What better person to write a case study of SB 191 – Colorado’s groundbreaking teacher evaluation legislation – than the legislative director for Mike Johnston, the state senator who shepherded it through to passage? Scott Laband describes the political, policy, and messaging elements that were essential for the legislation’s ultimate success:
What better person to write a case study of SB 191 – Colorado’s groundbreaking teacher evaluation legislation – than the legislative director for Mike Johnston, the state senator who shepherded it through to passage? Scott Laband describes the political, policy, and messaging elements that were essential for the legislation’s ultimate success:
That Democrats led the charge to pass Colorado’s SB 191 certainly “defies conventional political wisdom.” That reality alone holds lessons for the Buckeye State, as lawmakers typically have a hard time breaching the partisan divide – especially when it comes to K-12 education policy.
Creating a Winning Legislative Campaign: The Colorado Story
Democrats for Education Reform
Scott Laband
How did good teachers become good teachers? Matthew M. Chingos and Paul E. Peterson seek to answer this question in their latest study, wherein they examined several traditional strategies for teachers to increase their effectiveness, such as pursuing advanced degrees, on-the-job training, etc. to determine which methods were successful. To get at this, they investigated student achievement data from all of Florida’s fourth and eighth graders who took state assessments from 2002-2009, to discern which teachers “added value” (i.e. produced gains in student achievement), and what enabled teachers to do so. Interestingly, none of the methods studied significantly improved teacher quality. The most salient findings include:
Considering the sharp debate surrounding seniority-based layoffs, as well as Ohio’s fiscal problems (master’s degree pay raises for teachers cost over $400 million annually), state lawmakers would do well to take note of the results of this study. SB 5 is a step in the right direction on this front as it reduces emphasis on traditional notions of effectiveness such as credentials, years of service, etc. Further, although Chingos and Peterson examined only public university teacher training programs in Florida, a recent Fordham study shows that teacher training programs across the country, including in Ohio, do not adequately equip teachers for their profession. Ohio needs to ensure that teacher training programs at its public universities make a positive difference in the effectiveness of the teachers they graduate.
An article about this study also appeared in Education Next. The full text of the study is available here, and another version of it was published in the Economics of Education Review.
It’s
Easier to Pick a Good Teacher than to Train One:
Familiar and New Results on the Correlates of Teacher Effectiveness
Matthew M. Chingos
and Paul E. Peterson
Program on Education
Policy and Governance (Harvard Kennedy School)
December 2010
The Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford released its latest study of charter school performance, this time focusing on Indiana. The report follows on CREDO’s 2009 national charter school study, which found mixed results for charters nationwide and not-so-stellar results for Ohio charters. Drawing on data from 42 charter schools and 8,959 charter school students in Indiana between 2004 and 2008, researchers developed a comparison methodology that matched students in traditional public schools with students in charter schools, and compared the learning growth of the two groups (determined using results from annual standardized tests). Researchers also measured the impact of attending a charter school based on the length of time a student was enrolled in a school, as well as the age of the school.
Learning gains among students in charters were greater when compared to district peers. The most important finding may be that Black students in charter schools outperformed Black students in traditional public schools, and that in math Black students in charter schools were performing at similar levels to the average white student in traditional public schools. CREDO’s report on Ohio in 2009 revealed a less positive narrative for charter schools here. In sum, Indiana charter schools have performed better (compared to traditional public schools) than Ohio charter schools have. But while these results are encouraging for the Hoosier State, as their legislature attempts to expand the state’s charter school program, robust standards must exist to prevent the authorization and reauthorization of charters with poor performance. This is an ongoing battle over charter school quality that Ohio knows all too well.
Charter School Performance in Indiana
Center for Research
on Education Outcomes
Stanford University
March 2011
When Michelle Rhee took the helm of DC Public Schools in 2007 the district’s achievement was dismal. NAEP scores for DC’s students were among the lowest in the nation, and achievement gaps between white and black students were among the largest in the country. Rhee and her team knew that something had to change dramatically. This latest case study by the Aspen Institute describes how Rhee and her team sought instructional excellence in every DC classroom, by first defining the principles of effective teaching and then creating a system of evaluation and pay centered squarely on it.
Aspen breaks down Rhee’s overhaul of teacher personnel policy into three segments: introduction of the Teaching and Learning Framework (TLF) emphasizing planning, teaching, and effectiveness of teachers; the creation of IMPACT, a new accountability system to ensure that the criteria set forth in TLF were carried through; and finally implementation of the evaluation system in the 2010-2011 school year.
Out of this process came five lessons from which schools districts across the country can learn, among them: creating common expectations about what effective teaching consists of, the need to anticipate that the hardest part of creating a teacher performance system is helping teachers improve their skills, and that continued development of organizational capacity is crucial to success. While this story is unique to DC, states around the country should be forewarned about the challenges of overhauling entrenched teacher evaluation systems. As Ohio moves forward it would do well do keep the successes, challenges, and lessons learned from DC in mind.
District of
Columbia Public Schools:
Defining
Instructional Expectations and Aligning Accountability and Support
The Aspen Institute
Rachel Curtis
March 2011
Following is an excerpt of public testimony about the education provisions of House Bill 153 that Fordham’s Terry Ryan presented to the House Finance Primary and Secondary Education Subcommittee on April 8. You can read his full testimony here.
Schools and teachers matter greatly, and this is especially true for our neediest and most vulnerable children. Stanford economist Eric Hanushek, who recently testified before a joint meeting of the Ohio House and Senate education committees, reports that “having a quality teacher throughout elementary school can substantially eliminate the disadvantage of low socio-economic background.” The stakes are high and decisions made now will have an impact on our children and their future for years to come.
I support the education reform goals and policies in HB153 because they focus on the dual objective of improving K-12 education in the Buckeye State while helping schools adjust to doing more with less. It is painfully clear that Ohio, like states across the country, has to start figuring out how to live within its means. We cannot make education reform continue to hinge on infusions of more cash – just the opposite. This “new normal”—as Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Bill Gates both term it—has been staring at us for several years now, but we’ve resisted dealing with it because of political timidity and one-time federal stimulus dollars.
In December 2008, I wrote an op-ed for the Cincinnati Enquirer that began:
The dismal economic news for Ohio keeps piling up. State revenues continue to plummet and economic forecasters are predicting a shortfall of more than $7 billion for the next two-year budget. The Buckeye State is going to have to figure out how to do more with less. This is apt to be true for education, where per-pupil cuts of 10 percent or more are realistic. That much out of the statewide education budget amounts to nearly a $1.7 billion reduction for our children.
I added:
Ohio is facing historic economic challenges. Lawmakers should seize the opportunity to not only help the state’s education system make it through the crisis, but make it through in a way that results in a stronger and more effective system. Spending less on doing things as usual is a plan for long-term failure. Now is the time for new thinking and bold action.
I then provided four ideas for trying to take advantage of tough times to strengthen Ohio’s K-12 system while living within our means that included:
· Fund students, not school districts;
· Encourage consolidation of services and innovative partnerships in education;
· Make Ohio a leader in distance learning; and
· Create a performance-based compensation and sustainable retirement system for
educators.
But the state ignored this advice, and tough decisions that reared their head during the 2009 biennial budget debate were put off two years thanks to $5.5 billion in one-time federal stimulus dollars. Worse, former Governor Strickland’s misleading celebration of a fundamentally-flawed education-funding scheme, which promised billions of non-existent new dollars for schools over the next decade, made people think we would somehow have more money for schools in the future, not less.
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Teachers and others may be forgiven for feeling like all of the change and pain in HB 153 has come out of nowhere because the state political leadership was largely in denial around the looming fiscal crisis before the start of this year. |
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So, instead of using the now-ending federal aid to help set the conditions for making schools work on leaner rations, the state moved forward for two years with its head in the sand about the impending fiscal cliff we were racing toward. Teachers and others may be forgiven for feeling like all of the change and pain in HB153 has come out of nowhere because the state political leadership was largely in denial around the looming fiscal crisis before the start of this year. At least now state government is dealing with reality, and that reality is undeniably tough. Some recent poll ratings may attest to that fact.
HB153 spreads the unavoidable pain across school districts in a reasonably equitable fashion. It cuts the poorest districts less than the wealthier suburbs, thus trying to protect our neediest children. It cuts public charter school funding by $50 a student but doesn’t eviscerate them, which is fitting considering how egregiously underfunded they already are in comparison with their district peers. Most importantly, the budget pushes reforms that seek to free up school districts to do more with less.
Not everyone regards greater autonomy as a sufficient compensation for less money but, as we learned from a recent Fordham Institute survey of Ohio school superintendents and charter heads, having the flexibility to allocate available resources in the most educational efficacious way would be a huge help to otherwise-strapped districts and charter schools.
Read the full testimony here.
What better person to write a case study of SB 191 – Colorado’s groundbreaking teacher evaluation legislation – than the legislative director for Mike Johnston, the state senator who shepherded it through to passage? Scott Laband describes the political, policy, and messaging elements that were essential for the legislation’s ultimate success:
That Democrats led the charge to pass Colorado’s SB 191 certainly “defies conventional political wisdom.” That reality alone holds lessons for the Buckeye State, as lawmakers typically have a hard time breaching the partisan divide – especially when it comes to K-12 education policy.
Creating a Winning Legislative Campaign: The Colorado Story
Democrats for Education Reform
Scott Laband
How did good teachers become good teachers? Matthew M. Chingos and Paul E. Peterson seek to answer this question in their latest study, wherein they examined several traditional strategies for teachers to increase their effectiveness, such as pursuing advanced degrees, on-the-job training, etc. to determine which methods were successful. To get at this, they investigated student achievement data from all of Florida’s fourth and eighth graders who took state assessments from 2002-2009, to discern which teachers “added value” (i.e. produced gains in student achievement), and what enabled teachers to do so. Interestingly, none of the methods studied significantly improved teacher quality. The most salient findings include:
Considering the sharp debate surrounding seniority-based layoffs, as well as Ohio’s fiscal problems (master’s degree pay raises for teachers cost over $400 million annually), state lawmakers would do well to take note of the results of this study. SB 5 is a step in the right direction on this front as it reduces emphasis on traditional notions of effectiveness such as credentials, years of service, etc. Further, although Chingos and Peterson examined only public university teacher training programs in Florida, a recent Fordham study shows that teacher training programs across the country, including in Ohio, do not adequately equip teachers for their profession. Ohio needs to ensure that teacher training programs at its public universities make a positive difference in the effectiveness of the teachers they graduate.
An article about this study also appeared in Education Next. The full text of the study is available here, and another version of it was published in the Economics of Education Review.
It’s
Easier to Pick a Good Teacher than to Train One:
Familiar and New Results on the Correlates of Teacher Effectiveness
Matthew M. Chingos
and Paul E. Peterson
Program on Education
Policy and Governance (Harvard Kennedy School)
December 2010
The Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford released its latest study of charter school performance, this time focusing on Indiana. The report follows on CREDO’s 2009 national charter school study, which found mixed results for charters nationwide and not-so-stellar results for Ohio charters. Drawing on data from 42 charter schools and 8,959 charter school students in Indiana between 2004 and 2008, researchers developed a comparison methodology that matched students in traditional public schools with students in charter schools, and compared the learning growth of the two groups (determined using results from annual standardized tests). Researchers also measured the impact of attending a charter school based on the length of time a student was enrolled in a school, as well as the age of the school.
Learning gains among students in charters were greater when compared to district peers. The most important finding may be that Black students in charter schools outperformed Black students in traditional public schools, and that in math Black students in charter schools were performing at similar levels to the average white student in traditional public schools. CREDO’s report on Ohio in 2009 revealed a less positive narrative for charter schools here. In sum, Indiana charter schools have performed better (compared to traditional public schools) than Ohio charter schools have. But while these results are encouraging for the Hoosier State, as their legislature attempts to expand the state’s charter school program, robust standards must exist to prevent the authorization and reauthorization of charters with poor performance. This is an ongoing battle over charter school quality that Ohio knows all too well.
Charter School Performance in Indiana
Center for Research
on Education Outcomes
Stanford University
March 2011
When Michelle Rhee took the helm of DC Public Schools in 2007 the district’s achievement was dismal. NAEP scores for DC’s students were among the lowest in the nation, and achievement gaps between white and black students were among the largest in the country. Rhee and her team knew that something had to change dramatically. This latest case study by the Aspen Institute describes how Rhee and her team sought instructional excellence in every DC classroom, by first defining the principles of effective teaching and then creating a system of evaluation and pay centered squarely on it.
Aspen breaks down Rhee’s overhaul of teacher personnel policy into three segments: introduction of the Teaching and Learning Framework (TLF) emphasizing planning, teaching, and effectiveness of teachers; the creation of IMPACT, a new accountability system to ensure that the criteria set forth in TLF were carried through; and finally implementation of the evaluation system in the 2010-2011 school year.
Out of this process came five lessons from which schools districts across the country can learn, among them: creating common expectations about what effective teaching consists of, the need to anticipate that the hardest part of creating a teacher performance system is helping teachers improve their skills, and that continued development of organizational capacity is crucial to success. While this story is unique to DC, states around the country should be forewarned about the challenges of overhauling entrenched teacher evaluation systems. As Ohio moves forward it would do well do keep the successes, challenges, and lessons learned from DC in mind.
District of
Columbia Public Schools:
Defining
Instructional Expectations and Aligning Accountability and Support
The Aspen Institute
Rachel Curtis
March 2011
