About a year ago, the New York Times Magazine published an article that
explored President Obama’s “Race to the Top” program, a competition that
provides federal grants to states that come up with innovative ways to
improve education.
The really cool thing about this program is its focus on improving teacher
quality by linking salary increases and layoffs to teacher performance. Any
profession that ignores performance and only rewards seniority risks
alienating its most qualified potential members and allowing incompetence to
thrive. Although teachers’ unions serve some very valuable purposes (like
allowing for collective bargaining and providing some essential legal
protection), their insistence on divorcing pay from performance punishes
America’s most valuable teachers while allowing its most ineffectual
teachers to keep their jobs indefinitely.
You can click around the official “Race to the Top” website and see which
states won grants last year.
Some of the programs are really fantastic. They have built “common academic
standards,” created systems to reward teacher effectiveness, and made plans
to prioritize the lowest performing schools.
Another issue that the New York Times article addresses is charter
schools. Charter schools are an important alternative for students who have
no good public school options. They can also serve as an experimental model
for what a publicly funded school looks like without bureaucracy and unions.
However, students are admitted through a lottery system. For students in
these areas, receiving a quality education is based entirely on the luck of
the draw. So instead of relying on charter schools to fill the gaps in our
public school system, the successes of certain charter schools should be
used as models for improving public schools.
These are just a few of the issues addressed in the article, which you can
find here.
Friday, April 15, 2011
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Florida Works to Protect Successful Teachers
On March 24th, Florida Governor Rick Scott officially signed the Student Success Act into law and started Florida down the road to quality education. The bill has many components, but I want to address those sections that are most critical for success in education reform.
First, SSA modifies the way that teachers are evaluated in the public school system by expanding the scale used to define quality and by incorporating student achievement gains in performance reviews instead of only relying on peer and administrator evaluations. It is vital to be able to identify exactly which teachers are producing results and which are substandard educators. In Florida’s previous system, 99.7% of teachers qualified as satisfactory when evaluated. The challenge, which Florida attempts to solve, is creating an evaluation method that does not categorize every teacher as satisfactory, but also incorporates multiple reliable means of assessment.
Second, the legislation identifies the subject areas that fail to attract qualified teachers and promises to pay them more. Educators qualified to teach high school math have far more employment options than those qualified to teach social studies or music. By paying these teachers more, the school system will be able to attract more qualified people willing to teach math and science and draw them away from what are usually higher paying careers.
Finally, and perhaps most critically, Florida abandons its tenure system. Instead of granting teachers tenure after three years of employment, the state will begin to hire teachers based on annual contracts. This piece is crucial to successfully reforming the public school education system. When teachers receive tenure, it becomes very difficult to terminate their services, no matter how poor their job performance becomes. By instituting a system of annual contracting, the Florida school system will ensure that their education professionals remain both professional and effective.
Other states must look to the Student Success Act and institute similar measures. Florida does not take away collective bargaining rights nor does it strip away union access to the state’s teachers. It also increases the rate of pay for some of its teaching professionals. Florida’s measures would reward successful teachers, especially those in subject areas where other high paying opportunities exist, and it would force those who performed poorly to either shape up or leave the classroom.
More information on the act can be found on the governor’s website:
http://www.flgov.com/2011/03/24/governor-scott-signs-student-success-act/
First, SSA modifies the way that teachers are evaluated in the public school system by expanding the scale used to define quality and by incorporating student achievement gains in performance reviews instead of only relying on peer and administrator evaluations. It is vital to be able to identify exactly which teachers are producing results and which are substandard educators. In Florida’s previous system, 99.7% of teachers qualified as satisfactory when evaluated. The challenge, which Florida attempts to solve, is creating an evaluation method that does not categorize every teacher as satisfactory, but also incorporates multiple reliable means of assessment.
Second, the legislation identifies the subject areas that fail to attract qualified teachers and promises to pay them more. Educators qualified to teach high school math have far more employment options than those qualified to teach social studies or music. By paying these teachers more, the school system will be able to attract more qualified people willing to teach math and science and draw them away from what are usually higher paying careers.
Finally, and perhaps most critically, Florida abandons its tenure system. Instead of granting teachers tenure after three years of employment, the state will begin to hire teachers based on annual contracts. This piece is crucial to successfully reforming the public school education system. When teachers receive tenure, it becomes very difficult to terminate their services, no matter how poor their job performance becomes. By instituting a system of annual contracting, the Florida school system will ensure that their education professionals remain both professional and effective.
Other states must look to the Student Success Act and institute similar measures. Florida does not take away collective bargaining rights nor does it strip away union access to the state’s teachers. It also increases the rate of pay for some of its teaching professionals. Florida’s measures would reward successful teachers, especially those in subject areas where other high paying opportunities exist, and it would force those who performed poorly to either shape up or leave the classroom.
More information on the act can be found on the governor’s website:
http://www.flgov.com/2011/03/24/governor-scott-signs-student-success-act/
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Welcome!
Greetings, and welcome to NewEdu, a blog designed to inform the public about news and present information about the current state of America’s teachers. Our diverse group of three Dartmouth College students will frequently be updating this blog over the next two months. We believe that overhauling the American education system will inevitably be an arduous and lengthy process, but reform in this area will be key to the future success of the United States. The education issue itself is vast and no individual reform will be able to solve this important problem on its own; there is no education panacea.
Therefore, instead of discussing education generally, this space will be used primarily to discuss and promote one aspect of the push to improve America’s schools: the need for quality teachers in public school classrooms. One way to achieve this result is by ending teacher tenure, instituting merit pay schemes, and defining a concrete and effective means of evaluating teacher performance. These ideas are not new, nor are they uncontroversial, but we are certain that teachers, above all other factors, are the number one determinant of classroom success. Maintaining high levels of performance for public school teachers will only be possible by incentivizing talented individuals to teach (who may have otherwise chosen more financially rewarding careers) and by identifying and rewarding the teachers who make the greatest impact on our children. Like members of any other profession, teachers must consistently perform well in order to keep their jobs.
Our group, which consists of members from all political perspectives, understands that some special interest groups will oppose these measures. We are confident however that once these opposing forces appreciate the actual benefits of these measures for both students and teachers, they will learn to support our efforts as well. Stay tuned for more updates throughout the weeks and months ahead, and thanks for reading!
Therefore, instead of discussing education generally, this space will be used primarily to discuss and promote one aspect of the push to improve America’s schools: the need for quality teachers in public school classrooms. One way to achieve this result is by ending teacher tenure, instituting merit pay schemes, and defining a concrete and effective means of evaluating teacher performance. These ideas are not new, nor are they uncontroversial, but we are certain that teachers, above all other factors, are the number one determinant of classroom success. Maintaining high levels of performance for public school teachers will only be possible by incentivizing talented individuals to teach (who may have otherwise chosen more financially rewarding careers) and by identifying and rewarding the teachers who make the greatest impact on our children. Like members of any other profession, teachers must consistently perform well in order to keep their jobs.
Our group, which consists of members from all political perspectives, understands that some special interest groups will oppose these measures. We are confident however that once these opposing forces appreciate the actual benefits of these measures for both students and teachers, they will learn to support our efforts as well. Stay tuned for more updates throughout the weeks and months ahead, and thanks for reading!
Ryan
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