Since its inception CTQ has been involved in a wide variety of research studies and policy projects, generating a number of reports, papers, and briefs as well as presentations. In addition, members of our TLN Forum have referenced and created literally thousands of insightful and provocative articles and artifacts during their daily conversations — and have become part of a teacher-generated Resource Library.

We begin with Ten Questions.

Ten Questions for Smart School Districts to Answer About Effective Teachers and Teaching

At the Center for Teaching Quality (CTQ) we continue to develop an evolving framework for assessing the effectiveness of the school community in its effort to ensure a caring, qualified, well-supported, and successful teacher for every student, in every district and school. Although one can find powerful examples of how states and school districts have transformed some strategies for recruiting, supporting and rewarding teachers, few, if any, communities have achieved comprehensive and coherent teaching quality policies to ensure access to good teaching for all students. Reaching this goal is no easy task, as insufficient and inequitable resources, out-of-sync federal and state policies, uncoordinated efforts, and lack of political will for bold action all limit the ability of many school communities to recruit and retain the effective teachers they need. The challenge is made greater by recent media accounts that simplify what it means to identify and develop effective teachers and ignore the role that the right working conditions play in enabling classroom practitioners to teach effectively.

Smart school communities ask and answer hard questions about which teachers they attract and how they are developed and supported, as well as whether they reward and retain the teachers they most need to help all students achieve. The framework described below represents a “Top Ten” list of questions smart school districts ask and answer in ensuring a caring, qualified, well-supported, and effective teacher for every student.

      
Question #1: Does the system identify and reward expert teachers?

Any organization needs exemplars that serve as models of excellence. School systems must have a system to identify and reward expert teachers and use that system to shine a bright light on what “good teaching and learning look like” (e.g., National Board Certification) and to drive recruitment, hiring, professional development and compensation practices.  While value-added statistical models can provide important information in determining who is an effective teacher, the poor quality of most standardized tests and limitations of the methodology, as suggested by many scholars, can restrict its utility. Even advocates for value-added methods now speak to its inherent weaknesses and call for caution in using the results in judging individual teachers.

The district must go beyond the traditional and often perfunctory checklist forms of teacher evaluation and use multiple measures, such as those being investigated in a major Gates Foundation study to identify effective teachers.

Then the district must provide the right incentives for all teachers to learn and use effective teaching practices. More effective teachers should be given special responsibilities and compensation commensurate with their abilities. However, this professional compensation system must be developed in an equitable way building cooperation and collaboration, not competition, among teaching colleagues. Without rewarding good teachers and making more public what good teaching looks like, systems cannot develop a high-functioning, coherent teacher development system.

Question #2: Does the system prepare and support principals so they can build teacher leadership and draw upon those leaders in school improvement?

Successful leaders, including principals, develop and count on contributions from many others in their organizations. While the idea of the principal as the instructional leader is a noble one, the job is too big for one person to accomplish. School systems must invest in principals so they can draw on its most accomplished teachers to (a) spread their content and teaching expertise (especially to lesser prepared and novice teachers); (b) implement a consistent and rigorous, yet adaptive curriculum within and between grades and across schools; and (c) help make smarter decisions about new teacher hires, curriculum, and school-community partnerships. Principals, with the right set of knowledge, skills, and dispositions are essential to developing and spreading teacher leadership. They also embrace the idea that to create the schools students deserve, it is time to blur the lines of distinction between those who teach in schools and those who lead them. Doing so means that effective principals are seen as effective teachers and spend some time teaching effectively and in turn give time for more teachers to lead outside of their classrooms.

Question #3: Does the system work with colleges and universities as well as other organizations to develop and grow a next generation of teachers?

 
Because no novice teachers can be fully prepared for all the challenges of classroom teaching, school districts must work closely with universities and other organizations to ensure that new teachers are as ready-to-teach as possible. School systems must work with local universities as well as community-based organizations (CBOs) and social service agencies in creating opportunities for new recruits to know their students and the neighborhood (and sociological) context in which they live. Urban Teacher Residencies (UTRs), built upon professional development schools and “lab schools” of the past, offer a way to think about investing in teacher education in ways transcending the usual debates over traditional university-based and short-cut alternative certification programs. They also represent a powerful venue for capturing the best of universities (e.g., access to research-based best practices) and districts (e.g., access to the best teachers) in preparing a new generation of teachers. They also help overcome the problems of universities (e.g., their ivory tower orientation) and districts (e.g., their myopic orientation and tendencies to implement curriculum du jour).  Teacher education of tomorrow will draw on CBOs to prepare some teachers as community organizers as well as a source of promising recruits who live in the neighborhoods in which they will teach. As we describe in some detail in Teaching 2030, universities, school systems, and other agencies will develop new operating agreements – and joint governing and financial arrangements – to collectively grow and development a new generation of effective teachers.

Question #4: Has the system redesigned its budgeting process and created streamlined personnel practices that allow for the best teacher candidates to be recruited and hired as well as placed and supported?

Perhaps more than anything else, high need districts must have more predictable budgets to recruit top-flight teachers for the schools that need them the most – matching the aggressive mid-spring hiring schedules of many competing suburban systems. State and local funding agencies must develop new procedures in order to assist systems in early hiring. District administrators and teacher union officials must work together to redesign HR functions and procedures in order to commit to hiring and placing at least 30 to 40 percent of new teachers by May, and the remainder by June. District offices must use new technologies to cast a wider recruitment net and to screen and process applicants more efficiently. Decision-making must be decentralized in order to involve more principal and teacher input into who is hired, while still tending to high and rigorous standards. Districts should examine a wide range of performance measures in determining who should be hired and how they should be assigned and supported over time. Studies have shown that out-of-field teaching continues to be a huge problem – a result of not just shortages, but mismanagement by administrators. Our own studies have shown how first grade teachers of extensive experience and expertise can be thrust by administrators into 5th and 6th grade math classes, without any preparation and support. And all too often school districts make teachers teach ineffectively by placing them in a subject or grade for which they are under-prepared or requiring them to waste their precious time on one-size-fits-all and moribund in-service workshops.

Question #5: Has the system redesigned its teacher assignment policies with a focus on the needs of students, and especially those in hard-to-staff, low performing schools?

Teacher unions and management must agree to revise teacher transfer processes so principals and teachers can choose among external and internal candidates equally. In many school systems, experienced teachers requesting transfers have “first dibs” on vacant positions in their teaching field, often in order of seniority, and they can pick and choose where they teach. Absent comprehensive incentives and supports for teaching in the most challenging schools, union officials are reluctant to back down on their seniority transfer “rights.” (In most situations, schools are required to take one of the transferring teachers who applies to fill a vacancy.) District administrators and union officials can create the kinds of positive assignment policies (e.g., different teaching loads, additional salary, more intensive professional development) that serve as incentives to recruit the best teachers for hard-to-staff schools. These schools, if they focus on the right conditions, as described in the empirical evidence and by one of our TeacherSolutions teams can ensure that high needs schools become easier-to-staff.

Question #6: Does the system have a comprehensive new teacher induction program that accommodates the needs of different types of novices and ensures that they do not get the most challenging assignments?

New teachers arrive at their first assignments with different degrees of readiness. Even well-prepared novice teachers do not possess all of the knowledge, skills, and experiences they need to be effective. Other professions and organizations formally induct their novices into their jobs, offer additional training and supports, and do not assign them to the most difficult tasks. Smart systems create new-teacher induction programs that are built on specific teaching standards. These systems also ensure that accomplished teachers serve as mentors who are trained for this new role and match mentors and novices on the basis of their teaching areas. These systems also devise ways for mentors to routinely observe and assess novices and for novices to watch other expert teachers teach. Strong induction programs are built in collaboration with local universities that can provide for novices a more seamless transition into teaching (for those who graduate from their program as well as others). Strong induction programs ensure that novices have a reduced teaching load and/or modified schedules so they have more time to learn to teach. Systems ensure that novices do not get the most challenging assignments in their first years of teaching and if they do, they work with a teaching team and do not have full responsibilities for the students and classes they teach.

Question #7: Does the system create professional development opportunities that respond to the needs of teachers and their students?

Teachers must have more professional development time that is related to their classroom needs and has meaning for improving student achievement. Smart systems provide more professional time but also hold teachers, administrators, and schools accountable for the new time devoted to professional development. The professional development that teachers experience must be related to their teaching assignment and focused on the content-specific teaching needs of the students being taught, as well as give teachers considerable input over what they are expected to learn and do. Systems must devise more ways for their teachers to engage in what the Japanese call “lesson study” – where common lessons are observed by teacher teams over time, the effects of the lessons on student learning are recorded and studied by the team, and curriculum materials and plans are adapted accordingly. Districts should assemble evidence on the effects of their professional development offerings on teaching practice and student learning. New technologies and online learning communities – like those we are developing for the Common Core (with support from the Gates Foundation) – can revolutionize professional development and finally de-silo teaching.

Question #8: Does the system create smaller learning communities and professional development opportunities for teachers to learn from and observe one another and analyze student data to improve practice?

Providing meaningful professional development opportunities for teachers is complicated by the fact that most schools are organized the same way they were 50 years ago. However, the small schools movement represents a “new” way of streamlining curricula and focusing on essential learning goals, reallocating resources in order to put more dollars into classrooms, and redeploying staff so more teaching adults can serve fewer numbers of students over time.  The Generation Schools Network, a Brooklyn-based nonprofit, has been helping urban schools reallocate the ways in which they use existing resources, especially staff and time. Since 2004, they have worked with schools to give students more time to learn and teachers more resources to teach more effectively. Without spending anymore money they have expanded learning time by up to 30 percent for all students without increasing the teacher work year; reduced class size in core content courses to an average of 14 to 1; reduced the total teacher load by two-thirds; increased professional development and provided common planning time daily for all teachers; enhanced the capacity of teachers to collect, analyze and respond continuously to data; and leveraged current and emerging instructional technologies in the classroom. Systems must prepare (and universities must be expected to assist) principals and other administrators in learning how to redesign their schools so teachers can be more effective. Without such redesign efforts, teachers will never have these powerful opportunities.

Question #9: Does the system have a data infrastructure that combines information on teaching practices and teacher working conditions, spurring continuous improvement and increases in student achievement?

Systems must be data driven – both in terms of student outcomes and the conditions that allow teachers to teach differently and more effectively. The Data Quality Campaign has identified 10 essential elements of a longitudinal data system. But it is incomplete. As outlined in our 2007 paper, policymakers must build data systems and capacity to link teaching practices, working conditions, and student achievement. Recent studies are showing powerful links between teacher working conditions and student achievement. Systems must assemble data that reveal not only which schools, teachers, and students are doing better. Data also must be collected and used in terms of what is working in classrooms and the school as a whole – and why. For example, this means that systems must collect data on what and how teachers teach and what kinds of teaching practices appear to make a difference for student learning as well as what kind of professional development teachers experience and how often they work with colleagues in joint problem solving. Principals and teachers must be consumers of these data and inform their communities as to what they mean and what needs to be done to improve student learning.

Question #10: Does the system inform and engage policymakers and the public on matters of teaching quality and student learning in ways that support the closing of the achievement gap?

Too many policy leaders do not believe that teaching is “smart” work and have little understanding of what it takes to create a comprehensive teacher development system that can help close the achievement gap. Systems can assemble the right kind of data and stories that engage key public constituencies around the issues at hand. In turn, these community leaders can become the advocates needed for securing the resources and the political will necessary to transform teaching and ensure that every student has a caring, qualified, well-supported, and effective teacher. Student voices around what constitutes “highly qualified” teachers and good teaching are part of a public engagement campaign.

In Teaching 2030, we call for a new kind of public engagement – marketing that teaching is complex work (in ways that the federal government marketed cigarette smoking as bad for your health) and new investments to be made in teachers. Creating a results-oriented 21st century teaching profession is more of political problem than a technical one. The public must understand and embrace new ideas and build the political will necessary to push policymakers and administrators stuck on using 20th century ideas to spur 21st century school improvements.