Back to School

No one would deny that having a high-quality teacher in every classroom is important. Research confirms that effective teaching improves student achievement. So it stands to reason that very few would deny that it’s important for all teachers to have access to high-quality professional learning. After all, research confirms it is a significant pathway to more effective teaching.

Yet as evidenced by a recent report from Learning Forward (formerly the National Staff Development Council), the National Education Association, American Federation of Teachers and Council of Chief State School Officers, far too few states and school districts ensure that their educators have access to effective professional learning activities.

Advancing High-Quality Professional Learning Through Collective Bargaining and State Policy takes an in-depth look at the professional learning policies of six states. The conclusion? Professional learning does not have a significant place in policy and collective bargaining language. But there is hope—the report offers recommendations and examples of collectively bargained language, legislation, regulations and administrative guidelines to inform the development of policy language that can strengthen the quality of professional development in the future.

To learn more about the report and its implications, we spoke to three individuals who each brought a unique perspective to this issue: Joellen Killion (Deputy Executive Director of Learning Forward), Linda Davin (Senior Policy Analyst at NEA) and Joyce Powell (now serving on the NEA Executive Committee after four years as the president of the New Jersey Education Association and decades in the classroom).

Public School Insights: Why is it important to do address professional development through collective bargaining and state policy?

Killion: At Learning Forward, we believe that if there are strong policies in place that set clear expectations, then there will be improved practice. So when collective bargaining language addresses with clarity the importance of the opportunity for teachers to engage in professional development, and when state policy simultaneously provides resources, guidelines and expectations for effective professional development, we believe that the practice of professional development will be improved.

Davin: I couldn’t agree more. Although we know that we can have high quality professional learning in districts where it is not included in collective bargaining language, we also know that professional development can be sustained if it’s incorporated into policies that drive the day-to-day operations of the school. Codifying professional learning through collective bargaining agreements and state policies helps ensure that it will actually occur.

Powell: I agree. And I think from a state perspective, part of the goal was bringing this together so that professional learning actually makes sense, so it can have some meaning and some sustainability. That it won’t just be happenstance. That it is embedded in the system so that it actually drives practice.

Killion: I think we know with a fair amount of certainty—it is certainly the consensus of the research—that the quality of teaching students experience in the classroom each day influences their achievement. And we also know that professional learning is one of the most important vehicles available to the teachers currently in classrooms to strengthen and refine their practice, and to support them in meeting the challenges of teaching. So ensuring that there is equal access to effective professional learning with appropriate resources for all teachers cannot be left to chance. It is an important system requirement.

Powell: If I might just add that this was our first attempt to bring all of these folks together to begin the discourse at a national level. We’d not really done that before. We hadn’t had those conversations. So for us, that was an important aspect of this project—beginning the dialogue so that we can have some understanding of what would be a better system of professional development, with all the voices in the room.

Public School Insights: Were you satisfied by what you found overall in this review?

Powell: I believe that we accomplished what we set out to accomplish. But this should not be the end product. This really should be a beginning. We can look at what’s going on in other states. And remember, when we started this about three years ago, we weren’t as sophisticated at identifying the best practices of professional development. We weren’t talking in the detail that we do today about professional learning communities. So there are ways to expand what’s been presented here.

Killion: We learned a lot in this work. We learned that there is tremendous inconsistency in collective bargaining language and in state policy regarding professional learning, at least in these six states. And we have no specific data to extrapolate to other states.

I think it’s fairly safe to say that very few states have a coherent system of professional learning or development. Some states—for example, Ohio over the last few years, and New Jersey recently—have done some tremendous work in strengthening policy, which I think will eventually lead to stronger collective bargaining language as districts work to enact those policies.

I think that’s where our challenge is. We are not satisfied with the fact that there’s fragmentation and inconsistency. We’re not satisfied with the fact that professional development fits into so many different places in state policy without a coherent system. And we want to address some of those issues as we have opportunities to work with state policymakers and with union leaders in districts and states.

So we learned we have work to do. And what we have identified will give us the fuel to begin that work.

Davin: As Joellen (Killion) noted, this publication begins our work. NEA believes that every student deserves a great public school with high-quality teaching. For experienced teachers, professional development is an essential component of improving practice and improving student learning. Additionally, all of us who participated in this project recognize that professional development cannot exist as fragmented, piecemeal improvement efforts, but has to be driven by a clear, coherent plan.

Another point that was driven home was that professional development must be school-based, with an emphasis on improving student learning. And it has to be embedded in the day-to-day work of teachers. We also learned that dedicated time—providing time in the school day—is one of the most challenging issues that confronts school and district leaders.

Professional development can’t be an add-on or an afterthought that’s cut during budget shortfalls. It has to be an indispensable component of improving student learning. And one of the goals of the project was to determine the best ways to codify professional development through collective bargaining language and state policy.

Public School Insights: The report names twelve professional development policy pathways. The first is standards-based professional development. What do you mean by that, and why do you think it’s important?

Killion: At Learning Forward, we have been involved in developing such standards, and supporting and providing resources to help districts and states monitor their implementation. One of the reasons we believe that standards are important is because they are markers that indicate quality. They set a benchmark for what districts, schools, school systems and states should strive to achieve. They help translate research into practice—we are integrating what we know about professional development, adult learning and system change into those standards. And they give us a way of measuring the progress of our professional learning programs. So they help establish a framework for quality.

By having standards I think we can increase access to effective professional learning. And we also have the potential to increase the results we see from investments in professional learning. They can help both policymakers and practitioners make effective decisions about investment in, and standards for, professional development.

Public School Insights: Many states have already adopted the National Staff Development Standards. But the report mentions that standards aren’t enough. Earlier you mentioned that time for professional development is one of the most contentious issues in developing effective professional development. Why do you think that is, and what kinds of hurdles do people have to clear, especially in a collective bargaining process, to make time for professional development?

Davin: The time issue is one that’s challenging simply because it’s often looked at as a funding issue as well. And when dollars are scarce, some districts don’t want to commit resources that may not be sustainable.

However, there are ways to structure time in the school day through creative scheduling. It can be done, but it’s not easy. School leaders—principals and others—who are committed to embedding professional learning in the school day must be committed to finding the time for teachers to collaborate daily on teaching and learning issues. Building collaborative time into collective bargaining agreements or other policy documents acknowledges its importance and ensures its occurrence.

Powell: Professional development standards really develop the rationale for committing time for high-quality professional development. They give us observable, measurable items that we can look at and say, “These are what help us in providing high-quality professional development, which we need if we want to increase and improve student achievement.”

Public School Insights: One of the twelve policy pathways that has been running through a lot of material recently is that teacher collaboration, which of course also depends on time. From your review, do you think that teacher collaboration is a common feature of current professional development policies and collective bargaining agreements?

Killion: From my own engagement with practitioners, I think that the practice of collaboration is increasing rather exponentially. But I don’t believe that is being followed with policies yet.

I think we’re making strides. New Jersey has certainly stepped out ahead of the pack with its revision of policy around professional development. But other states and districts have, from my perspective, only begun to have conversations about policies related to collaboration, even though practice is already leading the way.

Davin: As we looked for examples of policy and bargaining language that details regularly dedicated time during the school day for teacher collaboration, we found such language was scarce,. However, school leaders, committed to creating a culture of collaboration and continuous school improvement, must also be committed to finding time and scheduling it in the school day. And I believe that is a challenging task.

But, like professional development, teacher collaboration cannot be a matter of chance. It has to be built into the daily routine of the school. And it’s not just about teachers meeting in teams. There has to be a real focus on student learning. To do this well, schools and districts need to invest in professional development to support educators’ effective use of collaborative time by providing assistance in the use of team protocols, goal setting, data analysis, and small group interaction. We also know it is not enough to simply schedule time to meet or provide professional development, all school staff—teachers, administrators, and education support personnel—must be committed to promoting and nurturing a collaborative school culture that supports student success.

Powell: I think we’re evolving in the collaboration arena, and finding time within the school day isn’t quite as difficult as we once perceived it to be. In the beginning I think everyone was cautious, thinking “Oh, this will take up too much time and energy.” Now we’re finding that common planning time with professional learning communities has simplified the system for us in a major way. But to actually bargain that, I think we have to get a little more sophisticated.

Public School Insights: Another of the policy pathways involves career paths and teacher leadership. Why do you think that’s an important pathway to include in your discussion?

Powell: I think it’s important because our teachers are experts in what’s absolutely necessary to improve academic achievement. Teachers have phenomenal experiences with what works in a classroom, and being able to share that with their colleagues is very powerful. And if we can give teachers a sense of being leaders, they’ll be much more likely to step up to the plate and say, “Yes, we should be doing this, and not looking for outsiders and other entities to determine best practices.” Teachers are really good at weeding out what’s important and what will work in their classrooms.

I believe teachers have to own professional development in order for it to be meaningful. And that’s where I think we see some great strides in the whole arena of professional learning. Just to sit, listen and be nonparticipants is not enough. We need the same engagement with adult learners that we need with students.

Davin: I also think when teachers come together in a collaborative culture there are so many benefits. It promotes the continuous improvement of all educators and provides a forum for new teachers to learn and to feel supported. It also provides the opportunity to discuss and resolve challenging dilemmas of teaching and learning. But, more than anything, it really cultivates a collective responsibility to ensure that all students learn. And there’s a sense of empowerment in that for teachers. And as Joyce [Powell] said, they are the experts. They’re doing the work on the ground.

Public School Insights: Do you think this report represents a significant change in how people see collective bargaining?

Killion: I think it’s difficult for us at this point to make an assessment of whether or not people would view this as a change in collective bargaining. But we’re hoping that people recognize that collective bargaining is a tool that can be used for strengthening the professionalism of teaching.

I think many educators have been eager to work not only on their working conditions but also on their professionalism. Collective bargaining is an incredibly powerful vehicle to help us professionalize teaching. And certainly, in looking at how teachers are continuously developed, that’s one way that we can really strengthen the profession.

Powell: From the bargaining perspective I believe it is a major change. Ten years ago, we didn’t talk about the teaching and learning process at the bargaining table. It was all about working conditions, salaries, benefits. That was all. Even just within a state organization that’s been pretty successful in the collective bargaining arena, it has been a major change to say, “Our teaching and learning process is as important as our working conditions.”

To me this report really brought that to a whole new level. I think that it sets a new tone in the collective bargaining arena. I’m not saying that it didn’t happen in isolated places before, but for the first time unions are actually saying, “This is as important as the other areas that we have been traditionally bargaining.” So I do see it as a major change for traditional union activity.

Killion: When you look at the four national organizations that participated in this project, I think that just this partnership is very powerful in speaking of professional learning and how important it is in terms of the day-to-day work of teachers in improving student learning. I think that the publication is going to be a very important contribution to professional development.

Public School Insights: Are there any questions that I should have asked you, but haven’t yet?

Powell: I think the important question is, what’s the follow-up? I don’t know that we have the answer to that yet, but I think it’s an important question. How will this be utilized to assist others?

Killion: I agree. I think that is a very important question for us to consider. I have some ideas, and I’d love to hear yours.

One of my ideas is that both state policy developers, including those who work at departments of education at the state level and are responsible for professional development and state school boards, who are often responsible for crafting policy related to professional development, use this as a vehicle for launching their own state policy analysis. We’ve been encouraging our affiliates to do that, and we worked with affiliate leaders this summer to begin the process of analyzing state policy.

I think that can also happen with negotiation teams at the district level. They can begin to study their collective bargaining agreements to determine how professional learning is addressed and where the gaps are, and think about where they might want to craft language that provides the kind of quality professional learning that we’ve been talking about.

Davin: I would like to see some follow-up research to determine where we are, now, in terms of bargaining language—how many contracts throughout the nation have collective bargaining language focused on the pathways to professional learning that we outlined in the report, as well as the extent to which state policy supports professional development and collaborative learning teams. I think that would be a very interesting study [to expand the scope of this report].

Powell: I couldn’t agree more. And the publication has some great ideas and recommendations in Part 3 about how we can expand this work in the future.

Sam Dillon

In many of the nation’s middle schools, black boys were nearly three times as likely to be suspended as white boys, according to a new study, which also found that black girls were suspended at four times the rate of white girls.

School authorities also suspended Hispanic and American Indian middle school students at higher rates than white students, though not at such disproportionate rates as for black children, the study found. Asian students were less likely to be suspended than whites.

The study analyzed four decades of federal Department of Education data on suspensions, with a special focus on figures from 2002 and 2006, that were drawn from 9,220 of the nation’s 16,000 public middle schools.

The study, “Suspended Education: Urban Middle Schools in Crisis,” was published by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit civil rights organization.

The co-authors, Daniel J. Losen, a senior associate at the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Russell Skiba, a professor at Indiana University, said they focused on suspensions from middle schools because recent research had shown that students’ middle school experience was crucial for determining future academic success.

One recent study of 400 incarcerated high school freshmen in Baltimore found that two-thirds had been suspended at least once in middle school.

Federal law requires schools to expel students for weapons possession and incidents involving the most serious safety issues. The authors said they focused on suspensions, which often result from fighting, abusive language and classroom disruptions, because they were a measure that school administrators can apply at their discretion.

Throughout America’s public schools, in kindergarten through high school, the percent of students suspended each year nearly doubled from the early 1970s through 2006, the authors said, an increase that they associate, in part, with the rise of so-called zero-tolerance school discipline policies.

In 1973, on average, 3.7 percent of public school students of all races were suspended at least once. By 2006, that percentage had risen to 6.9 percent.

Both in 1973 and in 2006, black students were suspended at higher rates than whites, but over that period, the gap increased. In 1973, 6 percent of all black students were suspended. In 2006, 15 percent of all blacks were suspended.

Among the students attending one of the 9,220 middle schools in the study sample, 28 percent of black boys and 18 percent of black girls, compared with 10 percent of white boys and 4 percent of white girls, were suspended in 2006, the study found.

The researchers found wide disparities in suspension rates among different city school systems and even among middle schools in the same district.

Using the federal data, they calculated suspension rates for middle school students, broken down by race, in 18 large urban districts.

Two districts showed especially high rates. In Palm Beach County and Milwaukee, more than 50 percent of black male middle school students were suspended at least once in 2006, the study showed.

Jennie Dorsey, director of family services in the Milwaukee district, said the district had recognized that its suspension rate was too high and had begun a program aimed at changing students’ behavior without suspensions.

The program has brought only modest reductions in the suspension rate so far, but Ms. Dorsey predicted sharper reductions over several years.

Nat Harrington, a spokesman for the Palm Beach County district, disputed the study’s statistics, but acknowledged that “all the data show an unacceptably high number of black students being suspended.” He said the district was using several strategies to reduce suspensions.

Good question from Paul in comments, about teacher-tutor tradeoff.

Benjamin Bloom, the guy who coined Bloom’s Taxonomy, wrote an article called The Two Sigma Problem. Thanks to Shaun Doherty for the article.

U of Chicago studies showed that tutoring created a ginormo, 2 standard deviation improvement in learning. “Good teaching,” which they call “mastery teaching,” created a 1 standard deviation improvement. The baseline was regular ol’ teaching, I suppose.

Bloom wondered in 1984: can we devise teaching (i.e., a whole group at a time) methods that generate the same level of learning as tutoring?

We’re obsessed with the same question today. Bloom’s team thinks if you combine a bunch of stuff, you can get there. Like a drug cocktail. But so far as I can tell, they don’t have evidence. They just argue that the results of 3 or 4 different methods are cumulative/additive. Sometimes stuff is additive. Sometimes it’s not.

Another way to consider the problem: what if, instead of a system where we try to make all teachers “mastery” level, we provide a lot more tutoring?

Tutoring is too expensive. That’s the usual response.

But shouldn’t the question be: How much learning is generated per dollar?

A median kid in a typical American school probably gets 1,000 hours per year of class time (including some that’s probably “mastery” level).

And while there’s no good data on this that I know of, that same kid also gets about…10 hours per year of tutoring? That’s 20 minutes per school week over the year.

Is that really the right ratio? 1,000 hours of class time and 10 hours of tutoring time?

TALLAHASSEE — A teachers union lawyer told a circuit judge Wednesday that a proposed class-size amendment should be thrown off the Nov. 2 ballot for the same reason that the state Supreme Court recently struck three other amendments — because the ballot language is misleading about its purpose.

In this case, Florida Education Association attorney Ron Meyer argued, the ballot language doesn’t make clear that the purpose is to reduce the state’s cost of paying for public schools.

But the lawyer for the state said Amendment 8 is just what it appears to be — a proposal that would give school districts the flexibility they say they need by limiting class sizes at the school level rather than at the classroom level as the constitution currently requires.

Charles Frances, the chief circuit judge for Leon County, said he hoped to rule on the case by Friday, and both sides have promised to appeal to the Florida Supreme Court for a final decision before the Nov. 2 election. It’s too late to remove the item from the ballot because ballots have already been printed but the court could order supervisors of elections not to tally the votes if it is ultimately tossed.

Meyer referred to Republican lawmakers’ frequent complaints that the current class-size standards are too costly and argued that the measure they placed on the ballot is misleading because it fails to inform voters that, if passed, it would undo the requirement that lawmakers give “adequate funding” to schools to reduce class sizes, which he said was “at the heart” of the 2002 amendment that created the class-size restrictions.

“Amendment 8 changes all that. You don’t know that by looking at the ballot summary. You don’t know that by looking at the ballot title,” Meyer said. “That change inescapably changes the funding. The voter doesn’t know that. The voter doesn’t see that. The voter doesn’t get that.”

But Jon Glogau, a lawyer in Attorney General Bill McCollum’s office defending the state in the lawsuit, argued that it is “pure speculation” that funding for schools will decrease if the amendment passes.

“This case is not about adequacy of school funding,” Glogau said. “I don’t know what he’s talking about … The chief purpose of this amendment is to change the caps. It’s patently obvious.”

Current class size rules cap classes at 18 students in Pre-K through third grade, 22 students in grades 4 through 8, and 25 students in high school. Amendment 8 would loosen the standards by applying those limits to school averages rather than individual classrooms; it also would set higher limits for individual classrooms: caps of 21 (K-3), 27 (4-8) and 30 (high school).

The Palm Beach County School District, like the rest of the districts in the state, has chosen not to meet the standards that were required by the start of school this year. Palm Beach County schools need an additional 800 to 900 teachers to meet the standards, and Schools Superintendent Art Johnson has said the district would pin its hopes on voters relaxing the law in November rather than raising taxes or making the other cuts necessary to find the $59 million needed to hire that many teachers.

Of the six amendments the legislature had placed on the Nov. 2 ballot, three have already been struck by the state Supreme Court on the grounds that their ballot summaries were misleading. Meyer was the attorney for the challenging group in one of those cases; he successfully used the argument in challenging the legislature’s amendment regarding the way legislative and Congressional districts are drawn.

What’s at stake

• For core classes, school districts were supposed to have met strict limits on individual class sizes by the start of school this August: 18 students in kindergarten through third grade, 22 in fourth through eighth grade and 25 in high school.
• If voters approve Amendment 8, those same limits would be applied on a school-wide average rather than to each individual class. In addition, individual classes would have caps of 21 (K-3), 27 (4-8) and 30 (high school).
• For example, under the proposal, the average size of an elementary school’s K-3 classes could not be more than 18 students, and no single class could have more than 21 students.
• The new standards would be made retroactive to the start of the 2010-2011 school year.

Back in 1965, UNESCO proclaimed September 8 to be International Literacy Day. The goal? To highlight the importance of literacy to individuals, communities and society. I’ll try to link to some of the reports being released today as they come out.

Just learning this occasion exists reminded me of a post of Robert Pondiscio’s that I saw recently on the Core Knowledge Blog, which referred to a post on Mark Bauerlein’s blog at The Chronicle of Higher Education that commented on an article that Pondiscio wrote with E.D. Hirsch earlier this year. (You’ve got to love the internet.)

The article doesn’t necessary embrace the international spirit of today, but it hits literacy on the head.

To be fully literate is to have the communicative power of language at your command—to read, write, listen and speak with understanding.

The Pondiscio/Hirsch article argues that reading is not a transferable skill, at least not entirely. A child may be able to master “decoding” but needs domain-specific content knowledge to fully comprehend what he or she is reading. And it argues that our current testing and accountability system for our public schools results in time wasted on reading strategies rather than imparting the knowledge that will allow our children to become truly literate, especially in low-income schools where children don’t always get background knowledge from their home environment to the degree that their more advantaged peers do. Certainly there are exceptions–Alabama’s George Hall Elementary comes to mind. But in general, we seem to be developing a society of decoders…or perhaps a society segregated in terms of literacy as well as income. Those who have are literate and those who have not decode. The problem is worsened by standardized tests that, at least in the early grades, reward the decoding drill and kill rather than the development of the underlying skills necessary for literacy later.

Just because a school has high test scores doesn’t mean that it’s a good school. And just because a child passes a state reading test doesn’t mean that he or she is literate. But then we get back to the same old question: How can we accurately assess whether someone is literate? Something worth considering on a day in which we are celebrate its importance to not only the individual but society as a whole.