Teacher Preparation and school success

by Stephen Krashen,


Education Secretary Duncan thinks that Schools of Education do a "mediocre job" and need strict accountability ("Louisiana serves as model in teacher assessment," Dec. 12).

American Schools of Education deserve praise, not scorn. If international test scores are the criteria for judging performance, American children do very well, as long as the effect of poverty is taken into consideration. There is very good evidence that poverty must be considered.

American schools where less than 25 percent of the students are poor outscore nearly all other countries in math and science. American children only fall below the international average when 75 percent or more of the students in a school live in poverty. Poverty means hunger, poor diet, toxins in the environment, and a lack of reading material. All of these seriously affect academic performance. The US has the highest level of childhood poverty of all industrialized countries, 25%, compared to Denmark's 2%. 


Poverty is beyond the control of Schools of Education. Low achievement is the fault of a society that allows so many children to live in poverty.

Also, if we accept Secretary Duncan's logic, we should hold schools of business accountable for the current economic crisis.

Stephen Krashen

Some sources:
Berliner, David C. (2009). Poverty and Potential:  Out-of-School Factors and School Success.  Boulder and Tempe: Education and the Public Interest Center & Education Policy Research Unit. http://epicpolicy.org/publication/poverty-and-potential
Krashen, S. 1997. Bridging inequity with books. Educational Leadership  55(4): 18-22.

Louisiana serves as model in teacher assessment
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/12/AR2009121202631.html



Duncan also cited California's PACT (Performance Assessment for California Teachers) as a model. This form of assessment lacks validity.
See http://sites.google.com/site/assessingpact/




The Governor of California vetoed $800,000 from the California budget for development of new state textbooks.  Therefore, California will continue to use history textbooks which have almost no coverage of the Latino history.  48% of California school children are Latino.
On the other hand, the budget does include $9 million for the invalid PACT. 

Upgrade Teaching ?

National Panel Urges Upgrades to Teacher Workforce

By Lesli A. Maxwell

Washington

A report from a high-powered education task force that calls for states and school districts to overhaul how they recruit, prepare, evaluate, and compensate teachers has raised the hackles of the American Federation of Teachers, which dismissed many of its recommendations as “top-down” and disrespectful of the profession.

AFT President Randi Weingarten’s sharp criticism of the report, released Tuesday by Strategic Management of Human Capital, came despite the participation of Ms. Weingarten and two other AFT officers in the 30-member task force that helped shape a series of 20 policy recommendations to improve the teaching corps in the nation’s 100 largest school districts. Some recommendations are aimed at improving the effectiveness of principals, but teachers are the overwhelming focus of the report.

“There weren’t many of us on the task force speaking for teachers, and I think the report reflects that, especially in the lack of emphasis on principal effectiveness,” said Francine Lawrence, the president of the Toledo Federation of Teachers, an AFT affiliate, and a member of the panel. “It doesn’t speak to the professionalization of teaching at all, which is a real disappointment.”

Other high-profile members of the task force included District of Columbia Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee, who served as a vice chair of the panel, and New York City Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein.

The ‘People Side’

In its recommendations to states, the task force calls for several sweeping changes in teacher policy.

It said raising the bar for who can enter undergraduate-level teacher education programs—perhaps by requiring a minimum score on the SAT or the ACT—is necessary to improve the talent that enters the profession. States also should require a rigorous content test before prospective teachers can earn an initial teaching license, it says. In addition, states should support, with policy and funding, more alternative pathways into teaching, such as Teach For America and the New Teacher Project, and should require all new teachers to go through an intensive induction or an internship experience that resembles a medical residency.

… “These recommendations are intended to be a framework for states, and we hope that they will use it, especially as they prepare their Race to the Top applications,” said Mr. Odden.

“There is a high congruence of these issues with what Secretary Duncan has outlined for the Race to the Top,” said Mr. Kelly. “I think we are seeing widening acceptance among many education leaders on these issues.”

‘No Vision’?

But union officials said the report ignored much of the input they offered. Chiefly, said Ms. Lawrence of the Toledo Federation of Teachers, the task force’s recommendations don’t reflect what she said is the need to treat teachers as professional partners in school improvement efforts. Without that, she said, keeping the best people in the profession and enticing them to work in the highest-need schools will remain an unfulfilled goal.

“We need to design a variety of roles for teachers, especially when it comes to making decisions about how we are going to turn around our lowest-performing schools,” she said. “There’s no vision for that in this report.”

While agreeing with the report’s call for radically changing the way teachers are evaluated, Ms. Lawrence said she was disappointed that the task force gave no nod to the peer-review system that’s been in use in Toledo since the early 1980s. That system, she said, has probably “dismissed more teachers for incompetence” than all of the traditional evaluation systems being used in most urban districts.

One superintendent took issue with what he saw as the report’s main thrust: recruiting “the best and the brightest” people to become teachers.

“In our profession, not everyone can teach regardless of how smart they may be,” said David C. Ring Jr., the superintendent in Delmar, Del. “We need people who can relate to children.”

Gov. Pawlenty said that districts need to strike a better balance between teachers who are experts in their subject areas and those who are skilled in running their classrooms and relating to children.

“I don’t think we are in any danger at the moment of overemphasizing smart people going into teaching,” he said.

From: Ed Week.

Testing and the California budget crisis

Lets cancel the High School Exit Exam, lay off teachers, release prisoners early, cut medi cal payments, keep children from health insurance, increase class size, end care for Alzheimer patients, but keep $ 16 million for a sweetheart contract for a very few tenured professors.

In 2006 the legislature and CTC imposed an expensive, redundant accountability system (test) TPA/PACT on teacher preparation – one the state cannot afford in its current budget crisis. I am confident that only a few legislators were even aware that they were creating this accountability fraud. It is a gross injustice to add funding for performance assessment of future teachers into the budget when our schools are having to increase class sizes, lay off teachers, reduce career technical education, cancel transportation, and delay long needed school reforms.
There is no evidence that TPA/PACT are valid measures of good teaching. To the contrary, our experience tells us that one-time all-or-nothing tests like the TPA/PACT are among the poorest possible ways to predict the likelihood that a test-taker will be an excellent California teacher.

Significant evidence of the test has yet to be gathered. For details see the linked article. But, I was able to observe two out of the available 5 local sites.
In each case about 30 students made twenty minute videos to measure (calibrated) to see if they were “good teachers”. In the two cases I observed, about 3 students – total of 6- did not pass on the first administration. Notably, these 6 students were also student teaching and observed by professionals who found their teaching very professional. In the same cohorts, about 6 student teachers were “excellent” in their calibration of their video. Notably, these 6 student teachers were not found to be excellent nor superior in their student teaching as measured by professionals. That is, the test did not eliminate the weak and it did not identify the strong. That is what the state is paying $16 million each year ; $10 million to the CSU and an estimated $6 million to the U.C. U.C. prepares fewer teachers than the CSU. BTW. In future years, the cost of the test (calibration) will be transferred as a fee to the students teachers.
The implementation of TPA assessment was initially contingent upon state funding. But SB 1209 in 2006 removed the funding requirement and required implementation of the TPA throughout the CSU effective July 1, 2008, imposing a new low quality accountability system on teacher preparation programs in addition to the performance assessments currently in place, without providing the funding needed to pay for the new program. The solution is obvious. Rescind this provision of SB 1209.
In times of crisis we should fund important things. This $ 16 million should be cut from the CSU and U.C. budgets and used for other vital, impacted interests.
For a detailed description of the problems of PACT and TPA see here ; http://sites.google.com/site/assessingpact/
Why are so many people disillusioned with the legislature and the legislative leadership? In part because these kinds of boondoggles exist. And, pure personal contacts, the privileges of the elite, keep them funded while the governor proposes that we close parks and reduce the number of fire fighters available. Legislators and the LAO have been consistently advised of this foolish spending. This is a failure of leadership.

Duane Campbell,
Sacramento

Imposed teacher assessment reforms do not make sense

A little common sense please.
Current legislation imposes untested, invalid teacher performance assessments in California as of 2008. All future teachers will be required to pass these assessments.
It would make a lot more sense to develop the assessments. Then have 2-3 campuses test them.
After 2-3 campuses tested them, we should have a real, authentic, analysis of the value and validity of these assessments.
Then, if the assessments are valid, and they add value; then they should be implemented state wide.
We need to stop writing law by ideology and then imposing it blindly.

Duane Campbell
for more see:

http://coefaculty.csus.edu/campd/index.html


CFA Resolution

As part of a massive movement by the State Commission on Teacher Credentialing to reform credential programs in California (SB2042, 2000), new accountability measures have been implemented, some without financial funding. As part of these mandates, the State of California’s Commission on Teacher Credentialing has mandated that all teacher education programs implement Teacher Performance Assessments for credentialing candidates (TPA) by July, 2008.
The TPA as an assessment tool is based on reductive, corporate-driven teacher performance expectations (TPEs). As an assessment tool, it is even more simplistic and rigid than these expectations, requiring the development of lower-level teaching skills needed to teach the scripted curriculum regulated by the high stakes tests required under No Child Left Behind. It may be inferred from the content of the TPA that programs employing this tool will lose quality in terms of equity and social justice as well as critical thinking, creativity, and the holistic growth of all participants: faculty, student teachers and teachers. These requirements imposed upon teacher education are only the beginning of state and national efforts that are currently referred to as student learning outcomes, assessment and accountability. These efforts are directed towards corporate control and standardization of all disciplines of higher education.
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Whereas, the CFA values the development of complex processes of accountability for teaching and learning if these processes are not framed in terms of reductive standards;
Whereas, the current move towards accountability contributes to the standardization of higher education from the ‘top down”;
Whereas, this standardization has serious implications for the academic freedom of all CSU faculty;
Whereas, the development and implementation of assessment tools are unfunded mandates that have serious workload implications, as well as implications for faculty, students, student teachers and teachers in terms of educational goals, practices and experiences.

Be it resolved, that CFA encourage faculty to become involved in a dialogue with others on campuses to learn more about these unfunded mandates, and
And be it further resolved that the CFA encourage faculty to decline to participate in the development and implementation of unfunded, reductionist assessment tools.

October 21, 2006

Unanimous support from Teacher Education Caucus , CFA
Majority support from the Peace and Justice Caucus

Oppose new, unfunded mandates on teachers

Regular readers will recognize that last Spring I posted several items on SB 1209, an Omnibus Education Bill in the California legislature, and how it was meddling and pandering rather than improving teacher preparation.
With the help of CFA, we have now prepared to repeal one part of the mandate.

April 12, 2007
Members, Assembly Education Committee

Fr: Susan Meisenhelder, Chair, Political Action and Legislative Committee
David Balla-Hawkins, Legislative Director

Re: AB 750 (Carter) – SPONSOR
Removal of CSU Teacher Assessment Unfunded Mandate


On behalf of the 23,000 faculty, counselors, coaches and librarians who teach at the California State University system, the California Faculty Association is the SPONSOR of AB 750 to eliminate an unfunded mandate affecting teacher credential students.

In lieu of this change, institutions such as the CSU will be required to pay for these teacher assessments – or will simply pass the estimated $400 per assessment costs onto students – when adequate state funding is not provided.


The Need for AB 750

Along with an array of important K-12 teacher credential reforms, a small change resulting from last year’s SB 1209 (Scott) also created an unfunded mandate that – unaddressed – will adversely impact CSU students seeking a teaching credential. Beginning July 1, 2008, CSU teaching candidates will be required to complete teacher assessments as part of their graduation requirement. Unfortunately, SB 1209 changed existing law that made these assessments contingent on the availability of state funding, thus creating a new CSU unfunded mandate.

At the CSU, where over half of all K-12 teachers are taught, student enrollment fees have already nearly doubled in just five years. Having the state require a new assessment of credential students, without providing the necessary funding, would discourage students from seeking a teaching credential by making it more cost-prohibitive – or simply more difficult – by forcing CSU teacher credential students to pay $400 more in higher fees, or eliminating other essential student services and/or classes to pay for these assessments.

AB 750 will simply reinstate existing language that was deleted by SB 1209, thus making teacher assessments contingent on the availability of state funding. Unaddressed, these assessment costs – if continued as an unfunded mandate – will further deplete limited CSU funds or restrict the financial ability of students to obtain a K-12 teaching credential.

It is for these reasons that CFA respectfully requests you vote “AYE” on AB 750.

What you can do.
Write letters of support to your Senators and Assemblypersons. Support AB 750.

For a detailed description of the complex problem and the strategy see

http://coefaculty.csus.edu/campd/index.html
Duane Campbell

Political meddling in California teacher preparation

In several prior posts I have described the process of legislative meddling in California teacher preparation.
The excerpts were from a longer paper.
The entire paper is at my campus home page

http://coefaculty.csus.edu/campd/index.html
See the link; Problems with the California legislation on Teacher Performance Assessment, Pact, and some suggestions.
Feedback is welcome.
Duane Campbell