[Senate Hearing 114-001]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 114-001
FIXING NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND: SUPPORTING TEACHERS AND SCHOOL LEADERS
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HEARING
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON HEALTH, EDUCATION,
LABOR, AND PENSIONS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
ON
EXAMINING FIXING NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND, FOCUSING ON SUPPORTING TEACHERS
AND SCHOOL LEADERS
__________
JANUARY 27, 2015
__________
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Pensions
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COMMITTEE ON HEALTH, EDUCATION, LABOR, AND PENSIONS
LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee, Chairman
MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming PATTY MURRAY, Washington
RICHARD BURR, North Carolina BARBARA A. MIKULSKI, Maryland
JOHNNY ISAKSON, Georgia BERNARD SANDERS (I), Vermont
RAND PAUL, Kentucky ROBERT P. CASEY, JR., Pennsylvania
SUSAN COLLINS, Maine AL FRANKEN, Minnesota
LISA MURKOWSKI, Alaska MICHAEL F. BENNET, Colorado
MARK KIRK, Illinois SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, Rhode Island
TIM SCOTT, South Carolina TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin
ORRIN G. HATCH, Utah CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut
PAT ROBERTS, Kansas ELIZABETH WARREN, Massachusetts
BILL CASSIDY, M.D., Louisiana
David P. Cleary, Republican Staff Director
Evan Schatz, Minority Staff Director
John Righter, Minority Deputy Staff Director
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
__________
STATEMENTS
TUESDAY, JANUARY 27, 2015
Page
Committee Members
Alexander, Hon. Lamar, Chairman, Committee on Health, Education,
Labor, and Pensions, opening statement......................... 1
Murray, Hon. Patty, a U.S. Senator from the State of Washington.. 4
Mikulski, Hon. Barbara A., a U.S. Senator from the State of
Maryland....................................................... 6
Cassidy, Hon. Bill, a U.S. Senator from the State of Louisiana... 39
Bennet, Hon. Michael F., a U.S. Senator from the State of
Colorado....................................................... 41
Burr, Hon. Richard, a U.S. Senator from the State of North
Carolina....................................................... 43
Warren, Hon. Elizabeth, a U.S. Senator from the State of
Massachusetts.................................................. 45
Isakson, Hon. Johnny, a U.S. Senator from the State of Georgia... 47
Baldwin, Hon. Tammy, a U.S. Senator from the State of Wisconsin.. 49
Franken, Hon. Al, a U.S. Senator from the State of Minnesota..... 51
Whitehouse, Hon. Sheldon, a U.S. Senator from the State of Rhode
Island......................................................... 53
Casey, Hon. Robert P., Jr., a U.S. Senator from the State of
Pennsylvania................................................... 55
Witnesses
Goldhaber, Dan, B.A., M.S., Ph.D., Director, National Center for
Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research at the
American Institutes for Research; Director, Center for
Education Data and Research at the University of Washington,
Bothell, WA.................................................... 7
Prepared statement........................................... 9
Holliday, Terry, B.E., M.Ed., Ed.S., Ph.D., Commissioner of
Education, Commonwealth of Kentucky, Frankfort, KY............. 16
Prepared statement........................................... 18
Hinojosa, Saul, Superintendent of Schools, Somerset Independent
School District, Somerset, TX.................................. 20
Prepared statement........................................... 21
Rachelle Moore, 1st Grade Teacher, Madrona K-8 School, Seattle,
WA............................................................. 27
Prepared statement........................................... 29
Handy-Collins, Christine, Principal, Gaithersburg High School,
Gaithersburg, MD............................................... 31
Prepared statement........................................... 32
ADDITIONAL MATERIAL
Statements, articles, publications, letters, etc.:
Response by Dan Goldhaber to questions of:
Senator Collins.......................................... 58
Senator Murkowski........................................ 59
Response by Terry Holliday to questions of:
Senator Collins.......................................... 61
Senator Murkowski........................................ 62
Response by Saul Hinojosa to questions of:
Senator Collins.......................................... 62
Senator Murkowski........................................ 64
Response by Rachelle Moore to questions of:
Senator Collins.......................................... 65
Senator Murkowski........................................ 67
Response by Christine Handy-Collins to questions of:
Senator Collins.......................................... 68
Senator Murkowski........................................ 69
(iii)
FIXING NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND: SUPPORTING TEACHERS AND SCHOOL LEADERS
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TUESDAY, JANUARY 27, 2015
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in room
SH-216, Hart Senate Office Building, Hon. Lamar Alexander,
chairman of the committee, presiding.
Present: Senators Alexander, Burr, Isakson, Collins,
Cassidy, Murray, Mikulski, Casey, Franken, Bennet, Whitehouse,
Baldwin, Murphy, and Warren.
Opening Statement of Senator Alexander
The Chairman. The Senate Committee on Health, Education,
Labor, and Pensions will please come to order. This morning,
we're holding a hearing on Fixing No Child Left Behind:
Supporting Teachers and School Leaders.
Ranking Member Murray and I will each have an opening
statement. Then we'll introduce our panel of witnesses. I'll
ask that each of our witnesses limit their testimony to about 5
minutes. We have your testimony. If you would summarize within
5 minutes--about 5 minutes--what you have to say, then it'll
give us more chance to interact with you. Then the Senators
will have a chance to ask questions. We'll conclude the hearing
at noon.
Next week, I think we have a plan for a roundtable. One
week from today on Tuesday, February 3d, at 10 o'clock, the
committee will hold a roundtable on Fixing No Child Left
Behind: Innovation to Better Meet the Needs of Students on how
States and local communities are innovating to improve their
own public schools. The reason we're doing that is because it
will provide a little less formal opportunity for Senators to
visit with experts and ask questions and have a conversation,
and we'll see how that works.
Today's hearing is all about better teaching, how we can
create an environment in which teachers, principals, and other
leaders can succeed. Governors around the country are focused
on one issue: better jobs for the citizens in their States. And
it doesn't take very long for a Governor, which I once was, to
come to the conclusion that better schools mean better jobs and
a better life.
Since no one has figured out how to pass a better parents
law, it doesn't take long to figure out how important a great
teacher is. I certainly came to that conclusion very quickly in
1984 when I was Governor of Tennessee and I considered the holy
grail of K through 12 education to be finding a fair way to
encourage and reward outstanding teaching.
I spent a year and a half, 70 percent of my time,
persuading the legislature to establish a career ladder, a
Master Teacher Program that 10,000 Tennessee teachers
voluntarily climbed. They were paid more, had the opportunity
for 10 11-month contracts, and our State became the first in
the Nation to pay teachers more for teaching well. Rarely a
week goes by that some teacher doesn't stop me and say, ``Thank
you for the Master Teacher Program.''
But it wasn't easy. A year before, I had been in a meeting
of southern Governors, and one of them said, ``Who's going to
be brave enough to take on the teachers' union?'' I had a year
and a half brawl with the National Education Association before
I could pass our Master Teacher Program.
Since then, there's been an explosion of efforts to answer
the questions that we tried to answer. A great number of States
and school districts are taking on the questions like: How do
we determine what is an effective teacher? How do we relate
student achievement to teacher performance? Having decided
that, how do we reward and support outstanding teaching so we
don't lose our best teachers?
In 1987, the Board for Professional Teaching Standards
began to strengthen standards in teaching. To date, more than
110,000 teachers in all 50 States and the District have
received a National Board Certification.
In 2006, the Teacher Incentive Fund was created to help
States and districts create performance-based compensation
systems. According to the National Center on Teacher
Evaluation, last year, 27 States were requiring annual
evaluations for all teachers, 44 were requiring annual
evaluations for new teachers, 35 required student achievement
and/or student growth to be a significant or the most
significant measure of teacher performance.
When I came to Washington as a U.S. Senator in 2003, most
people expected--since I thought rewarding outstanding teaching
is the holy grail--that I would want to make everyone do it. To
the surprise of some, my answer was, ``No, you can't do it from
Washington, DC.''
Nevertheless, over the last 10 years, Washington has tried.
Here is how: No Child Left Behind told States that all teachers
of core academic subjects needed to be highly qualified by 2006
and prescribed that definition in a very bureaucratic manner.
That simply hasn't worked, and I don't know many people who
really want to keep that definition. Even Secretary Duncan
waived the requirements related to highly qualified teachers
when he granted waivers to 43 States, the District, and Puerto
Rico.
Unfortunately, the Secretary replaced those requirements
with a new mandate requiring teacher evaluation systems first
in Race to the Top, which gave nearly $4.4 billion to States,
and, second, in the waivers. To get a waiver from No Child Left
Behind, a State and local school district must develop a
teacher and principal evaluation system with seven required
elements, such as three performance levels, multiple measures
including student growth, guidelines and supports for
implementation, and each element must be approved by the U.S.
Department of Education.
The problem is that after 30 years, we're still figuring
out how to do this. Our research work on measuring growth and
student achievement and relating it fairly to teacher
effectiveness may have begun in 1984.
Even today, former Institute of Education Science Director
Russ Whitehurst told the New York Times in 2012 that States
are,
``racing ahead based on promises made to Washington or
local political imperatives that prioritize an
unwavering commitment to unproven approaches. There's a
lot we don't know about how to evaluate teachers
reliably and how to use that information to improve
instruction and learning.''
The second problem is that some States just haven't been
willing to implement the systems the way the U.S. Department of
Education wants them to. California, Iowa, and Washington State
are examples. They had their waiver requests denied or revoked
over the issue of teacher evaluations.
In Iowa's case, it was because the State legislature
wouldn't pass a law that satisfied Washington's requirements.
California simply ignored the administration's conditions when
they applied for a waiver. Washington State's waiver, in April,
was revoked by Secretary Duncan because their State legislature
wouldn't pass legislation requiring standardized test results
to be used in teacher and principal evaluation. Instead,
Washington wanted to allow local school districts to decide
which test to use.
Now, whether or not this Federal interference with State
education offends your sense of federalism, as it does mine, it
has proved impractical. The Federal Government, in a well-
intentioned way, is trying to say, ``We want better teachers,
and we're going to tell you exactly how to do it, and you must
do it now.'' That has created an enormous backlash. It has made
harder something that was already hard to do.
Even in Tennessee, despite 30 years of experience and
nearly $500 million in Race to the Top money, the
implementation of a new teacher evaluation system has been
described in an article in my hometown newspaper as,
``contentious''.
Given all the great progress that States and local school
districts have made on standards, accountability, tests, and
teacher evaluations over the last 30 years, you'll get a lot
more progress with a lot less opposition if you leave those
decisions there. I think we should return to States' and local
school districts' decisions for measuring the progress of our
schools and evaluating and measuring the effectiveness of
teachers.
In conclusion, I know it's tempting to try to improve
teachers from Washington. I also hear from Governors and school
superintendents who say,
``If Washington doesn't make us do it, the teachers'
unions and the opponents from the right will make it
impossible to have good evaluation systems and better
teachers.''
I understand what they're talking about.
After I left office as Governor, the NEA watered down the
Tennessee Master Teacher Program. Nevertheless, the chairman's
staff discussion draft that we have circulated eliminates the
highly qualified teacher requirements and definition and allows
States to decide the licenses and credentials that they're
going to require that their teachers have.
Despite my own support for teacher evaluation, the draft
doesn't mandate teacher and principal evaluations. Rather, it
enables States to use the more than $2.5 billion under title II
to develop, implement, or improve these evaluation systems. In
Tennessee, that would mean about $39 million, in Washington
State about $35 million, potentially available for continuing
the work that's underway for evaluating teachers linking
performance and student achievement.
In addition, it would expand one of the provisions in No
Child Left Behind, the teacher incentive fund that Secretary
Spellings recommended and that Secretary Duncan said in
testimony before our committee was one of the best things that
Secretary Spellings has done. And, third, it would emphasize
the idea of a Secretary's report card, calling considerable
attention to the bully pulpit. A secretary or president has to
call attention to States that are succeeding or failing.
For example, I remember when President Reagan visited
Farragut High School in Knoxville in 1984 to call attention to
our Master Teacher Program. It caused the Democratic speaker of
the House of Representatives to say, ``This is the American
way'' and come up with an amendment to the proposal I had made
that was critical to its passage into law. President Reagan
didn't order every other State to do what Tennessee was doing.
But the president's bully pulpit made a real difference.
The columnist Thomas Friedman told a group of senators
recently that one of his two rules of life is that he's never
met anyone who has washed a rented car. In other words, people
take care of what they own. My experience is that finding a way
to fairly reward better teaching is the holy grail of K through
12 education. Washington will get the best long-term result by
creating an environment in which States and communities are
encouraged, not ordered, to evaluate teachers. Let's not
mandate it from Washington if we want them to own it and to
make it work.
Senator Murray.
Opening Statement of Senator Murray
Senator Murray. Well, thank you very much, Chairman
Alexander.
Thank you to all of our witnesses for being here today. I
am especially thrilled to have not just one, but two Washington
State witnesses on our panel today, Dan Goldhaber and Rachelle
Moore. Thank you both for coming all the way out here to
Washington, DC, or what we call the other Washington. We really
appreciate your traveling all the way here and all of our
witnesses for being here.
Today, we are going to address the critical issue of how to
best support teachers and school leaders. Each day, our
Nation's educators are helping students get ahead and making
sure struggling students don't fall through the cracks.
As I've said, one of the major problems with the Nation's
current education bill, No Child Left Behind, is to set
unrealistic goals for schools across the country, but then
failed to give them the resources they needed to succeed. Going
forward, we need to provide adequate and effective support for
teachers and school leaders, who are so important to a
student's achievement and growth.
A 2012 study showed that good teachers don't just help
students make progress during a particular school year. When a
child has a highly effective teacher, that student will be more
likely to attend college and earn higher wages later in life.
The same is true for school leaders. A study from Stanford
University found that in a single school year, a highly
effective principal can raise the achievement of a typical
student by between 2 and 7 months of learning.
We also need to recognize it is not an easy time to be a
teacher or a school leader. When they step into a classroom or
school, educators confront innumerable challenges, from helping
children who are struggling with poverty at home, to teaching
students who are just beginning to learn English, to meeting
higher standards across the board.
Unfortunately, I hear all the time from teachers--three-
quarters of whom are women, by the way--who feel like they
aren't getting the resources they need and who feel like they
don't have a voice in the decisions that affect their own
classrooms. If teachers and principals don't get the training,
resources, and support they need to advance their skills and
help their students succeed, then very little else we do will
matter.
On evaluations, I believe we should have ways to measure
how educators are doing to make sure students do have access to
high-quality teachers. I am wary of using them as the sole
factor in setting salaries or using testing as the sole
indicator in an evaluation. There is just so much more going
into teaching than test scores.
I know some of our witnesses will be talking about this
issue today, and I think this is a very important conversation
to have. We need to listen to the feedback we're getting from
teachers and school leaders and provide them with the resources
they need to carry out the important work they do.
I believe that we need to invest more in teachers and pay
them enough to continue to attract the best and brightest to
the profession. Educators need clear pathways to advance and
grow in their careers in ways that reflect their expertise.
We should also consider ways to recruit and retain strong
and diverse educators and make sure the most successful
teachers are working with the students who need them the most.
Throughout their career, teachers and school leaders should
have access to high-quality professional development so they
can continue to hone their skills in ways that are relevant to
their classrooms. That includes residency and mentorship
programs.
For example, Ms. Moore, I know that your school in Seattle
is helping new teachers prepare for the classroom by placing
them with more experienced educators for an entire school year.
That way, when new teachers begin their first day of the class,
they are ready to help their students grow and thrive and
learn.
I look forward to hearing more from all of you on this
panel on more ways to empower teachers and school leaders with
a voice at the table and with the support and resources they
need to tackle the many challenges of improving student
outcomes.
If we want to truly fix the badly broken No Child Left
Behind law, this is something we have to get right, and it
should not be a partisan issue. Democrats and Republicans
should be able to work together on something as important as
making sure our students have great teachers and can access
high-quality education, no matter where they live, how they
learn, or how much money their parents make.
So, I hope we can have conversations about a truly
bipartisan approach in the HELP Committee to fix this very
broken law. Thank you, and I look forward to hearing from our
panel of witnesses today.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Murray. Would you like to
introduce the two witnesses from Washington State?
Senator Murray. I'd be very pleased to do that, Mr.
Chairman. Thank you.
I want to introduce Dan Goldhaber. He is the director of
the Center for Education Data and Research and a Professor at
the University of Washington--which happens to be in my
hometown of Bothell, so it's great to have you here. His
research has focused on education reform at the K through 12
level, as well as measuring teacher effectiveness and the
effects of teacher qualifications on student outcomes, among
other topics. He is also a former school board member in
Alexandria, VA.
Dr. Goldhaber, thank you for taking the time to be here
today. We look forward to your testimony.
Mr. Chairman, I'm also very pleased to have on our panel
today Rachelle Moore. She is in her fifth year of teaching at
Madrona K-8 in Seattle, WA. I recently had the chance to visit
her school and saw first-hand how dedicated the teachers are to
engaging their students and helping them succeed. It was a
great day, so thank you.
As I mentioned a moment ago, Madrona has implemented this
mentorship program to make sure teachers are ready on day 1.
I'm looking forward to hearing more about that program and how
we can all better support teachers to be successful in the
classroom. Thank you very much, Ms. Moore, for being here today
as well.
The Chairman. Senator Mikulski, would you like to introduce
the teacher from Maryland, please?
Senator Mikulski. Yes.
The Chairman. Or the principal. Pardon me.
Statement of Senator Mikulski
Senator Mikulski. Mr. Chairman and committee members, it's
really a delight to introduce Dr. Christine Handy-Collins to
you. She is a well-recognized educator in really being able to
deliver results, closing the disparity gap between minority
achievement, and actually runs the school.
She was awarded Maryland's Principal of the Year in 2006.
She is currently the principal of Gaithersburg High School,
where she is the 2014 recipient of the Dr. Edward Shirley Award
for Excellence in Administration and Supervision.
But she doesn't worry about the awards she gets. She
worries about what her students get. She's been known for her
outstanding work for students across Maryland and the region,
especially in increasing minority participation and
performances.
Dr. Handy-Collins took the time out of her busy schedule to
attend here today, and I think we're going to learn a lot from
her because she's actually on the firing line trying to manage
a school with all of the challenges that go into it. I am
pleased to present her to you today and look forward to hearing
her testimony.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Mikulski.
We have three other witnesses. Dr. Terry Holliday is here.
He is the Kentucky Commissioner of Education. He'll discuss the
important work of supporting teachers and leaders in Kentucky.
Mr. Saul Hinojosa is the Superintendent of Schools for the
Somerset Independent School District in Somerset, TX. We
welcome you.
I guess those are the only two remaining witnesses. Why
don't we start now with 5-minute summaries of your comments.
Dr. Goldhaber, we'll start with you and go right down the
line, and then we'll go to Senators' questions.
STATEMENT OF DAN GOLDHABER, B.A., M.S., Ph.D., DIRECTOR,
NATIONAL CENTER FOR ANALYSIS OF LONGITUDINAL DATA IN EDUCATION
RESEARCH AT THE AMERICAN INSTITUTES FOR RESEARCH; DIRECTOR,
CENTER FOR EDUCATION DATA AND RESEARCH AT THE UNIVERSITY OF
WASHINGTON, BOTHELL, WA
Mr. Goldhaber. Chairman Alexander, Ranking Member Murray,
members of the committee, it's a pleasure to be here today, and
I'm delighted to be talking about fixing No Child Left Behind
and supporting teachers and school leaders. I guess I'd like to
begin by saying that I agree that there are, in fact, important
fixes that need to be made to No Child Left Behind.
One thing that I hope doesn't change is the annual testing
requirement. I say that because the annual testing requirement
has facilitated a tremendous amount of learning about educator
effectiveness, the variation of educator effectiveness in the
workforce, and, importantly, the implications of educator
effectiveness for student achievement.
Senator Murray, you mentioned the 2012 study. We now know
that the differences between teachers have profound
implications for students in terms of their later academic
outcomes and labor force outcomes. We also know that the old-
style teacher evaluations that tend to suggest that all
teachers are the same are both wrong and totally inadequate for
addressing the individual needs of educators. I think that we
wouldn't know those things were it not for the annual testing
requirement.
What does research have to say about educational
effectiveness and its distribution? I'll begin by talking a
little bit about teacher preparation. There's really two
different strands of research on teacher preparation. One
strand of research tends to focus on the path of entry into the
profession, whether or not you enter through a traditional
certification route that tends to occur at colleges and
educations in a traditional teacher preparation program.
The second alternative route is a route like Teach for
America. There are actually many different routes, but Teacher
for America is quite well known. There are a great many studies
that look at the differences between teachers based on their
route of entry into the profession, and, in general, they find
relatively small differences.
Now, that has led some to believe that teacher training
doesn't matter, and I think that that is the wrong conclusion.
It's at least the wrong conclusion in terms of the research
base, because you don't know if the differences that exist--or,
in this case, the lack of differences--have to do with the
individuals and the selection of individuals into programs or
the training that they actually receive while they are at
programs.
The second line of research around teacher preparation is
much newer, and it is in some ways quite encouraging. It
focuses on the experiences that people have, the features of
teacher training, and connects those experiences to teachers
once they go out into the field. There's some evidence, for
instance, that teachers that do their student teaching in a
more coherent environment and have their student teaching
experiences match well with their course work end up being more
effective once they go out into the field and assume classroom
responsibilities.
I'll mention a few things about policies designed to
improve educator effectiveness for educators that are in
service. Professional development is a ubiquitous strategy to
try and improve teaching. More recently, a lot of school
systems--as you, Senator Alexander, mentioned--are using
performance bonuses to try and increase teacher effectiveness.
Now, the evidence on each of those looks like,
independently, they don't work. There's some really high-
quality randomized control trials that suggest that if you just
do performance incentives tied to student gains on tests, it
doesn't increase the effectiveness of teachers. If you just do
professional development, it also doesn't increase the
effectiveness of teachers.
Much more encouraging are systems that are more holistic.
Last week, you heard from Tom Boasberg, and I would actually
point to the system in Denver as one that is more holistic. I
would point to the IMPACT system here in DC as one that's more
holistic. And there's good evidence in both of those settings
that it's making a difference for educator effectiveness and
for student achievement.
Last, I'll talk a little bit about teacher distribution.
What we know is that teachers--whether teacher quality is
measured based on the attributes of teachers, their
credentials, their experience level, or whether teacher quality
is based on output-based measures of effectiveness, the teacher
quality is inequitably distributed across students. So
disadvantaged students are less likely to get access to a
highly effective or a highly qualified teacher than advantaged
students.
Now, that can be ameliorated somewhat by financial
incentives. Teachers, like most of us, respond to financial
incentives, and if you pay recruitment or retention incentives,
that does seem to make a difference for getting teachers to go
to or stay in disadvantaged schools. The impact is not huge,
and it's clear that teachers also care a great deal about their
working conditions, things like the quality of school
leadership and the collegiality of their peers.
What does all this suggest about fixing No Child Left
Behind? Well, I'll echo my comment about the testing
requirement and what we have learned from it and what we learn
from it about the needs of individual educators, and I'll say,
in particular, that I think that it's really important that the
test that is used is comparable across localities within States
so that you're using a common yardstick to make judgments and
inform practices to support teachers.
And, last, I'll say that I think that there is an important
role that the Federal Government plays in encouraging
innovation. I'm hearkened to see that the Teacher Incentive
Fund is in the draft bill. I think we need innovation on all
kinds of areas that govern the teacher pipeline from teacher
preparation to induction programs, et cetera.
I will stop there and say I will look forward to your
questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Goldhaber follows:]
Prepared Statement of Dan Goldhaber, B.A., M.S., Ph.D.
Chairman Alexander, Ranking Member Murray, members of the
committee, thank you for inviting me to testify today. My name is Dan
Goldhaber and I am the director of the National Center for Analysis of
Longitudinal Data in Education Research (CALDER) at the American
Institutes for Research and the director of the Center for Education
Data and Research at the University of Washington Bothell. I have been
engaged in research on schools and student achievement for about 20
years, and much of my work focuses on the broad array of human capital
policies that influence the composition, distribution, and quality of
teachers in the workforce.
Let me begin by saying that while these hearings are focused on
fixing No Child Left Behind (NCLB), it is important to recognize that
not all parts need fixing. The annual testing requirement of NCLB made
possible a great deal of learning about the importance of the Nation's
educators. Empirical evidence now clearly buttresses intuition that
teachers differ significantly from one another in terms of their
impacts on student learning and shows that these differences have long-
term consequences for students' later academic (Goldhaber and Hansen,
2010; Jackson and Bruegmann, 2009; Jacob and Lefgren, 2008; Kane and
Staiger, 2008) and labor market (Chamberlain, 2013; Chetty, et al.,
2014; Jackson, 2013) success. There is also now good evidence that the
quality of our educators has real implications for our Nation's long-
term economic health (Hanushek, 2011).\1\ Research on school leaders is
far less extensive, but it too suggests that principals, not
surprisingly, significantly influence student achievement, in part by
affecting the quality of teachers in their schools (Branch, et al.,
2012; Coelli and Green, 2012; Grissom and Loeb, 2011; Grissom, et al.,
2013).
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\1\ Students' success clearly depends a good deal on their
experiences at home and in their neighborhoods, but teacher quality is
arguably the most important schooling factor influencing academic
outcomes (Goldhaber, et al., 1999; Nye, et al., 2002).
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We also know that disadvantaged students tend to have less access
to high quality teachers, whether the measure of quality is observable
teacher credentials or student-growth (Clotfelter, et al., 2011;
Goldhaber, et al. in press; Isenberg, et al., 2013; Sass, et al.,
2012). This is problematic from an equity perspective in that public
education is probably the single best social equalizer, offering
opportunities for individuals to improve their socioeconomic status
through hard work. A well-functioning education system can and should
provide disadvantaged students with ways to escape poverty, but an
unequal distribution of quality educators implies inequity in
opportunity.
A second overarching point is that information about individual
educators' needs is fundamental for informing teacher and school leader
supports and for learning what policies and practices improve educator
effectiveness.
I am worried that a change we might see with reauthorization--a
move away from a requirement of uniform statewide annual year-over-year
testing--would greatly shrink and possibly even eliminate our knowledge
of educator effectiveness, its distribution among students, and its
responsiveness to different policies and practices. In short, it would
greatly limit the information we need to make schools better.
The reasons are simple. First, the right measure of the impacts of
educators is one based on progress over time, not achievement at any
given point. To be blunt, measures that do not track progress simply
are not credible. And, second, we can compare the learning in one
locality to another only when the yardstick measuring learning is the
same in both. The most important educator policies are controlled by
States--regulation of teacher education programs, licensure, induction
and mentoring, tenure, layoffs, and often compensation. This suggests
that States need solid information about educator outcomes, including
impacts on student achievement, that are comparable across localities
within a State to make good decisions about the policies that influence
the entire teacher pipeline--from teacher preparation to the pay and
status of in-service teachers to determining which teachers probably
should not continue in the classroom.
What do we know about supporting teachers and leaders? While many
might naturally think about ``support'' in connection to incumbent
educators, I take a more expansive view: support also includes pre-
service education and policies and practices aimed at attracting and
retaining high-quality educators.\2\ In outlining the research here,
I'll cover three broad categories: (1) teacher preparation, (2)
professional development and incentives, and (3) recruitment,
retention, and the distribution of teachers. Then I will close with a
few thoughts about what this research suggests about fixing NCLB.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ Nearly all the research I describe below is about teachers
because there is relatively little quantitative work on the development
and mobility of school leaders.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
teacher preparation
Pre-service teacher training is thought to have a powerful
influence on teacher career paths and student achievement (Levine,
2006; NCATE, 2010). Yet, there is very little empirical evidence
linking pre-service training to workforce outcomes (National Research
Council, 2010). A primary reason is that there are few localities where
one can connect detailed information about the pre-service education
experiences of prospective educators to their in-service workforce
outcomes. Hence, much of the evidence on pre-service preparation
focuses on how a teacher enters the profession, i.e., via training in a
college or university setting or through an alternative certification
route (e.g., Constantine, et al., 2009; Glazerman, et al., 2006; Papay,
et al., 2012; Xu, et al., 2011), or whether there are differences in
effectiveness associated with the specific teacher education program
attended (Boyd, et al., 2009; Goldhaber, et al., 2013; Goldhaber and
Cowan, 2014; Mihaly, et al., 2013; Koedel, et al., forthcoming).
The literature referenced here on pathways into the profession
suggests that shorter programs with varying selection criteria and a
practical teaching curriculum can produce graduates that are, on
average, as effective as graduates from traditional college and
university teacher-education programs. However, we do not know the
extent to which this finding reflects differences in potential
teachers' backgrounds (i.e., who is selected into a program or pathway)
versus differences in potential educators' experiences in programs.\3\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ See Goldhaber (2013) for a more detailed review and discussion
of selection versus training effects.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Only a few studies connect the features of teacher training to the
outcomes of teachers in the field. That said, evidence is mounting that
some types of pre-service teaching experiences and pedagogical
coursework are associated with better teacher outcomes. Some research
shows, for instance, that teachers tend to be more effective when their
student teaching experiences are well-aligned with their methods
coursework (Boyd, et al., 2009). There is also evidence that teacher
trainees who student-teach in higher functioning schools (as measured
by low attrition) turn out to be more effective teachers when
responsible for their own classrooms (Ronfeldt, 2012). Novice teachers
with better preparation in student teaching and methods coursework are
also more likely to remain in the profession (Ronfeldt, et al., 2014).
To my knowledge, only one study connects principals' training to
student outcomes (Clark, et al., 2009), and it doesn't substantiate a
relationship between the two.\4\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ The study does, however, find a positive relationship between
principals' years of experience and having previously served as an
assistant principal, and student achievement.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Taken together, studies like these begin to point toward ways to
improve teacher preparation. With such a thin evidentiary base, we are
just beginning to understand what makes teacher preparation effective--
both the criteria determining selection into preparation programs and
the education that teacher candidates receive. With roughly 200,000
newly minted teachers entering the profession each year, we need to
know more.
professional development and incentives
Nearly all school districts use professional development (PD) to
try to improve teaching. Not surprisingly, therefore, a large number of
studies relate both the content and mode of delivery of PD to teacher
instructional practices and effectiveness. Unfortunately, most research
on PD is not terribly rigorous, and few studies suggest that it
systematically improves teaching.\5\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\ See, for instance, Yoon, et al. (2007) for a comprehensive
review. For rigorous studies of PD using longitudinal observational
data, see, for instance, Harris and Sass (2011) and Jacob and Lefgren
(2004). The most encouraging research on PD suggests that focusing on
how students learn a content area tends to be more effective than PD
emphasizing pedagogy/teaching behaviors or curriculum (Cohen and Hill,
2000; Kennedy, 1998; Rice, 2009).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Several large-scale, well-designed, federally funded experimental
studies do tend to confirm that PD has little or mixed impacts on
student achievement. For instance, a randomized control trial focusing
on a 1-year content-focused PD program showed positive impacts on
teachers' knowledge of scientifically based reading instruction and
instructional practices promoted by the PD program, but no discernable
effects on student test scores (Garet, et al., 2008). Another recent
randomized control trial (Glazerman, et al., 2010) of the effects of
mentoring and induction (a form of profession development for novice
teachers) did find some evidence that students of teachers who received
2 years of comprehensive induction had higher achievement levels by the
third year.
One argument for professional development's relatively poor showing
is that it is rarely targeted to the needs of individual educators. As
for why, old-style ``drive by'' evaluations generally yielded little
useable information about what individual teachers and leaders need.
This was perhaps best captured in The Widget Effect (Weisburg, et al.,
2009), a study of 12 school districts (in four States) that showed that
while the frequency and methods of teacher evaluation varied, the
results of evaluations rarely did--nearly all teachers got a top
performance rating.\6\ If all are judged to be the same, targeting
professional development to their diverse needs is difficult indeed.\7\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\6\ Other evidence includes Bridges and Gumport (1984); Tucker
(1997).
\7\ One might also argue that PD would be more likely to pay off
under institutional structures that reward performance; teachers
generally have little besides goodwill at stake when investing their
time in professional development since they are simply satisfying PD
seat time requirements (Rice, 2009).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Another way that policymakers have tried to improve educator
effectiveness is by providing explicit incentives for teacher
performance. Unfortunately, much of the highest quality randomized
control trial evidence on this avenue of reform also suggests that it
has limited impacts on student achievement (Yuan, et al., 2013). One
experiment (Marsh, et al., 2011) showed that $3,000 bonuses for every
teacher in a given school meeting performance standards had no impact
on student achievement relative to control-group schools ineligible for
the bonus. Another randomized control trial study (Springer, et al.,
2010) focused on teacher-level incentives of up to $15,000 per teacher
also found no consistently significant difference between the outcomes
of students with teachers in the treatment versus the control group.\8\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\8\ One argument for the mixed evidence of pay for performance is
that many performance plans are not well designed (Imberman and
Lovenheim, 2014). The most encouraging experimental evidence on pay for
performance in U.S. schools comes from a recent study by Fryer, et al.
(2012) with a very different study design from those described above.
Teachers in a treatment group received a bonus up-front and were told
that they would lose it if their students did not make significant test
score gains, testing whether they might respond more to loss aversion
than the potential for financial gain. In this case, student
achievement in the performance-incented group was higher than in the
control group. It is unlikely that this sort of incentive could be
widely implemented given political and cultural constraints in public
schools, but the finding does show the potential for policies to affect
the effectiveness of the current teacher workforce.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The most encouraging evidence about changing the effectiveness of
in-service teachers comes from programs that take a more holistic
approach, combining comprehensive evaluation with feedback,
professional development and performance incentives.\9\ You heard last
week from Tom Boasberg, the Superintendent of Denver Public Schools
(DPS), about the progress the district has made over the last decade
using such an approach.\10\ Findings from a study (Dee and Wyckoff,
2013) of the IMPACT system here in the District of Columbia show that
teachers deemed highly effective (based on a multifaceted performance
evaluation system) and eligible to receive large base pay increases if
the high rating continue, increase their performance in the next
year.\11\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\9\ Indeed there is evidence (Taylor and Tyler, 2012) that targeted
feedback about teacher performance itself helps teachers become more
effective.
\10\ My research with a colleague (Goldhaber and Walch, 2012)
confirms these findings in Denver.
\11\ The study also finds that teachers at risk for termination for
poor performance tend to either improve or voluntarily leave the
district.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
recruitment, retention, and the distribution of teachers
As noted above, teacher quality is inequitably distributed across
students. This finding is related to both the recruitment and retention
patterns of teachers--not surprising since research shows that schools
serving disadvantaged students face greater challenges hiring new
teachers (Boyd, et al., 2013; Engel, et al., forthcoming) and that
teachers are more likely to leave schools serving disadvantaged
students for other schools or other professions (Borman and Dowling,
2008; Goldhaber, et al., 2011; Hanushek, et al., 2004; Scafidi, et al.,
2007).
There is evidence that teachers making employment choices respond,
as would be expected.\12\ Studies of recruitment incentives, for
instance, find that offering bonuses increases the likelihood that
teachers will take a position in schools offering the incentive.
Glazerman, et al. (2013) study an experiment in which high-performing
teachers are offered $20,000 bonuses to transfer to a low-achieving
school for at least 2 years and find large recruitment effects. Steele,
et al. (2010) study a policy that provides prospective teachers with a
$20,000 scholarship for teaching in a low-performing school for 4 years
and get much the same result. Of course, the design of these financial
incentives is also important: these policies do not provide ongoing
inducements to stay in high-needs schools and neither study found
evidence that targeted teachers stayed at high-needs schools longer.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\12\ For a more comprehensive review, see Hanushek and Rivkin
(1997).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Much of the empirical evidence does show that higher permanent
salaries reduce teacher attrition. Much of this evidence comes from
investigating differences in salaries between districts in the same
geographical area (e.g., Hanushek, et al. 2004; Imazeki, 2005;
Lankford, et al., 2002). Of particular note is research on retention
incentives for schools serving high-poverty and low-achieving schools.
Studying a program that awarded $1,800 bonuses to math, science, and
special education teachers in high-poverty schools, Clotfeler, et al.
(2008) find that the bonus policy reduced the turnover of targeted
teachers by about 17 percent. Springer, et al. (2014) assess a program
providing highly rated teachers in low-achieving schools $5,000 bonuses
and find that the bonus improved teacher retention by 10-20 percent.
While financial incentives appear to be a viable tool for affecting
the distribution of teachers, teachers clearly also care about their
working conditions. Such factors as the quality of school leadership
and workplace collegiality also affect teachers' decisions and some
scholars (Boyd, et al., 2011; Johnson, et al., 2012; Ladd, 2009)
suggest that such factors matter far more than salary in determining
whether teachers choose to teach in a particular school. This finding
poses a challenge since there is not a direct policy control over such
working conditions.\13\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\13\ It is of course possible that policies could have impacts on
school leadership or culture, but this would be more circuitous. For
instance, one might require principals receive training to improve
their leadership skills, but for it to have an impact on teachers, the
training would have to change the perceptions that teachers have of a
principal's leadership skills.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
fixing no child left behind
Given current research, what is the connection between supporting a
high quality teacher and school leader workforce and fixing No Child
Left Behind? First consider that the NCLB testing requirement ushered
in a new era: we now pay far more policy and research attention to the
effects of schools and educators on student learning--an outcome
focus--rather than making judgments about the quality of education
students receive, or the equity of educational resources, based on
schooling inputs (class size, teacher credentials, etc.). The shift has
been significant and, to my mind, appropriate. Parents should care more
about how much their students are learning in schools than, for
instance, about teachers' specific backgrounds and educational
credentials (though the two may certainly be related).
This new focus on educational outputs means that any changes to
NCLB should preserve our ability to garner accurate information about
the outputs of teachers and school leaders. Here I echo my initial
point that this information is key to determining what kind of support
individual teachers and leaders need so they can improve, which leaders
and teachers we want to stay in public schools, and what policies and
practices lead to improvements in educator effectiveness.
To be sure, States left to their own devices might decide to
continue with a testing system that allows for credible information
across localities in educator effectiveness. Recall here that in the
decade or so before NCLB passed, only a handful of States had year over
year testing of all students. My fear is that, given the difficult
politics associated with testing, many States would return to systems
that would not permit measures of student growth that are comparable
across school systems in a State.
I'll end by touching on a final issue about the Federal role in
influencing the effectiveness of the Nation's educators. While NCLB has
been in place for well over a decade, the national focus on
effectiveness of individual educators, and the institutions that
prepare them, is far more recent. The country is in the midst of a
large experiment in reforming the way educators are evaluated. Just
since 2009, 49 States and the District of Columbia have changed their
evaluation systems, and in many cases these changes are being fully
implemented only now (Center on Great Teachers and Leaders, 2014). Many
of these changes entail using information on individual educators to
inform important policies (e.g., regarding teacher preparation) and
personnel decisions (compensation, professional development, tenure,
licensing, etc.), and, as noted above, new evidence shows that this can
make a difference for educator effectiveness. We are now just on the
cusp of learning about how these changes affect the quality of the
educator workforce and sound policy must rest on such knowledge.
Throughout I have emphasized a focus on information on the
effectiveness of individual educators. This is appropriate given what
we have learned over the last decade about the important variation in
effectiveness between teachers and school leaders, and because most
States now have policies designed to act on what we learn about
educator effectiveness. However, I very much doubt that we would have
seen much State experimentation with pre-service and in-service
policies were it not for the role of the Federal Government in
incenting such change. I think we can do better when it comes to
supporting teachers and school leaders, and learn more about the
policies and practices that result in a more effective educator
workforce. Significant improvements will require more innovation, and
the Federal Government can play an important role in nudging, not
mandating, States and localities to innovate (for instance in the realm
of teacher preparation) through competitive grant programs, like the
Teacher Incentive Fund, that encourage experimentation with the systems
and institutions that govern the teacher pipeline. The public education
enterprise has to get smarter about how to deliver education, and
figuring out how to improve educator effectiveness is arguably the best
way to improve the future of the Nation's children.
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The Chairman. Thank you, sir.
Dr. Holliday.
STATEMENT OF TERRY HOLLIDAY, B.E., M.Ed., Ed.S., Ph.D.,
COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATION, COMMONWEALTH OF KENTUCKY, FRANKFORT,
KY
Mr. Holliday. Chairman Alexander, Senator Murray, and
members of the committee, thank you for inviting me to testify
about the importance of supporting teachers and school leaders
through reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary
Education Act.
First, I'll express my thanks to the Chairman and Ranking
Member and committee members for their work on reauthorization.
Please continue this important work. We must have a stable
Federal law to support our States and schools, and I can assure
you my fellow chiefs really support the work that you're
currently engaged in.
As a former teacher, principal, local superintendent, State
superintendent, and past president of the Council of Chief
State School Officers, I'm more certain today than ever before
that the success of public education is directly related to the
quality of instruction in every classroom and leaders in every
school building. With over 43 years of this work, I offer three
points for your consideration as you look to reauthorize ESEA.
Point 1: To adequately address teacher and leader
development in our public schools, we must look at a systemic
approach. We cannot try fixing one part of the system without
looking at and addressing the entire system. This means we must
address teacher and leader preparation programs, recruitment of
teachers and leaders into the profession, professional
development, evaluation, retention, and working conditions.
Here are just a few examples of how States are taking the
lead and may not need the Federal guidelines to be too strict.
The Council of Chief State School Officers board has recently
developed priorities for ESEA reauthorization that include the
following measures of a quality system. It must have multiple
measures of teacher and leader performance, not relying solely
on just tests. We need to make meaningful differentiation of
performance of teachers and leaders, and we need to provide
actionable information to inform professional development.
I was honored to be co-chair of the task force that
developed the standards for the new Commission on Accreditation
of Teacher Preparation Programs. I can assure you that these
national accreditation standards are very rigorous and will
require significant improvements in teacher and leader
preparation programs.
Kentucky and other States are currently requiring programs
in our States to meet these new national accreditation
standards. Kentucky worked with Learning Forward and five other
States to establish best practice guidelines for professional
development.
These guidelines focus on customizing professional
development that moves toward professional learning to meet the
needs of teachers and students. Also, these guidelines focus on
measuring the impact of professional learning on student
outcomes.
Kentucky, like many other States, has been working to
improve its low performing schools and close achievement gaps.
We have found a model that seems to work well in these schools.
The model is an intensive diagnostic review of the
instructional program in the school to identify areas for
improvement. We then provide onsite math, literacy, and
principal coaches to provide just-in-time support to improve
instruction. We have seen schools move from the bottom 5
percent in Kentucky to the top 10 percent with this model.
Point 2: This systemic work must be done with teachers and
not to teachers. In Kentucky, we have developed strong
relationships with teachers' unions, leadership associations,
and other key stakeholders.
Our teacher and leader effectiveness system took years to
develop, and we are continuing to improve the system. As a
former teacher, I am very concerned that teachers across this
Nation feel that they are under attack due to the current
education reform efforts around teacher evaluation.
Point 3: In order to create a system of support for
teachers and leaders, we, as State leaders in education, do not
need review or approval from the U.S. Department of Education.
In Kentucky, we have built a successful system because it was
done by Kentuckians. It was our teachers, our school leaders,
and our community that decided what worked best for us. I want
the same for my fellow State chiefs.
Thank you for this opportunity to speak to you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Holliday follows:]
Prepared Statement of Terry Holliday, B.E., M.Ed., Ed.S., Ph.D.
Chairman Alexander, Senator Murray, and members of the committee,
thank you for inviting me to testify about the importance of Supporting
Teachers and School Leaders through the reauthorization of the
Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA).
First, I express my thanks to the Chairman, Ranking Member and
committee members for their work on reauthorization. Please continue
this important work. We must have a stable Federal law to support our
States and our schools. It is critical for us to have that certainty to
move forward and make continued progress in our schools.
As a former teacher, principal, local superintendent, State
superintendent and past president of the Council of Chief State School
Officers, I am more certain today than ever before that the success of
public education is directly related to the quality of teachers in
every classroom and leaders in every school building. Over the last 43
years of doing this work, I offer three fundamental points for your
consideration as you look to reauthorize ESEA.
Point 1: To adequately address teacher and leader development in
our public schools, we must look at a systemic approach. We cannot look
at trying to ``fix'' one part of the system without looking at
addressing the entire system. This means we must address teacher and
leader preparation programs, recruitment of teachers and leaders into
the profession, professional development, evaluation, retention and
working conditions. Here are just a few examples of how States are
taking leadership in this systemic work:
The Council of Chief State School Officers' board has
recently developed priorities for ESEA reauthorization that include the
following measures of a quality system for supporting teachers and
school leaders:
Multiple measures of teacher and leader performance;
Meaningful differentiation of performance; and
Actionable information to inform professional
development and support.
The Council of Chief State School Officers recently
published a report titled ``Our Responsibility: Our Promise,'' which
provided key recommendations to States on how to improve teacher and
leader preparation programs. Kentucky and several other States are now
working to implement those recommendations that focus on program
approval, licensure, and data systems.
As co-chair of the task force that developed the standards
for the Commission on Accreditation of Educator Preparation Programs
(CAEP), I can assure you that these national accreditation standards
are very rigorous and will require significant improvements in teacher
and leader preparation. Kentucky and other States are requiring
preparation programs to gain national accreditation through CAEP.
Several States, including Kentucky, require 1- to 2-year
internships prior to teaching candidates receiving their teaching
license.
Kentucky worked with Learning Forward and five other
States to establish best practice guidelines for professional
development. These guidelines focus on customizing professional
development that moves toward professional learning to meet the needs
of teachers. Also, these guidelines focus on measuring the impact of
professional learning on student outcomes.
Kentucky provides 24/7 online access to all teachers and
leaders in Kentucky to thousands of hours of high-quality professional
development. This access ensures teachers and leaders in our rural and
poverty communities have equal access and opportunity to high-quality
professional development.
Kentucky has implemented a teacher and leader evaluation
system that focuses on continuous professional growth and improving
student learning. This evaluation system is housed electronically so
the school, district and State can analyze and identify areas for
improvement which in turn inform preparation programs on areas of
improvement.
Kentucky borrowed heavily from the great work in North
Carolina with regard to National Board Certification and the Working
Conditions Survey. We have learned that teacher retention is strongly
correlated with the strength of leadership in the school building.
Kentucky, like many other States, has been working to
improve its low-performing schools and close achievement gaps. We have
found a model that seems to work well in these schools. The model is an
intensive diagnostic review of the instructional program in the school
to identify areas for improvement. We then provide onsite math,
literacy and principal coaches to provide just-in-time support and
coaching to improve instruction. We have seen Kentucky schools move
from the bottom 5 percent to the top 10 percent in the State using this
model.
Kentucky has worked with the Harvard Strategic Data
Project to analyze current distribution of teachers across schools.
Through this work, we have identified improvement areas and measures
that we will use to hold schools and districts accountable for
equitable distribution of effective teachers.
Finally, Kentucky is working to develop specific career
pathways to provide multiple pathways for teachers to become leaders.
Many teachers want to gain leadership roles without giving up the
ability to teach. Kentucky is working to model what the most successful
systems in the world provide to teachers for career pathways.
Point 2: This systemic work must be done WITH teachers and leaders
and not done TO teachers and leaders. In Kentucky, we have developed
strong relationships with teachers' unions, leadership associations,
and other key stakeholders. Our teacher and leader effectiveness
systems took years to develop and we are continuing to improve the
systems. As a former teacher, I am concerned that teachers across the
country feel that they are under attack due to the current education
reform efforts around teacher evaluation.
Point 3: In order to create a system of support for teachers and
school leaders, we as State leaders in education, do not need review or
approval from the U.S. Department of Education. In Kentucky, we have
built a successful system because it was done by Kentuckians. It was
our teachers, our school leaders and our community that decided what
worked best for us. I want the same for my fellow State Chiefs.
If the Federal Government does play a role in evaluations, it
should be to ensure these systems are strong and effective. Congress
should reauthorize ESEA to give States the ability to use ESEA funds,
such as title IIA, more effectively to develop and implement State
systems.
Through a State-led approach, we can accomplish several things:
First, we will remain committed to ensuring that all
students are taught by--and all schools are led by--excellent
educators. We can do this in a way that makes the most sense for each
State. Every State has a different timeline and method for
implementation. It cannot be dictated by a Federal timeline, but must
be decided by stakeholders working together within a State.
Second, we will remain committed to using information
about teacher performance to determine how to support educators and
ensure that disadvantaged students receive high-quality instruction. If
this data remains in the control of States, and efforts to act on the
data is led by States, we can better use this information to support
teachers and principals. If we find it is not working well, we can
quickly make mid-course corrections to better assist those in the
field. If this is a part of Federal law, I fear we will be working to
meet reporting deadlines, rather than working to support teachers.
Third, we will maintain State control in developing
evaluation and support systems and in determining how it coordinates
across districts. These systems will be designed by educators in each
State, for educators in each State. We will determine the best systems
to meet the needs of our educators and roll them out on a timeline that
meets the needs of our teachers, principals and students.
I appreciate the opportunity to speak with the committee today and
look forward to your questions.
The Chairman. Thank you, Dr. Holliday.
Mr. Hinojosa.
STATEMENT OF SAUL HINOJOSA, SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, SOMERSET
INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT, SOMERSET, TX
Mr. Hinojosa. Chairman Alexander, Ranking Member Murray,
and members of the committee, thank you for inviting me to
testify today. I am the superintendent of the Somerset
Independent School District in Bexar and Atascosa County.
Briefly, my district, established in 1922, is located in
Somerset, TX, which is 15 miles southwest of downtown San
Antonio. There are 3,956 students enrolled in our seven
campuses from age 3, comprising of Head Start students, through
12th grade.
When you look at our demographics, 86 percent of our
students are Hispanic, 78 percent are economically
disadvantaged, and 59 percent are considered at-risk. Also, 53
percent of our teachers have 5 years of experience or less, and
most travel across several districts through San Antonio, which
has traditionally presented a significant challenge to retain
teachers.
I am here today to tell you about my experience using a
Teacher Incentive Fund grant to support substantial
improvements in teaching and learning in the district. While I
clearly saw the need for improvements in classroom teaching and
better support for teachers and school leaders in the district,
the TIF grant provided me with the resources, momentum, and
partnerships to build support for the kind of leap forward that
was needed.
My district has embedded these changes in our budget and
processes and will work to sustain these improvements after the
grant ends. In my view, we must recognize and reward teachers
who accelerate student learning, take on the most challenging
assignments, and serve in leadership roles, rather than basing
teacher pay solely on years of experience and degrees earned.
Beginning in 2010, we partnered with the National Institute
for Excellence in Teaching, which oversees a national teacher
effectiveness reform called TAP, The System for Teacher and
Student Advancement. We applied for a Federal TIF grant with
the goal of putting our teachers and principals at the heart of
efforts to drive higher levels of instruction in every
classroom.
Using TIF funds, we piloted TAP at our middle school, which
had been rated academically unacceptable under the
accountability system then in use in Texas. We later expanded
TAP to our high school--it was also failing--and last year
rolled it out district-wide.
All six of our campuses met State standards this time for
the first time since 2011, including three that were rated as
``improvement required'' in 2013. In addition to district-wide
gains, we made progress closing achievement gaps with our
special education and English language learner students.
We had to try something new, and we wanted to find an
approach that our teachers and principals could strongly
embrace. Our system includes performance-based compensation,
but also focuses on best practices utilizing student data to
align staff development with student and teacher needs.
New evaluation instruments provided more accurate, timely,
and useful information on teacher instruction. Teacher leaders
are part of the team that conducts evaluations and provides
support for improvement. At Somerset ISD, we had over 70
percent of our staff vote yes to this new approach.
When these measures are implemented with fidelity, you can
see improvement. But the real credit lies with the teachers and
principals who are in the trenches doing the work.
The power of this teacher-centered approach is described by
one of our veteran teachers, Joshua Harrison, who credits the
feedback for his improved math teaching at Somerset's Junior
High. Last year, 158 of 160 eighth graders passed the State
algebra test, which included special needs and English language
learners. ``One of the reasons I stay here is because of TAP,''
he says. ``With the four observations, we can find out how to
improve within the year. It's helped us push our thinking.''
We change our approach based on data and our own student
needs. We now have in place a powerful structure for ensuring
consistent delivery of strong instruction in every classroom.
I encourage you to authorize the Teacher Incentive Fund to
allow other districts and States to benefit as we did.
Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Hinojosa follows:]
Prepared Statement of Saul Hinojosa
Chairman Alexander, Ranking Member Murray, members of the
committee, thank you for inviting me to testify today. My name is Saul
Hinojosa, and I am superintendent of the Somerset Independent School
District in Bexar and Atascosa County, TX.
Briefly, my district--established in 1922--is located in Somerset,
TX which is 15 miles southwest of downtown San Antonio, TX. There are
3,956 students enrolled in our 7 campuses from age 3 comprising of Head
Start students through 12th grade. When you look at our demographics 86
percent of our students are Hispanic, 78 percent are economically
disadvantaged and 59 percent are considered at-risk. Fifty-three
percent of our teachers have experience of 5 years or less and most
travel across several districts through San Antonio which has
traditionally presented a significant challenge to retain teachers.
I am here today to tell you about my experience using a Teacher
Incentive Fund TIF grant to support substantial improvements in
teaching and learning in my district. While I clearly saw the need for
improvements in classroom teaching and better support for teachers and
school leaders in my district, the TIF grant provided me with the
resources, momentum and partnerships to build support for the kind of
leap forward that was needed. My district has embedded these changes in
our budget and processes and will work to sustain these improvements
after the grant ends.
As you know, research shows that teacher quality is the most
important school-related factor in determining student achievement
growth. We simply cannot close the achievement gap without aggressively
improving both the overall effectiveness of teachers who work in
schools, and the supports to those teachers, who serve large numbers of
underprivileged children.
In my view, we must recognize and reward teachers who accelerate
student learning, take on the most challenging assignments, and serve
in leadership roles, rather than basing teacher pay solely on years of
experience and degrees earned.
Beginning in 2010, we partnered with the National Institute for
Excellence in Teaching (NIET) which oversees a national teacher
effectiveness reform called TAP: The System for Teacher and Student
Advancement. We applied for a Federal TIF grant with the goal of
putting our teachers and principals at the heart of efforts to drive
higher levels of instruction in every classroom, even those of our most
effective teachers.
Using TIF funds, we piloted TAP at our middle school, which had
been rated ``academically unacceptable'' under the accountability
system then in use in Texas. We later extended TAP to our high school--
it was also failing--and last year rolled it out district-wide.
All six of our campuses met State standards this year for the first
time since 2011, including three that were rated as ``improvement
required'' in 2013. That came even as the Texas Education Agency set
the accountability bar for schools higher. Five of Somerset's campuses
had failed at least once in the previous 3 years.
Somerset had been using the Texas Professional Development
Appraisal System, or PDAS, to evaluate our staff. PDAS is a yearly 45
minute observation that is scheduled with the teacher. This model was
implemented in Texas in 1997 and many educators dismiss it as weak and
outdated. It certainly wasn't working for us.
We had to try something new, and we wanted to find an approach that
our teachers and principals could strongly embrace. The TAP System, and
the TIF grant, requires support and buy in from the faculty before
implementation. When these new measures are implemented with fidelity,
you can see improvement. But the real credit lies with the teachers and
principals, who are in the trenches doing the work.
In the past, teachers in my district did not want to teach the
classes with the highest numbers of struggling students. The way TAP is
structured; it leads your best teachers to want to work with the
students that are struggling the most which, traditionally have been
our special education and English Language Learner students. They are
able to show significant growth and improvement, and they are supported
by a team of colleagues. The chart below exhibits Somerset ISD
improvements in these subgroups:
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
As you know, TIF was established by Congress in 2006 to encourage
States and districts to develop comprehensive programs to support
effective classroom teaching and increased student academic achievement
growth in high-need schools.
What TAP did for us and what it does for others is create:
New teacher leadership roles and a school leadership team;
School-based professional development;
Accurate evaluation of performance; and
An opportunity for teachers to earn additional
compensation.
Here's how it works and why it's so successful.
The TAP system increases the skills of all teachers by using
teacher leaders in that school to raise instructional excellence across
the faculty. Teacher leaders in each school form a leadership team with
administrators that are responsible for setting school goals, providing
school-based, job-embedded professional development, and conducting
multiple performance evaluations of each teacher. Educators have the
opportunity to earn additional compensation based on their own
classroom performance, the performance of their students, the
performance of the campus, and for taking on new leadership roles and
responsibilities.
This model creates a more cohesive and coherent approach to
professional evaluation and development based on the needs of our
students, and takes into account the specific instructional needs of
their teachers. Perhaps the most important aspect of this approach is
the way it enables teachers themselves to lead the effort to redefine
instructional excellence at a higher level and to embed these higher
standards in school culture, conversations and practices.
Within each school's leadership team, we have one master teacher
for every 15-20 classroom teachers, and one mentor for every six to
eight classroom teachers. Teachers must apply for these positions, and
demonstrate effective instruction themselves, as well as an ability to
coach and support other adults. They have ongoing training and
accountability to ensure that they are providing high quality support
for their peers. Most critical of all, we use time within the school
day for professional learning ``clusters'' and ongoing coaching in
classrooms, so that professional growth is a part of everyone's job.
Standards for teaching are spelled out and used in both evaluation and
professional support, creating a common language around excellent
instruction.
In my district, principals are supported in developing distributed
leadership teams that involve teacher leaders in analyzing data,
setting school goals, planning how to meet those goals, supporting
teachers in classrooms to make measurable progress, evaluating
instruction and measuring whether goals have been met by meeting weekly
with district instructional teams.
This approach is working, not just in my district, but in schools
across 10 States that have received support through TIF that are
demonstrating significant, sustained increases in teacher skill and
student achievement growth compared to comparable schools. We looked
carefully at TAP and at schools and districts in other States using
this approach as we considered using it.
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
The power of this teacher-centered approach is described by one of
our veteran teachers, Joshua Harrison, who credits TAP feedback for
improving his math teaching at Somerset's junior high campus. Last
school year, 158 of his 160 eighth-graders passed the State algebra
test, including special-needs students and English-language learners.
``One of the reasons I stay here is because of TAP,'' he said.
``With the four observations, we can find out how to improve within the
year. It's helped push our thinking.''
There are many other teachers such as Joshua Harrison who have
pushed their thinking and accepted the TAP model. As a result, we
improved our teacher retention rate at the junior high and high school.
Surveys have illuminated that teachers appreciate the level of support
they receive from district and campus staff to help them improve their
craft. This support comes in the form of weekly cluster meetings, walk-
throughs, and collaboration with colleagues to discuss research-based
methodologies on how to improve their performance based on student
data.
In a national survey of across a broad range of schools using this
approach, teachers strongly support the TAP System. I have found
similar support among my faculty.
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Principals report that this approach results in more effective
teaching in their schools. Our results are similar to the national
results.
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
There is a real difference in results between TAP evaluations and
current practice. To get such different results, you cannot just tinker
around the edges. To achieve these results, you have to completely
reset expectations. No longer can 90 percent of teachers in a school be
far above average. Resetting expectations is a critically important
step and requires buy in and the active engagement of teachers.
These reforms must be done with teachers and not to teachers. In
TAP we have found that the system must have two goals--to measure
performance and to support improvement. These two goals represent two
distinct levers for change--one is to produce sound data on teacher
effectiveness for performance decisions, and the other is to provide
individualized and intensive support to teachers to improve their
instruction. Increases in teacher effectiveness then derive not only
from attracting and retaining talented teachers but also from growing
the talent of every teacher, every year.
TAP's instructional rubric is designed to be used to measure
teacher practice and to guide improvements in that practice. The
specificity of the rubric indicators provides teachers with a clear
understanding of what is expected, and creates a conversation about
good practice. Evaluators undergo 4 days of training as a team, with
principals, master and mentor teachers training together, to become
certified evaluators. This calibration process is essential in laying
the foundation for accurate, consistent and reliable evaluations.
TAP is not a one-size-fits-all, in fact, TAP helps us to create the
scaffolding or structure into which we layer our own unique needs and
priorities. We change our approach based on data and our own student
needs. We now have in place a powerful structure for ensuring
consistent delivery of strong instruction in every classroom. The
approach we are using as a result of the TIF grant has provided an on-
the-ground case study for other districts and the State as they move to
support more effective instruction and revise teacher evaluation and
support systems. I encourage you to authorize the Teacher Incentive
Fund and allow other districts and States to benefit as we did.
The Chairman. Thank you, sir.
Ms. Moore.
STATEMENT OF RACHELLE MOORE, 1ST GRADE TEACHER, MADRONA K-8
SCHOOL, SEATTLE, WA
Ms. Moore. Thank you, Chairman Alexander, Senator Murray,
and distinguished committee members, for the opportunity to
speak today. My name is Rachelle Moore, and I am a National
Board Certified Teacher and a proud member of the National
Education Association.
I have been teaching first grade at Madrona K-8 in Seattle
for the past 5 years. At Madrona, the majority of my students
are minorities, lack early educational experiences, and live in
poverty.
I grew up wanting to be a teacher like my dad, who has been
teaching high school arts for the past 35 years. I decided to
follow my childhood dreams and become a teacher, hoping to
close the achievement gaps and empower the youth of the
future--no easy feat, for sure.
Every one of us supports the goal of student success and
achievement. I would argue that those of us working directly in
the field of education or in government shaping education
policy have an even greater investment. It begins with asking:
What is success? What is achievement? We also need to consider
the unique challenges and circumstances of each student's life.
There is no way to measure the intangibles in a student's
life. There is no average student. Each student is shaped by
individual experiences, and those experiences must be taken
into consideration when shaping policies geared toward
improving student success.
Research shows that teachers are the most important school-
based influence on student learning. Accordingly, every student
deserves to be taught by an excellent teacher. To ensure that
this is the case, we must do a better job of preparing and
retaining high-quality educators. The best way to do that is to
invest in the continuum that includes teacher induction,
professional growth, and teacher leadership.
I am pleased to say that unions, in conjunction with their
school districts across the country, are working to enhance
student learning with teacher induction programs based on the
successful medical model. These programs pair novice teachers,
or residents, with experienced teachers, mentors, for an entire
year. Such programs not only strengthen the teacher pipeline,
but they also provide rich professional development for all
teachers.
For the past 2 years, I have been a mentor with the Seattle
Teacher Residency, which is unique in that it is driven by
teacher voices. The residency program was created by the
Seattle Education Association, the University of Washington,
the Alliance for Education, and the Seattle Public Schools.
This partnership identifies the unique needs of our district
and makes sure that they are taking steps to support incoming
teachers so that they can best serve our diverse population of
students.
A major goal of the residency is to keep participating
residents in our school district in high-need schools for at
least 5 years, thus providing continuity for our students and
schools. Novice teachers are often placed in high-need schools
in communities that lack key resources and, as a result, where
the students face many challenges.
Back in 2010, I was one of five new hires in my school. I
have seen more than a dozen K-8 teachers hired since then. In 5
years, we have retained just three of the teachers that I
started with in 2010. Imagine how difficult it is to gain
traction as a school and provide consistency for your students
when each year you have to start fresh with a new batch of
teachers. Imagine that half of those teachers have no prior
teaching experience.
Those are the realities in high-needs schools like mine and
why it is so important to create and expand teacher residency
programs, including opportunities for mentoring, professional
development, and leadership training.
Last year, I mentored a novice teacher named Kristen. I
shared my knowledge of first grade content with her, and I
demonstrated how to manage a classroom, engage students in
academic discourse, and modify my instruction based on student
learning. I served as Kristen's coach, asking her questions and
pushing her to reflect on teaching and learning. I made my
decisions as a teacher visible by thinking aloud and providing
the reasoning for what I was doing.
In a lesson, if Kristen was observing me, I would often
press pause and engage her in discussion about what was
happening in a lesson and then what accommodations and
adjustments I was making. Kristen now teaches kindergarten in a
school with 7 of the 22 graduates from the Seattle Teacher
Residency Program. The principals and her peer teachers who
work with them rave about how well-prepared they are.
Students benefit greatly from this co-teaching model in
which two teachers are committed to their success. The student-
teacher ratio is lower, which allows us to differentiate
instruction and spend more time working one-on-one with
individual students.
I am hopeful that all parties here today will work together
on ESEA reauthorization to ensure that all students have equal
educational opportunities and to provide the necessary
resources to support and retain great teachers. Ultimately,
ESEA should invest in the continuum that includes teacher
induction, professional growth, and teacher leadership.
Professional learning opportunities are essential to keeping
great teachers in the classroom and helping them to be data-
driven, to identify what their students have mastered, what
they need help in, and what kinds of help they need.
Teachers are as unique as the students they serve. We
adjust our lessons to help our students learn. We see what
works and we see what does not work. We develop relationships
within our schools, our school districts, and our States to
help formulate the most effective teaching and learning
practices.
We are the ones in direct contact with students day in and
day out. We are the ones most invested in student success, and
we are highly trained and committed professionals. Invest in
us. Trust and support us.
Thank you for your time.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Moore follows:]
Prepared Statement of Rachelle Moore
Thank you Chairman Alexander, Senator Murray, and distinguished
committee members for the opportunity to speak today.
Good morning, everyone. My name is Rachelle Moore and I am a
National Board Certified Teacher and a proud member of the National
Education Association. I have been teaching first grade at Madrona K-8
in Seattle for 5 years, where the kids do not have the opportunities I
have been fortunate to have. At Madrona, the majority of students are
minorities, lack early educational experiences, and live in poverty.
I grew up wanting to be a teacher like my dad, who has been
teaching high school arts for the past 35 years. As a child, I was
fortunate to be afforded opportunities that helped prepare me to be a
successful student, as well as for my career as a teacher. During my
undergraduate years at the University of Washington, I took a detour
and pursued a pharmacy career like my mom. Then I volunteered at
Madrona and decided to follow my childhood dreams and become a teacher,
hoping to close achievement gaps and empower the youth of the future--
no easy feat for sure!
Every one of us supports the goal of student success and
achievement. I would argue that those of us working directly in the
education field or in government shaping education policy have an even
greater investment. It begins with asking: What is success? What is
achievement? One measure of success is an individual student's growth
over the course of an academic year, but that is just part of the
story. We also need to consider the unique challenges and circumstances
of each student's life.
There is no way to measure the intangibles in a student's life.
There is no ``average'' student. Each student is shaped by individual
experiences. Those experiences must be taken into consideration when
shaping policies geared toward improving student success.
Research shows that teachers are the most important school-based
influence on student learning. Accordingly, every student deserves to
be taught by an excellent teacher. To ensure that is the case, we must
do a better job of preparing and retaining high-quality educators. And
the best way to do that is to invest in the continuum that includes
teacher induction, professional growth, and teacher leadership.
(Source: Linda Darling-Hammond, The Flat World and Education: How
America's Commitment to Equity Will Determine Our Nation's Future,
2010).
I am pleased to say that unions in conjunction with their school
districts across the country are working to enhance student learning
with teacher induction programs based on the successful medical model.
These programs pair novice teachers (residents) with experienced
teachers (mentors) for an entire year. Such programs not only
strengthen the teacher pipeline, they provide rich professional
development.
For the past 2 years, I have been a mentor in the Seattle Teacher
Residency, which is unique in that it is driven by teacher voices. This
residency program was created by the Seattle Education Association, the
University of Washington, the Alliance for Education and the Seattle
Public Schools. The National Education Association has given a grant
for the past several years to help support this program. This
partnership identifies the needs of our school district and takes steps
to ensure that incoming teachers have the training and support they
need to serve our diverse population of students. For example, when
mentors found that residents lacked assessment knowledge, we took
action to change coursework and fill the gaps. In collaboration, we
provide monthly training within our mentor group to help them develop
into teacher leaders.
A major goal of the Seattle Teacher Residency--shared by our
network of community partners--is to keep participating residents and
mentors in our school district for at least 5 years, thus providing
continuity for our students and schools. Doing so is important because
high-needs schools like mine often have difficulty retaining
experienced and highly effective teachers. Novice teachers are often
placed in high-need schools in communities that lack key resources and,
as a result, where the students face many challenges. It's a very
challenging environment to be placed in without proper support from
more experienced colleagues.
Back in 2010, I was one of five new hires. I have seen more than a
dozen K-8 teachers hired since then. In 5 years, we have retained just
three of the teachers I started with in 2010. Imagine how difficult it
is to gain traction as a school and provide consistency for students
when you have to start fresh with a new batch of teachers each year.
Imagine that each year, half of those new teachers have no previous
teaching experience. Imagine having a new administrator each year.
Those are the realities in high-needs schools like mine and why it is
so important to create and expand teacher residency programs, including
opportunities for mentoring, professional development, and leadership
training.
I chose to be a mentor because I believed in the investment the
program makes in all teachers and wanted to help prepare new teachers
to be accomplished in their practice. The co-teaching model our program
uses also addresses student outcomes. Using student work as the basis
for instruction, we help novice teachers develop their skills in
planning, teaching, and assessing student progress. We also reflect on
ways to improve teaching and learning, gradually releasing
responsibility to those we mentor.
Last year, for example, I mentored a novice teacher named Kristen.
I shared my knowledge of first-grade content with her and demonstrated
how to manage a classroom, engage students in academic discourse, and
modify instruction based on student learning. I served as Kristen's
coach, asking questions and pushing her to reflect on teaching and
learning. I made my decisions as a teacher visible by thinking aloud
and providing the reasoning for what I was doing. When Kristen observed
me, I often pressed ``pause'' and engaged her in discussion about what
was happening in a lesson and the adjustments I was making. Kristen saw
how I encouraged student participation and used assessment to analyze
student growth and adjust instruction to meet our students' needs. I
also helped Kristen learn to navigate the school district bureaucracy--
everything from taking attendance to finding a substitute teacher. All
of this helped smooth her transition from student to teacher. Kristen
now teaches kindergarten in a school with 7 of the 22 graduates of the
Seattle Teacher Residency Program. The principals and peer teachers who
work with them rave about how well-prepared they are.
Students benefit greatly from the co-teaching model in which two
teachers are committed to the success of each student. The student-
teacher ratio is lower, which allows us to differentiate instruction
and spend more time working one-on-one with individual students.
Instead of providing individualized instruction for just some of our
students each day, with co-teaching we can meet the needs of all 20 of
our students every day. Just last week, for example, my current
resident Ben and I employed a strategy called parallel teaching:
splitting the class in half to provide more opportunities for student
participation and gathering data used to plan future lessons.
I am also proud of my work with National Board for Professional
Teaching Standards. Both the residency program and board certification
have provided invaluable learning experiences for me as a teacher,
helping me grow in my practice as I strive to make the invisible
visible to novice teachers. I have opened the doors of my classroom to
colleagues and engaged in authentic discussions of teaching and
learning. I have become an instructional leader in my school and
district, and helped improved student learning beyond my own classroom.
I am hopeful that all parties will work together on ESEA
reauthorization to ensure all students have equal educational
opportunities. I am also hopeful that reauthorization will provide the
resources necessary to support and retain teachers, such as investing
in residency models and mentoring programs. Ultimately ESEA should
invest in the continuum of the education profession that includes
teacher induction, professional growth, and teacher leadership.
Professional learning opportunities are essential to keeping great
teachers in the classroom and helping them use data effectively: to
identify what their students have mastered, where they need help, and
what kinds of help they need. That means providing resources and
support for the whole child--like good nutrition and health care--not
just investing in high-quality teaching.
Teachers are as unique as the students they serve. We adjust our
lessons to help our students learn. We see what works and what does
not. We develop relationships within our schools, our school districts,
and our States to help formulate effective teaching and learning
practice. We are highly trained and committed professionals, the ones
most invested in student success, the ones in direct contact with
students day in and day out. Listen to our voices. Invest in us. Trust
and support us.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Dr. Handy-Collins.
STATEMENT OF CHRISTINE HANDY-COLLINS, PRINCIPAL, GAITHERSBURG
HIGH SCHOOL, GAITHERSBURG, MD
Ms. Handy-Collins. Chairman Alexander, Ranking Member
Murray, and committee members, thank you for inviting me here
today to discuss how ESEA can better support teachers and
school leaders. My name is Christine Handy-Collins, and I am
the proud principal of Gaithersburg High School, a
comprehensive diverse high school with more than 2,200 students
and 250 employees in Montgomery County, MD.
My 16 years as a high school principal include leadership
in large urban and small rural schools, prior to which I spent
10 years as a special education teacher. I also serve on the
board of directors for the National Association of Secondary
School Principals and would like to speak on behalf of my
fellow middle and high school leaders.
My experience, the experience of my colleagues, and 10
years of rigorous research by The Wallace Foundation prove one
large reality: school leadership matters. A nation must invest
in the recruitment, preparation, and ongoing support of
principals if we want each student in every school to succeed.
The reauthorization of ESEA gives Congress the perfect
opportunity to provide that support to school leaders.
It takes at least 5 years to create real, sustainable
school improvement, and leadership continuity is an essential
condition for student success. But because of lack of support,
one-fourth of principals leave after 1 year, and one-half of
all principals leave after just 3 years on the job. That means
most high school principals are not in place long enough to see
their freshman class graduate.
Our Nation's students and schools are already paying a
significant cost as a result of this high turnover. Resources
would be far better spent on the front end to develop and
support principals so they are ready on day 1 and stay on the
job to see their initiatives through. States and school
districts must be directed to exert greater efforts to recruit,
prepare, and retain principals, especially for high-need
schools.
I am proud to say that we get it right in Montgomery County
with two crucial elements of principal preparation. First, a 1-
year principal internship program to allow promising leaders to
gain hands-on instructional leadership experiences. Second, an
intensive mentorship and professional development program to
ensure candidates are prepared to lead schools.
These district efforts are reinforced by the Maryland State
Department of Education and its promising Principals Academy, a
year-long experience in which statewide cohorts of aspiring
principals work with accomplished school leaders to build
leadership skills. Unfortunately, my colleagues across the
Nation do not all have the same opportunities.
For this reason, Congress should provide dedicated funding
for professional development for principals. Title II is the
primary resource of Federal funds to improve principal quality.
ESEA bundles principal development in a vast assortment of
allowable uses of funds.
The reality is that principal professional learning and
growth competes with teacher development, class-size reduction,
and other priorities once Federal funds arrive to the district.
As a result, the U.S. Department of Education found that
districts use only 4 percent of title II dollars for principal
professional development. The ESEA draft currently under
discussion makes the conditions worse by adding even more
allowable uses for title II funds.
I have benefited enormously in my professional life from
the guidance and development from my district and from our
State and national principal organizations. As State budgets
tighten, that professional development becomes less and less
accessible.
Congress recently instructed the Department of Education to
provide guidance to States to support specialized principal
development opportunities. The Nation's leading principal
organizations have proposed a 10 percent set-aside for
principal professional development. I encourage the committee
to take that recommendation to heart.
Not only does Congress need to provide direction on
principal professional development, but principal evaluation as
well. An educator's evaluation must be more informative than
punitive. The new principal evaluation systems being developed
by States and districts rely far too heavily, as much as 50
percent, on student achievement data and not factors under
their direct control.
Of course, the ultimate goal of our work is to improve
student performance. When we fast forward directly to a test
score, we miss the opportunity to evaluate and develop
principals in other areas that lead to school success, such as
school culture and the support and engagement of teachers and
parents and the community.
Limiting achievement data to 25 percent of a principal's
evaluation, as the research suggests, and tying the evaluation
to a professional growth plan in these areas will increase the
chances for genuine school improvement.
Thank you for the opportunity to share these comments, and
I look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Handy-Collins follows:]
Prepared Statement of Christine Handy-Collins
fixing no child left behind: supporting teachers and schools leaders
Chairman Alexander, Ranking Member Murray, and members of the
committee, thank you for inviting me here today to discuss how the
Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) can better support
teachers and school leaders. My name is Christine Handy and I am the
proud principal of Gaithersburg High School in Gaithersburg, MD. I also
serve on the board of directors for the National Association of
Secondary School Principals (NASSP) and would like to speak on behalf
of my fellow middle and high school leaders.
I was a special education teacher for 10 years before beginning my
career as a school leader. I have served as a high school principal for
the past 16 years in a charter school, a small rural school, and
presently, a large, diverse, comprehensive public high school in
Montgomery County, MD. Gaithersburg High School has more than 2,200
students and 250 employees.
I attended The George Washington University's Education Leadership
program to prepare for my first school leadership experience. The
preparation program concluded with an internship experience where I had
the opportunity to oversee a summer school program at a public middle
School in Norfolk, VA. I continued in the doctoral program at The
George Washington University and while my classwork focused largely on
being an effective school leader, my research focused on leadership at
the superintendent level. My preparation for being an effective school
leader has depended primarily on professional development offered by
the school district, the State department of education, and State and
national principal associations where I have had the opportunity to
attend in-person conferences, participate in online professional
development, and learn by networking with colleagues from across the
State and the Nation.
Montgomery County Public Schools values professional development
for school leaders and teachers and has allocated funds and staffing
dedicated for this purpose. The district has a principal internship
program to allow promising leaders the opportunity to serve as
principals to gain valuable experience. Assistant principals also go
through an intensive training program with mentors and receive ongoing
professional development to ensure that they are prepared to lead
schools.
At the State level, the Maryland Department of Education has
dedicated Principal Academies for new leaders and ongoing teacher and
principal summer workshops. The Maryland Association of Secondary
School Principals, Maryland Association of Elementary School
Principals, and their affiliated national organizations demonstrate a
dedication to professional development by offering ongoing workshops
and conferences that are committed to the vision of providing excellent
school leaders in every school.
importance of school leadership
Great schools do not exist apart from great leaders, and strong
school leadership is essential for ensuring student success. For more
than a decade, the Wallace Foundation has sponsored rigorous research
on school leadership, which has led to the finding that there is an
``empirical link between school leadership and improved student
achievement.'' Principals are recognized for their ability to influence
a variety of factors that indirectly affect student outcomes and
directly influence schools, including their ability to support teachers
and create the conditions necessary for high-functioning schools. The
research from the Wallace Foundation about successful schools is clear:
A great teacher gets great results in a classroom, but only a principal
can lead a school to success in all classrooms for each students'
success and create the culture for sustaining long-term improvements.
esea reauthorization
Principals respectfully request that Congress work to refocus the
Elementary and Secondary Education Act to help put in place State and
local education systems that will provide robust, meaningful
accountability together with sufficient supports for educators and
schools. The law is in dire need of this redirection to provide high-
quality educational opportunities and improved outcomes for all
students.
support for principals
Today's principals are expected to be visionary leaders,
instructional experts, building managers, assessment specialists,
disciplinarians, counselors, social workers, community builders, and
more; they are also held directly responsible for student achievement
in our Nation's schools. With the growing demands, changing
demographics, and increased accountability to prepare students to be
college and
career-ready, the job imposes excessive demands on time and burnout is
common. If principals are to meet the growing and evolving expectations
of this demanding position, they must be provided ongoing personalized
professional development to meet their individual and school needs.
This is true for all school leaders, regardless of their initial
preparation or their length of service. To meet these demands, ongoing
mentoring, job-embedded professional development, and the time to
participate in professional learning communities to learn from their
peers are necessary to support all school leaders.
recruitment and preparation
States and districts must be directed to put in place more rigorous
efforts to recruit and prepare principals and assistant principals to
be instructional leaders and improve student academic achievement in
high-need schools through research-based programs. In recruiting the
next generation of profession-ready school leaders, Federal policy
should support State and school districts efforts to ensure that:
School districts put structures in place to ensure a
principal continuum.
Prospective principals commit to work in high-need schools
in both urban and rural environments.
Prospective principals reflect the increasing racial,
ethnic, and economic diversity of our Nation's students.
To ensure that new principals or assistant principals are
profession-ready, candidates should have an advanced degree and
demonstrated record of success as a teacher and teacher leader.
Individuals with strong instructional backgrounds make better
instructional leaders and are better able to relate to and lead
teachers, as well as identify and model effective classroom practices.
Congress should enact policies to ensure that every principal and
school leader enters a school with the skills and qualities necessary
to effectively lead a school. Legislation should support principal
preparation programs that require candidates to demonstrate leadership
competencies through an assessment prior to entry into a qualified
principal preparation and certification program that includes
partnerships between districts and local preparation programs. This
will help ensure that the preparation programs, including curriculum
and residencies, are clearly aligned with the realities of school
leadership and the ``critical success factors'' of an effective
principal. Furthermore, qualified school leader candidates must
complete a 1-year principal residency program under the guidance of an
accomplished school leader. Additionally, upon completion of their
preparation program, aspiring principals should demonstrate a deep
understanding of the domains of effective school leadership and related
competencies through a performance-based assessment before commencing
work as school leaders.
NASSP strongly supports the School Principal Recruitment and
Training Act, and we're very pleased that Senator Franken will be
reintroducing the bill this Congress. The level of preparation required
by grantees in the bill is critical for every principal to enter the
profession ready and properly equipped to improve student achievement
and to be an effective instructional leader.
professional development
Professional development for principals has been largely overlooked
by States and local districts, because the primary source of funds for
principal development--title II--bundles principal development in a
vast assortment of ``allowable uses of funds.'' As a result, according
to a 2013 Department of Education survey, districts use only 4 percent
of title II dollars for principal professional development, falling far
short of what States and districts should be doing to support
principals to meet the increased demands as instructional leaders of
schools. Meanwhile, a majority of the funds have been spent by
districts to reduce class size, which some may say has little effect on
teacher and principal quality--the named purpose of this section of the
law. Research and evidence over the past 10 years substantiate the role
of principals and prove that they have an impact on student
performance, second only to teachers in the classroom.
Given their importance as the key catalysts for school improvement,
ESEA and title II funds must be refocused on providing professional
development for principals and assistant principals in a manner that
effectively supports their role as instructional leaders. This is even
more imperative for those school leaders serving in high-need schools
so that they have the knowledge, skills, and resources necessary to
improve school and student achievement, and support and improve the
instructional practice of educators in the classroom. Furthermore, the
law must afford principals proper training to help them improve teacher
quality in their schools.
NASSP, together with the National Association of Elementary School
Principals (NAESP), released policy recommendations in 2013 to better
support principals in implementing new teacher evaluation systems. The
report found that there has been insufficient training to complete
teacher evaluations that will allow principals to differentiate
performance and engage in a high level of instructional coaching,
provide meaningful feedback to teachers, and use evaluation results to
inform decisionmaking in their schools.
We respectfully encourage you to include robust provisions in a
reauthorized ESEA that will support principal professional development,
including a requirement that districts who receive title II funding
allocate no less than 10 percent of the funds available for
professional development for elementary, middle, and high school
principals to improve instructional leadership. This must be a separate
section of the reauthorized law to ensure that principals are afforded
the recognition and proper support in executing their leadership role
in schools successfully.
principal evaluation
Principals are concerned about the new evaluation systems that are
being developed by States and districts that were a condition for
receiving ESEA flexibility waivers. We feel that Congress has a
responsibility now to provide guidance to State and local efforts in
order to support effective principal evaluation systems that will lead
to improved performance. An effective evaluation system is
collaboratively developed; provides meaningful feedback to the
individual principal; is based on multiple measures; and takes into
account student growth as well as evidence of effective school
leadership practices. According to the latest research related to
principal evaluation, the Nation's most prominent principals
organizations recommend that no more than a quarter of a principal's
evaluation be based on student achievement and growth. Further, any
principal evaluation system must be tied to professional improvement
plans for principals and have a strong focus on six key domains of
leadership responsibility within a principal's sphere of influence.
These domains are school leadership; student growth and achievement;
school planning and progress; school culture; stakeholder support and
engagement; professional qualities and practices; and professional
growth and learning.
pathways for principal leadership
In a reauthorized ESEA, Congress must provide support for school
districts to enhance leadership capacity through a full range of
leadership roles for assistant principals, early career principals, and
veteran school administrators. In order to develop strong instructional
leaders to mentor and support the pipeline of future school leaders,
accomplished educational leaders must be supported to:
Cultivate their understanding of leadership and school
improvement processes to meet high levels of performance;
Help novice principals gain a clear vision of
instructional leadership;
Engage stakeholders in developing and realizing excellence
in instructional leadership; and
Participate in meaningful community engagement and
advocacy on behalf of their students, teachers and schools.
Sustained improvement in schools takes no less than 5 years to put
in place, and leadership continuity during those 5 years is absolutely
essential. Yet the most recent data indicates that one-fourth of
principals leave after 1\1/2\ years, and half of all principals, leave
after 3 years on the job. That means most high school principals are
not in place long enough to see their freshman class graduate. More
important, those principals are not in place long enough to see their
school improvement efforts all the way through. Efforts are rebooted
with the arrival of each new principal. I submit that States and
districts are already paying a significant cost for unfulfilled
improvement efforts as a result of principal turnover. Those resources
would be far better spent on the front end to support principals so
they will stay on the job long enough to see their initiatives through.
That leadership continuity is an essential condition for student
success. It is a condition the Federal Government is uniquely
positioned to advance with its next reauthorization of ESEA.
The Chairman. Thank you, Dr. Handy-Collins, and thanks to
all of you for being here. We'll now begin a series of 5-minute
questions.
Dr. Holliday, let me begin with you. Since I only have 5
minutes, I'm going to ask short questions, and let me see if I
can elicit some short answers. You're a former president of the
Chief State School Officers, right?
[No verbal response.]
The Chairman. For the last 30 years or so, you've been
working together to development--the Chief State School
Officers--to develop standards, tests, accountability systems.
Am I correct about that?
Mr. Holliday. Yes, sir.
The Chairman. You said in your testimony that you don't
think Washington should--well, let me ask you this. If you were
reauthorizing No Child Left Behind, do you favor keeping the 17
Federal tests?
Mr. Holliday. Yes, sir. The chiefs favor annual assessment,
but there are different ways you can get at annual assessment.
We support annual assessment with some innovation ability to
look differently at something other than just an annual
multiple choice test.
The Chairman. Do you favor the disaggregation of the
results?
Mr. Holliday. Absolutely, sir.
The Chairman. So you favor that. Then we get to the
question, which is sometimes contentious, about who decides
whether a school or a teacher is succeeding or failing, and
what are the consequences of that. We call that the
accountability system. Now, Kentucky, I gather, has its own
accountability system.
Mr. Holliday. Yes. We were able to be a little creative
with the waiver. Now we're getting a little micromanagement
with the waiver.
The Chairman. What would you say to those people who
believe that if we have the Federal tests and if we
disaggregate the results, we can't trust Kentucky or other
States to come up with their own ways to decide whether a
school or a teacher is succeeding or failing and what the
consequences should be? Some people say that would be moving
backward.
Mr. Holliday. They're definitely stuck in the 1980s,
because the chiefs now--if you look at the work in the last 5
to 10 years, you see dramatic change in responsibility and
accountability from the chiefs. And don't forget, I serve on
the NAGB board, and every 2 years you get the truth. So States
might be able to----
The Chairman. Which is the National Assessment of----
Mr. Holliday. That's right, National Assessment of
Educational Progress. You get a State-by-State ranking. You get
the breakouts by the demographics. It's a treasure trove of
data to hold States accountable.
The Chairman. Kentucky began some time ago its work on
teacher effectiveness. Why do you not think that the U.S.
Department of Education should approve--or do you think it
should approve what you do about teacher effectiveness in
Kentucky?
Mr. Holliday. Oh, it was the issue of guiding principles
becoming micromanagement. We worked for 3 years to get a matrix
system at our unions and had buy-in from everybody. We sent the
waiver in, and one cell in one little page--``Oh, we're not
going to approve your waiver again if you don't fix that.''
That's micromanagement, and that's what the chiefs are very
much against. It usually happens when you move from general
principles to actually monitoring and overseeing the waivers.
The Chairman. Ms. Moore, in April, Washington State's
waiver was revoked by Secretary Duncan because that State
legislature wouldn't pass legislation requiring standardized
test results to be used in teacher-principal evaluation
systems. Instead, the law in Washington allows local school
districts to decide which tests they use.
Now, you're a proud member of the National Education
Association. What would you say to those who say that if we
just turn it all back to Washington that the teachers' union
will stop good teacher evaluation systems in your school
district or in your State?
Ms. Moore. Well, I believe--I mean, we definitely need
measures to indicate student growth and to identify gaps and to
make sure that there is accountability. From my own experience,
I know that there's a number of other indicators that can be
used beyond just testing.
I know what my expectations are in order to make sure that
a first grader is prepared to go on into second grade
successfully and so forth. I would also say that----
The Chairman. If I may interrupt, who do you think should
be making those decisions? Do you think those should be made
here, or do you think Washington State or Tennessee or Texas or
Kentucky should be developing their own standards for whether
teachers are succeeding or failing and what the consequences
are?
Ms. Moore. I guess I believe in the ground-up idea that
we're really listening to teachers' voices and that it should
be a more personalized system where teachers have some buy-in
in that. We should be able to trust the system and believe in
it, knowing that it's part of a larger professional growth
system.
As teachers, we're professional, and we're committed to
this work. We want to grow, and we want our students to learn.
I would argue that teachers should have some say in that, and
that it should be knowing the students in the area that you're
teaching in.
The Chairman. Thank you very much.
Mr. Hinojosa, my time is up. I simply want to underscore
and thank you for your comments about the Teacher Incentive
Fund which Secretary Spellings recommended and Secretary Arne
Duncan has strongly endorsed and which is an important way, I
believe, to help local school districts come up with their own
ways of evaluating teachers and relating student achievement to
teacher performance.
Senator Murray.
Senator Murray. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Ms. Moore, I know that teaching in a high-poverty school,
you and your colleagues face some real challenges on a daily
basis. Now, you have decided to continue teaching at your
school, even as a lot of the colleagues that you mentioned have
left. And because you're a terrific teacher, you've been chosen
to be a mentor to support new teachers that you talked about as
they get into the classroom.
Can you talk about how the support you received enabled you
to stick with teaching in your school, including being able to
take a leadership role in the profession?
Ms. Moore. Well, I would just say that, definitely, all of
those professional learning opportunities and opportunities to
become a teacher leader have been something that I invested in
myself in order to advance myself as an educator. It all goes
back to the student learning piece, where I want to stay in the
school because I see the changes that I'm able to make with
students.
I've been invested in by the local union, whether that be
through my National Board Certification--they provided me with
opportunities to be a part of a cohort and go through that
process with a mentor who had done National Boards, as well as
the Washington Education Association provided jump start
preparation programs.
Seeing that buy-in from the State and the local level has
really shown me that they're very invested in accomplished
practice, and that has helped me continue to believe that I'm
going to be able to do great things and, hopefully, encourage
others, such as in the mentoring program, to become teacher
leaders themselves and be on that board trajectory toward board
certification one day.
Senator Murray. So that extra investment and attention
support was critical in you staying in a very tough
environment?
Ms. Moore. Absolutely, yes.
Senator Murray. Dr. Goldhaber, in your testimony you
highlighted research on teacher quality showing that any way
you cut the data, poor kids, kids of color, get less than their
fair share when it comes to effective instruction. Can you
describe those findings to us on this committee and talk about
why it's so important that we change those patterns?
Mr. Goldhaber. Well, describe the findings--there are
studies that look both within States--Washington State being
one of them--and across States and look at the probability that
a student of a particular race or ethnicity or a student who is
eligible or not eligible for free or reduced-price lunch is
likely to be taught by a more experienced teacher or a teacher
who is nationally board certified or a teacher who seems to
produce large student learning gains on standardized tests.
No matter how you cut the data, the probability is lower
that minority students and economically disadvantaged students
are likely to have access to those more experienced, more
effective teachers. Why is it important? It's important because
we now know the impact that teachers have on long-term academic
and labor market success. I think that it's part of an equal
opportunity society and realizing the American dream that the
public institutions we have should do the best job they can to
give disadvantaged students an opportunity to succeed.
Senator Murray. And the best way to do that is with a
highly effective teacher.
Mr. Goldhaber. There are lots of things that affect student
achievement. My read on the education literature that among the
things over which schools have control, the best way to do it
is a highly effective teacher.
Senator Murray. Dr. Handy-Collins, I have heard from
principals in my State that they are not receiving the
professional development and support that they need. I know I
don't need to tell you that effective school leaders play a
really critical and important role in students' academic
success, especially in our high-need schools.
How important is it that we provide a dedicated source of
funds to support and retain effective principals?
Ms. Handy-Collins. It is very important that we provide
funding for professional development for our school leaders,
because we are in a time where our schools are more diverse, we
have change in accountability as well as different assessments,
and we're preparing students for the 21st century. We want all
of our students to be college- and career-ready, and to lead
those efforts in a school today requires a different kind of
training.
It's important that we provide professional development at
the local levels, at State levels, and also it's important for
our leaders to learn from each other and be able to participate
in a professional learning community, not just at the local
level but on the State and national levels as well.
Senator Murray. So at the Federal level, if we don't have a
dedicated source of funding for funds to support and retain
effective principals, what would happen?
Ms. Handy-Collins. Well, I think that we can only ensure
that--we won't know that States are consistently implementing
professional development for our school leaders. It gets hidden
in one of those things that you can use for--what you can use
the funds for--rather than what you must use the funds for. So
we're advocating for dedicated funding toward principal and
school leader professional development.
Senator Murray. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thanks, Senator Murray.
Senator Cassidy.
Statement of Senator Cassidy
Senator Cassidy. Dr. Goldhaber, a couple of things. I'm not
a teacher. Well, I am a teacher. I teach with a medical school,
and so I have some experience. Pobably my main experience is
that my son graduated from an inner city school, 80 percent
minority, kind of a tough neighborhood sort of thing, with an
occasional murder off the block.
How do you define access? Where my son attended school,
there were great teachers. He's now at an Ivy League school.
Yet it was an 80 percent minority school and probably didn't do
very well in the standardized testing. Is access defined as the
child actually being in the classroom with the teacher, or
having the option to be in the classroom with the teacher? Do
you follow what I'm saying? How do you define access?
Mr. Goldhaber. I want to be really clear that what I'm
talking about is probability. Certainly, I don't want to
suggest that disadvantaged students never or rarely have access
to effective or highly credentialed teachers. That's not true.
Senator Cassidy. So you're looking at macro data?
Mr. Goldhaber. I'm talking about probabilities, and access
is defined, in terms of the studies I'm thinking of, at the
classroom level.
Senator Cassidy. I got you. If the child is in the
classroom.
Mr. Goldhaber. That's correct.
Senator Cassidy. Second, I've read several things that the
annual testing poorly correlates between a teacher and a
child's performance. And yet you suggest that, no, you're quite
able to evaluate a teacher with longitudinal data in terms of
how that child does. Is that a fair statement? You seem to find
value where others do not.
Mr. Goldhaber. I think that the research is pretty
definitive, that any form of evaluation is imperfect, and that
one way that we can evaluate teachers is based on their
contribution to student learning gains on standardized tests,
so-called value-added----
Senator Cassidy. Please be brief. We have limited time.
Mr. Goldhaber. I do think that there's evidence suggesting
that that measure is connected to students' later success.
Senator Cassidy. So you must have regression analysis
within that. Can you give me your top four, actually give me
the top two. What are the top two predictors on regression
analysis, independent variables, on a student's success, a
teacher's success, and a school's success? Can you do that?
Mr. Goldhaber. No, because I'm not quite sure I understand
the question.
Senator Cassidy. If you put in a variable, if you have a
child who is of a certain demographic in a suburban school, but
he does well, and you put the same child of the same
demographic in an urban school and he does well, you have to
correct for the demography of that child. So that's the only
way you would know whether or not the teachers were doing well,
et cetera. What are your top two predictors of those?
Mr. Goldhaber. I would say that if you're going to predict
student success, probably the best predictor is a measure of
family income or mother's or father's education level. Then
when you start to look into schooling variables----
Senator Cassidy. Is there a second variable you would throw
in there? Because that was not correlated with the teacher.
Mr. Goldhaber. I would say family--I'm sorry. I thought you
wanted to know the predictors of student achievement.
Senator Cassidy. Yes, I did. But it's not the teacher. It's
not the principal. It's not the school. It's the parents'
educational level?
Mr. Goldhaber. That would be my top predictor.
Senator Cassidy. And your second?
Mr. Goldhaber. Parents' income level. My third would
probably be the quality of educators that students have.
Senator Cassidy. Now, with teachers, what are the top two
variables?
Mr. Goldhaber. The top two variables predicting how
successful they are as a teacher?
Senator Cassidy. Yes.
Mr. Goldhaber. I think the best prediction of how
successful someone is going to be is how successful they've
been in the past.
Senator Cassidy. OK. Past is prologue. Now, you mentioned
how Teach for America really has very little difference from
someone who goes through formal training. Teach for America
goes into urban schools, really bad schools. I'm impressed.
After one of the hurricanes in New Orleans, a couple of them
stayed in my house, and we had a long conversation.
Now, if you correlate the student achievement of a child in
a TFA classroom versus someone in the same school, presumable
same demographics, is there a difference between those TFAs and
the teachers who are more traditionally trained?
Mr. Goldhaber. There are relatively little differences.
Some studies suggest that Teach for America teachers tend to be
more successful, particularly at the secondary level in
mathematics. The studies vary. I would say--I would
characterize the research as a whole as suggesting relatively
little difference between TFA teachers and traditionally
trained teachers.
Senator Cassidy. I'm going to go back to my regression
analysis, because if the TFA student is in the toughest school,
you would want to be comparing that teacher to a teacher in
that same tough school with the same demographics, the same
parental education and income levels. Do the studies do that?
Mr. Goldhaber. Yes. That is exactly what you would want to
be doing. The studies that I'm talking about do, in fact,
adjust for the circumstance in which teachers are teaching.
Senator Cassidy. Again, you find some improvement in
mathematics, but otherwise, these highly motivated kids with
great verbal skills are still little able to impact kids who
are otherwise anchored down by a terrible family life or a less
advantageous family life, et cetera.
Mr. Goldhaber. I wouldn't characterize it as little able to
impact. I would say that when I'm describing how effective one
program is or one path of entry is relative to another that it
is relative to another. That does not suggest that the teachers
are not having an impact on student learning. It suggests that
it's comparable.
Senator Cassidy. I got you. Thank you very much.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Cassidy.
Senator Bennet.
Senator Bennet. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and----
Senator Mikulski. Senator Bennet, could you just hold 1
second?
Senator Bennet. Yes, of course.
Senator Mikulski. Mr. Chairman, I ask the indulgence of the
committee that I be excused. We're about to lose 500 jobs in
Salisbury, MD, and I'm going to meet with the CEO of the
company to try to save those jobs. I'm for you, but I've got a
couple of other things----
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Mikulski, and thanks for
coming today on such a busy day.
Senator Bennet.
Senator Bennet. I have no idea who the CEO is, but I like
your chances, Senator Mikulski.
[Laughter.]
Statement of Senator Bennet
Mr. Chairman, thank you. I want to say to you and to the
Ranking Member thank you so much for the way you're approaching
this work. To me, as I sit here, I think about all the teachers
across the country that are teaching right now, including
teaching the three Bennet girls in the Denver Public Schools
today, and the work that they are putting in and the fact that
this Congress--not just this Congress, but a sequence of
Congresses have been unable to fix this law for now 7 or 8
years while they are doing everything they can try to do to
drive student achievement. It's a national embarrassment.
It is my hope--and I know that the Ranking Member and the
Chairman feel the same way--that finally, this time, we can get
a result and we can actually make a small contribution to
actually driving achievement in this country. Everybody in this
room should bow down to Ms. Moore, because there isn't anybody
in the country that has a harder job than somebody who's
teaching in a high-
poverty school.
I can tell you the members of this panel don't have a job
remotely as hard as the job that she's doing. Yet we have been
unable to fix this law, and it is time for us to do it, because
the stakes are really high.
All of you have touched on some elements that have made it
better for teachers in this country. If you've got a great
principal, that helps. If you've got a committed faculty that
is rowing in the same direction, that really helps. If you're
paid respectfully, that helps.
But we're swimming against the tide. I think the chairman
raises very important questions about who's responsible for
what part of this, and I agree that it's something that we
ought to work on. As a Nation, whoever's responsibility it is,
we have fallen down on the job.
We have a system of training teachers, of recruiting
teachers, of hiring teachers, of giving teachers professional
development, of paying teachers that belongs to a labor market
that discriminated against women and assume that we get the
ones that decided not to be nurses. The likelihood was that
you'd get the best British literature student in her class to
be a teacher, but that likelihood is gone, thank goodness,
because many people--women are able to do many other things.
The idea that somebody is going to come and teach for 30
years at a ridiculously low compensation compared to what
anyone else in her college class would be paid for the benefit
of a pension that's not going to be there 30 years from now is
completely illusory. Here's what I'd like to ask you guys.
If this country really wanted to attract the best folks in
their college class to teaching, what would we do? Would we say
to them, ``If you come and teach in a high-poverty school, your
student debt is forgiven, and you don't have to pay us back''?
Would we pay starting teachers dramatically more than what we
pay them?
There's a lot of attention paid to whether we should get
rid of lousy teachers, and I'll stipulate that I think we
should get rid of lousy teachers. We don't spend any time--or
very little time--on the question of how we deal with the fact
that we're losing 50 percent of the teaching workforce in the
first 5 years of the profession. That's not going to result in
good outcomes for our kids. I would just turn it over to the
panel--anybody who would like to answer that.
Ms. Moore, I'll call on you first.
Ms. Moore. Well, I would just say that there's obviously--
--
Senator Bennet. And I will bow down to you.
[Laughter.]
Ms. Moore. Thank you. There's some inherent goodness in
wanting teachers to work in schools and to work with students.
That's always been something that I wanted to do growing up
with a dad as a teacher, and then I actually had--my mom, who
is here today, is a pharmacist, and for a while, when I was at
the University of Washington, I was going to pursue pharmacy,
because that did look more--I'd get better pay and what-not.
Deep down, I always cared and wanted to work with students.
I would just say that from a teacher's standpoint, the
reason why teachers maybe aren't staying and we're seeing
retention problems in my school is because they're feeling so
overwhelmed by all of the stuff that we're trying to do. We
talk about--a kid can come into the classroom. The moment they
walk in the door, some kids have a complete disadvantage
compared to their peers.
I know that in my school, sometimes we feel like we're
doing the job of a social worker and a teacher. I'm constantly
trying to support that whole child, because until I can have
them come into the classroom and feel like they are ready to
learn, they've been well fed, and they feel safe--that's a
whole job in and of itself beyond teaching.
Senator Bennet. Dr. Goldhaber, I'm almost out of time. Do
you have anything you'd like to add?
Mr. Goldhaber. Well, ultimately, I think we need to do
things to elevate the status of teachers. In this country, one
of the ways that status is established is with salary. I think
that salary is a real key. I'm a data-driven guy, so I would
urge you to take a look at research on the Teacher Equity
Project Charter School in New York City, because I think that
they're doing some interesting things.
What they're doing is they're paying starting teachers a
great deal of money, $125,000, and they're doing it within the
existing school budget by reallocating other resources in the
school. The initial results from the study of the Teacher
Equity Project looked very promising.
Senator Bennet. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Bennet.
Senator Burr.
Statement of Senator Burr
Senator Burr. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm going to go off
of Senator Bennet's statement.
Ms. Moore, let me ask you. Do you think we should get rid
of lousy teachers?
Ms. Moore. Well, I definitely wouldn't want to pass my
students along to a teacher who I didn't feel was well-
prepared. That's something that--as a teacher leader in my
building, I really strive toward accomplished practice so that
now I can work with the peers around me. The second grade
teacher who is above me--I want to be there to support her,
because, ultimately, I'm going to pass my students along, and I
want to be able to trust that she is just as highly qualified.
Senator Burr. If it bothers you, imagine what a parent
thinks. And I get back to what Dr. Goldhaber said, that parents
are a big motivating factor--their education level, their
income level, but also their involvement in their child's
education. If they believe that they got a lousy teacher--the
lottery went the wrong way--they sort of count the days for the
school year to be over and hope that they get a better one.
Now, that sort of gets into you, Dr. Handy-Collins, because
the question is: Why aren't principals making those decisions?
Now, you were very specific about we need to mandate certain
things funding-wise for principal development. You don't know
me. I don't think you really trust me to do that. I'm not sure
I trust me to understand exactly what the need is.
I do trust your school. I trust the parents of the
students. I trust who you've chosen as a superintendent, and
the superintendent has chosen the principals. One of the things
we do in this bill is we take 67 Federal programs in title II
and title IV and we put two pots of money. Locally, you can
determine how you use those pots of money. The requirement is
to better educate teachers, and you can shift from II to IV if,
in fact, you feel compelled.
Title I is left alone. Title II is funded at a higher
level. There's actually the ability--and I go back to Ms.
Moore--there's actually the ability for teachers to be
involved, for teachers to say, ``If we had this, we could do
this.'' No longer do you look down a list of 67 things and say,
``This is not on that option list.'' If it's not on the option
list or your school system doesn't embrace it, you lose the
money.
Now we're saying let's open up the money to everybody, and
let's open up everybody within the system to contribute to what
changes we should make that actually educate kids to a better
level. Doesn't that make sense? Is there anybody that objects
to that?
I understand that if we did that, we're not prescribing to
the school system exactly how much should go to principals and
how much should go to this. We basically say, ``Apply it where
you think it makes the best impact on the outcome of our
children.''
Ms. Handy-Collins. I want to say that what we're advocating
for today is dedicated funding to professional development,
because what we're seeing across the Nation is not that
dedicated funding and that States----
Senator Burr. Are you telling me that in your system, in
your school, that is the No. 1 challenge that you're up
against?
Ms. Handy-Collins. I won't say it's the No. 1 challenge,
but it's certainly----
Senator Burr. Is there a challenge you can think of that's
greater than that?
Ms. Handy-Collins. Greater than professional development? I
think professional development is one of our answers in helping
our teachers and our school leaders to support having students
college- and career-ready.
Senator Burr. Then under the--the way it's written in this
bill, then you can use it for that. Dr. Holliday doesn't have
to. If his determination is that putting that money into
something different is more important for student outcome, he
can do that, and maybe he's chosen principals a different way.
Now you're Kentucky, so the superintendent is down the line.
I'm only suggesting this, that we've tried this system for
a long time, and I don't think anybody is coming here today
telling me that, ``Geez, elementary and secondary education--it
works perfect. You guys found the right formula.'' Why don't we
look at what's happening around us, that some are doing things
differently?
I don't have time, Dr. Goldhaber, to talk about KIPP
Academy. They're the biggest utilizer of Teach for America
teachers. They go into the most at-risk communities. I can take
you to one in Charlotte, NC, that's located one block from an
elementary school.
The demographic makeup of both schools is exactly the same.
Yet the expectations out of the KIPP Academy are totally
different than the expectations out of the elementary school
beside it. Teachers, resources, social economics, parental
education--I don't know what it is, but it's something. We
don't tie their hands as to how they use their money.
My time is up. The chairman has been generous. We've got a
deep interest in getting this right, and I think getting this
right, Ms. Moore, actually is including you. It's including
principals. It's including superintendents. It's taking the
shackles off and saying, ``Create whatever works for you.''
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Burr.
Senator Warren, then Senator Isakson, and then Senator
Baldwin.
Statement of Senator Warren
Senator Warren. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm just going to
pick up where Senator Burr left off.
Recent studies from the National Bureau of Economic
Research have found that teachers have a greater impact on
student achievement than any other factor in school, and that
students with effective teachers are more likely to attend
college and to have higher lifetime earnings. In other words,
one of the best investments in our kids is to invest in their
teachers.
Dr. Handy-Collins, there are a lot of ways that we can
invest in our teachers and principals. Do you see anything in
the Republican draft proposal that requires that a single
dollar of Federal aid be used to improve teaching?
Ms. Handy-Collins. Well, what we see is a list of allowable
uses of funds under title II, and what we're advocating for,
I'll say once again, is dedicated funding to professional
development for our teachers and for our school leaders.
Senator Warren. Right. I understand that there's a list,
but nothing that requires that any of it be spent on teachers.
Mr. Hinojosa, is that your reading as well?
Mr. Hinojosa. Yes. What I'm hearing is that it is very
difficult in areas of poverty to get highly effective teachers.
We have a responsibility to train teachers, to develop these
teachers, because these are the ones that are in our
communities. I'm competing against 16 other districts locally
in San Antonio. We have to work with these teachers in
providing an environment where they're going to want to stay.
We've been very effective. I mentioned the junior high. We
had a retention rate of over 90 percent. Again, this was
because of the fact that we put things into place, that we were
going to support our teachers, that they weren't going to feel
when they came in that it was going to be daunting and that
they were not going to be supported. It's very important that
we do support our teachers to be highly effective.
Senator Warren. Thank you. As I read the Republican draft
proposal, States and districts would no longer be required to
invest title II funds in teachers, in leaders. Maybe it will
happen sometimes, but nothing in this draft requires the States
to spend a single Federal tax dollar on strengthening teachers.
This is a huge concern for me.
We keep asking more and more and more of our teachers, but
this Republican draft proposal doesn't do a single thing to
make sure that the States will actually use this Federal money
to help teachers do their jobs. Giving billions of dollars in
Federal aid to States without requiring them to spend a dime of
that money on helping our teachers is not a responsible use of
Federal tax dollars, not good enough for our teachers and sure
enough not good enough for our kids.
Now, I want to ask about something else as well, and I want
to start with the point that Senator Bennet made at last week's
hearing that really struck me. For the first time, poor
children will be the majority of public school children in
America. The law that became No Child Left Behind was
originally enacted back in the 1960s as part of President
Johnson's war on poverty. We have to ask ourselves how we can
make this law a more powerful weapon against poverty.
Ms. Moore, do you have all the resources you need to combat
the effects of poverty in the school where you work? And if
not, what additional resources and support would help you with
your work?
Ms. Moore. No, I don't believe that I have all of the
supports that I need. While I have the teacher preparation, I
think that a lot of other things have a direct impact on
learning--our students in the classroom. In my case, there's a
lot of students who are dealing with the effects of trauma,
whether that be domestic violence, abuse, homelessness,
poverty. So we really need to look at the whole child and take
into consideration all those other things beyond just the
academic piece.
For instance, in my school, our funding for a nurse--her
FTE has gone down each year, and we have to rely on outside
funds, such as our PTSA, to provide days for her to be at the
school. Without a nurse, without the healthy snack programs and
things like that, I'm not sure that my students would even come
into the classroom feeling like they were ready to learn. I
would argue that those would be things that we would need to
take into consideration.
Senator Warren. Ms. Moore, are you confident that without
any guidance or any accountability in the Federal statute that
every State will target Federal funds to the classrooms and the
students who need those additional resources the most?
Ms. Moore. Without hearing teacher voices, I would worry
that they wouldn't know what needs we have. Without really
getting into the classrooms and talking to the teachers and
figuring out what your students need in order to be successful
in the classroom, I'm not sure that they would know what those
are.
Senator Warren. Well, thank you.
I think that Ms. Moore reminds us that there's a lot going
on outside the classroom in the lives of our vulnerable
children, and we need to make sure that these children have
access to the full range of services that they need to learn
and to succeed. This means school nurses and counselors and
making sure that our kids can see the board in class, that they
aren't hungry, that they have the healthcare they need.
Education is about building opportunity, and that's about
making sure that Federal dollars go to the kids who most need
the help to have a real chance to succeed.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Warren.
Senator Isakson.
Statement of Senator Isakson
Senator Isakson. Well, thank you, Chairman Alexander, and
thank you for your focus and leadership on kids, on No Child
Left Behind, and on flexibility.
I have to ask Mr. Hinojosa a question. I've known two great
Hinojosas in education. One of them is named Reuben in the
House of Representatives, and the other is Michael, who is the
superintendent of schools in Cobb County, GA. You've got to be
related to one or both of them.
Mr. Hinojosa. Not to my knowledge. I've met both of them. I
know who they are, but----
Senator Isakson. Well, if you're as good as they are,
you're awfully good, then. Thank you for being here today.
Mr. Hinojosa. Thank you.
Senator Isakson. You know, Chairman Alexander, I'll make
this confession. I'm one of the two guys left that wrote No
Child Left Behind. I want you all to know that in full
disclosure. The other one is Speaker Boehner. The rest of them
have retired from Congress or are gone.
We had a meeting the night after it passed in the basement
of the Capitol--it was Ted Kennedy, myself, Mike Castle, John
Boehner, and some others--and talked about,
``If this works, we're going to be in trouble come 6
years from now because if it works, it's going to be
harder and harder to make AYP. People are going to go
into needs improvement, even though they're doing
better, and we're going to go from an attitudinal shift
from positive to negative.''
And that's what's happened, all right?
It is time we fix No Child Left Behind and we reauthorize
ESEA, and I think the chairman's move toward flexibility is
exactly how to do it. Schools understand now that
disaggregation is important. They understand that measuring the
quality of the product is important. They also recognize that
doing it their way is important.
I want to make a couple of points. My belief in Federal
involvement in education lies in two areas: Title I and 94-192
for special education in 1978. Those are specific statutory
involvements of the Federal Government in education K-12. The
balance of it is done at the local level. The maximum
flexibility we can give with good leadership and guidance, the
better off we're going to be.
There are two areas I'd like to focus on. I guess that I'd
ask--is anybody a special ed teacher?
Ms. Handy-Collins. I was a special education teacher.
Senator Isakson. You looked kind of special. I'm married to
one.
[Laughter.]
Ms. Handy-Collins. Thank you.
Senator Isakson. You know, when we disaggregated kids, we
disaggregated them with disabilities as well--by race, by
language, by learning level, but also by disabilities. If you
were a special needs kid, you were assessed and disaggregated
like other groups or other areas. When we assess them, we
assess them with a one-size-fits-all test with only a 1 percent
exception for cognitive disability. Yet there are a plethora of
disabilities of children in public schools today.
I tried 2 years ago when we brought this subject up to
bring up an idea of alternative assessment where the assessment
of special needs children, instead of being a specialized, one-
size-fits-all test, would be a test chosen in the IEP by the
parent and the faculty member. What do you think about that
idea?
Ms. Handy-Collins. Well, I certainly think that one-size-
fits-all has not been effective, and we're finding that in our
schools. I certainly agree with what you just said, in that if
we had some alternative assessments that our parents and our
communities would agree upon, that would certainly be a great
option.
Senator Isakson. Dr. Hinojosa, you were nodding your head.
Isn't the student's parent and the teacher better equipped to
determine how to assess that child than a standard test?
Mr. Hinojosa. Absolutely. Again, we did have that local
control in Texas at one time. Recently, the law changed, so
we're not able to do that. I'd just like to say, the State
accountability system itself is under a lot of scrutiny at
times, but we are--there's businesses, there's newspapers, and
so forth who are always looking at our successes.
So aside from Washington, we do have an accountability
system in Texas that makes us accountable to our constituents,
our parents, and so forth. They know what's going on in our
communities, and it is publicized.
Senator Isakson. Ms. Moore, you're a National Board
Certified teacher. Is that correct?
Ms. Moore. Yes, that's correct.
Senator Isakson. Congratulations, and thank you for your
commitment.
Ms. Moore. Thank you.
Senator Isakson. I have a question for you on teacher
certification. When I first was elected to Congress in 1999,
President Clinton was President of the United States, and one
of his promises in the State of the Union was to hire 100,000
teachers for local boards of education. There was only one
problem. If there were 100,000 teachers out there to be hired,
they would have already been working. There weren't 100,000 who
were qualified and ready to be hired.
We learned that the teacher shortage was not just because
there weren't that many people who wanted to teach. It was
because there weren't that many people willing to teach who had
the qualifications to do so.
What do you think about alternative certification for a
teacher being able to teach? In other words, if someone--in the
military, we have some programs already, where specialists out
of the military go from troops to teachers, and that's worked
pretty well in Georgia. I think some flexibility in terms of
certifying teachers based on their life's accomplishments gives
us a lot bigger pool to draw from. Would you agree with that or
disagree with that?
Ms. Moore. I would just say from my own experience in
working with the residency model that the more hands-on
experience and the time being in a classroom is going to lead
to better preparation. While I might not have gone through an
alternative route of certifying, I've seen the effects that
having been in a classroom for an entire year can provide one
person.
My novice teacher from last year, Kristen, knew exactly
what to do to set up a classroom and to develop those
relationships with families and students early on. She knew
which procedure she needed to make sure she taught those first
few weeks of school. I can't say that there's anything better
than having more time doing that experience.
We always say that with our students, you learn best by
doing. You learn best by teaching. The more time that someone
has had in the classroom, the better. I would have been lost if
I hadn't had a yearlong preparation program myself when I
entered my classroom, because I wouldn't have known--what do I
do this first day when all these different situations arise.
Senator Isakson. Mr. Chairman, if I can--one extension on
that. Ms. Moore makes a very good point. In Sacramento, CA,
they did a pilot program on alternative certification for
teachers by profession rather than by education. They made any
teacher who was not board certified or otherwise certified to
have a mentor for a year, and they funded the mentor program.
Would that help cause you to like the program more?
Ms. Moore. I definitely would appreciate the mentoring
opportunities. I know in Seattle, we have like a STAR program
where mentors are provided for the first year, and that, along
with the residency model, has been very helpful in preparing
teachers to work in high-need schools.
Senator Isakson. Thank you all for what you do.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Isakson.
Senator Baldwin.
Statement of Senator Baldwin
Senator Baldwin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member
Murray. I appreciate the hearing squarely focused on supporting
our teachers and school leaders.
As we've discussed, we start hearing a little bit about the
choices that are going to be before this committee as we
advance in the effort to reauthorize the ESEA. You start
hearing the debate between flexibility and dedicated funding
streams. Yet you are the practitioners, you are the folks who
can talk about the effect that these proposed changes have on
children in the classroom, in the teaching profession, among
school leaders.
We've been touching in the discussion and the Q & A's back
and forth on a number of issues. I know I'm not going to have
time to explore all of them. I want to definitely more deeply
explore the impact of the changes that we're talking about on
issues like recruitment of future educators who will reflect
the rich diversity of our Nation's classrooms and, as you were
talking about, Dr. Handy-Collins, professional development that
prepares today's educators and school leaders to respond to the
needs of increasingly diverse classrooms.
I hope that we will also have a more granular discussion
about programs like Seattle's Teacher Residency Program and
how, again, the proposed changes that we're talking about would
impact the future of what seems to be an incredibly exceptional
program.
I want to actually touch on one issue that hasn't come up
but is increasingly discussed at home in Wisconsin and I'm sure
in other States, and that is the impact of the changes that
we're talking about on the use of technology in the classroom
in preparing teachers. You know, technology is increasingly
becoming an important tool in the classroom. The effective use
of devices and data and online learning and digital curriculum
can enhance the educational experience, but only if teachers
know how to effectively use this technology.
In discussing the existing Enhancing Education through
Technology Program under ESEA with Wisconsin's Department of
Public Instruction, I was told that continuation of funding for
professional development is the highest priority for
Wisconsin's education technology evolution.
I'm wondering, Ms. Moore, if you can speak to the use of
technology in your classroom or at your school and in your
colleagues' classrooms. Do you have access to any targeted
professional development on the use of technology?
Ms. Moore. In my classroom, we actually--through Donors
Choose, which is a nonprofit agency, I have gotten about five
iPads for my classroom to use. Just recently, based on teacher
voice, the district listened--my administrator listened and
said, ``OK. Our K-2 teachers are saying that we need more
phonics support.''
We went out and we looked at other schools in the district
and saw what they were doing. We ended up getting a program to
use to support early phonics, and that's something that we
receive training on pretty frequently. I just went to a
training about 2 weeks ago.
It's something that--again, because it was driven by
teacher voice and it was something we were really invested in
and we knew our kids needed. There's been a lot of buy-in and
teachers are using it effectively in the classroom and we've
seen great results. Just last week, one student made 20 points
growth on, like, reading levels because of the new work that
we're doing with that phonics program.
Senator Baldwin. Thank you.
Dr. Holliday, can you discuss the importance of
professional development in your State, including such training
specifically tailored to using technology in the classroom?
Mr. Holliday. There's a fundamental issue of bandwidth
first. It doesn't do a lot of good to train in technology
unless you've got bandwidth, and we still have a few places in
Kentucky where the Governor and Representative Rogers are
working to make sure we get the bandwidth.
A critical issue there is training of the teachers and the
principals to understand what the kids already know and then
being able to help translate that into the professional
development that they need. If you dedicate dollars, quite
often, that stifles innovation, and there are a lot of
different ways that we're going about doing this training in
Kentucky and delivering online, delivering just-in-time,
delivering face-to-face.
There are just so many variables and different ways to do
it that when you get into dedicated funding streams, people who
are not very creative tend to say, ``Well, there's the box. I'm
going to stay in it.'' We really need the flexibility to move
around the box, but the accountability to see how technology is
impacting student learning, and our flipped classrooms, our
virtual classrooms, all of those things, seem to be working
very well.
We're able to spread great teachers to far eastern
Kentucky, rural places where they don't have a physics teacher,
just by using the technology. Sometimes the rules get in the
way of the creativity.
Senator Baldwin. Dr. Handy-Collins, do you have a comment?
Ms. Handy-Collins. Yes. I would like to say as we have seen
a paradigm shift in education where we must increase student
engagement and students are engaged with the use of technology,
we have certainly added Promethean boards in most classrooms,
the use of Chromebooks now in classrooms, as well as just
something as simple as opening Wi-Fi access to students,
changing cell phone policy uses in schools. We know that we
have to engage our student learners today, and technology is
certainly a primary way to do that.
The Chairman. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Senator Baldwin.
Senator Franken.
Statement of Senator Franken
Senator Franken. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think one thing
the focus has become today is on kids at the bottom of the
economic ladder whose parents maybe didn't go to college, et
cetera. We're talking about teacher professional development
and professional development of leaders in schools.
Dr. Handy-Collins, I want to thank you for mentioning my
bill, the School Principal Recruitment and Training Act, in
your written testimony. I noticed you didn't use it in your
oral, but----
[Laughter.]
We do thank you.
What this would do is create a competitive grant program to
recruit and train high caliber principals. I think Dr.
Goldhaber talked about to attract teachers like Ms. Moore to
schools that have high-needs, that it's more important that the
ethos of the school attract the teachers, that the teachers
will stay if they feel they're working in an environment where
everyone is working as a team.
The leader of the school creates that. That's why I think
principals are so important, and that's why I think this is so
important.
Can I ask you how this works? How does a principal of a
successful--a successful principal of a high-needs school
mentor for a year--I guess for a school year is one way of
doing it--how that works and how that mentorship would work?
Ms. Handy-Collins. In mentoring teachers or mentoring
school leaders?
Senator Franken. Principals.
Ms. Handy-Collins. Yes. In Montgomery County, we have a
principal internship program, so selected primarily assistant
principals who aspire to be principals are paired with a
successful principal for a full-year. During that time, they
primarily follow the principal to important meetings and really
learn the day-to-day activities of a principal.
For a certain period of time, they also have an opportunity
to actually serve as the principal of the school, whereas the
actual principal leaves the school for like a 6- to 8-week
period and that principal intern is allowed to actually take
over the lead of the school. We have found that this has been
successful in preparing principal leaders.
Certainly, the interns are able to experience being a
principal and knowing the day-to-day activities. It's one thing
to look at the principal from the assistant principal's role,
but to actually serve and to be in that seat, they have a
better opportunity to decide if this is, in fact, for them.
Senator Franken. Let's move from principals to teachers.
Ms. Moore, you've talked about professional development in
your school and teachers working together. I have something
called the STEM Master Teacher Corps, where we need STEM
teachers. We need to keep them, and we need them to help the
professional development of others, and mentoring is a way to
do that. You say it's been very successful--mentoring--in your
school.
Ms. Moore. Yes, that's correct. In the Seattle Teacher
Residency, we use what in education we call the gradual release
of responsibility, where I do something and teach the kids, and
then we do it together, and then the students do it. It's the
you do--I do, we do, you do.
That's kind of the same idea with this co-teaching model in
the residency. At the start of the year, I am mainly the
teacher doing the work, and I'm constantly thinking aloud,
telling my resident, ``This is why I'm doing these things,''
because there's a lot of things that they would walk into the
classroom and not know how to do.
And then similar to this principal internship program, over
time, I'm releasing that responsibility. Just this week, in
Seattle, my co-teacher, Ben, is doing some lead teaching by
himself, and then I'll go back and be a coach and ask him
reflective questions.
Senator Franken. I just want to move on.
Ms. Moore. OK.
Senator Franken. Dr. Goldhaber, you're saying that this
kind of creates an atmosphere that teachers want to stay in.
Right?
Mr. Goldhaber. I'm saying it has the potential to. I think
that we need to investigate whether those kinds of programs
actually work.
Senator Franken. Ms. Moore, just one last thing, because I
have about 30 seconds. You're talking about teachers having to
be the social worker and the teacher. Early childhood, to me,
seems to be sort of the best answer to that for kindergarten
and first grade teachers and second grade teachers having to be
all of that, and I think that's something that we need to be
talking a lot about here on this committee.
Do you agree?
Ms. Moore. Yes, absolutely. I would also just say this push
for early education is something that needs to be really
considered as we look into ESEA reauthorization. I know that
even when students step in the door in kindergarten, they're
coming in at such different levels, and they're already kind of
getting separated based on their ability right there.
Senator Franken. I agree with you.
Ms. Handy-Collins. I would like to add that that doesn't
end at the elementary school level. We see those needs at the
high school level as well.
Senator Franken. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Franken.
Senator Casey.
[No verbal response.]
Senator Whitehouse.
Statement of Senator Whitehouse
Senator Whitehouse. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you
to the panel for being here.
I suspect we all agree that a school that is dealing with a
population with a very high concentration of poverty has a real
problem on its hands and that if they're going to succeed for
the kids, they need significant resources to overcome that
concentration of poverty. I see all the heads nodding here.
We here in Congress in the Federal Government face a
situation in which a State legislature could, as a matter of
policy, decide we're going to throw those schools, those kids,
those teachers, under the bus. We have other priorities. We
want to cut taxes for folks, whatever. If that were to happen,
that gives the Federal Government an interest. I don't want to
be arguing for the Federal Government having no interest in how
well States, schools, districts, whatever, perform.
Meeting with my education community in Rhode Island, I hear
repeatedly about the burden of the testing and accountability
system in the classroom, and that it is at the stage now where
it's actually impeding the ability of teachers to teach,
because they spend so much of their time either dealing with
the tests, coping with the tests, preparing for the tests, not
teaching because some of the classes are in the test, not
teaching because the bandwidth has been entirely absorbed so
that the tests can take place and nobody can get on a computer,
and all of that sort of stuff.
I met yesterday morning with some Rhode Island education
community leaders, and one said that in one grade class, they
counted off 42 days of testing in 1 school year. Another said
that the testing has just run wild--to use their word--run wild
in the classroom.
My question to each of you is: If you spot me that there's
a proper role for Federal oversight in this area, as people who
are familiar with the system, by how much, as a percentage, do
you think you could reduce the testing footprint in the
classroom while still getting the information that we need? I
don't mean for you to be specific, but I'm just trying to get a
sense of how much room you think there is for us to be more--
where should we set our goals?
Is it, ``Well, 90 percent of it has to happen. You could
probably whittle it down by 10.'' Or is it ``Maybe we could get
rid of half and still be able to do this.'' Or is it ``This
thing is out of control. Ten percent of the effort would yield
what we need and the rest, 90 percent, is just going''--people
have kind of lost control of--the purpose having been lost in
the process?
Just a quick opinion. I'm not going to really hold you to
it. I just want to get a flavor for how much you think there is
to--and I know it's going to be very rough numbers.
Mr. Goldhaber.
Mr. Goldhaber. I'm definitely not going to give you a
percentage, except to say that I think----
Senator Whitehouse. Well, why don't we move on to Dr.
Holliday, then, so I can get my percentages?
[Laughter.]
Mr. Goldhaber. Can I just say that----
Senator Whitehouse. We'll come back to you if there's time,
but time is short.
Mr. Goldhaber. OK.
Mr. Holliday. If we eliminate the teacher evaluation
component, which added about 40 percent testing, that would be
about 40 percent right there. If we were able to address
accountability at the State level rather than the Federal
level, we might be able to reduce another 20 percent, because
most of the tests are local and school district tests tied to
the teacher evaluation and tied to the Federal accountability.
Senator Whitehouse. So 60 percent.
Mr. Holliday. Yes.
Senator Whitehouse. Mr. Hinojosa.
Mr. Hinojosa. I agree. I think we can reduce. What the
percentage is, I don't know. I can just give you at least half.
Senator Whitehouse. Ms. Moore.
Ms. Moore. I would just argue at least half as well.
Senator Whitehouse. Dr. Handy-Collins.
Ms. Handy-Collins. Fifty percent sounds like the going
rate.
Senator Whitehouse. And you're comfortable with that?
Ms. Handy-Collins. I'm comfortable with that. I think it's
more important how we use the data and looking at progressive
growth measures.
Senator Whitehouse. Well, I've got 49 seconds left, so back
to you, Dr. Goldhaber, for your non-number answer.
Mr. Goldhaber. Thank you. I think that----
Senator Whitehouse. Forty-three seconds.
Mr. Goldhaber [continuing]. The Federal Government gets a
lot of the blame for the vast amount of testing that takes
place. The studies that look at how much of testing is actually
tied to the 17 NCLB tests suggest that it's anywhere from
roughly a quarter to a third. While I appreciate that a lot of
schools feel like they're over-tested, a lot of it has nothing
to do with the NCLB testing requirement.
Senator Whitehouse. All right. Well, I've got 14 seconds
left, so I'm not going to hazard a question.
Mr. Chairman, thank you for leading us through this effort
to try to repair this broken law.
The Chairman. Senator Whitehouse, as you can tell, would be
a very skillful headmaster. Thank you very much.
Senator Casey.
Statement of Senator Casey
Senator Casey. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Sorry I wasn't here
for my turn. I've been juggling hearings. We're grateful for
the contribution of this panel.
I wish I could get to each of you. I'll probably only get
to two, kind of on my right, your left, for most of it. One of
the broad principles that I start with when we come to these
questions--we're here to talk about education and teaching and
supporting the teaching profession and making sure that we have
the kind of support and resources.
I do start from a broader frame. I think it was page--I
guess it was the third page, Ms. Moore, of your testimony,
where you say, and I quote, at the bottom of the second to the
last paragraph, this means, ``resources and support for the
whole child, like good nutrition and healthcare, not just
investing in high-quality teaching.''
I couldn't agree more, and I think when we're talking about
all these issues, we need to step back and say, ``What are we
doing as a country for children?'' We all believe that every
child is born with a light inside them, the light of their
potential. We say we're committed to making sure the light of
every child shines as brightly as it should, and yet we don't
have a national strategy to do that.
We had a Marshall Plan after World War II for Europe to
rebuild Europe, yet we've never had a Marshall Plan for
children. I think that's just a fact. It's a sad fact to report
and to assert. So I start from that broader frame.
Dr. Handy-Collins, as much as I've seen the impact that
teachers can make in a classroom and in the life of a child,
I've also seen the impact that principals make. Sometimes when
other parts of the school are not where they ought to be, and
the school is maybe going in the wrong direction, a strong
principal can be so determinative of the outcome we all hope
for. Your point about professional development is well taken,
and I want to support that as best I can.
In the same vein, Ms. Moore, about supporting teachers, you
said a couple of things which are important. No. 1, you said--
at the bottom of your first page, you talked about teacher
induction, professional growth, teacher leadership as being
kind of building blocks.
Later, you say, ``With co-teaching, we can meet the needs
of all 20 of our students every day.'' That's a remarkable
statement, because I'm not sure a lot of people hear that
enough. Tell me--this idea of mentoring and the particular
program that you have--tell me what the elements are for the
most successful mentoring program for teachers based upon your
experience.
Ms. Moore. I would say that based on the STR, the Seattle
Teacher Residency experience, that the most important thing is
that it is really driven by teachers. The Urban Teacher
Residency United along with our director, Marisa Bier--they are
teachers themselves, who know what works in the classroom and
what doesn't.
They're very responsive to the needs of teachers as well as
students. They get into the classroom, at least a coach every
week, and they're constantly asking teachers, ``What do we need
to do better to prepare our residents?''
So if I say, ``Our residents don't seem like they really
understand the assessment piece in developing their own
assessments,'' they go back and they add that into their
curricula with the University of Washington. They have that
unique ability to work with all those different partnerships to
really address what teachers see as the greatest need for our
students.
Then I guess just taking that time to really have those
conversations, learning focus conversations with the teachers,
with the residents, with their coaches--their professors are
all--it's all engaged in that work together. We have monthly
training, so that I, as a mentor, can go meet up with a network
of other teachers in Seattle schools, and we can talk about
what we can best do to support our teachers so that one day,
maybe the teacher I mentored is going to go be a colleague for
somebody else.
Maybe I'm going to have Kristen, my novice teacher, teach
kindergarten and send her kids to me, or maybe I will be
sending my kids on. We're really making sure that we're focused
on what the students need in our schools.
Senator Casey. Well, as someone who spent only a total of 1
year as a volunteer teacher in a volunteer program, the Jesuit
Volunteer Corps, my placement was in north Philadelphia. I
really could have used a program like the one that you
described.
In my remaining 25 seconds, Dr. Holliday, I want to ask you
just real quick--on page 2 of your testimony, you said, ``We
have seen Kentucky schools move from the bottom 5 percent to
the top 10 percent in the State using this model.'' Tell us
again how you got there. What is the model you describe, and
what's the example?
Mr. Holliday. Very similar to what Ms. Moore is talking
about, mentorship, full-time math coach, literacy coach, and a
principal coach. You can't bring in a bunch of new teachers in
certain parts of our State. You've got to address the ones that
you have. Having that full-time mentorship, real solid support
and coaching, you can help teachers really turn it around, and
we've seen the evidence of it.
Senator Casey. Thanks very much.
Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. I want to thank the witnesses. I'll turn to
Senator Murray for her concluding remarks in just a minute.
I've heard a lot of--all of us have heard different things.
I think, Dr. Goldhaber, your point that maybe a fourth to a
third of the tests that people see in the schools are related
to the 17 Federal tests is especially helpful to us as we think
about the Federal tests.
Dr. Holliday, you've expressed a strong view that the State
accountability systems are in place and important, and you and
other chiefs, while you support the tests, don't want the
further direction of Federal accountability systems for
teachers and schools.
Mr. Hinojosa, you've echoed what Secretary Duncan and
Secretary Spellings have told us about the Teacher Incentive
Fund, and you've actually made it work.
Ms. Moore, you've emphasized teacher voices, which I think
is very important as we think about what we require from here
and what we leave to you. That's an important voice.
Dr. Handy-Collins, you've eloquently talked about the
importance of school leadership.
I thought Senator Whitehouse's question was one that's
probably on the minds of all of us as we try to understand the
complaint we hear about the number of tests and the concern we
have about wanting to make sure that we do have a strong
accountability system, but whether we become so prescriptive
and intrusive here that we're getting in the way of strong
Texas accountability or Kentucky or Washington State or
Maryland accountability systems where teachers and principals
and school boards are making their own decisions about what is
success, what is failure, and what are the consequences for
schools and teachers.
It's been a very helpful hearing. This is the second
hearing that we've had where Senator Murray and I and our
staffs have agreed on the witnesses. I think that makes much
more of a bipartisan setting, which is the kind of thing we
like to try for. We don't always get that, but we like to head
that way. We're more likely to get a result if we work that
way.
One week from today, on Tuesday, we'll try something a
little different--a roundtable on innovation in the States,
where Senators can more directly interact with experts.
The hearing record will remain open for 10 business days.
Members may submit additional information or questions to the
witnesses for the record within the time if they would like,
and the witnesses--if there was something that you wanted to
say to us today--like Senator Whitehouse didn't give you a long
time to answer his questions. If you had something else you
wanted to say to him or to us, please feel free to do that, and
we'd like to ask you to get that in within the next few days.
We thank you for being here. I'll call on Senator Murray
now for any remarks that she would like to make, and then we'll
adjourn the hearing.
Senator Murray. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for this
hearing. I really want to thank all of our witnesses today. I
think you brought us invaluable insight as we work together on
this committee, hopefully, to create a bipartisan bill to move
forward. I think it's important to every person who says No
Child Left Behind is broken. We want to fix it. We want to work
with you, Mr. Chairman, to do that in a bipartisan way.
I think it is really valuable to have people here who are
in the field every day working with our young people to help us
as we put together this proposal. I want to thank all of our
committee members, too. I think they bring invaluable insight,
and we've got a lot of work ahead of us.
Thank you very much.
The Chairman. Thank you. The hearing is adjourned.
[Additional Material follows.]
ADDITIONAL MATERIAL
Response by Dan Goldhaber to Questions of Senator Collins
and Senator Murkowski
Thank you for your careful reading of my testimony to the HELP
Committee and the followup questions. Below I address each question and
try to be clear about what the research base says about a particular
issue and what falls more into the realm of my speculation based on
many years of studying the K-12 system.
Please feel free to contact me ([email protected] or 206-547-1562)
if you have any additional questions.
Sincerely,
Dan.
______
senator collins
Question 1. In 2005, former-Senator Olympia Snowe and I
commissioned the Maine NCLB Task Force to examine the issues Maine
faced with implementing the new law.
Maine's small rural schools, the ``Highly Qualified Teacher''
standard (HQT) was particularly burdensome and, in many cases,
unworkable. In rural schools, the reality is that teachers must teach
multiple subjects and are often re-assigned to different content areas
because of low enrollments. Yet HQT requires teachers to have majored
in or passed rigorous State tests in the subjects that they are
teaching. When this year's fourth grade math teacher must become next
year's fifth grade science teacher, meeting the added burden of
becoming ``highly qualified'' in several academic areas makes staffing
even more difficult.
The Maine Task Force recommended that States be granted flexibility
to create different standards for rural school districts. Do you
believe that States should have the authority to set alternative
standards in small rural schools that incorporate factors such as
school size and the courses available?
Answer 1. I do not believe the HQT requirement effectively ensures
that students do in fact have a highly effective teacher. Quite simply,
the determinants of a teacher meeting the HQT standard are only weakly,
at best, related to how effective a teacher is in the classroom.\1\ I
also agree that the HQT provision can be particularly problematic for
school systems and schools with particularly difficult staffing
challenges, as is often true for rural systems. For that reason, my
opinion is that there should certainly be flexibility around the HQT
requirement (or a wholesale change of this particular requirement).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ See, for instance, Goldhaber (2007) on licensure tests and
Goldhaber (2015) for a more general review of the teacher
qualifications that do (or do not, as is often the case) predict
teacher effectiveness.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
That said, your question is broader in that it focuses on
``alternative standards.'' Here I would try to separate out what is
under a school or school district's control from the factors that are
not. In general, I think it makes sense to hold school systems
accountable for policies and practices they control and allow
adaptations in requirements for factors they don't. School systems
probably have only limited ability within their resource constraints to
affect the kind of teacher applicants they attract so I could imagine
setting somewhat different standards based on how rural a district is
or the specific type or needs of students enrolled in a district, but I
would be more wary of setting up different standards for factors, such
as school size and courses offered, since districts have some control
over these decisions.
Question 2. No Child Left Behind defines ``core academic subjects''
to include 10 subject areas, including civics and government,
economics, history, and geography.
The Maine NCLB Task Force observed that many schools integrated
these four subjects into one ``social studies'' course. Yet the
``Highly Qualified Teacher'' standard (HQT) would have had a social
studies teacher meet the HQT requirements of all four subject areas.
Notably, NCLB does not break down ``science'' into its many
subdivisions, like biology or chemistry.
School districts want to attract the best and the brightest to the
teaching profession. My concern, however, is that the HQT standard may
have had two unintended and related consequences.
First, it places a burden on teachers who have multiple class
assignments. And second, it may result in narrowing school curricula,
resulting in fewer classes being offered. The Maine Task Force found
that these burdens were particularly detrimental to small rural
districts, where teacher recruitment and retention is especially
difficult.
What effects have the HQT standards had on teacher recruitment and
retention, as well as school curricula? Are there ways to encourage
teachers to gain additional subject-matter knowledge without imposing
an HQT requirement in each subject that a teacher teaches?
Answer 2. No research that I know of speaks directly to whether the
HQT standards affect teacher recruitment, retention, or curricula.
However, as I said in answering #1 above, I do not see a very good
argument for keeping this standard given its unproven connection with
student learning.
Question 3. In 2013, like 42 other States, Maine received a No
Child Left Behind flexibility waiver from the U.S. Department of
Education, which exempts it from some of the requirements of the
Federal law. However, the U.S. Department of Education has determined
that Maine has not yet adopted adequate guidelines for teacher and
principal evaluation systems. The Department notes that the State must
clarify the role of statewide tests in its teacher evaluations.
If the State adopts a different evaluation system that does not
place what the U.S. Department of Education believes is enough emphasis
on student test scores in its teacher performance measurement, then the
waiver could be revoked and many of Maine's schools may be deemed
``failing.'' In fact, Washington State faced this very scenario 1 year
ago, and has since lost its waiver.
If a State determines that student test scores should be one of
many factors in teacher evaluations, should the Federal Government be
overruling their judgment?
Answer 3. This question can't be answered from a research
perspective; it is more of a political question and a matter of
opinion. For the record, I do believe student test-based measures of
teacher effectiveness (also commonly referred to as ``value-added'')
contain important information about teacher effectiveness. In fact, as
an example, there was some discussion at the HELP Committee hearing on
January 27 of the study (Chetty, et al., 2014) showing that effective
teachers have long-term impacts on student outcomes (such as predicting
whether they go to college and what they earn later in the labor
market). The metric used for teacher effectiveness in that study is a
student test-based measure, showing that this particular way of
assessing teachers tells us not only about teachers? impacts on student
tests but a much broader array of later outcomes.
As a more direct response to your question, my understanding is
that all States that receive an NCLB waiver use multiple factors in
creating summative measures of teacher performance. Research cannot yet
assess much about the implications of assigning different weights to
each factor (classroom observations, value-added, etc.) because the
waivers and evaluation systems are new. As I stressed in my testimony,
older teacher evaluation systems that typically relied only on
classroom observations tended to suggest that nearly all teachers are
the same, and nearly all fall near the top of whatever performance
evaluation system is being used (Weisburg, et al., 2009). This
assessment of teachers does not comport with what we know empirically--
that they differ substantially from one another in ways that affect
their students' outcomes.
senator murkowski
Question 1. The Discussion Draft bill that we are working on here
in the committee would give much more autonomy to States to make
decisions about education policies. Do you think that the Federal
Government should maintain some basic requirements for States to
implement in designing how they ensure the maximum number of effective
teachers and leaders, or should Congress give States complete
authority? Why?
Answer 1. This too is a difficult question to answer from a
strictly research perspective as it really depends on what States will
do absent Federal requirements. My own opinion is that the Federal
Government should keep pushing States to develop valid and reliable
educator-evaluation systems.
Some States will likely adopt or keep evaluation systems that are
valid in the sense that they reflect important differences in the
contributions that educators make toward student achievement.\2\
Indeed, as Senator Alexander mentioned, Tennessee once had a teacher
career ladder that recognized and rewarded effective teachers.\3\ But,
as Senator Alexander also mentioned, the State abandoned the system.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ See Croft, et al. (2011) on validating teacher evaluation
systems.
\3\ This career ladder has been studied and validated, see Dee and
Keys, 2004.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm skeptical that most, or even many, States will have effective
educator-evaluation systems unless the Federal Government nudges them.
My skepticism stems from the fact that States have had tremendous
flexibility in designing evaluation systems for many years and few of
the systems they created recognized differences in performance between
teachers. As noted above in my answer to Senator Collins, the evidence
is that States' old evaluation systems usually suggested the
overwhelming majority of teachers were the same.
I recognize the powerful appeal of the message that we should
simply devolve the system to State control, but the politics around
educator evaluation are tough at every level. In the end, it is a
judgment call about whether the benefits of greater flexibility around
educator-evaluation systems outweigh the potential that States will
fail to adopt valid and reliable systems. I've never served in a State-
level position, but I have served on a local school board (before
NCLB), and we confronted difficult political terrain when it came to
teacher and leader evaluation. In that position, saying that we made
our evaluation system more rigorous in part because we're required to
do so. This would have taken some of the political heat off of us.
Question 2. You indicated in your written testimony that
professional development has little or mixed impact on student
achievement. My teacher friends tell me that too often, ``professional
development'' consists of bringing teachers together after school for
an hour so they can be introduced to a new kit, or a new method,
curriculum, or standard, but that long-term, individualized assistance
to implement whatever the new thing is, is rare. Does the research
compare the effects of this type of professional development vs. long-
term, individualized approaches? If so, what guidance does it provide
to principals and school districts?
Answer 2. Your important question raises two distinct, though
related, issues: whether professional development is generalized versus
individualized, and whether it is a ``one off '' training or is more
intensive (more hours spread over a longer time and connected more
closely with content). There is a strong consensus now that ``one off
'' seminars have little impact on teacher knowledge, practices, or
student learning. By contrast, there is better evidence that more
intensive professional development works, though, as I mentioned in my
testimony, even the evidence on this is mixed.\4\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ Yoon, et al. (2007) provide a good review of the professional
development literature and the features of professional development
that seem most promising.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
To my knowledge, there are no convincing studies on whether more
individualized professional development is more effective, but I
believe good reasons suggest it would be. The argument here is simply
that educators have different needs when it comes to improvement so the
support they receive should address those individualized needs. This is
why I think it is so essential that educator-evaluation systems
pinpoint those needs. If they aren't identified and documented, how
could schools' personnel and support systems possibly address them? To
be speculative and brief, I believe that one reason professional
development does not have a greater impact is that the professional
development that teachers receive is not grounded in information from
rigorous evaluation systems.
References
Chetty, R., Friedman, J., & Rockoff, J. (2014). Measuring the impacts
of teachers II: Teacher value-added and student outcomes in
adulthood. American Economic Review, 104(9): 2633-79.
Croft, M., Glazerman, S., Goldhaber, D., Loeb, S., Raudenbush, S.,
Staiger, D., & Whitehurst, G. (2011). Passing muster: Evaluating
teacher evaluation systems. A report for The Brookings Brown Center
Task Group on Teacher Quality. Published April 26, 2011 at http://
www.brookings.edu/research/reports/2011/04/26-evaluating-teachers.
Dee, T. & Keys, B. (2004). Does merit pay reward good teachers?
Evidence from a randomized experiment. Journal of Policy Analysis
and Management, 23(3): 471-88.
Goldhaber, D. (2007). Everyone's doing it, but what does teacher
testing tell us about teacher effectiveness? Journal of Human
Resources, 42(4): 765-94
Goldhaber, Dan. (2014). Exploring the potential of value added
performance measures to affect the quality of the teacher
workforce. Educational Researcher, in press.
Weisburg, D., Sexton, S., Mulhern, J., & Keeling, D. (2009). The widget
effect: Our national failure to acknowledge and act on differences
in teacher effectiveness. A report for The New Teacher Project.
Retrieved from http://tntp.org/publications/view/the-widget-effect-
failure-to-act-on-differences-in-teacher-effectiveness.
Yoon, K. S., Duncan, T., Lee, S. W.-Y., Scarloss, B., & Shapley, K.
(2007). Reviewing the evidence on how teacher professional
development affects student achievement (Issues & Answers Report,
REL 2007--No. 033). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education,
Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education
Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Regional Educational Laboratory
Southwest. Retrieved from http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs.
Response by Terry Holliday to Questions of Senator Collins
and Senator Murkowski
senator collins
Question 1. In 2005, former-Senator Olympia Snow and I commissioned
the Maine NCLB Task Force to examine the issues Maine faced with
implementing the new law.
Maine's small rural schools, the ``Highly Qualified Teacher''
standard (HQT) was particularly burdensome and, in many cases,
unworkable. In rural schools, the reality is that teachers must teach
multiple subjects and are often re-assigned to different content areas
because of low enrollments. Yet HQT requires teachers to have majored
in or passed rigorous State tests in the subjects that they are
teaching. When this year's fourth grade math teacher must become next
year's fifth grade science teacher, meeting the added burden of
becoming ``highly qualified'' in several academic areas makes staffing
even more difficult.
The Maine Task Force recommended that States be granted flexibility
to create different standards for rural school districts. Do you
believe that States should have the authority to set alternative
standards in small rural schools that incorporate factors such as
school size and the courses available?
Answer 1. As a State chief, I can assure you that the HQT standard
was burdensome and did not lead to higher quality teachers in every
classroom in our Nation. The teacher equity gaps between schools with
higher socioeconomic levels and schools with lower socioeconomic levels
have actually widened since NCLB. In Senator Alexander's discussion
draft, State chiefs are encouraged to see the HQT requirement removed.
Teacher licensure, evaluation, and equitable distribution are best left
to States due to the many different contexts in States such as the
rural context you mention in your question.
Question 2. No Child Left Behind defines ``core academic subjects''
to include 10 subject areas, including civics and government,
economics, history, and geography.
The Maine NCLB Task Force observed that many schools integrated
these four subjects into one ``social studies'' course. Yet the
``Highly Qualified Teacher'' standard (HQT) would have had a social
studies teacher meet the HQT requirements of all four subject areas.
Notably, NCLB does not break down ``science'' into its many
subdivisions, like biology or chemistry.
School districts want to attract the best and the brightest to the
teaching profession. My concern, however, is that the HQT standard may
have had two unintended and related consequences.
First, it places a burden on teachers who have multiple class
assignments. And second, it may result in narrowing school curricula,
resulting in fewer classes being offered. The Maine Task Force found
that these burdens were particularly detrimental to small rural
districts, where teacher recruitment and retention is especially
difficult.
What effects have the HQT standards had on teacher recruitment and
retention, as well as school curricula? Are there ways to encourage
teachers to gain additional subject-matter knowledge without imposing
an HQT requirement in each subject that a teacher teaches?
Answer 2. As a State chief, I agree that HQT standards have not
helped States properly identify and support high-quality instruction.
State chiefs believe that State certification and licensure standards
and procedures should govern. In fact, the Council of Chief State
School Officers (CCSSO) developed a series of recommendations for
States to transform teacher preparation and licensure, and several
States, including Kentucky, are working in this direction today.
Question 3. In 2013, like 42 other States, Maine received a No
Child Left Behind flexibility waiver from the U.S. Department of
Education, which exempts it from some of the requirements of the
Federal law. However, the U.S. Department of Education has determined
that Maine has not yet adopted adequate guidelines for teacher and
principal evaluation systems. The Department notes that the State must
clarify the role of statewide tests in its teacher evaluations.
If the State adopts a different evaluation system that does not
place what the U.S. Department of Education believes is enough emphasis
on student test scores in its teacher performance measurement, then the
waiver could be revoked and many of Maine's schools may be deemed
``failing.'' In fact, Washington State faced this very scenario 1 year
ago, and has since lost its waiver.
If a State determines that student test scores should be one of
many factors in teacher evaluations, should the Federal Government be
overruling their judgment?
Answer 3. Most State chiefs believe that States should control
teacher evaluation systems and processes. State chiefs support the
ability to use ESEA funds for the development and implementation of
State evaluation systems. The Federal Government should not be able to
overrule the judgment of a State with regard to teacher evaluation
systems. States have spent enormous energy and resources to develop
teacher evaluation systems that have the support of stakeholders in the
State. The Federal Government should not undermine this important work.
senator murkowski
Question 1. The Discussion Draft bill that we are working on here
in the committee would give much more autonomy to States to make
decisions about education policies. Do you think that the Federal
Government should maintain some basic requirements for States to
implement in designing how they ensure the maximum number of effective
teachers and leaders, or should Congress give States complete
authority? Why?
Answer 1. State chiefs believe States should have the
responsibility and flexibility to design and improve teacher and
principal effectiveness systems. This work requires significant
resources and stakeholder involvement. Teacher and principal evaluation
systems should support continuous instructional improvement, recognize
outstanding performance and include:
Multiple measures of teacher and leader performance;
Meaningful differentiation of performance; and
Actionable information to inform professional development
and support.
A reauthorized ESEA should allow input from but not require the
approval of the U.S. Department of Education of any State's evaluation
system. It is important to allow use of ESEA funds for the development
and implementation of those systems.
Question 2. You stated in your written testimony that Congress
should allow States to dictate their own timelines for ensuring that
all schools are staffed by excellent educators and leaders. I agree
that one-size-fits-all dictates from Washington, DC are problematic at
best. How many years, in your estimation, would it take all States to
meet this expectation?
Answer 2. In Kentucky, we are estimating a 5-year timeline to see
significant improvement in the equitable distribution of educators and
leaders. However, every State has a different context. States with
large urban settings have different challenges than States with a large
percentage of small and rural school districts. The challenges of
context underline the reason why there cannot be a one-size-fits-all
dictate from Washington. State chiefs have taken the lead on this issue
and are working on State plans to address equitable distribution of
educators and leaders. An appropriate role for ESEA authorization would
be the requirement that States develop equitable distribution plans and
utilize Federal funds to implement the plans. However, the U.S.
Department of Education should not have the authority to approve plans.
An appropriate role for the department would be to provide examples of
best practice and publicly report progress.
Response of Saul Hinojosa to Questions of Senator Collins
and Senator Murkowski
senator collins
Question 1. In 2005, former-Senator Olympia Snowe and I
commissioned the Maine NCLB Task Force to examine the issues Maine
faced with implementing the new law.
Maine's small rural schools, the ``Highly Qualified Teacher''
standard (HQT) was particularly burdensome and, in many cases,
unworkable. In rural schools, the reality is that teachers must teach
multiple subjects and are often re-assigned to different content areas
because of low enrollments. Yet HQT requires teachers to have majored
in or passed rigorous State tests in the subjects that they are
teaching. When this year's fourth grade math teacher must become next
year's fifth grade science teacher, meeting the added burden of
becoming ``highly qualified'' in several academic areas makes staffing
even more difficult.
The Maine Task Force recommended that States be granted flexibility
to create different standards for rural school districts. Do you
believe that States should have the authority to set alternative
standards in small rural schools that incorporate factors such as
school size and the courses available?
Answer 1. A large part of the reason we have moved in my district
to a new evaluation system for teachers is that we found measures such
as Highly Qualified Teacher did not tell us whether a teacher would be
effective in the classroom. The system we are now using takes student
outcomes and results into account, measuring whether a teacher is
effective in the classroom. It also provides the kind of detailed
feedback that is necessary for a teacher to improve their practice.
Without accurate and detailed feedback, it is difficult for teachers to
identify and address issues in their practice. In my view this is a far
better way for us to evaluate and support teachers.
I have also found that the HQT requirement has proven to be an
obstacle when I wanted to hire teachers who did not meet the
requirements of that standard. For example, Somerset ISD recently found
an outstanding teacher who moved in from the State of Wyoming who had 6
years of experience. Subsequently, the State of Texas issued her a 1-
year temporary certificate until she completed her requirements for
certification. HQT though would not certify her to be ``Highly
Qualified'' until she passed the Texas exam. This example illuminates
the disconnect between the National and State standards for hiring
teachers which can cause barriers to hiring exemplary personnel. As you
heard in my testimony, we have used a TIF grant to create district
structures to better identify, support and reward effective teaching. I
view a strong commitment to creating structures and systems to ensure
that students are being taught by effective teachers, in part measured
by student learning growth, to be an effective way to provide all
students with effective classroom teachers.
Question 2. No Child Left Behind defines ``core academic subjects''
to include 10 subject areas, including civics and government,
economics, history, and geography.
The Maine NCLB Task Force observed that many schools integrated
these four subjects into one ``social studies'' course. Yet the
``Highly Qualified Teacher'' standard (HQT) would have had a social
studies teacher meet the HQT requirements of all four subject areas.
Notably, NCLB does not break down ``science'' into its many
subdivisions, like biology or chemistry.
School districts want to attract the best and the brightest to the
teaching profession. My concern, however, is that the HQT standard may
have had two unintended and related consequences:
First, it places a burden on teachers who have multiple class
assignments. And second, it may result in narrowing school curricula,
resulting in fewer classes being offered. The Maine Task Force found
that these burdens were particularly detrimental to small rural
districts, where teacher recruitment and retention is especially
difficult.
What effects have the HQT standards had on teacher recruitment and
retention, as well as school curricula? Are there ways to encourage
teachers to gain additional subject-matter knowledge without imposing
an HQT requirement in each subject that a teacher teaches?
Answer 2. I would make the case that using multiple measures of
teacher effectiveness, including observations of their classroom
instruction multiple times during the year by multiple observers, and
some measure of student learning growth, among other possible measures,
provides a much greater assurance that students are being taught by an
effective teacher than HQT requirements. When we set specific criteria
to identify HQT teachers it limits the pool of personnel districts,
especially in rural areas, can attract. Flexibility of providing
structures of research-based staff development to aspiring teachers,
would allow districts to develop newly hired teachers into effective
teachers at an accelerated rate.
Question 3. In 2013, like 42 other States, Maine received a No
Child Left Behind flexibility waiver from the U.S. Department of
Education, which exempts it from some of the requirements of the
Federal law. However, the U.S. Department of Education has determined
that Maine has not yet adopted adequate guidelines for teacher and
principal evaluation systems. The Department notes that the State must
clarify the role of statewide tests in its teacher evaluations.
If the State adopts a different evaluation system that does not
place what the U.S. Department of Education believes is enough emphasis
on student test scores in its teacher performance measurement, then the
waiver could be revoked and many of Maine's schools may be deemed
``failing.'' In fact, Washington State faced this very scenario 1 year
ago, and has since lost its waiver.
If a State determines that student test scores should be one of
many factors in teacher evaluations, should the Federal Government be
overruling their judgment?
Answer 3. In my own experience, teacher evaluation should include
multiple measures of effectiveness. In my district, we include a
measure of student learning growth as one of the factors. The reason
this has been important for us is that it enables us to help teachers
to make the connection between their instructional practice and what
students are learning. For example, a teacher might feel that she is
teaching a particular topic very well, but if students are not grasping
the concepts, adjustments need to be made. By looking at student
learning growth in her classroom, and reflecting on her own practice
and the feedback she has received over several observations of her
classroom, she has more information to guide her as she makes necessary
adjustments.
senator murkowski
Question 1. The Discussion Draft bill that we are working on here
in the committee would give much more autonomy to States to make
decisions about education policies. Do you think that the Federal
Government should maintain some basic requirements for States to
implement in designing how they ensure the maximum number of effective
teachers and leaders, or should Congress give States complete
authority? Why?
Answer 1. As I described in my testimony, there were several
failing schools in my district before we won a TIF grant. All of the
adults in the school system were committed to improving student
academic performance, but we needed help in making some major changes
in the way we recruit, develop, support, promote and compensate
teachers. Knowing we were not hitting targets set by NCLB was an
important first step, but we needed support in figuring out how best to
meet new higher standards. The old system just wasn't producing the
results we all wanted. I think the Federal Government has an important
role to play in providing support to districts and States to make
innovative changes in the ways we manage our most critical resource,
our effective teachers and leaders. I think it is incumbent on those of
us who have received this support through grants like TIF to share our
experiences and lessons learned with others so they may benefit.
Question 2. I appreciate the work that you and your colleagues have
done to create professional learning communities and continuous
improvement in your schools. You noted that you were able to design and
implement this model, which has been very effective in raising student
achievement, because of the Federal TIF grant. Given that other States
have used TIF grants to create teacher and leader recognition programs
that are no longer being used, would you recommend that we require any
TIF grantee district to use the model that has worked so well for
Somerset School District or some variation that has essentially the
same components or process?
Answer 2. The regulations for TIF have changed over time to reflect
the lessons learned in various projects, as you suggest in your
question. For example, the most recent cohort of grantees were required
to describe the ways that their approach would connect evaluation to
professional development and support. This was not a requirement in the
first cohort. I think the regulations strike a balance between
requiring grantees to include certain elements or to align certain
elements of their systems of teacher and leader effectiveness, while
leaving open the way in which they will do it.
While we have had tremendous success working with the TAP System
using our TIF grant, I think the right approach is to outline key
features that have proven broadly successful and allow grant applicants
to design these features as they see fit.
As you note, in TIF there are some grantees who did not continue
with their initiative after the grant ended. I expect that to be the
case with a program that is designed to support innovation. I would
also note however that there are a number of reports that highlight the
successes that districts and States are having using TIF, including how
their work has influenced the development of statewide teacher
evaluation systems, new opportunities for teacher leadership roles, and
the creation of more effective ways of providing school-based
professional development.
When districts acquire grants it allows for opportunities to
experiment with research-based contemporary methodologies to improve
student achievement knowing that eventually the grant will end.
Somerset ISD, due to the successes in incremental implementation of the
TAP System, developed a long-range plan to sustain the system after the
grant ended. As a result, we now have the ability to be a TAP district
without the fiduciary support of the TIF grant.
Response by Rachelle Moore to Questions of Senator Collins
and Senator Murkowski
senator collins
Question 1. In 2005, former-Senator Olympia Snowe and I
commissioned the Maine NCLB Task Force to examine the issues Maine
faced with implementing the new law.
Maine's small rural schools, the ``Highly Qualified Teacher''
standard (HQT) was particularly burdensome and, in many cases,
unworkable. In rural schools, the reality is that teachers must teach
multiple subjects and are often re-assigned to different content areas
because of low enrollments. Yet HQT requires teachers to have majored
in or passed rigorous State tests in the subjects that they are
teaching. When this year's fourth grade math teacher must become next
year's fifth grade science teacher, meeting the added burden of
becoming ``highly qualified'' in several academic areas makes staffing
even more difficult.
The Maine Task Force recommended that States be granted flexibility
to create different standards for rural school districts. Do you
believe that States should have the authority to set alternative
standards in small rural schools that incorporate factors such as
school size and the courses available?
Answer 1. Based on my own experiences, in a small K-8 urban school,
I understand the difficulties low enrollment can have on staff
assignments and the resulting implications for the school. There are a
number of difficulties related to hiring HQ teachers, particularly with
Special Education. I would argue that States be granted flexibility not
just for rural schools, but also for urban schools like mine.
After reaching out to colleagues and WEA members, I was reminded of
the HOUSEE method that allowed teachers to teach outside of their
endorsed areas (provided the school explained the status of the teacher
in a letter to parents) and to become highly qualified after so many
years of teaching the course and receiving good evaluations.
Again, as noted in my testimony, the best way to ensure we prepare
and retain high-quality educators is to invest in the continuum that
includes teacher induction, professional growth, and teacher
leadership. The Seattle Teacher Residency program and National Board
Certification have provided invaluable learning experiences for me as a
teacher, helping me grow in my practice as I strive to make the
invisible visible to novice teachers. I have opened the doors of my
classroom to colleagues and engaged in authentic discussions of
teaching and learning. I have become an instructional leader in my
school and district, and helped improved student learning beyond my own
classroom. This work has proven more important than my title as a
``highly qualified teacher.''
Question 2. No Child Left Behind defines ``core academic subjects''
to includes 10 subject areas, including civics and government,
economics, history, and geography.
The Maine NCLB Task Force observed that many schools integrated
these four subjects into one ``social studies'' course. Yet the
``Highly Qualified Teacher'' standard (HQT) would have had a social
studies teacher meet the HQT requirements of all four subject areas.
Notably, NCLB does not break down ``science'' into its many
subdivisions, like biology or chemistry.
School districts want to attract the best and the brightest to the
teaching profession. My concern, however, is that the HQT standard may
have had two unintended and related consequences:
First, it places a burden on teachers who have multiple class
assignments. And second, it may result in narrowing school curricula,
resulting in fewer classes being offered. The Maine Task Force found
that these burdens were particularly detrimental to small rural
districts, where teacher recruitment and retention is especially
difficult.
What effects have the HQT standards had on teacher recruitment and
retention, as well as school curricula? Are there ways to encourage
teachers to gain additional subject-matter knowledge without imposing
an HQT requirement in each subject that a teacher teaches?
Answer 2. Again, these burdens are the same regardless of school
setting. A middle school teacher in my school explained to me the
difficulty he had in finding a job as a language arts teacher because
he wasn't also HQ in social studies and the two courses are often
combined. Despite him receiving a Masters degree and completing a year-
long internship in a low-income school with underserved populations,
the HQT standards limited his opportunities in terms of finding a job.
If Congress wants to keep the HQT standards, they should keep the basic
endorsement requirement and perhaps return to using the experience and
successful evaluation system.
There is a large range of costs for endorsements depending on the
endorsement being added, the institution one is receiving it from, and
their previous undergraduate coursework. In order to ease the financial
hardship, I would consider offering incentives for dual certification
for teachers to gain additional subject-matter knowledge. In Washington
State, the Retooling Scholarship helps teachers add endorsements in
high-need areas. Some districts also offer stipends or days off for
teachers adding endorsements at the request of the district. My school
district supported me in my pursuit of National Board certification,
which was a critical part of my development as a teacher. Expanding
these types of opportunities for more teachers should be a part of a
reauthorized ESEA.
While I am not aware of the effects the HQT standards have had on
teacher recruitment and retention in a rural setting, I can speak to my
experience with the Seattle Teacher Residency program which offers dual
certification in either SPED or ELL, on top of the K-8 and Masters
degree the residents receive. Residents who I've worked with
acknowledged that this aspect of the program made it more appealing
than other programs. As the reauthorization process continues, I
recommend you engage with the teachers who have to face these questions
every day. They may be able to suggest solutions that acknowledge the
realities of rural settings while continuing to invest in teacher
development and support.
Question 3. In 2013, like 42 other States, Maine received a No
Child Left Behind flexibility waiver from the U.S. Department of
Education, which exempts it from some of the requirements of the
Federal law. However, the U.S. Department of Education has determined
that Maine has not yet adopted adequate guidelines for teacher and
principal evaluation systems. The Department notes that the State must
clarify the role of statewide tests in its teacher evaluations.
If the State adopts a different evaluation system that does not
place what the U.S. Department of Education believes is enough emphasis
on student test scores in its teacher performance measurement, then the
waiver could be revoked and many of Maine's schools may be deemed
``failing.'' In fact, Washington State faced this very scenario 1 year
ago, and has since lost its waiver.
If a State determines that student test scores should be one of
many factors in teacher evaluations, should the Federal Government be
overruling their judgment?
Answer 3. No, the Federal Government should not dictate what any
individual State includes in its evaluation system. Research shows that
standardized test scores do not measure a teacher's effectiveness. If
we focus strictly on testing, we will only see some gains, particularly
when we've intentionally prepared kids for these tests, but it won't
provide us with the whole story.
I personally believe in the ground-up philosophy that evaluations
should be more personalized and that they should be a part of a larger
professional learning and growth system. If you leave this decision to
the States, you provide more flexibility and the potential for
innovation. For example, California uses eight criteria (http://
downloads.capta.org/edu/e-school-finance/LCAP.pdf) in regards to
funding which include: student achievement, student engagement, school
climate, parental involvement, basic services, implementation of Common
Core State Standards (CCSS), course access and other student outcomes.
In Washington State, every teacher has to develop growth goals for
students--we come up with our own metrics; we look at data & measure
student growth based on what we see. The student learning uses
indicators beyond testing. As a first grade teacher for example, test
scores are not part of my evaluations; yet I feel like I have received
constructive feedback, particularly through serving as a mentor in the
Seattle Teacher Residency and through Board certification. It is
important that ESEA reauthorization continue to look at the greater
continuum of teaching and the whole picture, not just what is easiest
to measure.
More information on Seattle's Teacher Evaluation system (from
Seattle Education Association): After a contentious bargaining process
between the district and the Seattle Education Association, the 2010
collective bargaining agreement codified a system for teacher
evaluation that recognized the importance of student growth without
evaluating teachers directly on student test scores.
While the evidence then wasn't as conclusive as it is now, it was
already then becoming evident that student test scores were an
unreliable indicator of teacher effectiveness. Seattle settled on a
system that used student test scores as a ``marker'' or a ``red flag''.
If a teacher's students' test score were low, it was required that the
evaluator and the teacher sit down, look at the scores, and have a
conversation about how to understand the scores and try to determine
what things the teacher might do to improve outcomes. This conversation
is not a ``high-stakes'' event. The evaluator cannot go back and change
the teacher's evaluation rating based on the test scores or on the
conversation. It is intended as a catalyst to have the teacher look
forward, to improve teaching practice. This is the essence of a
``professional growth'' model of teacher evaluation.
Two years later, when Washington's State legislature took up the
issue of teacher evaluation, the State hewed closely to Seattle's model
of a professional growth-based system. In Seattle the system was
already demonstrating its advantages by laying the groundwork for
collaboration with colleagues, for willingness to try new practices,
and for joint reflection on the craft of teaching. The State
legislature followed Seattle's lead on how to treat student growth. It
created a student growth requirement for all teachers, not just
teachers of tested grades and subjects. If teachers feel that the State
test is the appropriate instrument for measuring student growth, then
they can use it as their measure of student growth. If they do not see
it as an appropriate instrument, then they and their evaluator can
develop a different measure of student growth. Every teacher, however,
has to have a goal and a measure for student growth. This is changing
the culture of teachers in Washington State in a positive, non-punitive
way. Teachers now reflect more on their practice in conscious ways that
foster student growth.
States should be allowed to develop teacher evaluation systems that
grow teachers' capacity over time and help them to become better
practitioners. Great teachers are not born; they are made. It is also
well-established that student test scores are a poor indicator of
effective teachers. We have to develop teachers into the kinds of
professionals that we want them to be. High-stakes evaluation, based on
student testing, does not do this; we have to create the space where
educators can feel safe to take the risks they need to take in trying
new things as they journey on the road to a better teaching practice.
senator murkowski
Question 1. The Discussion Draft bill that we are working on here
in the committee would give much more autonomy to States to make
decisions about education policies. Do you think that the Federal
Government should maintain some basic requirements for States to
implement in designing how they ensure the maximum number of effective
teachers and leaders, or should Congress give States complete
authority? Why?
Answer 1. I believe that States, school districts, and the
educators working directly with students know best what their students
need, thus I'd lean with more State control. The Federal Government
should focus on providing resources to support and retain high quality
teachers, such as investing in residency models and mentoring programs,
and providing professional learning opportunities so that educators can
better support their students. We need to ensure that teachers are
getting trained properly and we should also make an effort to recruit
more males and teachers of color. Congress might also want to direct
title I money to help specific student types, such as those living in
poverty or struggling with academics, etc., while not directing State
level policy.
Without losing the emphasis on teacher quality, a reauthorized ESEA
should bring resources to bear on the challenges that poor children
face. Housing security, food security, health care, vision and dental
care, mental health services, anti-gang support, social services for
immigrant families, employment for parents/guardians, sexual and
physical abuse interventions, after-school programs/child care, early
childhood education, all need huge investment to help poor children be
ready to learn. Children are not ready to learn when their families are
struggling. Some of these are areas for investment that are not in
education per se, but will have huge returns in educational outcomes. A
reauthorized ESEA should leverage Federal education moneys to prompt
communities to make bigger investments in these areas.
Within education there are parallel areas where attention will also
improve outcomes. My school system has inadequate numbers of
counselors, nurses, health clinics, psychologists, speech language
pathologists, physical therapists, occupational therapists, family
support workers, specialists, and librarians. These people do the same
kind of work inside schools for students as the work mentioned above
that needs to be done in the neighborhoods for families. This work is
not optional; it is essential. These people are not luxuries in our
system of education; they are necessary for bringing our Nation's
educational attainment for all of its citizens up to a level where we
all can be proud.
Question 2. Ms. Moore, thank you for your work as a teacher, and as
a teacher mentor and leader. You asked us to provide resources, through
ESEA, to help schools across the country develop teacher induction and
mentoring programs. We can get a handle on this request, what does it
cost the Seattle School District, from all sources of funding, to
implement the program you've described? What are the current sources of
funding?
Answer 2. The Seattle Teacher Residency has a total budget for
2014-15 of $1.4M that supports rigorous, targeted recruitment and
selection, intense clinical preparation, mentor selection and support,
and coursework planning and delivery for 31 residents. The program
budget will increase incrementally over time with the increase in
cohort size, rising to $2.3M by 2017-18 to train 60 residents for
Seattle Public Schools.
The bulk of the program expenses are directed to mentor and
resident stipends to support them in their work throughout the yearlong
program. The resident stipend is $16.5K plus benefits; the mentor
stipend is $3.5K.
The other major cost centers are:
Recruitment, $40K;
Coursework and instructional costs at the University of
Washington, which are covered by resident tuition of $25K;
Mentor professional development, $50k; and
Graduate induction, $20k.
SSP currently contributes 17 percent of the program costs in 2014-
15, with a rising investment over the next 4 years to 33-51 percent.
The initial launch expenses were supported primarily by private
philanthropy. Private philanthropy and other supporters, including
Federal program funds, will contribute toward the long-term support of
the program.
Please contact the Program Director, Marisa Bier
([email protected], 206-205-0338), with any additional budget
questions. In addition, Urban Teacher Residency United (UTRU) is a
great resource for accessing information about the cost of the model
generally, and examples of how other residencies pay for the program.
Response by Christine Handy-Collins to Questions of Senator Collins
and Senator Murkowski
senator collins
Question 1. In 2005, former-Senator Olympia Snowe and I
commissioned the Maine NCLB Task Force to examine the issues Maine
faced with implementing the new law.
Maine's small rural schools, the ``Highly Qualified Teacher''
standard (HQT) was particularly burdensome and, in many cases,
unworkable. In rural schools, the reality is that teachers must teach
multiple subjects and are often re-assigned to different content areas
because of low enrollments. Yet HQT requires teachers to have majored
in or passed rigorous State tests in the subjects that they are
teaching. When this year's fourth grade math teacher must become next
year's fifth grade science teacher, meeting the added burden of
becoming ``highly qualified'' in several academic areas makes staffing
even more difficult.
The Maine Task Force recommended that States be granted flexibility
to create different standards for rural school districts. Do you
believe that States should have the authority to set alternative
standards in small rural schools that incorporate factors such as
school size and the courses available?
Answer 1. Proposals introduced in the 114th Congress and the ESEA
flexibility waivers offered to States by the U.S. Department of
Education remove the requirement that teachers be ``highly qualified''
and focus on a definition of ``effectiveness'' related to robust
teacher evaluation systems. I serve on the board of directors for the
National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP), and our
organizations is a leading member of the Coalition for Teaching Quality
(CTQ) whose mission is to promote equal access to well-prepared and
effective educators for each and every child. In October 2014, CTQ
released a policy roadmap (attached) for transforming the teacher and
principal professions. We feel that Federal policy should support the
development of a coherent, performance-based professional continuum for
teachers and principals that begins in preparation and leads to
accomplished practice and the opportunity to serve in leadership roles.
The framework offers specific recommendations to: (1) strengthen the
recruitment pipeline; (2) ensure that the next generation of educators
are profession-ready; (3) create opportunities for continuous
professional learning and growth; and (4) provide pathways for teacher
and principal leadership. The Rural Schools and Community Trust is an
active member of CTQ and strongly feels this framework will help to
ensure that students in rural have the same access to excellent
teachers and principals as students in suburban or urban areas.
Question 2. No Child Left Behind defines ``core academic subjects''
to include 10 subject areas, including civics and government,
economics, history, and geography.
The Maine NCLB Task Force observed that many schools integrated
these four subjects into one ``social studies'' course. Yet the
``Highly Qualified Teacher'' standard (HQT) would have had a social
studies teacher meet the HQT requirements of all four subject areas.
Notably, NCLB does not break down ``science'' into its many
subdivisions, like biology or chemistry.
School districts want to attract the best and the brightest to the
teaching profession. My concern, however, is that the HQT standard may
have had two unintended and related consequences.
First, it places a burden on teachers who have multiple class
assignments. And second, it may result in narrowing school curricula,
resulting in fewer classes being offered. The Maine Task Force found
that these burdens were particularly detrimental to small rural
districts, where teacher recruitment and retention is especially
difficult.
What effects have the HQT standards had on teacher recruitment and
retention, as well as school curricula? Are there ways to encourage
teachers to gain additional subject-matter knowledge without imposing
an HQT requirement in each subject that a teacher teaches?
Answer 2. As I mentioned in my previous response, proposals
introduced in the 114th Congress and the ESEA flexibility waivers
offered to States by the U.S. Department of Education remove the
requirement that teachers be ``highly qualified'' and focus on a
definition of ``effectiveness'' related to robust teacher evaluation
systems.
Question 3. In 2013, like 42 other States, Maine received a No
Child Left Behind flexibility waiver from the U.S. Department of
Education, which exempts it from some of the requirements of the
Federal law. However, the U.S. Department of Education has determined
that Maine has not yet adopted adequate guidelines for teacher and
principal evaluation systems. The Department notes that the State must
clarify the role of statewide tests in its teacher evaluations.
If the State adopts a different evaluation system that does not
place what the U.S. Department of Education believes is enough emphasis
on student test scores in its teacher performance measurement, then the
waiver could be revoked and many of Maine's schools may be deemed
``failing.'' In fact, Washington State faced this very scenario 1 year
ago, and has since lost its waiver.
If a State determines that student test scores should be one of
many factors in teacher evaluations, should the Federal Government be
overruling their judgment?
Answer 3. The NASSP board of directors approved a position
statement on Teacher Supervision and Evaluation in 2011. We recommend
that States and districts should include multiple measures of
performance, including but not limited to, input measures such as
evidence of a teacher's knowledge of subject matter; skill in planning,
delivering, monitoring, and assessing students' learning; skill in
developing and maintaining positive relationships with students,
parents, and colleagues; knowledge and skills in pedagogical methods to
meet the needs of students with an array of learning styles and needs;
and commitment to students' learning to their utmost potential.
Examples of outcome data that are also appropriate and necessary to
assess teacher effectiveness are students' individual growth and
progress as measured on valid and reliable standardized instruments,
teacher made tests that are aligned with the curriculum, student
performance demonstrations in a variety of media, and portfolios of
student work. NASSP does not believe that teacher evaluations should be
based solely on student test scores, and we are concerned that many
States are include a very high percentage for student data. However,
our understanding of the situation in Washington is that State law
allows districts to determine what assessment may be included in the
teacher evaluation, and the U.S. Department of Education requires that
the State assessment mandated under NCLB be used in the teacher
evaluation systems.
senator murkowski
Question 1. The Discussion Draft bill that we are working on here
in the committee would give much more autonomy to States to make
decisions about education policies. Do you think that the Federal
Government should maintain some basic requirements for States to
implement in designing how they ensure the maximum number of effective
teachers and leaders, or should Congress give States complete
authority? Why?
Answer 1. Principals believe the appropriate Federal role in
education is to promote equity and access and provide targeted
resources to assist States and local districts that, in turn, must
support educators to meet the learning needs of students, especially
those that are considered ``high-need.'' As I mentioned in my response
to Senator Collins, NASSP is a member of the Coalition for Teaching
Quality (CTQ) that released in October 2014 a policy roadmap for
transforming the teaching and principal profession. We feel that
Federal policy should support the development of a coherent,
performance-based professional continuum for teachers and principals
that begins in preparation and leads to accomplished practice and the
opportunity to serve in leadership roles. The framework offers specific
recommendations to: (1) strengthen the recruitment pipeline; (2) ensure
that the next generation of educators are profession-ready; (3) create
opportunities for continuous professional learning and growth; and (4)
provide pathways for teacher and principal leadership. While the
framework does include examples of States and districts that are
already leading this effort to transform the teacher and principal
professions, I communicate regularly with principals across the Nation
that do not see the same emphasis on preparation, induction,
evaluation, and professional development, so I do believe it is
inherent for the Federal Government to provide States guidance in this
area.
Question 2. You have encouraged Congress to direct States to
require entrance exams for principal preparation programs. Can you
share with us what types of skills, and what knowledge, you would
expect each candidate to have in order to be accepted for training as a
principal?
Answer 2. In addition to the policy roadmap I referenced in my
previous response, CTQ released a document in October 2014 titled
Profession-Ready Teachers and Principals for Each and Every Child.* To
ensure that principals are profession-ready when they enter the school
building, we feel that they should: (1) have an advanced degree and a
demonstrated record of success as a teacher; (2) demonstrate leadership
competencies through an assessment prior to entry into a high-quality
principal preparation program; (3) complete a 1-year residency program
that includes hands-on instructional leadership experiences and
guidance from a mentor or coach in preK-12 schools; and (4) demonstrate
a deep understanding of the domains of effective school leadership and
related competencies through a performance-based assessment. NASSP
offers an assessment and development framework around four themes:
educational leadership, resolving complex problems; communication
skills; and developing self and others. Within these four themes are 10
primary skill areas to assess and develop.
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* The document referred to may be found at http://
coalitionforteachingquality.org/images/upload/Profssion.Dov.pdf.
Setting instructional direction: implementing strategies
for improving teaching and learning, including putting programs and
improvement efforts into action;
Teamwork: seeking and encouraging involvement of team
members;
Sensitivity: perceiving the needs and concerns of others;
Judgment: ability to make high quality decisions based on
data;
Results orientation: assuming responsibility;
Organizational ability: planning and scheduling one's own
and the work of others so that resources are used appropriately;
Oral communication: clearly communicating;
Written communication: ability to express ideas clearly
and correctly in writing;
Developing others: teaching, coaching, and helping others;
and
Understanding own strengths and weaknesses: identifying
personal strengths and weaknesses.
[Whereupon, at 11:53 a.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
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