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.

Been a little busy......

It has been a while since I blogged - but it turns out that many states are looking for the solutions we offer.

In Missouri, the Senate passed a bill allowing ABCTE to recruit, prepare and certify teachers. A lot of press on this since one senator attempted to filibuster the bill that ultimately passed 25 to 5. It is now on to the Missouri House.

Mo Chamber lauds Senate action on bill to make it easier for career professionals to switch to teachingBy Jo Mannies, STL Post-Dispatch, Political Fix

Gov. Blunt Statement on Alternative Teacher Certification
JEFFERSON CITY - Gov. Matt Blunt today issued the following statement commending the Missouri Senate for passing legislation to allow alternative teacher certification:"One of the issues I addressed earlier this month at the 2008 Governors Summit on Regional Economic Development is the teacher shortage that exists in some areas of our state in subjects such as math and science."We need to provide the opportunity for highly motivated people with education and experience in these areas to have the training to bring their expertise to the classroom. Missouri's current system of alternative certification of professionals who want to become teachers is too restrictive. I support this alternative, to allow certification through the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence."I called for an alternate certification process when I ran for Governor, and I commend the Missouri Senate for passing Sen. Luann Ridgeway's forward-looking legislation to allow an alternate way for motivated professionals to become certified to teach in Missouri classrooms."

And in Utah they are looking at legislation to reward teachers who pass our Distinguished Teacher program with a $3,000 bonus - outstanding progress in recognizing great teachers.

Details about the bundled education and tax bills

So - at least I have an excuse for missing a few blogs. Flying between DC, Missouri and Utah is not easy. More to come as we continue to work with legislators looking to solve education problems today.

University Updated

Two significant updates from the college world this week. I have a daughter at Radford University in Virginia and one who is a junior in high school.

Update #1: The Virginia Tech Effect.
People often say that education is slow to change. Last week at 2:00 am my cell phone and my wife’s cell phone started ringing. Obviously, with a child in college, a 2:00 am cell phone call is not good. It turns out that it was the automated warning system for Radford University telling us that a man dressed as a security guard was lurking around the dorms and that all students should stay in their dorm rooms and not come out. This automated alarm went out to all parents, students and faculty. We also got an email alert at the same time. About 10 minutes later we got a second automated call and email saying all was well (turned out the guy dressed as a security guard was actually a security guard). Although I hate to be awakened at 2:00 am, I will sleep much better knowing that this system is in place and works. Communication was a huge issue in the Virginia Tech incident, so it is a great credit to universities that they were able to get a fix in place this fast and that the fix is effective.

Update #2: Applications to college on the rise.Kevin Carey did a piece on college applications allegedly debunking the myth that college applicants were on the rise saying that applications, not applicants, were on the increasing. His statement is based on the fact that each student puts in many more college applications than ever before and the number of college seniors does not change that much. Wrong. We recently did the college tour with my high school junior and any parent in a similar situation would definitely hoist the BS flag on Mr. Carey. The fact is that the next two years will be the largest classes of seniors ever. This is combined with an increasing push to get more kids in college that is actually succeeding. The result is that it is much harder to get in college. Most of us parents could not even come close to getting into the schools we graduated from 20 years ago. It is a challenge to get accepted to so-called “safety schools” today. Case in point is Christopher Newport University which became a University in 1992 and over the last 10 years the average SAT score is 500 points higher for admission. Our campus tour guide made the point that many seniors at the school couldn’t get in as a freshman today. The main problem in any education issue is that looking at the national numbers shows a totally different picture than the problems facing each individual state.

Education Moving Forward

Today I had the pleasure of attending the US DOE working group on school leadership looking to exchange ideas on teacher recruitment, retention and leadership in general. A number of points from this outstanding discussion:

1. Our teachers of the year are pretty amazing – Nebraska, Connecticut and Arkansas had outstanding ideas and thoughts
2. Teachers think differently than teacher unions – no shocker here but union policy input tends to meet their goal of better pay and conditions for members while teacher policy input really looks at what is best for the students
3. Customization – there is no “one size fits all” for teachers – whether it is training, certification, performance pay, mentoring – stop trying to find one solution for all 3.2 million teachers, it will not work
4. Any time you start to pick at the edges of education it starts to snowball into all the things that need to happen to fix the thing you were picking at – the only real conclusion is that the current education system cannot work in the current reality of 2008 and we need total educational system redesign to fix any part of the broken system
5. If people don’t stay in jobs for more than 5 years, why would teaching be different – find ways to work within the reality of the social environment and stop trying to hold on to preparation systems that don’t work in the current reality
6. Education Schools need help – they can no longer be ignored by universities and need a serious upgrade in what works
7. Value add is solidly in the vocabulary of teachers – say what you want about NCLB but I have heard more teachers talk about gains then ever before
8. The “teaching to the test” mantra is still a crutch as is talking about the mythical loss of music, social studies etc. NCLB didn’t make this happen. Your student test is supposed to be aligned to student learning standards which are supposed to be aligned to what students need to know. If teachers teach to the standards, by default they are teaching to the test which is teaching to what students need to know to succeed.
   

Sadly – the administration is rapidly approaching lame duck status and like all the millions of panel discussions in DC, this great exchange will be cataloged and placed on a shelf without real action.

Great Teachers

What is a great teacher? It is a question that seems to always bring out political ramifications mixed with research questions. But today I heard an interview of Richard Ognibene who is the teacher of the year for New York. His thoughts are so inspiring and his advice absolutely the best. If we had 3.3 million clones of Richard teaching in our schools, we would have the absolute best educational system in the world.

I urge you to listen to the podcast from The New Teacher Hotline – and pass on the link to anyone who needs to understand that we do have so many great teachers out there truly reaching their students. They can listen from the website or download from iTunes (which helps with the rankings). The New Teacher Hotline is a free resource that is designed to provide practical advice to new teachers and is sponsored by ABCTE.

Here are some thoughts for new teachers that Richard provides:

• Send a letter to each of your students explaining who you are and ask them to send a letter back– use those letters so you really get to know your students
• Provide a caring classroom – a great classroom is one where kids want to be there• Discipline starts before any problems happen in your classroom
• Set the rules and get their interest right from the start – find ways to compliment every student to their parents in the first weeks of schools
• Collaborate with other staff
• Understand that you don’t have 120 future scientists in your class but find a way to make science interesting to all 120

And his most important advice that all new teachers must know………. well for that you have to listen to the entire podcast.

Substitute terms getting longer...

The use of long term substitutes as a story is getting legs. As school districts continue to experience severe shortages, the practice of using substitutes to fill positions grows. And the students suffer. The US DOE says that we now have double the number of long term subs in the classroom since 1994 and that over 20% of schools now use long term subs every year.

The article then dives into the anecdotal abyss. But the example of the teacher who was in a car accident bringing in his lesson plan every day is pretty heroic. He was obviously concerned with his student’s regressing while he was recovering.

But if you have a long term sub taking over the class for a year, the sub is supposed to be planning the lesson except they may not realize their responsibility or even have the most basic knowledge of the subject.

This provides yet another opportunity for a shameless plug for our program. Why are you using a long term sub when you could be using a teacher recruited, prepared and certified by us? The reason is that people continue to let politics get in the way of common sense.

And for those who repeatedly oppose us – look at the data on our program, talk to the principals who hire our teachers and ask them if they would rather have a long term sub.

If you still don't agree, then go explain to the students that they can't have a good teacher right now because you need to make a political point.

Budget Cuts = Creative Solutions

District Superintendents are running a huge business. It is fascinating to watch Fairfax County Superintendent Jack Dale. He is basically running a $2.3 billion company. Most CEO’s with vast business experience don’t have a $2.3B budget and haven't yet had to make drastic cuts in a budget that large. The complexities of such a budget are staggering yet here we have Jack Dale and his staff now trying to cut $100 million from that budget.

They have come up with some pretty innovative ways to make those cuts. In an affluent county like Fairfax they are asking parents to pony up in the way of fees. They want parents to pay for AP tests, PSAT and the like. They are also thinking of charging $50 to participate in high school sports. They are going to raise class size by a half of a student - which I find amusing unless of course it was my child who is the one to be cut in half.

It isn’t going to get better. They have an increase of students yet property values are dropping meaning their tax/revenue base is dropping. The county told them to keep costs flat next year and their current budget represents a 3% increase – so there is still a lot of negotiating to do and no one wants to talk of cutting education in a big election year.

District management teams are really going to be challenged this year with dwindling budgets. Innovative ways to meet those challenges should be shared so that we can meet this challenge and still improve education.