NCTAF News Digest:

A Weekly Digest of News Articles & Reports

Thursday May 29, 2008

In this Issue:

--NCLB Watch

--Research Questions Quality of Teachers' Training

--New Uses Explored for 'Value-Added' Data

--Hopefuls' Education Plans Show Divides

--Podcast: Why Education Isn't a Hot Topic in Election 2008

--Districts Tearing Up Teachers' Pink Slips

--No Easy Plan for Teacher Pay

--California's New Teachers Are Ready But Have No Place To Go

Greetings,

This is the NCTAF News Digest, a timely news service provided to our partner states, commissioners, and the education policy community. This Digest is for the personal educational use of the recipient. At publication time, all links were active. Some publications may require free registration. You may wish to bookmark links for future reference.

Research Questions Quality of Teachers' Training

-The Plain Dealer; May 25, 2008

In "Putting Teachers to the Test," an occasional series, The Plain Dealer is taking a yearlong look at issues involving teachers and the quality of instruction. Today and Monday, we examine teacher-preparation programs. Future stories will explore what constitutes good teaching and bad teaching and how the profession is changing. Imagine that commercial airline pilots were trained in schools where almost everyone who applied was admitted. Imagine that their instructors had not been in a cockpit for decades and rarely spoke with active pilots about new equipment or cutting-edge techniques. Fasten your seat belt. That imaginary scenario is all too close to the way critics describe the training that America's teachers receive -- on average -- at the nation's 1,200 college- and university- based teacher education programs. A growing body of research argues that education schools -- despite some exemplary exceptions -- produce inadequately prepared teachers. The issue is crucial because educators agree that having a quality teacher in the classroom is the single most important factor in a child's education. In fact, research shows that students who have three ineffective teachers in a row will score as much as 50 percentage points lower on standardized tests than students who have three effective teachers in a row, said Stanford University professor Linda Darling-Hammond.  "That's the difference between being ready to go to an Ivy League college and not finishing high school," said Darling-Hammond, one of the nation's top experts on teacher training.

So what are the odds of getting three bad teachers in a row? Maybe not as slim as you think. In a four-year study released 20 months ago, Arthur Levine, former dean of Teachers College at Columbia University, found that students who intend to major in education, as a whole, have lower scores on college entrance exams than other college-bound students. And because universities often rely on education schools as "cash cows," low admissions standards are too often allowed because they help boost enrollments and revenues, he found. Some schools accept 100 percent of their applicants. Education professors, often as a result of low publication records and lightly regarded research, receive tenure less frequently and are paid less than colleagues in other fields. Far too often, those faculties and the curricula they teach are disconnected from real schools and real practitioners. The hours required for student teaching can vary anywhere from 300 hours to 30 hours, the study found. Worse yet, teacher preparation programs are awash in a system of weak quality control, according to Levine's research. Programs are judged only by their students' success on certification exams, not on whether the teachers they produce help children learn. Accreditation is rarely pulled. Despite myriad shortcomings, none of the 70 institutions involved in Levine's study lost accreditation. "Teacher education is the Dodge City of the education world," Levine says. "It is unruly and chaotic."

To view the full article, click here.

New Uses Explored for 'Value-Added' Data
-Education Week; May 28, 2008

With “value added” methods of measuring student-learning gains continuing to grow in popularity, policymakers and researchers met here last week to explore possible new ways of using the sometimes controversial approaches and to debate their pluses and pitfalls. The May 23 conference at the Urban Institute, a think tank based here in the nation’s capital, examined the policy implications for value-added statistical designs , which typically measure students’ learning gains from one year to the next. Such methods have been spreading since the early 1990s.  While value-added designs are still imperfect technically, various speakers at the gathering said, they can provide new information to help identify ineffective teaching and the impact of certain programs and practices, for example. The data they provide can help educators reflect on their own practices, give administrators grounds for denying tenure to poorly performing teachers, or be used by states to calculate whether districts are making adequate yearly progress under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. And value-added models can answer such important research questions as what makes a good teacher and whether problems in retaining early-career teachers actually harm or help schools, speakers said. Yet when it comes to high-stakes decisions, supporters, critics, and scholars of value-added research models seemed to agree on one point: Value-added calculations, if they’re used at all, should be one among several measures used in judging the quality of schools or teachers. “Assessment results are one critically important measure,” said Ross Wiener, the vice president for programs and policy at the Education Trust, a Washington-based research and advocacy group that focuses on educational inequities. “There are other things that teachers do that are important.”

Last week’s Urban Institute event piggybacked on an April conference at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where researchers aired technical cautions about value-added research methodology and shared some other research supporting its usefulness. ("Scrutiny Heightens for ‘Value Added’ Research Methods," May 7, 2008.) An organizer of the Wisconsin meeting said at the Washington event that the limitations of value-added designs should be kept in perspective. Both the Washington conference and the Wisconsin gathering that preceded it were sponsored jointly by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Joyce Foundation, and the Spencer Foundation. (All three philanthropies underwrite coverage in Education Week.) “I ask you not to lose sight of what I think is the main message,” said Adam Gamoran, the director of the Madison-based Wisconsin Center for Education Research, “which is that value-added models are better than the alternatives.”

To view the full article, click here.

Hopefuls' Education Plans Show Divides

-Politico; May 27, 2008

News that voucher proponent and former Arizona schools chief Lisa Graham Keegan quit her job to work full time for Republican Sen. John McCain has education wonks eagerly anticipating McCain’s proposals on education policy, which have been in short supply. If McCain proposes an ambitious school voucher program, as he did in 2000, it will underline stark philosophical differences between the GOP and Democratic presidential candidates on education policy. Although it takes a back seat in campaign coverage compared with the economy and the Iraq war, education remains a high priority for many American voters. An April 21 CBS News/MTV poll of young voters found that education was their third most popular concern, behind only the economy and Iraq and ahead of health care, terrorism and the environment. A Pew poll in January also found that more Americans chose education than terrorism as the most important problem facing the nation. While the presidential candidates emphasize their commitment to improving America’s education system, the issue has received scant attention from the media. Less than 1 percent of the questions in presidential primary debates were devoted to education, according to a forthcoming study whose results were provided to Politico on a confidential basis. 


While the nuances of each candidate’s health care plan have been carefully considered, most voters have heard little about the important distinctions between McCain and the Democrats, and between Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton, on education policy.  Each candidate has a unique philosophy on education. Clinton’s approach follows liberal tradition, aligning philosophically with the teachers unions in her support of increased funding and universal pre-kindergarten. Obama seeks newer and what might be termed “neo-liberal” solutions, such as being open to individual merit pay for teachers and a community service requirement for college students. McCain emphasizes giving education choices to parents, using programs such as private school vouchers. Clinton and Obama share many policy goals but often differ on the means to achieve them. For instance, both have committed to spending an additional $10 billion annually on programs for children under 5. That would mean doubling the current federal investment in early childhood education. 
But their approaches diverge sharply. While Clinton has proposed universal pre-kindergarten for all 4-year-olds, Obama would offer Early Learning Challenge Grants — modeled after an Illinois program — for states to use in a variety of ways. 
“These proposals reflect two competing strains of thought in the early education advocacy field,” said Sara Mead, an education expert at The New America Foundation. 

To view the full article, click here.

Podcast: Why Education Isn't a Hot Topic in Election 2008

-npr.org; May 25, 2008

The "Ed in '08" campaign got $60 million to try to make education a prominent issue in the race for the White House. Former Colorado Gov. Roy Romer, the chairman of the nonprofit in charge of the project, talks with Ari Shapiro about why the topic hasn't been high on the candidates' radar.

To listen to the podcast, click here.

Districts Tearing Up Teachers' Pink Slips

-The Union-Tribune; May 28, 2008

Months after massive protests and alarm over school layoffs began, only a fraction of the teachers who received pink slips will lose their jobs. Yesterday, the San Diego Unified, Poway Unified and Chula Vista Elementary school districts became the latest to rescind layoff notices and restore all permanent teaching positions. In San Diego Unified, jobs were restored for more than two-thirds of the 617 teachers and nurses who received pink slips this month. That includes all of the nearly 380 permanent teachers and all 37 probationary nurses who had received layoff notices. Around 200 probationary teachers still face layoffs. Poway Unified officials said they would pull back layoff notices for more than 100 classroom teachers who received them in March. A revised state budget added $5.3 million in expected revenue for the district in 2008-09, all of which is being poured into personnel costs. Administrators said the move spares permanent and probationary teachers facing layoffs, but the status of temporary teachers working on one-year contracts remains in limbo.

The Chula Vista Elementary School District's board last night rescinded layoff notices to 274 classroom teachers. The district had issued 401 tentative layoff notices in March and withdrew 127 of them before last night. Scores of layoff notices to teachers elsewhere in the county also have been withdrawn. The changes in most districts came after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger issued a revised budget this month that meant less-drastic funding cuts. Just a couple of weeks ago, layoff notices were rescinded for more than 280 teachers, counselors and others in the San Diego district, the state's second-largest. “We went overboard,” San Diego school board member John de Beck said of the initial layoff list. But unknowingly, he said. The board was being prudent based on the budget information it had at the time.

To view the full article, click here.

No Easy Plan for Teacher Pay

-The Salt Lake Tribune, May 23, 2008

Lawmakers' plan to spend $20 million next school year on performance pay for educators might have some problems, several superintendents said Thursday. Superintendents of the Salt Lake City, Box Elder and Uintah school districts said at an Education Interim Committee meeting Thursday that school districts are struggling to create plans to pay educators for performance. Adding to their stress, districts must come up with plans by the end of June to get a piece of the $20 million lawmakers approved in March. Some states have taken years to decide how to pay teachers based on their performance. Now, Utah teachers' pay is based mostly on years of experience and their educations. Uintah Superintendent Charles Nelson said he supports the idea of performance pay, but his district won't likely apply for the money. "My main concern with this process is it's too quick," Nelson said. "To have two months to come up with a plausible plan that's something . . . meaningful; I didn't think it could be done." Box Elder Superintendent Martell Menlove and Salt Lake City Superintendent McKell Withers said their districts plan to apply for the money. Menlove said he knows of another 16 districts that also plan to apply. But Menlove and Withers are concerned about several things, including that school districts might not be able to give state officials the type of report they seek by summer of 2009.     Utah State Board of Education rules say school districts must submit reports about their programs by July 1, 2009, and are encouraged to base the performance pay partly on measures of student academic progress in 2008-2009. But school districts often don't know standardized test results until August of each year.

Menlove also said districts are having trouble trying to craft plans that reflect lawmakers' intent when the rules are so broad. For example, should they reward all employees or just teachers, and should everyone get the same amount of money or different amounts? Sen. Howard Stephenson, R-Draper, who sponsored the legislation, and other lawmakers told the superintendents they don't expect perfection, especially because they gave school districts so much leeway in designing plans. "This was a loosey goosey appropriation," said Rep. Stephen Urquhart, R-St. George, meaning lawmakers purposefully didn't tell districts exactly what to do. "It's $20 million to use as you see fit."  Several lawmakers said they see the $20 million as a one-year experiment on performance pay in Utah, and they hope to use the results to help them create a long-term plan. "In an experiment like this, it's as important to know the misses as well as the hits," Urquhart said. "I just hope some of the misses are not detrimental to the process," Menlove replied. Menlove said he worries about lawmakers basing a long-term performance pay plan on the results of this one-year experiment because of the uncertainty surrounding it.

To view the full article, click here.

California's New Teachers Are Ready, But Have No Place To Go

-Los Angeles Times; May 25, 2008

Diana Nguyen has dreamed of teaching high school since she was inspired by her ninth-grade world history instructor, who made the subject jump off the page. But when the UC Irvine student receives her teaching credential this summer, she plans to move to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, to teach English. Why the change in plans? Simple, Nguyen, 23, said in her characteristic upbeat way. There are no jobs for a social studies teacher. "Because of the education budget cuts, I decided to travel abroad before settling down in a district," said Nguyen, a Garden Grove resident and student teacher at Carr Intermediate in Santa Ana. "This is a good chance to travel, build my resume up and relearn the Vietnamese language." Nguyen is one of thousands of prospective teachers who are graduating in the coming weeks during a time of decreasing jobs, school district budget cuts and declining student enrollment. New teachers hoping to find positions near their homes are being forced to seek work in other parts of California, across the United States, even overseas, and some are applying to private and charter schools.

Others are hoping to find work as long-term substitutes, typically receiving lower pay and no benefits. "I can't remember a worse time. It's desperate," said John Eichinger, an education professor who has taught at Cal State L.A. for 16 years and had taught in public schools for 15 years. His students "are very excited and idealistic, and they can't wait to get out there, and there's no place to go." California education officials worry that these graduates will leave the state, or the teaching field entirely, and that fewer students will enroll in teacher-preparation programs, as occurred five years ago when mass layoffs were threatened. This could gravely affect the state's ability to replace retiring teachers with well-trained understudies; one-third of the state's 308,000 teachers are expected to retire over the next decade. "I'm worried," said Jack O'Connell, state superintendent of public instruction. "Many of these individuals have the potential to be outstanding teachers. Yet if they're not hired, or if there's not an economically viable option, they'll leave the teaching profession." O'Connell said he was concerned, too, about other states poaching California teachers. School districts in Nevada, Texas, Hawaii and Virginia, among other states, have been recruiting in California. Fort Worth, Texas, school district officials placed billboards in San Diego reading "Your Future Is in Our Classroom" and held a three-day job fair earlier this month. School districts issued layoff warnings in March to as many as 24,000 teachers, librarians, nurses and others in the wake of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's January budget proposal.

To view the full article, click here.