacher has to learn the craft, create great lesson plans, grade their papers, build their stamina (let's not kid ourselves - this is key) and then go to classes at night?? Gee - I wonder why they don't stay around long.

Also - it gets really annoying out there when everyone thinks that Teach for America, The New Teacher Project and Troops to Teachers are alternative certification programs- they are not. They are recruitment strategies (that work by the way!!). They recruit prospective teachers and help them get through current certification methods accepted in the state.

One can only hope that people read this and understand that to truly attract more people into teaching, we need alternative certification routes designed to attract professionals who want to work with America's students.