The Futures of School Reform,
edited by Jal Mehta, Robert B. Schwartz, and Frederick M. Hess, is a
collection of essays that try to push the boundaries of current
education reform efforts in order to generate dramatic change through
high leverage issues. In the second of the essays, “Building on
Practical Knowledge,” Carnegie President Anthony Bryk, Senior Fellow
Louis Gomez, and Mehta, who is at Harvard Graduate School of Education,
advocate an approach to professionalizing the field of education by
using the principles of a
Networked Improvement Community.
The authors argue that teaching is not a professionalized field, in
which knowledge is shared and best practices are developed. The
hierarchical and bureaucratic state of schools, districts, and state and
federal governments results in the disregard of local learning and
adaptation when creating standardization across schools and implementing
policies. There is no formal system to develop teachers’ practical
knowledge, training, or apprenticeship, resulting in a wide variation in
teacher performance.
In addition, the authors write that
traditional approaches to educational research—translational research
and action research—are often divorced from practice and have failed to
help further the improvement of teaching and student learning.
Translational research uses innovation as a stage-wise linear inquiry
process and generalizes solutions well, but fails to accommodate local
insights. Action research, on the other hand, flows from practice and is
improvement-based, but puts a low priority on generalizable mapping of
cause and effect, resulting in an inability to scale successful changes.
The authors discuss a “third way”: a
Networked Improvement Community (NIC), which is the Carnegie approach to
problems of practice that Bryk and colleagues are attempting to
integrate into the field of education research. Through the use of
common targets, a shared language, and common protocols for inquiry,
this “third way” uses
improvement science
to consider local contexts and networks to help generalize and scale
solutions. Thus NICs can help contribute to professionalizing teaching
by framing the profession around practice improvement, engendering
routines that enable inquiry, and helping teachers feel part of a
broader profession. NICs create a system to support a knowledge
profession through the use of human capital building centered on
practice, allowing states and districts to focus on providing an
infrastructure for educational improvement, and creating policy that
allows for a “greenfield” for social learning. Doing this will help
improve performance, learning, and equity in our schools, the authors
note.
In order to get there, the authors believe
every actor has a role to play. School leaders should think of their
institutions as areas that can learn, unions should free up teachers and
schools to take responsibility, governmental actors need to move away
from a focus on control and compliance and towards support and learning,
and institutions need to act as focal points for large collective
action problems. They conclude, “If all actors, throughout the system,
began to conceive their jobs as transforming an Industrial Age
compliance structure into a profession of competent, skilled, and
continuously learning practitioners, collectively we might finally be
able to move our education system into the twenty-first century” (64).
The chapter helps highlight the motivations and results of a well-functioning NIC. Carnegie’s two NIC-supported programs, the
Community College Pathways and
Building a Teaching Effectiveness Network,
can not only directly help students become more successful, they can
also help professionalize the teaching profession, thus accelerating
improvement. Through the use of NICs,
Some of the News Fit to Print
ABOUT K-12
TEACHERS, STUDENTS RETURN TO CHICAGO SCHOOLS
Delegates for the Chicago Teachers Union voted to call off its
seven-day strike, sending some 350,000 public schools students back to
class this morning and ending the daily scene of teachers dressed in red
picketing their schools. The article is in the
Chicago Tribune.
VALUE-ADDED MEASURES: A NEW APPROACH
Tulane Professor Doug Harris writes in the
Huffngton Post:
President Obama and other Democrats are challenging teachers unions and
urging them to recognize the need for deep reforms -- a bold political
move that we see only rarely among political allies. So, it took gall
for Governor Romney, Jeb Bush, and others at the Republican National
Convention to say that teacher unions control the Democratic Party. If
that were true, there wouldn't be a strike. Despite its boldness, all
might have turned out well for the Democrats if not for another
seemingly small choice that the Obama Administration made in the design
of its Race to the Top initiative. They smartly embraced the idea of
multiple measures of teacher performance, but decided to lump all the
various measures together into an index and use that as the mother of
all measures -- to be used for all personnel decisions. The raging
debate since then has been over what percentage of the index should be
given to value-added versus the other measures.
BLACK MALE GRAD RATE STILL LAGS
The four-year graduation rate for black males has steadily improved
over the last decade, but remains dismally low compared to the rate for
their white male peers, according to a
study
released this morning. In its fifth biennial report on graduation rates
for African-American males, the Schott Foundation for Public Education
found that in 2009-10, 52 percent of black males graduated from high
school with a regular diploma within four years. It’s the first time
that more than half of the nation’s African-American boys did so,
according to Schott’s report. The article is in
Education Week.
ABOUT HIGHER ED
EFFICIENCY IN JOB TRAINING
Bachelor degree production isn’t a big problem in this country.
Associate degrees and certificates are where the U.S. lags other
industrialized countries, according to the
latest study from Anthony P. Carnevale, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. The article is in I
nside Higher Ed.
MOOC HOST EXPANDS
Coursera continued its ambitious expansion in the growing market for
MOOC support today, announcing accords with 16 new universities to help
them produce massive open online courses — more than doubling the
company’s number of institutional partners and pushing its course count
near 200. The new partners include the first liberal arts college,
Wesleyan University, to leap formally into the MOOC game, as well as the
first music school, the Berklee College of Music. Coursera also
announced deals with name-brand private universities, such as Brown,
Columbia, Emory and Vanderbilt Universities; some major state
institutions, such as the University of Maryland System, the Ohio State
University and the Universities of Florida, and California at Irvine;
and several international universities, such as the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and the
Universities of British Columbia, London, and Melbourne. The article is
in
Inside Higher Ed.
CAN PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES STILL COMPETE?
America’s public universities face unprecedented challenges. In the
wake of the economic recession and the resulting budget crises, states
have cut higher education funding. At the same time, the nation’s
expectations for higher education have grown, with President Obama
warning that our economic competitiveness will suffer unless our
colleges and universities produce more graduates. College leaders are
being asked to do more with less. In response to these new demands, most
institutions have made small changes and battened down the hatches in
the hopes that funding will return to normal. Public colleges have
raised tuition to make up for lost revenue, made across-the-board cuts,
and frozen hiring. These changes may help in the short-term, but they do
little to prepare existing institutions for a “new normal” of tight
budgets and high expectations. The article is from the American
Enterprise Institute.
Some of the News Fit to Print
ABOUT HIGHER ED
STANFORD FOR ALL
Should Stanford encourage more of its faculty to produce these
so-called massive open online courses, or MOOCs? Should anyone profit
from their distribution? And if the University does invest more heavily
in online education, how might that affect students—and professors—on
the home campus? During the past year such questions have been the
subject of intense debate. Many professors say they like the idea of
mass online education for humanitarian reasons. Some believe
high-quality online courses could enhance the University's prestige in
the same way that faculty-authored textbooks do, and help Stanford
attract and identify brilliant students from around the world. And some
would be happy to replace their large lecture courses with a more
engaging educational model—one that many plugged-in Stanford students
prefer. Other professors loathe the idea of lecturing to a camera, or of
trying to assess thousands of students online. The article is in
Stanford Magazine.
WE MUST INVEST IN OUR PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES
UC Santa Cruz Chancellor George Blumenthal writes in
The San Francisco Chronicle:
Our public universities are in trouble. Nationwide, they produce 70
percent of our college graduates. Yet, from coast to coast, unrelenting
state budget cuts threaten the quality of our leading institutions, even
as they force students and families to dig deeper and borrow more to
pay the tuition. As we begin another academic year, our top priority
must be to develop a stable, long-term funding model for public higher
education. We need a path forward that preserves excellence, protects
access and affordability and puts the United States on track to regain
our standing as having the highest proportion of college graduates in
the world. Our decline from first to 16th place since the 1980s demands
action.
THE BUDGET CUTS TO COME
WASHINGTON — If Congress does not agree on a long-term plan to reduce
the deficit by the end of the year, most higher education programs will
face deep cuts in the mandatory spending reductions that go into effect
Jan. 1, according to a
report
released Friday by the White House’s Office of Management and Budget.
For months, advocates for education funding (as well as those concerned
about other budget areas) have braced for the cuts, known as
sequestration. The article is in
Inside Higher Ed.
STATE MAY RANK IOWA TEACHER COLLEGES, GRADUATES’ PERFORMANCE
Ranking Iowa's teacher colleges and tracking the performance of their
graduates are among ideas being considered by the state's board of
education. The potential changes are part of a larger effort to overhaul
the accreditation process for teacher preparation programs, a reform
that Governor Terry Branstad said would be crucial to improving the
academic performance of the state's children. The article is in the
Des Moines Register.
ABOUT K-12
IN SEARCH OF EXCELLENT TEACHING
The Chicago teachers’ strike was prompted in part by a fierce
disagreement over how much student test scores will weigh in a new
teacher evaluation system mandated by state law. That teachers’ unions
in much of the country now agree that student achievement should count
in evaluations at all reflects a major change from the past, when it was
often argued that teaching was an “art” that could not be rigorously
evaluated or, even more outrageously, that teachers should not be held
accountable for student progress. Traditional teacher evaluations often
consist of cursory classroom visits by principals who declare nearly
every teacher good, or at least competent, even in failing schools where
few if any children meet basic educational standards. As a result of
this system, bad things can happen. High-performing teachers who have an
enormous impact on student achievement go unidentified, and they often
leave the district. Promising, but struggling, young teachers never get
the help they need to master the job. And disastrous teachers who have
no feel for the profession continue as long as they wish, hurting young
lives along the way. The editorial was in
The New York Times.
CPS FAILS TO GET COURT ORDER ENDING STRIKE
Lawyers for Chicago Public Schools were rebuffed today in their hopes
of winning a temporary restraining order and immediately ending the
teachers strike. A Cook County Circuit Court judge did not agree to hold
a hearing on the matter today. Instead, Judge Peter Flynn raised the
possibility of setting a hearing for Wednesday, but questioned if the
legal issues wouldn’t be moot if the strike is over by then, according
to Roderick Drew, a spokesman for the city’s Law Department. The article
is in the
Chicago Tribune.
START-UP HOPEFULS TEST IDEAS WITH EDUCATORS
Many entrepreneurs in K-12 believe technology can solve education’s
problems, but don’t work to understand those problems before prescribing
technology to solve them. That frustrates educators and can be a recipe
for failure for fledgling companies. The founders of Imagine K12—Tim
Brady, Alan Louie, and Geoff Ralston—made their fortunes working for
some of Silicon Valley’s star companies, like Yahoo and Google. But
they’re trying to change that dynamic by helping people who start
education businesses understand what educators truly need and then
create products to meet those needs. The article is in
Education Week.
TWO VERSIONS OF COMMON CORE TEST
Instead of designing one test, the Smarter Balanced Assessment
Consortium is planning to offer its states a choice of a longer and a
shorter version. The pivot came in response to some states' resistance
to spending more time and money on common core standards testing. States
are confronting what is politically and fiscally palatable and how that
squares with an in-depth approach to testing students on the standards.
The article is in
Education Week.
STUDY FINDS NO RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ED SPENDING AND RESULTS
A
new study
from State Budget Solutions finds that the approach that many have long
considered a panacea to academic ills – more spending and increased
financial resources – doesn’t actually translate to improvements in
student achievement as measured by standardized test scores. Analysis of
spending by the states between the years of 2009 and 2011 showed that
states that spend the most on education as a portion of their total
budget didn’t graduate students at a higher rate, nor did their students
score better on the ACT than their peers. The article is from
EducationNews.org.
the authors write that the field
can take advantage of promising education reforms with the input of
practitioners who, when working together, can help scale successful
changes that will generate dramatic change.
WHAT IS A WORLD-CLASS EDUCATION?
In an article in UNESCO's
Prospects magazine, Henry Levin
writes that restricting the meaning of "world-class" education to the
narrow criterion of test scores relies on the idea that higher scores
are closely linked with a capable labor force and competitive economy.
In fact, Levin argues, the measured relationships between test scores
and earnings or productivity are modest and explain a relatively small
share of the larger link between educational attainment and economic
outcomes. Missing from these assessments are the effects that education
has on the development of interpersonal and intrapersonal skills and
capabilities -- non-cognitive skills -- that affect the quality and
productivity of the labor force. Levin recommends that
non-cognitive-skill areas and measures be incorporated into research on
academic achievement, school graduation, post-secondary attainments,
labor market outcomes, health status, and reduced involvement in the
criminal justice system in conjunction with standard academic
performance measures. At some point we will learn enough to incorporate
specific non-cognitive measures into both small- and large-scale
assessments, leading to a deeper understanding of school effects and
school policy and a more inclusive framework for ascertaining what is,
in fact, world-class education. This information is from the
PEN NewsBlast.
ABOUT K-12
TEACHER EVALUTION DISPUTE ECHOES BEYOND CHICAGO
One of the primary issues at the heart of the Chicago teachers' strike
is whether student test scores should be used to evaluate teachers and
determine their pay. Mayor Rahm Emanuel is pushing that approach, as are
other officials around the nation. But many teachers insist that it's
inherently unfair to grade their teaching based on their students'
learning. Just the fact that there's a growing discussion around teacher
evaluations is a huge leap for the education industry. Historically,
reviews have been haphazard, ranging from nonexistent to an annual
classroom visit from the principal — often referred to as the
"drive-by." The piece is from NPR’s All Things Considered.
THE STRIKE OVER STUDENT ‘GROWTH’: CHICAGO TEACHERS’ PROTEST REFLECTS NATIONAL TREND
Striking teachers in Chicago are fighting a contentious education
reform that could overhaul how teachers are paid and evaluated,
highlighting the difficulty of judging teachers by student performance.
According to
National Center for Teacher Quality data,
new evaluation systems have been changed in at least 33 states since
2009 and more than two dozen states are relying on observations and
student test scores. The article is from the
Hechinger Report.
STRIKE TALKS IN CHICAGO MOVE TOWARD END GAME
More than 350,000 students remain out of their classrooms as bargaining
to end Chicago's teachers strike dragged into Friday ahead of an
afternoon union gathering where a vote could stamp needed approval on
any deal. Rank-and-file teachers prepared to return to the streets for
morning rallies to press the union's demands that laid-off instructors
be given first shot at job openings and for implementation of a teacher
evaluation system that is not too heavily weighted on student test
results. The AP article is from NPR.
WHEN GREEN ISN’T GREAT
Recent findings by Richard Ingersoll at the University of Pennsylvania
show that as teacher attrition rates have risen to 13 percent for
first-year teachers, schools must hire increasing numbers of new
teachers,
USA Today reports. Between 40 to 50 percent of those
entering the profession now leave within five years in what Ingersoll
calls a "constant replenishment of beginners." The end result: a more
than threefold increase in the sheer number of inexperienced teachers in
U.S. schools. The 1987-88 school year, Ingersoll estimates, had about
65,000 first-year teachers; by 2007-08, the number was over 200,000. In
1987-88 the biggest group of teachers had 15 years of experience. By
2007-08, the most recent data available, the biggest group of teachers
had one year of experience. Heather Peske of Teach Plus says the
so-called greening of the profession doesn't necessarily mean families
will find "fresh-faced 23-year-olds in every classroom." Many new
teachers are career-changers with experience in functional workplaces.
These teachers will expect adequate materials, and the chance to
collaborate with co-workers. "I do think that's good for the
profession," Peske says. But parents shouldn't be surprised if young
teachers soon leave the classroom for better-paying jobs. With teachers
moving around more, parents should also ask how the school keeps their
replacements current on student progress. This information is from the
PEN NewsBlast.
ABOUT HIGHER ED
GATES, MOOCS AND REMEDIATION
Early returns show that massive open online courses (MOOCs) work best
for motivated and academically prepared students. But could high-quality
MOOCs benefit a broader range of learners, like those who get tripped
up by remedial classes? That’s the question the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation wants to answer with a newly announced round of 10 grants for
the creation of MOOCs for remedial coursework. “We’re trying to seed
the conversation and seed the experimentation,” said Josh Jarrett, the
foundation's deputy director for education and postsecondary education.
The article is in
Inside Higher Ed.
COLLEGE COMPLETION OR COLLEGE ACCESS?
The latest trend in public university financing is to give colleges
funding based on performance, generally the graduation rate. While
different states are proposing slightly different policies, the
consensus seems to be that some performance measures are useful for
encouraging colleges to educate students well. Some advocates recommend
focusing the Pell Grant program, which provides grants to low-income
students to attend college, on completion. According to a recent
study by Mark Kantrowitz, founder of
finaid.org
and an expert in college finances, however, the focus on college
“completion” will likely reduce access to college for many poor
students. The article is in
Washington Monthly.
STATE EFFORTS TO MAKE COLLEGE MORE AFFORDABLE
A Senate hearing on efforts by states to make college more affordable
highlighted several initiatives that Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), chair of
the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said he hopes can
be replicated more broadly. These initiatives are likely to receive more
attention next year, when Congress begins to work on reauthorizing the
federal Higher Education Act. At Thursday's hearing, Harkin expressed
urgency in addressing the soaring cost of higher education. When it
comes to increasing affordability, “states still have a primary role to
play,” he said. The article is in
Community College Times.
LESSONS FROM CHICAGO: IT TAKES THE CAKE, AND THE TRULY DISADVANTAGED NEED EXTRA FROSTING
Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, blogs in
Working Economics:
As the Chicago public schools teachers strike continues, with no
resolution of the conflict in sight, the mayor and CEO might do well to
reflect on two key lessons imparted by a scholar whose research on
Chicago school reforms is universally hailed as in-depth,
groundbreaking, and unimpeachable. Anthony Bryk is the creator of the
Consortium on Chicago School Research and current president of the
Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Bryk and his CCSR
colleagues’ 2010 book,
Organizing Schools for Improvement: Lessons from Chicago, has become a bible for evidence-based education policymakers across the country.
CHICAGO STRIKE COULD INFLUENCE TEACHER EVALUATION DEBATE
The debate over teacher evaluations that's taken center stage in the
Chicago schools strike could have major effects on the issue in the
future, an education expert says. "Chicago absolutely matters," said
Elena Silva, senior associate for public policy engagement at the
Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. "I think what
happens here will substantially matter for what we see happen with
teacher evaluations nationwide," she said. In the last three years, 21
states have passed have legislation or implemented new regulations
designed to highlight teacher accountability, according to a report by
Bellwether Education Partners, a consulting firm. The article is from
CNN.
posted Sep 13, 2012 10:15 am
Some of the News Fit to Print
ABOUT K-12
CHICAGO STRIKE PUTS SPOTLIGHT ON TEACHER-EVALUATION REFORM
While wages and benefits have played important roles in the ongoing
dispute between the Chicago Teachers Union and the city’s school
district, the issue about which the two sides have remained most
entrenched in their opposing views is teacher evaluation. In that
respect, the flare up in Chicago is, in many ways, reflective of broader
tensions about changes to evaluation policies being rolled out across
the country. The article is in
Education Week.
CAN NAEP PREDICT COLLEGE READINESS?
If you want to know which states are closing black-white achievement
gaps in grades 4, 8, and 12, the National Assessment of Educational
Progress can show you. If you want to find out how many 8th graders
understand how to translate decimals to fractions, "the nation's report
card" can help with that, too. But after nearly a decade of effort,
educators and policymakers are still trying to figure out whether NAEP
can predict how likely a state's students are to start college without
needing to take remedial courses, not to mention whether they are
prepared for careers. And researchers' struggles with the federally
administered NAEP may highlight the uphill battle that awaits the
developers of common state assessments or anyone else trying to tie
school performance to the post-high-school world. The article is in
Education Week.
ABOUT HIGHER ED
COLLEGES AREN’T GOOD AT REMEDIAL EDUCATION
More than 2 million U.S. college students this fall will be spending a
good bit of their time reviewing what they were supposed to learn in
high school or earlier. They are taking “remedial” education courses. A
recent study issued by ACT Inc., a testing organization measuring
“college readiness,” found that less than one-third of graduating
high-school seniors met benchmark standards for science, and a majority
failed to meet them for math. Even in English and reading, a large
minority of students were below a level that would mostly earn a grade
of C or better on college-level work. The results are depressing. In
science, most students don’t come close (within three points) of meeting
the ACT benchmark standards. The student at least partially unprepared
for college is the rule, not the exception. The commentary, by Richard
Vedder of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, is in
the
Columbus Dispatch.
CALIFORNIA NEEDS A NEW MASTER PLAN
California State University Chancellor Charles Reed (who is retiring this year) writes in the
L.A. Times:
California's public higher education system, once the envy of the
world, is struggling. To survive in a way that continues to fulfill its
mission, we need to break the mold on how it operates. State budget cuts
have stripped our universities to the bone. And the promise of nearly
free, accessible higher education has all but disappeared as cuts have
forced tuition increases. What was once a rite of passage for all
qualified young people is increasingly becoming untenable for many
prospective students. Some lucky people may have the option to simply
choose another university, perhaps a private institution. But many more
students, particularly those from low-income and traditionally
underserved backgrounds, may have no choice but to forgo a university
degree.
MOOCS, REPUTATION, AND CREDIT RATINGS
Recent developments in online higher education will likely benefit the
credit ratings of brand-name and niche institutions while possibly
threatening for-profit institutions and smaller, regional colleges and
universities, according to a new report by Moody's Investor Service. In a
report that elides the potential implications of massive open online
courses (MOOCs) and the continued growth of conventional online
programs, Moody's analysts predicted that well-reputed institutions will
band together around online offerings to reduce operating costs.
Meanwhile, there could "eventually be negative side effects on
for-profit education companies and some smaller not-for-profit colleges
that may be left out of emerging high reputation online networks," the
report said. However, the analysts suggested that well-known
institutions that rush too heedlessly into MOOCs could sacrifice their
reputational footing. "[T]he rapid pace of the MOOC movement presents
the possibility of brand dilution as universities rush to join the trend
without controlling the quality of the product/content being posted,"
they wrote. The article is in
Inside Higher Ed.
No
matter how many accolades Harvard rakes in, its graduates are paling in
comparison to their peers at lesser institutions in one crucial field:
starting salary.
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