New Teacher Center Policy News

February 2013

 

Evaluating and Supporting New Teachers 

Liam Goldrick, Director of Policy

 

Today New Teacher Center is releasing a guide that explores whether a new state teacher evaluation law -- Illinois's Performance Evaluation Reform Act -- provides sufficient growth and learning opportunities for beginning teachers. Cultivating Effective Teachers Through Evaluation And Support: A Guide For Illinois Policymakers And Educational Leaders is available now on the NTC website.

 

While the Guide is customized for policy and school leaders in Illinois, its content may potentially interest a national education audience. The Guide raises important questions about whether teacher evaluation as currently construed and designed can adequately meet the learning needs of beginning teachers. It offers three examples of school districts (Hillsborough County, Florida; Montgomery County, Maryland; Pleasanton Unified, California) that have implemented teacher evaluation systems that are purposeful about developing and supporting new teachers.

 

Educator evaluation reform is intended to more accurately identify effective and ineffective teachers and to inform teacher development. The reality is that more effort and attention has been focused on how to assess and rate teacher performance within such systems than on how to ensure that they provide regular and useful feedback on teaching.

 

NTC believes that evaluation alone cannot sufficiently inform and accelerate new teacher development. Teacher learning must be supported through an aligned talent development system that includes the induction of beginning teachers. But overlooked amidst the din of evaluation reform is the fact that few states have policies to ensure that all beginning educators receive comprehensive, high-quality induction and mentoring assistance. In most settings, induction simply does not fulfill its potential as a vehicle for instructional improvement.

 

For Illinois, our 11 detailed recommendations for state policymakers and district leaders focus around two broad priorities: (1) Design a comprehensive educator effectiveness system that encompasses both evaluation and robust instructional feedback and support for new teachers; and (2) Encourage and enable teacher leaders to serve as teacher mentors and as peer evaluators.

 

We offer five main takeaways from this work for a national audience. First, teachers are learners, too. Their effectiveness is not a fixed attribute, but is variable depending on their teaching conditions and can be improved over time. This prospect for on-the-job improvement is especially strong for new teachers when given the appropriate support and guidance during the initial years of teaching.

 

Second, beginning teachers should not be treated as widgets within evaluation and performance management systems. New teachers experience unique developmental phases and require more frequent support and feedback than their veteran colleagues. But most states are generally not differentiating evaluation for them or providing individualized, targeted support. Further, beginning teachers are the modal, or most common, today in American schools and are disproportionately assigned to disadvantaged students. There is a strong rationale to consider them the most important subjects, or focus, of these emerging systems.

 

Third, evaluation must be designed as part of a broader talent development system and cannot inform and support changes to teachers' practice independently. Most evaluation systems as designed simply do not provide the frequency and depth of feedback on teaching that research suggests new teachers need in order to accelerate their effectiveness. For beginning teachers, this necessitates an aligned program of high-quality induction featuring regular contact with a mentor, frequent classroom observation, on-going opportunities to engage in reflection and self assessment, and actionable, "real time" feedback that can inform instructional improvement throughout the school year.

 

Fourth, induction in most state and district contexts is not designed or implemented to strengthen new teacher performance. While 43 states currently require annual teacher evaluations, only 11 require the provision of induction and mentoring assistance for all first- and second-year teachers. As we have articulated in our Review of State Policies on Teacher Induction, most states' policies and teacher induction standards (if they have them) leave much to be desired. As a result, the quality and breadth of the support that new teachers receive varies widely.

 

Finally, states and districts need to employ and develop teacher leaders as peer evaluators and mentors. Teacher talent is currently underutilized in schools and districts. In rolling out evaluation systems, principals and school administrators are poised to do most of the heavy lifting with regard to classroom observation and leading coaching conversations. Instructional improvement is a collective responsibility and is too critical and time intensive an endeavor to leave solely to often overtaxed school administrators.

 

 

NTC News

NTC TELL Surveys Launch in Several States   

Questions on school leadership as well as new teacher support are key components of the Teaching and Learning Conditions surveys administered by NTC on behalf of State and District partners. Surveys have recently launched in Colorado, Delaware, Maryland, Tennessee, and Hillsborough County (Florida). In the coming weeks, NTC will launch surveys in Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Vermont, Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania), and Santa Cruz (California).

 

In this video, a third-grade teacher talks about her positive experience with the TELL Colorado survey and how the data helped her improve teacher induction and mentoring at her school. Similarly, Delaware Governor Jack Markell, Secretary of Education Mark Murphy and State Education Association President Frederika Jenner spoke about the importance of teaching conditions at the recent launch of TELL Delaware. NTC works with state leaders to bring together collaborative partners in support of improving teaching conditions.

 

In addition to the surveys, NTC recently created the TELL Resource Library, designed to support schools seeking improved teaching and learning conditions and the use of the TELL Survey. The online resource provides links to free articles that support schools in addressing the core areas of the survey.

 

Listening to educators is an essential first step to improving schools, so we were heartened when John Wilson raised an important question in his Education Week blog post about the MetLife Survey this week. "How can we begin to shore up our schools and the teachers in them? We can start by having every school administer the Teaching and Learning Conditions Survey and use the data to make substantive changes in the school environment. The New Teacher Center is the resource for getting that started. The Center's work is no longer mere theory, but meaningful data for school improvement and a must for those who want to improve teacher job satisfaction." 

 

Learn more about NTC's Teaching & Learning Conditions Initiative.    

Two Significant Findings of the MetLife Survey  

NTC Chief External Affairs Officer, Eric Hirsch, weighs in on last week's release of the new MetLife Survey of the American Teacher: Challenges for School Leadership in this NTC blog post. Hirsch identifies two specific findings that stood out to NTC, and prompted us to ask: What constructive steps can we take to move education forward? 

  1. Nearly seven in 10 principals (69 percent) report that the responsibilities of the principal are not similar to those of the job just five years ago.  

  2. More principals find it challenging to maintain an adequate supply of effective teachers in urban schools (60% vs. 43% in suburban schools and 44% in rural schools) and in schools with two-thirds or more low-income students (58% vs. 37% in schools with one-third or fewer).

Hirsch writes, "Listening to educators is an essential first step to improving schools. We commend MetLife for conducting this survey each year. We know from our Teaching & Learning Conditions Initiative that surveying educators, and learning more about how they perceive key factors about their work, is an essential first step to improving schools across the country."   

 

Policy News

Race to the Top Year 2 Highlights

Year 2 Race to the Top state performance reports released by the U.S. Department of Education reveal advancements in providing effective support to teachers and principals.

 

Georgia developed a final draft of Teacher and Principal Induction Guidance to inform state policy on induction and provide LEAs and schools with assistance on creating, implementing and sustaining quality teacher and principal induction programs.

 

Hawai'i adopted statewide Teacher Induction Standards. The state anticipates having between 500-1500 new teachers in 2012-13. NTC provides two years of induction support to beginning teachers. Principals have been receiving monthly job-embedded mentoring through the New Principals Academy.

 

Maryland's Teacher Induction Academy provides all new teachers with high-quality induction support. In partnership with NTC, the state conducted a second Academy that trained an additional 200 new teacher mentors and induction coordinators.

 

Massachusetts created the Superintendent Induction Program and an online training for mentors of teachers instructing English as a Second Language, special education and STEM. The state also collected feedback on teaching and learning conditions through the TELL Massachusetts survey.

 

Ohio established the state's Resident Educator Program that provides four-years of induction to beginning teachers and creates professional support structures for teachers and principals. The state also collaborated to provide training for mentors of beginning teachers and worked with 30 education stakeholders to develop a mentorship model for beginning principals.

 

Rhode Island developed an induction and mentoring program to support new teachers. Supported by NTC, 17 induction coaches provide every new teacher in the state with 75 minutes of mentoring per week and participate in ongoing professional development.

 
STEM Master Teacher Corps Act

U.S. Senator Al Franken (D-Minnesota) re-introduced legislation (S.758 now S.358) that would establish a Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) Master Teacher Corps program. The program would offer career advancement opportunities and higher pay to the nation's top STEM teachers. Corps members would receive specialized training, mentor other STEM teachers, and inform the development of STEM education policy. The bill would enact a key recommendation from a 2010 report of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. First introduced in 2011, the bill is endorsed by more than 55 organizations, including New Teacher Center. (Bill summary)

 

NTC provides ongoing support to new science teachers around the nation through our e-Mentoring for Student Success (eMSS) initiative. Through eMSS participating states, districts, institutions of higher education, NTC partners, and nonprofits are able to provide content- and grade-specific e-mentoring to math, science, and special education teachers -- an excellent solution for new STEM teachers located in remote areas where in-person mentoring is restricted. To date, the initiative has served over 3400 teachers nation while. Members of NTC's eMSS team who are also involved with the development of the Next Generation Science Standards are beginning to revise the program's curriculum to address the support teachers will need to implement these new set of standards. Furthermore, e-MSS may also serve as a tool to provide training and ongoing support to members of the STEM Master Teacher Corps.

Proposed State Investments in New Teacher Induction 

Illinois State Superintendent Chris Koch and the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) have proposed reinvesting in new teacher and principal induction that has been without state funding for the past two years. ISBE's FY 2014 budget request includes $5 million for the Teacher and Administrator Mentoring Program and $900,000 for the Principal Mentoring Program. New program rules adopted by ISBE last fall would ensure that this funding flows only to those induction programs that adhere to state induction program standards.

 

In Oregon, the Chalkboard Project is leading the charge to ensure that state funding continues for the Oregon Beginning Teacher and Administrator Mentoring Program. Sustained funding of $5 million would ensure that half of the state's beginning educators receive high-quality induction support. An increase to $10 million would provide mentoring assistance to all of Oregon's new educators.

Good Reads

Stanford Social Innovation Review Discuss Teacher Preparation Programs         

The Stanford Social Innovation Review discusses the need for teacher preparation programs to better prepare their students for the realities of the classroom. April Stout, a New Teacher Center mentor, describes her experience as a new teacher in one of California's toughest school districts. Even with her teacher preparation program, she wasn't prepared for the reality of the classroom. "I went on total survival mode for the first six months of my career," says Stout. With several years of mentoring as a new teacher, Stout eventually became a skilled teacher. According to Stout, "teaching is the only profession where a first-time practitioner is expected "to have the same skill set as a 10-year veteran." Moving teacher preparation programs toward a practical approach rather than theoretical can better prepare teachers for the classroom.

Strategies for Telling A Good Learning Story    

Sam Chaltain, formerly the National Director of the Forum for Education & Democracy and co-director of the First Amendment Schools Project, was a featured speaker at NTC's recent 15th National Symposium on Teacher Induction. Chaltain urged educators to start telling their own stories about teaching and learning and stop allowing others to "pigeonhole" the public's perception of the work being done in today's schools. He followed up on his presentation by posting three design principles for educators to start telling their own story.

  1. Decouple and Recouple: Amplify and humanize the stories of the people in our schools than look for the actionable ideas underpinning that work and flesh them out separately.
  2. Serialize and Sustain: Tell the stories of teachers, students, classrooms, and schools in a series of stories to build and sustain an audience.
  3. Reshare and Repurpose: A great story can and should serve multiple purposes.

See Me After Class     

   

Roxanna Elden is a National Board Certified high school teacher in Miami, Florida. She was a featured speaker at NTC's 15th National Symposium on Teacher Induction. Her book, See Me After Class: Advice for Teachers by Teachers, is widely used for teacher training and retention. While many books and movies portray the heroic teacher who can concur and change the world, this book asks teachers to be cruelly honest about how tough teaching truly is and whether the rewards are worth the challenge. (They are!) It is a compilation of stories from more than 100 veteran teachers from around the country.

 

NTC Policy News is a monthly publication by the New Teacher Center. It is produced with funding support from the Joyce Foundation. Based in Chicago, Illinois, the Joyce Foundation invests in initiatives to improve public education and works to close the achievement gap by improving the quality of teachers in schools that serve low-income and minority children.

 

  

 
In This Issue
Elevating and Supporting New Teachers
NTC TELL Surveys Launch in Several States
Two Significant Findings of the MetLife Survey
Policy News
Good Reads
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