Charter School Resources

Having served on the board of a charter school and recently attended the NACSA meeting, it occurred to us that charter schools could use more help. Since we are a non-profit and focused on teaching, we felt like we could provide more resources to charter schools in the area of teacher quality.

So today we are launching CharterTeacher.com with the goal of working more closely with charter schools to ensure the every charter school student has a great teacher. To that end we have built this website so that it covers the various areas that impact teacher quality:

1. Teacher Recruitment: there is a job posting section so that charter schools can find the talent they need and a teacher resume posting area so that dedicated teachers can find the charter school that fits their skill-set.
2. Teacher Preparation: for the most part, charter schools can hire the talent they need and don’t have to worry about licensing. But making sure that a person is ready to teach and really knows their subject is an area where ABCTE can help.
3. Teacher Certification: some states require certification and some parents want their child to be taught by a certified teacher. ABCTE certifies teachers so why not take advantage of a rigorous program to certify your charter school teachers.
4. Professional Development: our resources, including phonics based reading instruction, classroom management, dealing with parents and subject matter workshops can help you improve your teaching workforce.
5. Charter Teacher Forum: the more you talk to charter school teachers and administrators the more you realize they really need more ways to share ideas and solutions. Our own ABCTE Teachers have a very strong online community through our forums so we know this charter school forum will get a lot of traffic.

So help us spread the word today so that all the great charter school administrators and teachers know about this new resource, provided for free, from ABCTE to build an even stronger charter school community!

Alternative Teacher Certification is part of the solution

Secretary Arne Duncanhit the one-two punch of teacher preparation this week focusing in on how poorly are teachers are prepared in general and then how they need a greater emphasis on math and science if we are to succeed as a nation.

“By almost any standard, many if not most of the nation’s 1,450 schools, colleges, and departments of education are doing a mediocre job of preparing teachers for the realities of the 21st century classroom”

So very true.

Increased subject matter expertise, more diversity in experience and culture, greater emphasis on recruiting top performers and more field based training - all point to alternative teacher certification like ABCTE as a big part of that solution.

Eduwonk, Flypaper and NACSA

Both Flypaper and Eduwonk pick up the New York Times story on alternative teaching. Been a great week for ABCTE even while I am down with the flu (not the H1N1 variety).

I am heading to NACSA in Salt Lake City next week to talk charter schools - we will be presenting at the conference on teacher certification. 15% of ABCTE teachers teach in charter schools and we are looking to help out even more. In a few weeks we will launch TeachCharters.com to help out even more with charter school teacher job postings, teacher resume posting, professional development and mentoring for teachers. Pretty exciting stuff!

Have a great weekend!

Jay Matthews on Alternative Teacher Certification

Jay Matthews has a quick ABCTE plug in the Washington Post this morning. If you have not been following it, he told the story a few weeks back about a gifted teacher who was frustrated by the bureaucracy involved with becoming a licensed teacher. To be blunt, if Jay had not inquired, this man would still be battling the powers that be.

Today’s post mentions ABCTE as a way for more Maryland teachers to get into teaching. We came very close to applying in Maryland before but they had a 4-6 week internship that was not possible for the mid career professionals that come into our program. So we went to work with other states.

It is a sad part of state teacher certification rules. States try to become more innovative but always get in their own way. They end up creating more rules that make it impossible for anything but the current processes to be able to apply. Case in point is Louisiana which spent the last 16 months trying to craft new rules and this supposedly innovative process requires alternative certification programs to have 32 hours of course work. That is just 2 classes shy of a master’s. Wow – so innovative I can hardly stand it.

So we appreciate education reporters like Jay Matthews ensuring that the public take a good hard look at a process that just doesn’t make sense.

Inspired Teaching

Trying to change education when people cling to ancient rituals (like current teacher certification rules) can be discouraging. What we look for to keep us going is adults in the system who aren’t focused on what they want but are truly focused on the. So it was great to sit down with the Washington Post on Sunday morning with a great cup of coffee and enjoy this piece in the opinion section. It is not written by a think tank or someone representing the many opposing groups in education or a researcher who once again found no statistical difference between policy A or policy B. It is written by Nancy Schnog who is an English teacher finding the inspiration to continue teaching even when adults in the system make it so hard for her to keep going.

The two money quotes from the article are:
“We’re inspired and inspiring teachers. Schools don’t let us teach”
“That’s what reaches them. Caring Enough. Caring.”

It baffles the mind that people spend so much time and money looking for the hidden holy grail of teacher preparation and what works in teaching and trying to tie it to some mysterious equations involving complex statistical analysis when all we need to do is really find a way to see if people truly care about students. It is especially annoying that we keep a complex maze of restrictions to limit what groups can certify teachers when we just need to make sure caring people have the right tools to succeed.

As long as people like Nancy Schnog are in the system, we will keep fighting to find more people like her to ensure our future generations can properly communicate with the rest of the world.

A shift lost in the shock

Wow – some harsh words for TFA from the NEA. It is amazing that after close to 20 years, they are still going after them. Right now the NEA is doing what any union is supposed to do – raise the specter of job losses and fight for member jobs. They have targeted TFA it is getting ugly.

There is support in the RTTBOC (Race to the Bags o’ Cash) otherwise known as Race to the Top for Alternative Teacher Certification. We are formulating our support during the comment period with some minor tweaks as are many of the other groups focused on improving teachers.

But here is what the NEA had to say by way of a critique:
NEA supports alternative routes to licensure, including high quality alternative certification programs. We know of many programs that do require evidence of excellence in the content area taught and have a carefully designed program of required course work in pedagogy and work with a mentor teacher.

In most alternative certification programs, however, the candidates are not fully certified for two years. And in one particular program, Teach for America, candidates are scheduled to leave teaching just as the two years are completed.

We agree that the Race to the Top programs should be focusing on the most challenging schools. And the research is clear that a highly qualified and stable workforce is necessary for true reforms to take hold. Experience, stability, content knowledge, access to induction and mentoring programs, and preparation for teaching diverse learners (cultural, linguistic and students with unique needs) will be key to the most qualified staff in high priority schools. Plans should be designed to attract and retain the best prepared, fire-tested, career individuals who plan to be there for the duration. Alternative certification candidates should be the last ones assigned to schools targeted for real reforms.

What will get lost in the scuffle with TFA is a pretty huge shift in policy for them. This is a pretty big compromise from NEA. In the past they would not allow anyone into teaching who had not gone through the Ed schools and they had to have had student teaching. This was their fight for years. So this statement is a pretty nice move to find common ground.

But that compromise will get lost in the shock to education reformers for their favorite program.

More Men!

"It's not glamorous, it's not a status position," said Schmitt, 44. "Guys at a young age are chasing after big dreams, big money. But at some point, later in life, they look for a job that's more meaningful." From the "Fewer Male Teachers"

The number of male teachers is declining. In this article from Illinois they point it that it is now down to 22%. I remember a speech by T. Willard Fair, leader of the Miami Urban League on the desperate need for great male role models in our urban schools. This article really highlights the challenges involved with creating a more diverse teaching workforce.

Alternative teacher certification is definitely an answer. Well over 30% of our teachers are male. In order to attract more males, you have to have a focused online preparation program that respects their time, cuts out the fluff and gets them in the classroom at significantly reduced cost. But educators don’t want to hear that.

They want to continue to train all 3.4 million teachers the exact same way. They refuse to understand that maybe, just maybe, doing things differently might actually change the make-up of our teachers which could have such an amazing impact on our schools.

Alas, change comes slowly in education – but it will come - and we will keep fighting so that we can better role models for all students.

Indiana wants me, and we will go back there!

We continue to stay in the news in Indiana as SUPERintendent Tony Bennett pushes for major reforms in education. This is great to see as you have a teacher speaking out in favor of these reforms and the SUPERman himself pushing hard.

Let’s break it down – shall we?
1. Teachers have the greatest impact on students
2. The performance of our education system has become stagnant while all the other school systems of the world improve
3. There are 3.4 million teachers in the US – is there any single training method that works perfectly for 3.4 million people?
4. If our current teacher preparation programs were perfect, number 2 wouldn’t be true
Therefore, bringing in new methods that can address training for different groups of potential teachers is the logical next step

We will continue to push with Tony Bennett to make sure that every student in Indiana has a great teacher.

It's about the students in Colorado

I had the pleasure of attending the Alliance for Choice in Education event in Denver this week. Many out there in the education world hate choice and think it is a bunch of rich white guys trying to foist their economic principles on the education system.

But in Denver it is about saving kids. ACE knows that they cannot save every child stuck in poverty, but they feel strongly that saving one at a time from a destiny of failure is a worthwhile cause.

Keep an eye on Colorado. There are some incredible people out there who really care about kids and that passion is creating results. Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) is putting resources there after an amazing start at the Democratic Convention. They don’t have vouchers, but they have school choice and they have over 150 charter schools that are getting results.

The Colorado legislature recently passed a bill to allow greater flexibility to the state school board on alternative teacher certification. There is also a much greater focus on dropout prevention AND they have a credit recovery programs that are getting some great attention.

There are signs that maybe, just maybe, people will continue to focus first on the students in Colorado and put the adults a distant second

Reform-O-Meter takes a hit

Over at Flypaper, Mike Petrilli is keeping the Obama Reform-O-Meter which he has pointing to a fairly neutral education agenda for the President and Secretary Duncan. He needs to point the arrow more to the left this week.

We got notice that the Office of Innovation and Improvement (OII) is beginning to release some of the $635 million they have to dole out under ARRA. They want to give out $143 million to 35 lucky groups to improve teacher quality. From the email:

• Department of Education (DOE) announces funds to improve the quality of new teachers by creating partnerships among Institutions of Higher Education (IHEs), high-need school districts (local educational agencies-LEAs) their high-need schools, and/or high-need early childhood education (ECE) programs. Partnerships would create model teacher preparation programs at the pre-baccalaureate level through the implementation of specific reforms of the IHE's existing teacher preparation programs, and/or model teaching residency programs for individuals with strong academic and/or professional backgrounds but without teaching experience.

Note that we are not eligible because we are not an Institution of Higher Education even though we currently have an innovative approach that prepares people from professional backgrounds who don’t have teaching experience.

But now, in the name of innovation, the DOE is going to throw a ton of money at groups that have never created a model teacher preparation program. In fact, when they create so-called alternative teacher certification programs they are almost always a few classes short of their normal master’s program.

Exactly the opposite of what Clayton Christensen says we need in order to create disruptive innovations in education. True innovation will not come from within the system. Note that Clayton even refers to ABCTE in this CNN Commentary.

Roughly a third of the “innovation” dollars go to those most firmly entrenched in supporting the status quo. Looks like Mike needs to move the arrow.

Is this change we can believe in?

Today in the Oklahoma House, Senate Bill 582 passed by a vote of 99 for and 0 against. A unanimous vote for the ABCTE alternative teacher certification program to be accepted in Oklahoma. This is pretty stunning as our program has, in the past, faced stiff opposition from the education establishment.

We have made a lot of changes to the program and placed a greater emphasis on teacher preparation especially in the pedagogy area. And we have changed to create a more balanced board of directors. And we have been much more accommodating in meeting with education groups to build a program in each state that takes input from all sides. And we have done a much better job at completing research and placing more teachers. And we have done a much better job at publicizing all of those accomplishments.

But 99 to nothing?!?!?.

That is really stunning. From my front line view, the tipping point is a combination of teacher unions looking to work with other groups and stop saying no to everything and President Obama constantly touting alternative teacher certification.

Regardless, it is extremely gratifying to become more “mainstream” and find much more common ground in education.

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.

Unanimous

Yesterday we went around to all the House Education committee members in Oklahoma to ensure passage of the alternative teacher certification bill SB 582. We had some very good questions from all the members. The most striking discussion with one of the Democrat members was that she told us that a math teacher/department head had called her and told her she had two math teachers who needed to be fired because students in their classes were not learning math. But she couldn’t fire them because she had no one to replace them. She asked that the legislature please do something about the shortage to get them the help they need.

So in a first for ABCTE we had a 14 – 0 vote in an education committee. As the program has evolved, become more “mainstream”, added great resources and become much better at communicating our message, we now see true bi-partisan support. It was a great day.

See the vote video here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFBcRQlY0M0

Part 5: What is happening to teaching jobs

For Part 5, the final in our series on teaching jobs, I was hoping to have more information about the billions going to protect teaching jobs but I guess that is going to have to wait for a few months once we see what really happens.

But in the mean time, there is a great interview with the Secretary of Education speaking frankly with the Ed Week Editorial staff. They ask great questions and they get real answers. From the teaching side of things Secretary Duncan "gets it" as evidenced by the following ideas he puts forth:

1. He understands that some states are saying they are going to move the stimulus money to paying off debt and he basically said that they will be sacrificing the opportunity for the big bucks if they do. The states that drive innovation will get A LOT more money. It is in the states best interest to use the money right
2. He wants to fundamentally change the staus quo. He knows this an historic, once in a lifetime opportunity to spend a gob of money (my word not his)
3. Data systems must be put in place to track students back to teachers and track teachers back to their teacher preparation program so that we can use the data to improve education
4. Talent matters tremendously
5. Need best teachers to take on the toughest assignments through incentives
6. Need to understand economic realities and pay math and science teachers more
7. For the small numbers of states that get it right, they will get the huge dollars available to take their reforms to scale – it will go to the states that do the hard work, demonstrate local courage and challenge the status quo. Let me just say that I love that line
8. We need new teams of adults if students are failing. I love this – not just blaming teachers but all the adults from the DOE on down that are involved in education. And he does support rewarding great teachers and moving poor teachers out of the classroom
9. Big believer in alternative certification. Here he reiterates what we have been saying in this series on teaching jobs - there is lots of great talent who just happened to not graduate with an ed degree and we need them in the classroom. Because of the huge numbers of baby boomers retiring from teaching, what we do in the next 4-6 years will determine what happens in the next 30 years. We need to do more now to make sure we have the talent far into the future

For all that are following the teacher employment – this is the money quote. Even if there is a blip in teacher hiring now, because the pipeline into teaching has dried up and because outflows are dramatically increasing, we will be in trouble if we don’t do something now. Secretary Duncan wants more paths to teaching, wants to build more competition in teacher preparation and then hold all the routes accountable for results.

Since he mentioned the 2010 budget details will come out in April, I imagine we will see money put behind these thoughts. And that is good news for what will happen to teaching jobs.

Series on What is Happening to Teaching
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

New Paper on Alternative Teacher Certification

Great paper that concludes that alternative teacher certification can help states build a world quality teaching workforce from Dan Lips at Heritage:

Find it here

Education Problem Solving Revisited

Interesting three days in Arizona on the education “human capital” front. First there was an article on teacher shortages in Arizona followed the next day with an article on our attempts to get approved in Arizona. So you have a problem and you have a solution – what should that mean…..hmmmmm…..well for some it means you find ways not to implement that solution and instead find ways to stick with what you are doing now.

A bill to encourage alternative certifications introduced by Education Chairman Crandall passed out of committee 7 to 1. The one baffled me a little – his concern was that we did not have course work. Instead of our program where candidates work through a program and are screened by two rigorous tests BEFORE getting into the classroom, he advocates for letting anyone in the classroom and training them on the fly as higher quality which doesn't make much sense. Plus – if that was good enough wouldn’t the needs of Arizona’s students be met by those programs?

The only other resistance was around our meeting of Arizona standards even though we have had an independent analysis say that we meet their standards with our program.

People that don’t want change usually stick to an argument even if the argument is proved false. Based on the outcomes of today, it looks like there is a desire to solve the problem and not stick with things that are not working.

NO LDH - sigh of relief

If you heard a collective sigh of relief from the education reformers in the world, you heard correctly. Linda Darling-Hammond (LDH) will not be joining the US DOE citing family reasons. Her daughter is ill and, as a dad, I will keep them in my thoughts. But for ABCTE, this is a relief.

Early in my career with ABCTE I was sitting at a lunch table at a NCTAF meeting and there was an open seat next to me. LDH was about to sit down and I stood and introduced myself – at that point someone came over and explained who I was and she immediately sat elsewhere.

It is one of those moments where you see that someone is so closed to any new ideas that they can't even sit next to you. This is borne out in her publications and speeches where she will not even consider alternative teacher certification in spite of the data that support this direction. It is also the reason new ideas are driven out of education – because the people carrying and driving those ideas are treated so rudely by the defenders of the status quo. Luckily my thick skin, stubbornness and inability to care what the status quo thinks, keeps me going.

I was very concerned during the elections that Obama was represented by LDH one day and a charter school principal the next. It appears that they were still developing their education policy and now true reform really has a chance.

And the children, not the adults, will be the real winners for a change

Stop the madness

How can a person teach if they have not had course work or student teaching? It is a question that I am asked many times when visiting states. In the past this was somewhat difficult to answer, but as the data comes in from multiple studies, it is clear that the answer to this question is: just as well as those who had course work and student teaching.

We now have four separate studies that provide pretty much the same conclusion that students of alternatively certified teachers perform as well as students from traditionally certified teachers.

The ridiculous compromise that many leaders use to create alternative teacher certification programs is to make people take course work at night. To these leaders I always try to stress that teaching in the first year is physically and mentally exhausting. You have to be “on” longer than in most professions and the last thing these new teachers need is to leave their school and go sit in a class. They still need to grade papers, tweak lesson plans, rest and spend time with the family.

It turns out we are right. From the most recent study on alternative certification (Note that AC is alternatively certified and TC is traditionally certified teachers):

Students of AC teachers who were taking coursework while teaching scored lower in math than students of their TC counterparts. This finding suggests that student performance in an AC teacher’s class may be negatively related to the teacher’s taking courses while teaching.

If the first rule of education reform is to do no harm – then we must eliminate course work requirements for new teachers that have no value and are actually reducing teacher effectiveness.

The studies are found here:
“What Does Certification Tell Us About Teacher Effectiveness? Evidence from New York City”, Kane, Rockoff, Staiger, 2006, http://gseweb.harvard.edu/news/features/kane/nycfellowsmarch2006.pdf
“Identifying Effective Teachers on the Job”, Gordon, Kane and Staiger, Brookings Institute, 2006
http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2006/~/media/Files/rc/papers/2006/04educ...
“What Happens when States have Genuine Alternative Certification”, Peterson and Nadler, Education Next, Winter 2009,
http://www.hoover.org/publications/ednext/34564684.html
“An Evaluation of Teachers Trained Through Different Routes to Certification”, IES/Mathematica, February 2009
http://www.mathematica-mpr.com/publications/pdfs/education/teacherstrain...

President Obama and ABCTE

It is appropriate for the blogosphere to recognize the transformation in DC right now. Since our birth occurred during the Bush era I am often asked how we will fair with the new administration. The answer apparently lies at: http://www.whitehouse.gov/agenda/education/

• Recruit Teachers: Obama and Biden will create new Teacher Service Scholarships that will cover four years of undergraduate or two years of graduate teacher education, including high-quality alternative programs for mid-career recruits in exchange for teaching for at least four years in a high-need field or location.

Three years ago, we set out to create a Board of Directors that absolutely focused on solving a problem. Our current board is a bi-partisan board that has helped us ensure that our program resonates with anyone who wants to look at the issue from one point of view: does it help students succeed.

It is an exciting time in education and the changes that will occur in the next few years because so many people are focused student success will be transformational.

Union Perceptions

I am a big fan of Mike Antonnuci’s Education Intelligence Agency (EIA) blog as he does an amazing job of keeping an eye on all things union. Since the teacher’s unions have come out so firmly against alternative certification, I rely on EIA to keep track of union positions and facts.

This time he steers us to a Rasmussen Report on the public perception of teacher unions. From their article: “two-thirds of U.S. voters (66%) say the teachers’ unions – the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers – are more interested in protecting their members’ jobs than in the quality of education.”

Wow – this on top of the WSJ Article that called out the unions for opposing alternative teacher certification since “Like all unions, teachers unions have a vested interest in restricting the labor supply to reduce job competition. Traditional state certification rules help to limit the supply of "certified" teachers”

Is this a trend? Do people – and maybe even politicians – finally understand that a union’s focus is more pay and benefits for members and not education improvements? It gives one hope.

And a shout out to Jay Greene and Matt Ladner for pushing the “all fronts” strategy on the blog.