The Education Gadfly Weekly

Eric Hanushek and Steven Rivkin
National Bureau of Economic Research
March 2010

Is teacher turnover a bad thing for student achievement, particularly when it occurs in high-needs schools? The study’s results challenge conventional wisdom by answering, No, not really. Analysts examined a matched teacher-student math achievement data set from one large (unidentified) school district in Texas in grades 4 through 8 for school years 1995-96 to 2000-01. The key finding: A whopping 30 percent of new teachers left their current school each year compared to 18 percent of veterans. Furthermore, exiters were significantly less effective on average than those who stay, regardless of whether they are compared to all stayers in the district or to the stayers in their school. Further, results reveal a similar pattern when school type is taken into consideration: Teachers who leave low-achieving schools or schools with higher percentages of black students are, on average, less effective compared to stayers, than those who leave higher-achieving schools or those with fewer black students. So, the takeaway is this: Teacher turnover is alive and well, but it doesn’t mean that schools are losing their best teachers, nor does it appear to adversely affect student achievement in math. (The analysts do posit, however, that the benefit of losing weak teachers is “offset” by the potential disadvantage of an influx of new teachers who are still learning the ropes.) While this study of one school district won’t settle the question of the impact of teacher turnover and departure on student outcomes, it is an important (and contrary) contribution to the field. Find it here.

Barry Topol, John Olson, and Ed Roeber
Assessment Solutions Group for the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy Education
April 2010

This paper, one of eight in a series on performance assessments spearheaded by Stanford Professor Linda Darling-Hammond, addresses the notion that instructionally-sensitive tests are too expensive. Using fancy cost-modeling software, analysts found that high-quality assessments (HQAs), such as those with short answer questions and expository writing samples, can compete economically with traditional multiple choice tests. A typical mid-sized state, defined as one that assesses about 900,000 students annually, now pays about $20 per student over the course of four years of “traditional” multiple choice math and English language arts assessment. But if that same state were to implement all of the cost-saving measures laid out in this paper, however, those states could bring that number to as low as $10 per student over four years for a high-quality test. The greatest money-saving move would be participation in assessment consortia (such as the ones being encouraged by the Education Department’s “Race to the Test” competition) and using teachers to score tests rather than the test company or independent paid assessors. Other tactics include more advanced technology, such as online testing, and remote and/or computerized scoring, though these had a much smaller impact on the bottom line. It’s probably no coincidence that Darling-Hammond herself is involved in a testing consortium, or that this paper finds participation in such a consortium to be the largest cost-saving measure. Still, it’s heartening that the ever-blunt instrument of standardized tests can become more nuanced and accurate without costing taxpayers an arm and a leg. Read the paper here, and the others in its series here.

MetLife Foundation
March 2010

Since 1984, MetLife has administered its annual Survey of the American Teacher to examine attitudes and trends within the profession. This year’s theme, “Collaborating for Student Success,” draws upon testimonials from teachers, principals, and grade 3-12 students to determine how in-school partnerships between teachers and administration affect student achievement and teachers’ feelings of professionalism. Given recent controversial firings and tensions over merit-pay provisions across the country, the report’s findings on intra-school trust are notable: Teachers working in schools with higher levels of collaboration indicated stronger feelings of trust among the faculty (69 percent versus 42 percent of teachers working in less collaborative schools) as well as increased job satisfaction. Teachers’ likelihood of leaving their profession is on par with last year’s survey, and a predictable 69 percent of teachers feel they do not have a voice in the education policy debate, despite the Race to the Top push for stakeholder support. Finally one-third of teachers report having had a different career before entering the classroom. For more insights read the report here.

Ben Wildavsky
Princeton University Press
2010

To their regret, Gadfly and his fellow heteroptera are so consumed with goings-on in the K-12 world that they often neglect higher education. But this superb new book by Ben Wildavsky warrants no neglect. For educators, it's the equivalent of Friedman's World Is Flat and carries much the same message: Higher education (and there are signs that K-12 is following behind) is no longer confined by national boundaries, much less campus walls. At least at its upper echelons, it's now an international industry, serving an international market, populated by globe-trotting people. From a U.S. standpoint, that's both good and bad. Although we are successfully exporting something we've long been good at--and importing students and faculty, too--the universities of a dozen other lands (including India, China, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, etc) are in hot pursuit and beginning to catch up. Ponder the implications. Meanwhile, read this book.

Too often in education reform, books are quickly pushed into one of two camps: policy or practice. Doug Lemov’s new book, Teach Like A Champion: 49 Techniques That Put Students on the Path to College, which was recently profiled in the New York Times Magazine, is so elegant in its simplicity that it has the power to transform the conversations in both worlds. That is, if enough people in both policy and practice read it, get past the “mundane” techniques Lemov proposes, and absorb its true message.

There are two critical ideas in Lemov’s book: 1. Getting results in the classroom stems from the honing of specific, often less-than-glamorous techniques. 2. Success should be defined by how well the teacher drives student achievement, not by how well he or she implements these or any programs, theories, or strategies.

While seemingly simple, the implications of these two messages are transformative: They would mean dramatically rethinking the way we view teacher training and ongoing professional development, as well as principal and teacher autonomy.

On the teacher training and professional development front, for example, a tremendous amount of time is devoted to learning theory and strategy. In the limited time schools (or districts or education schools) have with teachers before they are thrown into the classrooms, this is decidedly not time well spent. Competitive runners, explains Lemov, do not train like this; “Mulling your decision to run from the front [of the pack] a hundred times doesn’t make [you] any better, but practicing a hundred sprints with just the right body position does.” In other words, if you really wanted to prepare a fledgling teacher for what lies in store for him on the first day of school, you would spend time teaching the basic techniques of the craft of teaching, even if that time comes at the expense of learning educational theory or strategy.

We see this in art, too, continues Lemov. Michelangelo, for example, was an artisan first and an artist later. It was his “diligent mastery of the tools of the craft [that] preceded and perhaps allowed what came after.” Likewise, even the most creative and successful teachers must first master the tools—the techniques—of the craft before true artistry can be achieved.

Unfortunately, teacher training, professional development, and even ongoing teacher evaluations are not circumscribed by this purpose. After reading Teach Like a Champion you come away with a deep appreciation for just how much focusing on theory over mastery of the essential techniques of the craft is costing American teachers—and their students.

Of course, it would be easy to read Lemov’s book and decide that these specific techniques should be adopted as ends in and of themselves. Lemov would likely be the first to disagree. He explains:

I would like this fact to distinguish this book from so many others: it starts with and is justified by the results it helps teachers achieve, not by its fealty to some ideological principle. The result to aim for is not the loyal adoption of these techniques for their own sake but their application in service of increased student achievement. Too many ideas, even good ones, go bad when they become an end and not a means. 

In fact, one principal, who has achieved remarkable student achievement results by training his teachers according to Lemov’s “taxonomy of effective teaching,” was recently asked how he holds teachers accountable for successful implementation of these techniques. In short, he doesn’t. Lemov says, “He manages his teachers for the results and provides these techniques to get them there. They are free to use them or not…”

Unfortunately, there are too many (well-intentioned) school and district leaders who, in desperately trying to improve the educational outcomes for their students, manage implementation of reform strategies rather than student achievement outcomes.

Lemov’s message to those on the front lines of educating our students: Make use of these techniques if they help you help your students, but always judge your work by its results. Would that policymakers and school and district leaders would heed this sage advice.

Two months ago, when submitting its budget proposal to Congress, the Obama Administration crowed about its fiscal discipline and its commitment to flat-lining domestic spending (sort of). While education would receive an increase, it would be measured and responsible. Well that approach didn’t last long. This week Arne Duncan signed onto a bill promoted by Senate education committee chairman Tom Harkin that would provide $23 billion in more “edu-jobs” bailout funds for states and districts. "It is brutal out there," Duncan told reporters. "It is really scary. We're seeing massive layoffs around the country.” In fact, students are worried about losing their “favorite teacher,” he said. But as Duncan knows, said students will only lose said favorite teachers if unions force districts to abide by “last hired, first fired” rules instead of making lay-off decisions based on merit. (Yes, we’re assuming that ineffective teachers aren’t typically kids’ favorites; if they are, we’re in bigger trouble than we thought.) And with state and district coffers likely to remain strapped for the foreseeable future, Duncan and Democrats in Congress are just delaying the inevitable belt-tightening that’s yet to come. And regardless of what you think of this idea, we can all agree that announcing it right before Tax Day wasn’t the smartest politics.

“Duncan Calls on Congress to Pass Edu-Jobs Aid,” by Alyson Klein, Politics K-12 a blog of Education Week, April 14, 2010

Be forewarned: It’s going to take me a while to get to my main argument. I hope you agree it’s worth the wait.

For going on two decades now, the twin movements to expand parental choice and foster accountability have been the major drivers of reform in the K-12 education system. And while choice and accountability can be seen as ends in themselves, for many reformers they have been primarily means: tactics for creating a high-performing education system, one that puts the needs of kids over the needs of adults. They are tonics meant to overcome the corrupting influence of complacency and protectionism within our public schools.

This brand of reform diagnoses the school system’s disease as primarily political rather than structural, behavioral, or attitudinal. It’s not that educators don’t work hard enough, or care passionately enough, or know enough. It’s that organized interests have a stranglehold on the system, creating incentives for managers at all levels to avoid making the hard decisions that are necessary for any organization to thrive. Most obviously, union contracts and civil service rules make it next to impossible to fire low-performers, whether they be central office bureaucrats, principals, teachers, or aides. And this creates an insidious cycle of cynicism that permeates the schools.

Enter choice and accountability. The theory of change goes something like this: Offer parents and their children real options outside the (unionized) public schools. Attach public dollars to the kids so that the money leaves the bureaucracy. Grow enough options so that the outflow of kids and money is large enough to get the attention of the district, and to cause real pain for the union (as the number of teachers--and union members--shrinks).

At the same time, hold districts accountable from the state and federal levels, by making their (bad) results transparent and forcing them to adopt meaningful (and unpleasant) reforms in their failing schools. The combination of competitive pressures from below, and accountability pressures from above, will create a new political environment, one in which unions and civil servants have no real alternative but to accept reform instead of oppose it—out of sheer self-interest.

And finally, after this long and circuitous route, districts will adopt critical changes, such as those that make it much easier to remove ineffective teachers (or principals or staff) from their jobs. And managers, newly empowered, will take bold action to weed out the low-performers and usher in a new era of excellence and accountability.

Sounds great, but how has this theory turned out in practice? Not so well. For instance, ten cities boast a charter school “market share” of greater than twenty percent, places like Detroit, Kansas City, and Dayton, which means that their districts have lost loads of kids and cash and teachers. And these districts are also subject to NCLB-style accountability from on high. But to date, their unions and central office staff aren’t exactly burning a path to reform’s door. 

Then again, there’s Washington, D.C. Here we have a city where a third of the students have decamped to charter schools, creating an environment in which the union is desperate to stanch the loss of teachers. And we have a tough-minded chancellor, backed by a strong mayor, willing to wield a tough accountability stick. And sure enough, just last week, Washington’s union leadership reluctantly embraced a reform-minded contract that will make it much easier to remove ineffective teachers from the classroom. (Of course, pay raises for everyone surely helped too.)

But it turns out that DC is the exception and not the rule. It is unique in one very important way: It is a city without a state. And, as we learned in the National Council on Teacher Quality’s report, Invisible Ink, many of the key policies that protect teachers and create complacency are enshrined in state law, not in district contracts. The NCTQ authors write, “State law dictates how often teachers must be evaluated, when teachers can earn tenure, the benefits they’ll receive, and even the rules for firing a teacher.” The Washington contract could address these issues because they weren’t already buttoned-up in state policy.

All of this helps to explain why “teacher accountability” is now the reformer’s primary rallying cry—and why the battle is primarily being fought at the state, rather than district, level. After twenty years it’s become clear that choice and accountability are necessary but not sufficient to create the conditions for high-performing systems. They were too indirect; now it’s time to tackle teacher tenure and evaluations head-on. And that means fighting the unions in committee rooms in state capitals.

That's what we're seeing in Florida, with the far-reaching bill just vetoed by Governor Crist. That's what we’re seeing in Colorado, with a bold proposal just released by state senator and uber-reformer Mike Johnston. And that's what we could see nationwide if states were willing to step up to the Race to the Top's challenge for meaningful teacher accountability.

But reformers shouldn’t expect this to be beanbag. In Florida, the unions have pulled out all the stops, and managed to get the Democratic caucus in the state legislature to more or less march in lockstep against the proposed changes. This same caucus split 50-50 when it came to expanding the Sunshine State’s private school choice program, demonstrating that teacher reform is now more radioactive than vouchers.

Tackling tenure and related reforms will be a fight to the finish, but after two decades of preliminaries, it’s about time for the main event. May the good guys win.

Are you against violence toward animals? Well you have an advocate in Hartford, Connecticut, where that state’s legislature is contemplating a bill that would allow students to complete science-class animal dissections virtually. Should students be forced to cut open that lifeless piglet or innocent frog to learn about their anatomy? The battle lines are drawn. On one side, the Connecticut Association of Biology Teachers says that the live experience is invaluable: “[Students] get over their squeamishness and find it highly informative,” explains CABT president Jonathan Morris. State Representative Maryanne Hornish disagrees: “This is about an ethical choice these kids are making. Some can’t handle the blood and gore.” (There’s actually no blood involved in dissections, but we get your point Maryanne.) One thing’s for sure: Computer simulations are getting better and better, so they could be a viable alternative for those with a moral or visceral repugnance to dissections in the flesh. At least this is a better use of technology than Physical Education classes online. But now we’re left wondering: Doesn’t Connecticut have better things to worry about, like filling in the blanks on its Race to the Top application?

“Strong Debate on Both Sides Over Bill Requiring Dissection Option in Schools,” by Grace E. Merritt, Hartford Courant, April 9, 2010

The new United Federation of Teachers’ president Michael Mulgrew was voted into office with 91 percent of the vote. (Mulgrew has been in office since his predecessor Randi Weingarten took over the parent AFT, but only as interim prez.) This landslide victory, however, masks an interesting reality: That Mulgrew was voted into office by everyone but the classroom teachers he’s supposed to represent. Confused? We’ll explain. First, overall turnout was just 32 percent, so lots of union members didn’t vote at all. And of that 32 percent, non-classroom teachers outnumbered their classroom counterparts two-to-one. In other words, active union members—classroom teachers—had just a 24 percent participation rate, while 47 percent of the union’s retirees cast their ballots. Though in real numbers, the two groups came out roughly equal—40 percent of the vote—of their respective numbers, many more retirees made it to the polls. (“Functional” teachers, such as psychologists, nurses, and paraprofessionals made up the remainder.) If you’ve ever wondered why teachers’ unions spend so much time protecting pension plans, here’s your answer.

“And the UFT Election Envelope Please…,” by Anna Phillips, Gotham Schools, April 9, 2010

“Dysfunctional,” by Frederick M. Hess, National Review Online, April 14, 2010

“Blow by Blow: Preliminary UFT Election Returns—Updated,” Education Notes Online, April 10, 2010

Barry Topol, John Olson, and Ed Roeber
Assessment Solutions Group for the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy Education
April 2010

This paper, one of eight in a series on performance assessments spearheaded by Stanford Professor Linda Darling-Hammond, addresses the notion that instructionally-sensitive tests are too expensive. Using fancy cost-modeling software, analysts found that high-quality assessments (HQAs), such as those with short answer questions and expository writing samples, can compete economically with traditional multiple choice tests. A typical mid-sized state, defined as one that assesses about 900,000 students annually, now pays about $20 per student over the course of four years of “traditional” multiple choice math and English language arts assessment. But if that same state were to implement all of the cost-saving measures laid out in this paper, however, those states could bring that number to as low as $10 per student over four years for a high-quality test. The greatest money-saving move would be participation in assessment consortia (such as the ones being encouraged by the Education Department’s “Race to the Test” competition) and using teachers to score tests rather than the test company or independent paid assessors. Other tactics include more advanced technology, such as online testing, and remote and/or computerized scoring, though these had a much smaller impact on the bottom line. It’s probably no coincidence that Darling-Hammond herself is involved in a testing consortium, or that this paper finds participation in such a consortium to be the largest cost-saving measure. Still, it’s heartening that the ever-blunt instrument of standardized tests can become more nuanced and accurate without costing taxpayers an arm and a leg. Read the paper here, and the others in its series here.

Ben Wildavsky
Princeton University Press
2010

To their regret, Gadfly and his fellow heteroptera are so consumed with goings-on in the K-12 world that they often neglect higher education. But this superb new book by Ben Wildavsky warrants no neglect. For educators, it's the equivalent of Friedman's World Is Flat and carries much the same message: Higher education (and there are signs that K-12 is following behind) is no longer confined by national boundaries, much less campus walls. At least at its upper echelons, it's now an international industry, serving an international market, populated by globe-trotting people. From a U.S. standpoint, that's both good and bad. Although we are successfully exporting something we've long been good at--and importing students and faculty, too--the universities of a dozen other lands (including India, China, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, etc) are in hot pursuit and beginning to catch up. Ponder the implications. Meanwhile, read this book.

Eric Hanushek and Steven Rivkin
National Bureau of Economic Research
March 2010

Is teacher turnover a bad thing for student achievement, particularly when it occurs in high-needs schools? The study’s results challenge conventional wisdom by answering, No, not really. Analysts examined a matched teacher-student math achievement data set from one large (unidentified) school district in Texas in grades 4 through 8 for school years 1995-96 to 2000-01. The key finding: A whopping 30 percent of new teachers left their current school each year compared to 18 percent of veterans. Furthermore, exiters were significantly less effective on average than those who stay, regardless of whether they are compared to all stayers in the district or to the stayers in their school. Further, results reveal a similar pattern when school type is taken into consideration: Teachers who leave low-achieving schools or schools with higher percentages of black students are, on average, less effective compared to stayers, than those who leave higher-achieving schools or those with fewer black students. So, the takeaway is this: Teacher turnover is alive and well, but it doesn’t mean that schools are losing their best teachers, nor does it appear to adversely affect student achievement in math. (The analysts do posit, however, that the benefit of losing weak teachers is “offset” by the potential disadvantage of an influx of new teachers who are still learning the ropes.) While this study of one school district won’t settle the question of the impact of teacher turnover and departure on student outcomes, it is an important (and contrary) contribution to the field. Find it here.

MetLife Foundation
March 2010

Since 1984, MetLife has administered its annual Survey of the American Teacher to examine attitudes and trends within the profession. This year’s theme, “Collaborating for Student Success,” draws upon testimonials from teachers, principals, and grade 3-12 students to determine how in-school partnerships between teachers and administration affect student achievement and teachers’ feelings of professionalism. Given recent controversial firings and tensions over merit-pay provisions across the country, the report’s findings on intra-school trust are notable: Teachers working in schools with higher levels of collaboration indicated stronger feelings of trust among the faculty (69 percent versus 42 percent of teachers working in less collaborative schools) as well as increased job satisfaction. Teachers’ likelihood of leaving their profession is on par with last year’s survey, and a predictable 69 percent of teachers feel they do not have a voice in the education policy debate, despite the Race to the Top push for stakeholder support. Finally one-third of teachers report having had a different career before entering the classroom. For more insights read the report here.