A Grass-Roots Start for Teachers' Ideas

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CQ WEEKLY IN FOCUSJune 4, 2012 Page 1134

A Grass-Roots Start for Teachers IdeaBy Lauren Smith, CQ Staff

A small band of teachers from around the country has been embedded in the Education Department on a

fellowship program for the past year, and they have proposed a new vision for the teaching workforce. They

want to raise teacher salaries significantly, make schools of education more selective and overall lift the

profession to increase its prestige and attract top college graduates.

The Obama administration likes the proposal so much that it launched a public relations campaign around it

in March called RESPECT Recognizing Educational Success, Professional Excellence and Collaborative

Teaching after requesting $5 billion to kick-start efforts in its fiscal 2013 budget a month earlier.

Too often, teachers and principals operate at schools with a factory culture, where inflexible work rules

discourage innovation and restrict teachers opportunities to work together as a team and to take on

leadership roles, Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in the announcement. As a result, the field ofeducation is not highly regarded many of Americas brightest young college graduates never consider

entering the field, and others leave prematurely.

The blueprint for a new teacher workforce, Duncan and the teaching fellows maintain, would elevate the

profession, putting it on par with medicine and the law, in order to ultimately provide students with a better

education.

The problem, education policy experts point out, is that Washington has very little authority over state and

local school district teaching and hiring policies, which are entangled with union contracts and state budget

priorities. And even if Congress approved $5 billion to start the transformation the likelihood of which iszero the money would be enough to cover only 10 to 15 states.

This vision is a pipe dream, says Michael Petrilli, executive vice president of the Thomas B. Fordham

Institute, a conservative-leaning education think tank. This is all sorts of aspirational. I just dont think you

can do much beyond the bully pulpit to effect that much change.

Such criticism isnt dampening the administrations spirit. The Education Department, well aware of its

limitations, is employing a grass-roots strategy, sending its teaching fellows to local school districts across

the country to build support from the ground up.

To be sure, many of the ideas have been proposed before by various policy experts and education

organizations. But packaging them together in an effort to change the entire profession top-to-bottom is a

more ambitious and some say impossible undertaking.

The goal of the initiative is to identify and ultimately implement strategies to strengthen the profession by

dramatically changing how teachers are recruited, selected, supported, compensated, promoted, and

retained in the profession, Duncan wrote in an open letter to the teaching fellows in February. It is a bold

plan that will take considerable time and resources, but one we firmly believe is worth the effort.

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EDUCATION EVANGELISTS: Duncan has sent a group of

teaching fellows around the country to promote an initiative

dramatically changing their profession. The administration

wants $5 billion for the program. (CHRIS MADDALONI / CQ ROLL

CALL)

Training and Feedback

The 16 teaching fellows who helped craft the RESPECT

campaign were recruited by the Education Department

to provide a teacher perspective to policy proposals.

Its very rare we have an opportunity for us as teachers

to give feedback before it becomes policy, says

Genevieve DeBose, who has taught for 10 years in Los

Angeles and Oakland, Calif., and in the Bronx in New

York City, before joining the program. This is an

opportunity for us to get it right and put our stamp on it.

[The fellows] feel extremely lucky, appreciated and

valued that their recommendations are taken in on the

front end.

The motivation behind the administrations campaign stems in part from the embarrassing performance by

U.S. high school students on international tests that place them far behind students in other industrializedcountries in reading, math and science; the ballooning number of teacher preparation programs with low bars

for entry or graduation compared with other parts of the world; and rapidly declining morale among teachers

over state budget cuts and antiquated policies.

Under the teaching fellows proposal, students would no longer advance in lockstep, age-based grades but

would instead progress through the system based on what they know and can do. The formulaic school day

and year, originally based on an agrarian calendar, would be eliminated and redesigned based on students

needs. Teachers would have access to data measuring student learning and would be trained on how to use

it to inform instruction hour to hour, day to day and year to year.

Becoming a teacher would be much more difficult, with a new workforce recruited from the top tier of

students in the country. They would be required to demonstrate subject area expertise, proficiency in

improving student learning and dispositions associated with successful teaching, such as perseverance and

effective communication.

In addition, teacher preparation programs would be required to track and publish data on how long their

graduates stay in the profession and how successful they are based on principals evaluations and student

learning.

Like aspiring doctors, graduates of teaching schools would enter a clinical residency for two to four years

with a master teacher before getting their own classes.

Starting salaries for teachers who have completed their residency could be as high as $65,000, according to

the plan. As teaching careers progress, salaries would increase faster and maximum salaries would be

higher, so that master teachers could earn as much as $120,000 to $150,000 after about seven to 10

years.

While pay has usually been linked to years of service or professional credentials, the proposed salary

structure would more reflect the quality of a teachers work. Teacher evaluations would include an analysis


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of their responsibilities and accomplishments, measurements of student growth data, results from formal

observations, self-evaluations, and feedback from students.

Think Local

Its highly unlikely that Congress will approve the administrations $5 billion request to prod states into

changing their teacher policies, given partisan divisions and this years looming budget battles. Duncan,

however, has become quite adept at finding his way around congressional gridlock and offering incentives to

states to change on their own.

During his tenure as secretary, Duncan has overseen the Race to the Top program, a grant competition that

prods states and in the latest round, school districts into embracing steps that the administration

favors. He also has waived provisions of the 2002 federal education law, known as No Child Left Behind, for

states that offered alternatives for improving their schools, as long as the administration approves the

alternatives.

Now, the Education Departments teaching fellows are traveling around the country to meet with teachers

and begin building support at the state level for the RESPECT proposal. The administration assures that this

is not meant to turn teachers into lobbyists, but rather to collect teachers feedback and give them a seat at

the table.

According to DeBose, at least 25 of the 30 teacher roundtable discussions that she has organized supported

the blueprint. A majority of folks are really excited about it, she says.

Its all about opening teachers eyes and allowing them to see opportunities, she says. And maybe theyll

say, hey, maybe if this doesnt happen, if Congress doesnt appropriate $5 billion for this or our state doesnt

win, what can I do at my school or district level to make some of these changes? Its all about having that

dialogue.

Theres not much the Education Department can do to alter the school year or revamp teaching salaries,

both of which are tied to union contracts or state policies. But the department could impose tighter

regulations on teacher-training programs to begin weeding out the least effective ones. It used this tactic

most recently in an effort to curb deceitful marketing and recruiting by for-profit colleges.

Congress, for its part, may also attempt to deal with teacher development programs and teacher evaluations

in the upcoming reauthorization of No Child Left Behind, which expired in 2007. Although floor votes arent

expected this year, committees in both chambers have laid down markers for the future by approving

reauthorization measures.

In the House, Minnesota Republican John Kline, chairman of the Education and the Workforce Committee,

included in his proposal a mandate that school districts create teacher evaluation systems based in part on

student test scores and four other measurements. Further, schools would have to use those evaluations to

make personnel decisions.

Iowa Democrat Tom Harkin, chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee,

says he would have liked to include a provision on teacher evaluations but gave up on the idea to keep his

bill less controversial.


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Blaming and Shaming

Implementing the administrations proposal is fraught with obstacles. For starters, powerful teachers unions

have reacted rather defensively.

Having a campaign is good, but it cant just be words, says Randi Weingarten, president of the American

Federation of Teachers. So frankly, rather than blaming and shaming teachers, rather than thinking theres a

silver bullet of rewarding and sanctioning, we should be helping and collaborating with teachers.

Such a response reflects teachers general discontent with the profession, says Jennifer Cohen, education

policy expert at the New America Foundation, a centrist think tank. Teacher job satisfaction has plummeted

by 15 percentage points, from 59 percent in 2009 to 44 percent in 2011, according to a MetLife study.

Teachers reporting that they are likely to leave for another occupation went up from 17 percent in 2009 to 29

percent last year.

I think a lot of teachers right now think theyre captive on a sinking ship, Cohen says.

Moreover, some of the proposals to overhaul the teaching profession are enmeshed in complicated webs of

supporters and critics that cross party lines.

Teachers unions, for example, have pressured Democrats to oppose including student test scores in teacher

evaluations, arguing that they are not a good measurement of performance. Republicans often contend that

setting evaluation requirements at the federal level would amount to government overreach. But some

lawmakers in both parties, such as Kline, see evaluations as a necessary tool for identifying good teachers.

The big question is whether states will pick up where Washington leaves off, and whether the Obama

administration can persuade all the various interest groups to go along.

People are worried that this is a great vision, but how will this actually happen and how will we ensure thatwe have funding for these ideas? DeBose says, describing the response from teachers around the country.

The other piece is, it comes back to leadership. Some say were all for this, but if our principals arent for i t,

if our superintendent, local organizations arent for it, how will this all happen?

Already, some states are taking steps outlined in the RESPECT plan. Louisiana and Tennessee now track

how well teachers from various preparation programs perform. Teachers in Massachusetts must pass a

relatively difficult certification exam. And more than 1,000 schools have taken steps to extend or restructure

the school day.

In a positive sign of a growing commitment to transforming the teaching profession, the EducationDepartment in May held its second labor management summit, at which teachers unions, heads of school

boards, superintendents and others promised to work with instead of against each other.

The ray of light between our stances on these issues is growing smaller and smaller, Duncan said at the

conference, held in Cincinnati. We have to walk that walk. We cant encourage states and districts to act a

certain way if were all still in our silos.

FOR FURTHER READING:Duncan circumvents Congress, CQ Weekly, p. 490; union flexibility, 2010 CQ

Weekly, p. 1325; Race to the Top (PL 111-5), 2009 Almanac, p. 7-3.


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A Grass-Roots Start for Teachers' Ideas