PSFA Daily News Digest

9 January 2013

www.nmpsfa.org 

Barbara Riley, Editor  ·  Email:  newsdigest@nmpsfa.org 

Santa Fe/ Gov. Martinez Spells Out Education Plans

By Hailey Heinz

ABQ Journal Staff Writer

January 9, 2013

Gov. Susana Martinez on Tuesday laid out her education plans for the coming legislative session, including linking teacher pay to the state's new evaluation system and creating an early-warning system to catch signs a student might drop out.

Martinez, who spoke about her plans at an education reform panel, also said she will continue to push for mandatory retention of students who cannot read at grade level by third grade. The bill also would require interventions and remediation for those who aren't on track to read proficiently.

Martinez promised such a law during her campaign and has repeatedly been stymied in her efforts to pass it. She has made headway on her two other main education priorities - A-F grades for schools and an overhaul of the teacher evaluation system.

The Legislature has twice denied the governor a teacher evaluation bill, so education chief Hanna Skandera has set new teacher evaluation policy through administrative rule. The new rules are being piloted in select districts around the state and will be fully adopted next school year.

The new system will evaluate teachers partly on the basis of how much their students' test scores improve and also will include other factors like classroom observations.

Martinez said Tuesday she will support a bill to align teacher pay to the evaluation system. Currently, the administrative rules assign teachers a rating, ranging from "ineffective" to "exemplary," and provide for consistently ineffective teachers to be removed from teaching.

But without new legislation, New Mexico's current three-tier licensure system will continue to set teacher pay. Teachers advance through the three-tier system based on experience, earning advanced degrees and showing their effectiveness through student work samples and essays.

Martinez said she will ask lawmakers for about $11 million to reward good teachers.

• "I also propose aligning the system in which our teachers advance and get paid to standards that measure effectiveness, so that teachers are not elevated based on the number of credentials they possess, but promoted based on their ability to shape the minds of tomorrow," she said.

However, Rep. Rick Miera, incoming House majority leader, said he plans to sponsor a bill that would replace Skandera's system with one that puts less emphasis on test scores.

Possible funding battle

Miera, D-Albuquerque, has been an outspoken critic of some of the governor's education initiatives. He said he expects the upcoming session will be heavily focused on deciding how new money will be spent, particularly on whether it should flow to districts through the state funding formula or go "below the line," meaning it flows directly to the Public Education Department to support the governor's reform agenda.

Martinez's "below the line" plans include:

• $13.5 million to be focused on early reading initiatives, like hiring reading coaches and providing assessments to identify struggling readers early.
• She will also ask for $4.7 million to help schools that received "D" or "F" grades under the A-F system and will support proposals that emphasize college and career readiness for graduating high school students.
• Specifically, she said that means expanding access to Advanced Placement classes and replicating programs that let students earn college credits or technical certificates while in high school.
• Martinez also said she will propose a warning system that tracks factors known to predict whether students will drop out, such as truancy, failing classes and low reading test scores. Martinez said the state already collects this data, and she backs a proposal to aggregate that information and intervene.

Miera said he has not seen results from the past two years of below-the-line funding, and would rather see funding flow through the formula, which is based on district size and factors like how many students have severe special needs.

Ellen Bernstein, president of the Albuquerque Teachers Federation, said she will also advocate for funding to flow through the formula because that is the only way it can reduce class sizes and pay for raises for teachers. Teachers in Albuquerque have not seen raises in five years and are paying more for their health insurance.

• "The first thing on teachers' minds right now is a raise," she said.

APS priorities

Albuquerque Public Schools also will advocate for more funding to flow through the formula.

• The district's legislative priorities include expanding pre-school and the K-3 plus program, which extends the school year for young children in high-poverty areas. A recent study by the Legislative Finance Committee found evidence both programs boost student achievement.
• APS will also lobby for the ability to certify its own police department. Currently, school police are certified through the Bernalillo County Sheriff's Department, and APS is seeking to create an independent police force that specializes in working with children.

APS Superintendent Winston Brooks previously opposed much of Skandera's agenda, such as third-grade retention and last year's teacher evaluation bill. He did not say Tuesday whether he would support mandatory retention this year, saying he would have to talk to state officials and see a bill before deciding.

• He did say he supports additional pay to reward excellent teachers and would like to see incentive pay for highly effective teachers who transfer to struggling schools.

Other detractors have not budged on the issue. Bernstein said she will continue her stance against mandatory third-grade retention, which she said takes discretion from teachers and parents.

• "As long as there's a hard line, 'You read by this moment in your life or you're retained,' and as long as the bill overrides parent choice, then I could not support it," Bernstein said.
• "I've seen too many kids bloom after third grade in terms of getting on level, and I believe the parent has the ultimate right, ultimately they have the right to make decisions for their own kid, not the state."

While mandatory retention has been opposed by numerous superintendents, it also has some fervent supporters. Adan Delgado, superintendent of Pojoaque Valley Schools, has publicly supported the bill.

Delgado said he supports an increased focus on reading in the early grades, and that having mandatory retention in the bill is an important way to intensify that focus.

"This is kind of a line in the sand where we are going to gather our forces and focus on something we really think is critical," he said. "And one of the ways we'll emphasize it is, if everyone doesn't get together, teachers, administrators, parents, then something drastic has to happen. It can't just be that they go on as if there wasn't that deficit."

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Rio Rancho/ School District Saves Water, Money

KOAT-TV, Channel 7 Report

January 9, 2013

With a major drought ongoing throughout the state, some schools are stepping up asking how they can save water and money.

Rio Rancho School District recently received a grant, the only one in the region, to design and implement a water conservation plan.

Besides retrofitting for xeroscaping at school campuses, Rio Rancho Schools have made a pledge:

• to fix leaks faster,
• retrofit toilets to save water and
• staying conscious of how much water is used in their athletic stadiums.

Elena Kayak, the district's energy and environmental specialist, told Action 7 News that all too often, they were finding that most of the water used in those stadiums wasn't watering anything at all. She said it was merely over-spray and therefore, a waste of the district's money.

Although Rio Rancho Schools couldn't say how much money they'd immediately save, Kayak explained that they'll be saving thousands of dollars and that water conservation plans should be designed and implemented everywhere.

• "It's very practical," she said. "It had us reflect on our practices and operations, but it also allowed us to see that we are in a very unique position to educate children and young adults."

So why aren't any other school districts doing the same thing already?

Kayak said it might be because they don't have the money to implement a plan yet. It does take some work to retrofit things and rooms, but she said the good news is that this year could bring change.

The Bureau of Reclamation, a water and hydroelectric power supplier in New Mexico, is now interested in helping other districts facilitate similar plans. They were the ones who granted Rio Rancho thousands of dollars to make their water conservation plan happen.

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Las Cruces/ LCPS Students Troop Back to Class, Construction Continues in Many Schools

By Lindsey Anderson

Las Cruces Sun-News

January 8, 2013

Thousands of Las Cruces Public Schools students head back to classes this week.

The Las Cruces High School campus was alive with cars honking and students hugging Tuesday afternoon as the bell rang. High school students started back from winter break Tuesday, while kindergarten through eighth grade go back Wednesday.

Freshman Kate Salopek said she was happy to be back at school with her friends.

"The first semester went by fast," she said. "Hopefully this semester doesn't go by as fast, but it probably will."

The semester brings continued construction at many schools, testing changes and school board elections.

Construction

• Phase one of the $15 million Loma Heights Elementary School remodel includes a new multi-purpose room, kitchen and classroom wing. It is scheduled for completion in May. Remodeling the 1996 school additions will likely end in September, and demolishing the school's 1966 portion will finish March 2014.
• Picacho Middle School students return to a new music building this semester, and construction of the baseball complex at LCPS Field of Dreams finished last month.
• Las Cruces High School renovations continue.

Testing

Kindergarten through third grade students will be tested on the Common Core State Standards this year.

All but five states have adopted the new standards, which align educational requirements across the nation. They will be expanded to all grades in 2013-2014.

• "I truly believe CCSS will result in better test scores and, more importantly, better educated and better prepared students," LCPS official Steven Sanchez said in a news release on the changes.

The Class of 2013 is the first that must pass the New Mexico Standards-Based Assessment to graduate. Students take the exam in 10th and 11th grades and can retake it in 12th.

The requirement "puts a lot more pressure on students," LCHS junior Aalia Cebreros said.

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Santa Fe/ School District Schedules Public Forums on Proposed Secondary Education Reform Plan

The New Mexican

January 8, 2013

Santa Fe Public Schools will hold a series of staff and public forums to get feedback and gauge reaction to the district's proposed secondary education reform plan.

In December, the district proposed several options for transforming its high schools and expanding opportunities to better fit student and community needs, including the creation of more career academies, an International Baccalaureate program for grades 7-12, and the creation of a ninth-grade academy.

• A forum for staff is set for 4 p.m. and for the community at 6 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 9, at Capital High School on Paseo del Sol.
• A staff forum is planned for 4 p.m. Thursday at Santa Fe High School on Yucca Road, followed by a community forum at 6 p.m.

Three subsequent community forums will be held at:

• 6 p.m. Jan. 17 at Agua Fría Elementary School;
• 6 p.m. Jan. 22 at Carlos Gilbert Elementary School and 
• 6 p.m. Jan. 28 at El Dorado Community School.

Spanish-speaking translators will be on hand at the forums.

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ABQ/ CNM Community College President Kathie Winograd Calls for Education Reform

By Astrid Galvan

ABQ Journal Staff Writer

January 9, 2013

Central New Mexico Community College president Kathie Winograd on Tuesday told a group of attorneys that the future of New Mexico was doomed if education here is not reformed.

Winograd, speaking before the Albuquerque Bar Association's luncheon at the Embassy Suites, cited staggering statistics about the state's educational system.

For example, about a third of entering UNM freshman need remedial courses. The state's high school graduation rate has also been notoriously low, especially for minorities.

• "Our challenge is that we are ranked very, very low in any kind of ranking.
• But this is the one that's saddest to me," Winograd said, referencing New Mexico's second-to-last ranking in overall risks to children.
• "The predictions for New Mexico's future are very bleak," she said.

Winograd talked about the role higher education plays in improving those statistics - and the New Mexico economy.

She said research shows that by 2020, 61 percent of jobs will require a college certificate or degree.

"The thing we know about a college education is that it really does improve our future," Winograd said.

That's where CNM comes in, she said.

The state's largest higher ed institution, CNM serves more than 30,000 students. She said students who graduate from CNM have on average 40 percent higher salaries than those who do not have certificates or degrees.

• "That adds to the tax base of New Mexico," she said.

But college attendance and graduation rates are too low now, and if rates continue as is, "we will be one of the lowest educated states in the country," Winograd said.

"We can face these challenges but we need to do this together," she said.

Winograd said it was crucial that the community be engaged in higher education. For example, she encouraged Bar members to give input on everything from how to make college more affordable to how to forge more partnerships with job providers.

Still, the state is doing some things right, Winograd said.

Its dual credit program, which allows high school students to take college courses that also fulfill their high school requirements, is "one of the more exciting things that have happened in higher education," Winograd said.

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ABQ/ StudentsFirst: New Mexico Gets 'D' in New School Study

By Gary Gerew, Assistant Editor

Albuquerque Business First

January 8, 2013

An advocacy group supporting laws and policies restricting teacher tenure, expanding charter schools and supporting the use of standardized test scores has given New Mexico a 'D' in its latest report, according to the New York Times.

That was better than the 11 states that received an 'F' from StudentsFirst, the group led by Michelle A. Rhee, the former schools chancellor in Washington, D.C. Rhee has generated debate in education circles for aggressive pursuit of her agenda and the financing of political candidates who support it.

In a report issued Monday, StudentsFirst ranks states based on how closely they follow the group's platform, looking at policies related not only to tenure and evaluations but also to pensions and the governance of school districts. The group uses the classic academic grading system, awarding states A to F ratings.

No states received an A and only two states received B-minuses.

Rhee told the New York Times that the relatively weak showing reflected how recently statehouses had begun to address issues like tenure and performance evaluations

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Tularosa/ School Board Discusses Safety Policies

By Alex Quintana, Staff Writer

Alamogordo Daily News

January 8, 2013

The Tularosa Board of Education returned from holiday break to review safety and had an open discussion Tuesday night for changes in its school board policies.

In her discussion of district information Tuesday, Superintendent Brenda Vigil informed board members the schools were reviewing their safety plans.

• "All schools reviewed our safety plan our response-to-emergencies plan, which each school has and our bus drivers and activity drivers have had CPR training," she said.

Vigil said she met with parents who were concerned about the safety of their students. So she and other administrators met with Tularosa Police Chief Chuck Wood during the winter break to review the district's emergency-response plan.

• "He looked at it and gave us some suggestions," Vigil said.
• "For example, we all had alternative locations to relocate if we had an emergency that required us to relocate in our current area.
• And he felt we needed an alternative to that, which we did not have, and we have looked at alternatives to that and he was very helpful with the review and also with making suggestions to us."

She said Wood agreed to work with the schools. She told the board he met with the high school after that meeting and asked if the police could walk through the schools, which also have locked doors for extra security measures.

• "We do lock the doors and we've gone to locking more doors," she said.
• "At the elementary and intermediate, they have one door open, and
• at the middle school, they went to using one door and
• at the high school, they had four areas open, but now they locked them all but the front, and during passing periods, they have teachers monitoring," Vigil said.

After approving all motions on the agenda, Vigil opened an discussion to allow the board to make any changes to section one (the mission statement and goals) and section two (the board of education's organization, legal status, membership, powers, elections, duties, rules, meetings and quorums of the Board Policy Manual).

The school board will later review the Superintendent's annual evaluation in special session Friday morning and return after lunch to approve the evaluation. The board will have their next regular meeting at 5 p.m. Feb. 12.

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Taos/ 2012 Newsmakers: Taos School Superintendent Rod Weston

By Chandra Johnson

Taos News

January 8, 2013

From the get-go, Taos Municipal Schools Superintendent Rod Weston said reinstating educational GRT for Taos County was necessary.

Existing buildings needed additions and maintenance. New buildings needed to be built and outfitted. The about $200,000 a month the GRT generated for Taos County would be distributed among all the schools based on census-recorded populations. That would ensure that everyone from UNM-Taos to Peñasco Independent Schools would get their piece of the pie.

But approval was not certain for the schools, as public outcry against the Town of Taos Council's proposed GRT hike in August led to misgivings (the town repealed the hike in October).

Some Taoseños denied the schools needed the money. Others said the money should go toward other things.

Then, just before the September election day, Weston entered the fight in the public standoff with Taos protester Jeff Northrup.

Northrup declared his opposition for the tax hike by picketing on the shoulder of Paseo del Pueblo Sur and the day of the election, Weston joined Northrup for the better part of a day with his own sign urging voters to approve the GRT in the interest of the schools.

The voters approved the GRT, thanks in part to Weston's personal investment of time and dedication to promote the schools' cause.

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ABQ/ OPINION: NM Must Set 2013 Education Goals [Margaret Spellings]

By Margaret Spellings [Former U.S. Secretary of Education , President of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation. This week, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Institute for a Competitive Workforce brought its Breaking the Monopoly of Mediocrity tour to Albuquerque.

ABQ Journal

January 9, 2013

Ringing in a new year is an opportunity to focus on the future and can provide the momentum needed to set new goals and challenge ourselves in a new way. As 2013 begins, New Mexico faces such a defining opportunity in education.

On the one hand, there is the aspiration of the state's "Kids First, New Mexico Wins" plan, which provides a focus on school accountability, early literacy and higher standards for all students, regardless of ZIP code or family income, race or ethnicity. New Mexico also has ambitious plans to better identify, recruit and keep its most effective teachers.

On the other hand, there is the status quo.

For the first time in state history, New Mexico's young people face the likelihood of being less educated than their parents. According to the Nation's Report Card from the U.S. Department of Education, New Mexico fourth-graders rank 49th in the United States in reading and 48th in mathematics. The achievement gap between poor and minority students and their Anglo peers is enormous.

The higher education landscape is grim as well.

At a time when we must educate more students to higher levels than ever before, only one percent of New Mexico students who enroll in a four-year institution after high school actually graduate in four years.

By the end of the decade, more than 60 percent of jobs in New Mexico will require a career certificate or degree. But, today, only about 30 percent of adults in the state currently have such qualifications.

As we look ahead, what will it take to make New Mexico schools work better in 2013?

First, it requires will and resolve. We must refuse to accept the myth that some students can't learn. We must recognize that what gets measured is what gets done and we must stand by testing systems that expose our education shortcomings even when that makes us uncomfortable.

Honest transparency about student and school performance provides educators with critical information that allows them to move forward with a compass rather than searching for solutions to misunderstood challenges and without understanding what is working for which students, where and when.

With compass in hand, state, district and school leaders must work to connect our best and brightest teachers with the kids who need them most and reward those teachers for their hard work.

The bottom line: when it comes to our schools, adults must face difficult truths, do the hard work required to rectify them and truly hold ourselves accountable for the results.

All of us - parents, teachers, school administrators, business leaders, and public officials - are in this together.

New Year's resolutions, more often than not, are pledges we make rather than promises we keep. It can't be that way with education.

The great promise of America has always been that each individual - with a dream, an education and an opportunity - can forge a path to a meaningful and prosperous life for themselves and provide their children with the tools to do the same.

Let's rededicate ourselves to that promise in 2013. Our future depends on it.

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Washington DC/ Gates Foundation: Combined Measures Better at Gauging Teacher Effectiveness

By Stephen Sawchuk

Education Week, Vol. 32, Issue 17  [Edweek.org]

January 8, 2013

Student feedback, test-score growth calculations, and observations of practice appear to pick up different but complementary information that, combined, can provide a balanced and accurate picture of teacher performance, according to research released today by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

A composite measure on teacher effectiveness drawing on all three of those measures, and tested through a random-assignment experiment, predicted fairly accurately how much high-performing teachers would successfully boost their students' standardized-test scores, concludes the series of new papers, part of the massive Measures of Effective Teaching study launched three years ago.

• "If you select the right measures, you can provide teachers with an honest assessment of where they stand in their practice that, hopefully, will serve as the launching point for their development," said Thomas J. Kane, a professor of education in economics at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, who headed the study.

Basing more than half a teacher's evaluation on test-score-based measures of student achievement seemed to compromise it, the researchers also found.

Another piece suggests that teachers should be observed by more than one person to ensure that observations are reliable.

The findings are among dozens from the final work products of MET. Together, they are billed as a proof point for the three measures the foundation has spent years studying.

Even as they praised the project's other insights, some scholars debated the strength of the findings from the random experiment. One glitch: Teachers and administrators didn't always comply with the randomization component, making it harder to interpret the findings.

"We can only be certain that it's a valid predictor of future test scores for those teachers who complied with the assignments," said Jonah E. Rockoff, an associate professor of finance and economics at Columbia Business School, who has studied teacher-quality issues using economic techniques. Mr. Rockoff was not involved in the study, but reviewed early drafts of the randomization.

Taken as a whole, the final MET findings provide much food for thought about how teacher evaluations might best be structured. But they are not likely to end a contentious, noisy debate about evaluation systems, and they are almost certain to be intensely debated, in part because of Gates' separate support for advocacy organizations that have already staked out positions on teacher evaluations. (The Gates Foundation also provides supports for coverage of business and innovation in Education Week.)

Weighing Measures

The $45 million study, in progress since 2009, is one of the largest and most extensive research projects ever undertaken on the question of how to identify and measure high-quality teaching. It involved some 3,000 teachers in six districts: Charlotte-Mecklenberg, N.C.; Dallas; Denver; Hillsboro County, Fla.; Memphis, Tenn.; and New York City.

Earlier studies released by the MET project had examined three potential measures of teacher quality:

• observations of teachers keyed to teaching frameworks,
• surveys of students' perceptions of their teachers, and
• a value-added method, which attempts to isolate teachers' contributions to their students' academic achievement.

Researchers examined the relationship of each measure to:

• students' scores on state standardized tests;
• their scores on a more complex, project-based series of tasks; and
• their perceptions of their teachers' instructional strengths and weaknesses.

Each of those measures, the earlier papers stated, had positive and negative traits; some were more reliable over time but less predictive of how much teachers would improve their students' achievement.

One of the four new papers examines different ways of weighting those three measures.

• It found that those that relied the most heavily on state standardized-test scores appeared to be counterproductive.
• Those composites tended to be volatile and were also the least predictive of how students taught by those teachers would fare on the more cognitively challenging tasks.

Yet weighting schemes that put the most emphasis on teacher observations were the least predictive of gains on the state test scores, it says.

In all, the study says, those that use a more equal mix of components, including between a third and half based on value-added, couple better correlations to the outcome measures with improved reliability.

In a way, the findings indicate that there is no one "best" way to weight the measures; instead, that decision will depend on what policymakers most value, whether state test scores or other outcomes.

Randomization

From the beginning, one of the foundation's key goals was to subject promising measures to "validation" through a randomized experiment.

Though infrequently conducted in K-12 education because of logistical problems and expense, random assignment allows researchers to eliminate sources of bias not accounted for using traditional statistical techniques.

The Gates project, with its reach across six districts and thousands of teachers, offered an unusual chance to test the ideas at a scale not seen previously.

For the randomization, researchers in 2009-10 generated estimates of teachers' performance based on composite measures using data from the surveys, prior test scores, and observation scores.

• Within individual schools, the study randomly assigned a class of students to each of the participating teachers in particular grades and subjects. After a year, then, researchers compared those teachers' actual performance to the estimates.
• The results were examined in groups based on the teachers' predicted performance.

In general, the groups of teachers identified as being more effective were in fact so in reality and produced results on par with what the measures had predicted. They also improved student performance not just on traditional standardized tests but also on the deeper, project-based tasks.

• "Because of the random assignment, we can be confident that we identified a subgroup of teachers who caused achievement to happen," Harvard's Mr. Kane said. "It's sort of a big deal to be able to say that."

Student attrition and other factors, including the refusal of several schools to carry out the randomization despite agreeing to do so, led to relatively high rates of noncompliance. About 66 percent of students in Dallas stayed with their assigned teacher, but only 27 percent of students in Memphis did.

To account for the noncompliance, researchers used a statistical technique known as "instrumental variables" to adjust the results. The technique is widely used in the social sciences.

Scholars had different opinions about how far those findings could be extrapolated to the K-12 field at large.

• "These results could still be based on a very selective group of teachers," said Jesse M. Rothstein, an assistant professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley, who has often been critical of the MET findings. "I would love to see a lot more investigating of just who was and wasn't complying, and why they were left out."
• Douglas N. Harris, a professor of economics at Tulane University, in New Orleans, added that the study didn't address some other potential sources of bias. For instance, the study's authors also acknowledge that the experiment is limited to comparisons of teachers within, but not across schools. "There are a lot of ways in which there could be a nonrandom assignment of students to teachers," Mr. Harris said. "They're studying some elements of that, but not others."

Teacher Observations

In yet another new finding, the researchers dug deeper into observations of teachers. Using a subset of 67 teachers in the Hillsboro, Fla., district, they investigated ways to improve the consistency of the scoring of their lessons, including by using more frequent, shorter observations and multiple raters.

The researchers found that having different raters score observations of teachers' practice may be a key component for the observations systems. Raters' first perception of a teacher's practice tended to influence how they scored additional lessons taught by that same teacher, the study found.

Nearly all teachers scored in the middle categories on the framework studied, the four-tiered Framework for Teaching, a popular tool created in 1996 by consultant Charlotte Danielson, rather than at the top or bottom ones. The researchers struggled to interpret that finding.

"It could be that observers are simply uncomfortable making absolute distinctions between teachers," that paper says. "It could be that the performance-level standards need to make finer distinctions. Or it could simply be that underlying practice on the existing scales does not vary that much."

Mixed Reception?

Nearly every work product released by the MET researchers thus far has been contested to some degree by observers, and the most recent results are likely to be no exception.

• "They see this as proof that the more equally weighted, combined measure is superior, but they omit all discussion of the expense and difficulty of collecting the classroom observations and student surveys," said Jay P. Greene, a professor of education policy at the University of Arkansas. Mr. Greene contends that earlier reports from Gates have veered too far into advocacy.

By contrast, the American Federation of Teachers, whose leader has had an on-again-off-again rapport with Mr. Gates and with the MET project, seemed to embrace the final studies.

• "The MET findings reinforce the importance of evaluating teachers based on a balance of multiple measures of teaching effectiveness, in contrast to the limitations of focusing on student test scores, value-added scores, or any other single measure," AFT President Randi Weingarten said in a statement.

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New York NY/ Gates Foundation Study: Good Teachers Linked to Test Success

By Stephanie Banchero

Wall Street Journal

January 8, 2013

A study found that effective teachers can boost the test scores of students who had struggled under low-performing instructors, marking a new salvo in the national debate over teacher performance.

The three-year study by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, published Tuesday, is the first large-scale research to show, using random student assignment, that some teachers can produce test-score gains regardless of the past performance of their students, according to foundation officials.

Tom Kane, a professor at Harvard's Graduate School of Education and leader of the research project, said the data provide the best evidence yet that some teachers can "cause student achievement to happen, and this is a really big deal."

Education officials increasingly emphasize the need to evaluate, pay and fire teachers based on performance. More than two dozen states have passed laws to evaluate teachers, in part, on test scores, prodded by the Obama administration's Race to the Top education initiative, which offered money to states that began the process.

The Gates Foundation said its study found that a combination of student surveys of teacher quality, well-crafted observations of classroom teaching and test scores is the best predictor of teacher effectiveness. Mr. Kane said combining all three is the best predictor of teacher quality.

Critics say the Gates effort is flawed because it begins in part with the assumption that test scores are a good measure of teacher effectiveness, and then seeks to prove it by using test scores. Some teachers unions and parents say tests are a crude measure of teacher effectiveness.

Jay P. Green, a professor of education policy at the University of Arkansas, called the Gates research a "political document and not a research document." He said the research doesn't support that classroom observations are a strong predictor of quality teaching.

• "But the Gates Foundation knows that teachers and others are resistant to a system that is based too heavily on student test scores, so they combined them with other measures to find something that was more agreeable to them," he said.

Critics of the study also say the formulas used to adjust student scores for race and poverty are problematic because they cause teachers' scores to jump around too much.

The three-year Gates study videotaped 3,000 teachers and their students in Charlotte, N.C.; Dallas; Denver; Hillsborough County, Fla.; Memphis, Tenn.; New York City and Pittsburgh. Dozens of researchers studied the results.

• In the most recent update to the study, the Gates Foundation analyzed students' 2010 test scores for about 1,600 of the 3,000 teachers and ranked the instructors using a formula, known as value added, that adjusts scores based on students' race, family income and past performance on state exams. The ranking also included scores from student surveys and classroom observations.
• The next year, students were randomly assigned to classrooms. The study found that the teachers who were ranked the highest on average produced the highest student achievement the following year. These students also scored well on other exams that measured deeper, conceptual knowledge of math and reading, the report said.

Ryan Kinser, who participated in the study and teaches eighth grade English at Walker Middle School in the Hillsborough district, said he watched videos of himself in the classroom and noticed he "looked wooden" and "talked too much." Once, he spent 10 minutes teaching his students the meaning of "hierarchy" and saw on the video that students appeared bored, and one remarked, "This is stupid, man."

"It forced me to reflect and better prepare for my kids," said Mr. Kinser, who is rated highly effective by his district.

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New York NY/ Gates Foundation MET Report: Teacher Observation Less Reliable Than Test Scores

By Joy Resmovits

Huffington Post

January 8, 2013

A few years ago, Bill Gates decided to learn more about whether a teacher's effect on student learning could be measured. Three years, 3,000 teachers and about $50 million later, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation thinks it has the answers.

On Tuesday afternoon in Phoenix, the Gates Foundation released the third and final component of the Measuring Effective Teachers project, a gargantuan effort spearheaded by Harvard economist Thomas Kane.

• "Effective teaching can be measured," the authors wrote in the latest installment. They're sure of it because they used a randomized experiment to figure it out.
• Reliable teacher evaluations, the paper claims, include "balanced" proportions of teacher observation, students' standardized test scores and student surveys. And for the first time, the randomized trial shows that teachers who perform well with one group of students, on average, perform at the same levels with different groups of kids.

The findings are important because of what they may contribute to the debate over changing how teacher evaluation is conducted, which has emerged as a hot-button political issue favored by the so-called education reform movement.

• Such changes are controversial because the idea of measuring a teacher's contributions to student learning contests the predominant labor management model in education: salaries and benefits that increase with experience, and layoffs based on reverse order of seniority.
• Measuring teachers promises administrators and policymakers that they can make hiring and firing decisions with an eye toward quality of instruction.

The federal government's Race to the Top competition had states vie for cash by doing such things as formalizing their teacher evaluations to include student test scores. Many states have signed on, and several districts have already implemented such systems.

One major point of pushback to using test scores in teacher evaluations has been the concern that such tools, known as value-added measures, reflect student demographics more than a teacher's ability, and penalize teachers who take on more difficult students.

• "We didn't know if in fact what we were seeing - the differences we were seeing between teachers were about the teacher or about the students who were coming into their class," Steve Cantrell, Gates' chief education researcher, told The Huffington Post.
• "By randomly assigning students to teachers, we were able to show that teacher effectiveness is really about the teachers."

After randomly assigning classes to teachers in consecutive years, Cantrell said, MET found that "the performance of the teachers in the second year was almost identical to the year prior."

While the study shows some reliability in measuring teachers who either over-perform or underachieve dramatically, the authors note that "the vast majority of teachers are in the middle of the scale, with small differences in scores producing large changes in percentile rankings."

Moreover, the report found that overall, classroom observations - the way most teachers around the country have been evaluated for decades - are highly unreliable on their own.

• "It is clear from these findings and the MET project's earlier study of classroom observation instruments that classroom observations are not discerning large absolute differences in practice," the authors wrote. They found that counting observations for half of the total score is "counterproductive."
• "The way that most teachers have been evaluated forever is completely unreliable," said Tim Daly, who leads TNTP, a consulting group that places new teachers and helps districts implement evaluations. "Before, what we were weighing is, 'Should we move in the direction of using student learning or is it too precarious?' They show we have no choice but to change - the way they're doing it is totally inadequate."

The report also notes that teacher observation becomes more reliable when more than one judge watches a class. The lesson for districts is that staffers other than principals need to be trained in teacher observations.

Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers union, has been critical of the MET Project's teacher quality research in the past. But in advance of Tuesday's release, she released a statement lauding the effort. "The MET findings reinforce the importance of evaluating teachers based on a balance of multiple measures of teaching effectiveness, in contrast to the limitations of focusing on student test scores, value-added scores or any other single measure," Weingarten said.

And as for Gates, while the foundation is closing a major chapter on teacher quality research, Cantrell says the next step is culling and tagging a massive video library of teaching practices to be studied by researchers and used by education schools.

Gates also intends to focus on helping teachers improve. "Now we know that we can identify and take up multiple perspectives on what great teaching looks like," said Vicki Phillips, who heads the Gates Foundation's college readiness efforts. "Now, how do we help make sure there's more and more of that?"

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New York NY/ StudentsFirst Report: More States Using Student Data in Reform

By Jackie Mader

Hechinger Report [Hechingerreport.org]

January 8, 2013

The number of states embracing contentious education reforms meant to increase teacher accountability rose rapidly last year.

• In 2009, no states tied tenure to a teacher's performance in the classroom as measured by student achievement on standardized tests.
• Now, 15 states have policies that base teacher tenure partly on student test scores, up from eight just a year earlier, according to a report released Monday by the advocacy group StudentsFirst.

The StudentsFirst report found that more states are using teacher performance data to make decisions on hiring, layoffs, and tenures than ever before.

The tenure reforms have drawn heavy criticism from educators who worry about the reliability and fairness of using students' standardized test scores to judge teachers. Yet even as many states have made sweeping changes, which also include increasing the number of charter schools and rewarding teachers based on student achievement, most are not doing enough to implement education policies that will better serve students and schools, according to StudentsFirst, which was founded by former District of Columbia Public Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee.

The group gave each state a rating of A through F based on the number and success of policies that align with StudentsFirst's priorities such as charter schools and more rigorous teacher-evaluation systems. Only two states received a rating of "B-," which was the highest score awarded. The report highlights which policies individual states have adopted in the past few years, providing an update on state-by-state changes to education laws following a similar report by another pro-reform group, the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ), in 2011.

States like Hawaii and Louisiana, which NCTQ identified two years ago as mediocre, have since made changes that earned them relatively high ratings in the StudentsFirst report. While the Hawaii State Teachers Union has been locked in a battle with the state over a new contract that would link student test scores to teacher ratings and pay, education reformers have praised the state for creating a merit pay pilot program and funding charter schools.

And Louisiana implemented sweeping changes to its teacher-evaluation system in 2012, linking hiring, layoffs and tenure to performance. Louisiana State Superintendent John White said the report validates the "courage and boldness" of Louisiana policymakers, voters and educators. "Our schools are improving as a result," White said. "But we still have a lot of work left to do."

The number of states requiring districts to use a merit pay system has also increased, from three in 2011, according to the NCTQ report, to seven as of December 2012, according to StudentsFirst.

More than 20 states have passed or are considering laws that would allow parents to take over failing schools.

Several states have resisted the wave of changes prompted partly by the Obama administration, which offered states and districts hundreds of millions of dollars in federal aid in exchange for overhauling their education policies through its Race to the Top program.

• California was ranked 51st by NCTQ in 2011 and 41st by StudentsFirst. Although a few California districts are adopting new teacher-evaluation systems and embracing controversial "parent trigger" laws, Richard Zeiger, California's chief deputy superintendent, told The New York Times that the state disagrees with StudentsFirst's "extremely narrow, unproven method that they think will improve teaching."

The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) compared the StudentsFirst scores with state results on the National Assessment of Educational Progress and state grades compiled by Education Week. While NAEP scores and Education Week rankings generally correlated, the StudentsFirst rankings were dramatically different for many states. For instance, Massachusetts, which was ranked 14th by StudentsFirst and given a D+, received a B+ from Education Week and ranked first on fourth-grade reading and eighth-grade math NAEP tests in 2011.

"The StudentsFirst report cards are merely political scorecards designed to push the organization's state legislative agenda," wrote Carolyn Fiddler of the AFT in a statement released Monday. Fiddler added that the report cards only measure "whether states are buying into the StudentsFirst agenda."

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Washington DC/ New Science-Standards Draft Includes Many Changes

By Erik W. Robelen

Education Week, Vol. 32, Issue 17  [Edweek.org]

January 8, 2013

A second and final public draft of common standards aimed at reshaping K-12 science education was released today for comment, following eight months of review and rewriting.

Organizers emphasized that the latest version reflects substantial changes from the draft issued last May, with a clear focus on taking to heart feedback gathered from more than 10,000 individuals and organizations.

• "It's pretty different from the last draft, significantly so," said Stephen L. Pruitt, a vice president at the Washington nonprofit Achieve who is overseeing the development of the Next Generation Science Standards.
• "Ninety-five percent of performance expectations have been changed since May in some way. ... That's the result of tons of really quality feedback."

Peter McLaren, a member of the writing team and the president of the Council of State Science Supervisors, echoed that point.

• "What you're going to see, first and foremost, this draft really respects the professionalism of the educators and stakeholders who commented, because there are a lot of changes," he said.
• "That's what I'm saying to people in the field: Don't think for one moment that when you spent time reviewing this, that it was all for naught."

A three-week public-comment period opens today with organizers saying a final set of standards will be ready in March. After that, it's up to states to decide whether to adopt them.

• Twenty-six states are "lead state partners" in crafting the standards. Although they are not bound to adopt them, all have pledged to give "serious consideration" to doing so.
• And organizers say other states have also signaled an interest in signing on as well.

An eight-page summary document issued with the standards highlights the main strands of feedback since May and key changes, organizing critiques into 10 themes. They include concern that there was too much material covered, suggestions for inclusion of still more topics, a perceived lack of clarity in the performance expectations, and complaints about a lack of specificity in making connections to standards in other subjects.

On the issue of content coverage, the summary document indicates that this change was helped along by feedback solicited from university and community college faculty, along with "workforce-readiness experts," to examine the standards in depth to ensure that all content included was both "necessary and sufficient for student success after high school in the 21st century."

"Their feedback, together with that from the public draft review, led to a deletion of many performance expectations and a reduction of focus in many areas of science," the document says. In addition, further reviews by cross-disciplinary teams of higher education faculty and from lead states "led to a further reduction in the content designated in the Disciplinary Core Ideas."

For example, a high school standard for energy saw substantial rewriting of virtually all its performance expectations, and the total number was reduced from eight to seven. A separate high school standard on "nuclear processes" was eliminated, and instead, that topic was merged into a standard on "matter and its interactions."

At the K-5 level, several performance expectations were shifted from one grade level to another based on feedback.

Engineering Concerns

The science-standards initiative brings together states with a variety of experts in science and education.

Beyond the 26 states, other partners include:

• the congressionally chartered National Research Council, which devised a framework to guide the standards, as well as
• the National Science Teachers Association and
• the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Achieve, which also was involved in the common-core project in English/language arts and mathematics, is managing the development process.

"The second public draft of the Next Generation Science Standards released today is a significant step forward in developing exemplary new standards that all states can support," said Karen L. Ostlund, the president of the NSTA, in a prepared statement. "We applaud the [standards] writing team and the 26 states for their extensive efforts to develop, review, and revise these standards. We are pleased that many changes have been made based on feedback and look forward to working with Achieve and the writers on additional changes to ensure the final standards meet the needs of science educators across the country."

The standards target four disciplines: the physical sciences; life sciences; earth and space sciences; and engineering, technology, and the applications of science. They are organized by grade level for K-5, but as grade-banded expectations for middle and high school.

Top priorities among the standards writers include:

• promoting depth over breadth in science education;
• ensuring greater coherence in learning across grade levels; and
• helping students understand the cross-cutting nature of crucial concepts that span scientific disciplines.
• Another aim is for students to apply their learning through scientific inquiry and the engineering-design process to deepen their understanding.

Each standard in the draft is organized into a table for the given topic at each grade level or grade range.

• The table has three main sections, starting with performance expectations at the top.
• Below that are "foundation" boxes that expand on and explain those performance expectations in relation to three dimensions: science and engineering practices; disciplinary core ideas; and cross-cutting concept statements.
• And last are "connection" boxes that relate the core idea to other science standards, as well as to the common-core standards in English/language arts and math.

A 4th grade standard on energy features five performance expectations, such as "construct an argument using evidence about the relationship between the change in motion and the change in energy of an object," and "formulate questions and predict outcomes about the change in energy that can occur between colliding objects and/or magnet interactions."

A high school standard on Earth's systems contains 12 performance expectations, including: "Construct an evidence-based argument about how a natural or human-caused change to one part of an Earth system can create feedback that causes changes in that system or systems." Another calls on students to "apply scientific reasoning to show how empirical evidence from Earth observations and laboratory experiments have been used to develop the current model of Earth's interior."

Not surprisingly, given the push in the standards project to focus on fewer subjects in greater depth, the writers have gotten pushback from those concerned about a lack of sufficient attention to certain topics.

"Major themes [in the feedback] included requests for more ocean-science context to be used in examples, for computer-science concepts to be added, and for 'nature of science' concepts to be made more explicit," the summary of feedback document says. In addition, many high school teachers expressed concern that certain content normally taught in courses was excluded, such as thermodynamics, solution chemistry, and nitrogen cycles.

On that point, the document explains that the standards specify "content and skills required of all students, and are not intended to cover the depth and breadth of content of upper-level science courses." It adds that the standards seek to provide "a thorough foundation for student success in any chosen field, and can be supplemented with further in-depth study in particular upper-level science courses."

At the same time, the document notes that the standards writers added "more context and examples demonstrating potential connections to ocean sciences and computer science."

Another area of contention was how the first draft addressed engineering and technology. Most reviewers responded favorably to their inclusion, the summary document says, though some argued for more engineering content. Another concern expressed was that the first draft contained separate performance expectations for engineering. As a result, the new version integrates the engineering design "core ideas" into other disciplines.

"There was a concern from states that engineering would be easily left off because it was separate and devoid of how it actually intersects with science," Mr. Pruitt said. "So in this draft, we have integrated engineering through all the traditional science disciplines."

Mr. McLaren said that while he understands that some engineering advocates will want to see more, he believes the standards as drafted would represent an important step forward for the subject.

"We're not [calling for] engineering courses, although we're not excluding that," he said. "But what this does is it provides an opportunity for [engineering] design to be brought into the classroom. You should see every standard has at least one engineering performance expectation associated with it. That's never happened before."

'Huge' Training Challenge

The new draft includes 11 appendices addressing various issues, though most were not available for review at press time. Topics covered include an examination of college and career readiness in science, a specific look at implementation strategies for student groups that have been "traditionally underserved in science classrooms," and suggestions for course mapping of science learning at the middle and high school levels.

• "Students are going to be required to provide evidence through performance expectations of understanding content. That, in and of itself, is the biggest innovation and shift," Mr. Pruitt said of the new draft. "And it's going to take some time. States are going to have to think about how they're going to provide support to teachers."

Mr. McLaren agreed, noting the standards will involve a "huge" professional-development challenge, but said the fact that they will be common across states will lessen the burden.

"There is going to be a lot of training involved in this, but the good news is with these standards, ... if you have a good model in one state, it can be applied to another state."

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Washington DC/ National-Board Professional Teaching Standards Certification Hits 100,000 Mark

By Francesca Duffy

Education Week [Edweek.org]

January 8, 2013

The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards announced today that 4,980 teachers earned national-board certification in 2012, pushing the total number of educators who hold the advanced professional certification to more than 100,000.

In its announcement, the NBPTS also highlighted a recent report by Harvard University's Center for Education Policy Research showing that teachers with national-board certification in Los Angeles outperformed their peers on the basis of student standardized-test scores in math and English. The report echoes two other recent research studies on the effectiveness of board-certified teachers, according to the NBPTS.

The organization reports there are now national-board-certified teachers in all 50 states, with the largest numbers in North Carolina, Washington state, and Illinois.

In recent months, as part of a leadership change, the NBPTS has been in the process of retooling itself to increase its influence in a changing teacher-policy environment. According to officials with the organization, that process may ultimately result in significant changes to the group's flagship certification program, including streamlined procedures, tie-ins to the Common Core State Standards, and integration of student-achievement measures.

Meanwhile, as part of an initiative to raise the standards for entry into the teaching profession, the American Federation of Teachers recently tasked the NBPTS with the job of creating a rigorous new national exam that prospective educators would have to pass before entering the classroom.

According to its release, the NBPTS recently won a $3 million Investing in Innovation (i3) grant from the U.S. Department of Education. It plans to use the funds to develop case studies to help strengthen preparation and early-career learning for 3rd-6th grade math and science teachers in high-needs schools.