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7/29/2019 A Grass-Roots Start for Teachers' Ideas
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CQ WEEKLY IN FOCUSJune 4, 2012 Page 1134
A Grass-Roots Start for Teachers IdeaBy Lauren Smith, CQ Staff
A small band of teachers from around the country has been embedded in the Education Department on a
fellowship program for the past year, and they have proposed a new vision for the teaching workforce. They
want to raise teacher salaries significantly, make schools of education more selective and overall lift the
profession to increase its prestige and attract top college graduates.
The Obama administration likes the proposal so much that it launched a public relations campaign around it
in March called RESPECT Recognizing Educational Success, Professional Excellence and Collaborative
Teaching after requesting $5 billion to kick-start efforts in its fiscal 2013 budget a month earlier.
Too often, teachers and principals operate at schools with a factory culture, where inflexible work rules
discourage innovation and restrict teachers opportunities to work together as a team and to take on
leadership roles, Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in the announcement. As a result, the field ofeducation is not highly regarded many of Americas brightest young college graduates never consider
entering the field, and others leave prematurely.
The blueprint for a new teacher workforce, Duncan and the teaching fellows maintain, would elevate the
profession, putting it on par with medicine and the law, in order to ultimately provide students with a better
education.
The problem, education policy experts point out, is that Washington has very little authority over state and
local school district teaching and hiring policies, which are entangled with union contracts and state budget
priorities. And even if Congress approved $5 billion to start the transformation the likelihood of which iszero the money would be enough to cover only 10 to 15 states.
This vision is a pipe dream, says Michael Petrilli, executive vice president of the Thomas B. Fordham
Institute, a conservative-leaning education think tank. This is all sorts of aspirational. I just dont think you
can do much beyond the bully pulpit to effect that much change.
Such criticism isnt dampening the administrations spirit. The Education Department, well aware of its
limitations, is employing a grass-roots strategy, sending its teaching fellows to local school districts across
the country to build support from the ground up.
To be sure, many of the ideas have been proposed before by various policy experts and education
organizations. But packaging them together in an effort to change the entire profession top-to-bottom is a
more ambitious and some say impossible undertaking.
The goal of the initiative is to identify and ultimately implement strategies to strengthen the profession by
dramatically changing how teachers are recruited, selected, supported, compensated, promoted, and
retained in the profession, Duncan wrote in an open letter to the teaching fellows in February. It is a bold
plan that will take considerable time and resources, but one we firmly believe is worth the effort.
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EDUCATION EVANGELISTS: Duncan has sent a group of
teaching fellows around the country to promote an initiative
dramatically changing their profession. The administration
wants $5 billion for the program. (CHRIS MADDALONI / CQ ROLL
CALL)
Training and Feedback
The 16 teaching fellows who helped craft the RESPECT
campaign were recruited by the Education Department
to provide a teacher perspective to policy proposals.
Its very rare we have an opportunity for us as teachers
to give feedback before it becomes policy, says
Genevieve DeBose, who has taught for 10 years in Los
Angeles and Oakland, Calif., and in the Bronx in New
York City, before joining the program. This is an
opportunity for us to get it right and put our stamp on it.
[The fellows] feel extremely lucky, appreciated and
valued that their recommendations are taken in on the
front end.
The motivation behind the administrations campaign stems in part from the embarrassing performance by
U.S. high school students on international tests that place them far behind students in other industrializedcountries in reading, math and science; the ballooning number of teacher preparation programs with low bars
for entry or graduation compared with other parts of the world; and rapidly declining morale among teachers
over state budget cuts and antiquated policies.
Under the teaching fellows proposal, students would no longer advance in lockstep, age-based grades but
would instead progress through the system based on what they know and can do. The formulaic school day
and year, originally based on an agrarian calendar, would be eliminated and redesigned based on students
needs. Teachers would have access to data measuring student learning and would be trained on how to use
it to inform instruction hour to hour, day to day and year to year.
Becoming a teacher would be much more difficult, with a new workforce recruited from the top tier of
students in the country. They would be required to demonstrate subject area expertise, proficiency in
improving student learning and dispositions associated with successful teaching, such as perseverance and
effective communication.
In addition, teacher preparation programs would be required to track and publish data on how long their
graduates stay in the profession and how successful they are based on principals evaluations and student
learning.
Like aspiring doctors, graduates of teaching schools would enter a clinical residency for two to four years
with a master teacher before getting their own classes.
Starting salaries for teachers who have completed their residency could be as high as $65,000, according to
the plan. As teaching careers progress, salaries would increase faster and maximum salaries would be
higher, so that master teachers could earn as much as $120,000 to $150,000 after about seven to 10
years.
While pay has usually been linked to years of service or professional credentials, the proposed salary
structure would more reflect the quality of a teachers work. Teacher evaluations would include an analysis
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of their responsibilities and accomplishments, measurements of student growth data, results from formal
observations, self-evaluations, and feedback from students.
Think Local
Its highly unlikely that Congress will approve the administrations $5 billion request to prod states into
changing their teacher policies, given partisan divisions and this years looming budget battles. Duncan,
however, has become quite adept at finding his way around congressional gridlock and offering incentives to
states to change on their own.
During his tenure as secretary, Duncan has overseen the Race to the Top program, a grant competition that
prods states and in the latest round, school districts into embracing steps that the administration
favors. He also has waived provisions of the 2002 federal education law, known as No Child Left Behind, for
states that offered alternatives for improving their schools, as long as the administration approves the
alternatives.
Now, the Education Departments teaching fellows are traveling around the country to meet with teachers
and begin building support at the state level for the RESPECT proposal. The administration assures that this
is not meant to turn teachers into lobbyists, but rather to collect teachers feedback and give them a seat at
the table.
According to DeBose, at least 25 of the 30 teacher roundtable discussions that she has organized supported
the blueprint. A majority of folks are really excited about it, she says.
Its all about opening teachers eyes and allowing them to see opportunities, she says. And maybe theyll
say, hey, maybe if this doesnt happen, if Congress doesnt appropriate $5 billion for this or our state doesnt
win, what can I do at my school or district level to make some of these changes? Its all about having that
dialogue.
Theres not much the Education Department can do to alter the school year or revamp teaching salaries,
both of which are tied to union contracts or state policies. But the department could impose tighter
regulations on teacher-training programs to begin weeding out the least effective ones. It used this tactic
most recently in an effort to curb deceitful marketing and recruiting by for-profit colleges.
Congress, for its part, may also attempt to deal with teacher development programs and teacher evaluations
in the upcoming reauthorization of No Child Left Behind, which expired in 2007. Although floor votes arent
expected this year, committees in both chambers have laid down markers for the future by approving
reauthorization measures.
In the House, Minnesota Republican John Kline, chairman of the Education and the Workforce Committee,
included in his proposal a mandate that school districts create teacher evaluation systems based in part on
student test scores and four other measurements. Further, schools would have to use those evaluations to
make personnel decisions.
Iowa Democrat Tom Harkin, chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee,
says he would have liked to include a provision on teacher evaluations but gave up on the idea to keep his
bill less controversial.
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Blaming and Shaming
Implementing the administrations proposal is fraught with obstacles. For starters, powerful teachers unions
have reacted rather defensively.
Having a campaign is good, but it cant just be words, says Randi Weingarten, president of the American
Federation of Teachers. So frankly, rather than blaming and shaming teachers, rather than thinking theres a
silver bullet of rewarding and sanctioning, we should be helping and collaborating with teachers.
Such a response reflects teachers general discontent with the profession, says Jennifer Cohen, education
policy expert at the New America Foundation, a centrist think tank. Teacher job satisfaction has plummeted
by 15 percentage points, from 59 percent in 2009 to 44 percent in 2011, according to a MetLife study.
Teachers reporting that they are likely to leave for another occupation went up from 17 percent in 2009 to 29
percent last year.
I think a lot of teachers right now think theyre captive on a sinking ship, Cohen says.
Moreover, some of the proposals to overhaul the teaching profession are enmeshed in complicated webs of
supporters and critics that cross party lines.
Teachers unions, for example, have pressured Democrats to oppose including student test scores in teacher
evaluations, arguing that they are not a good measurement of performance. Republicans often contend that
setting evaluation requirements at the federal level would amount to government overreach. But some
lawmakers in both parties, such as Kline, see evaluations as a necessary tool for identifying good teachers.
The big question is whether states will pick up where Washington leaves off, and whether the Obama
administration can persuade all the various interest groups to go along.
People are worried that this is a great vision, but how will this actually happen and how will we ensure thatwe have funding for these ideas? DeBose says, describing the response from teachers around the country.
The other piece is, it comes back to leadership. Some say were all for this, but if our principals arent for i t,
if our superintendent, local organizations arent for it, how will this all happen?
Already, some states are taking steps outlined in the RESPECT plan. Louisiana and Tennessee now track
how well teachers from various preparation programs perform. Teachers in Massachusetts must pass a
relatively difficult certification exam. And more than 1,000 schools have taken steps to extend or restructure
the school day.
In a positive sign of a growing commitment to transforming the teaching profession, the EducationDepartment in May held its second labor management summit, at which teachers unions, heads of school
boards, superintendents and others promised to work with instead of against each other.
The ray of light between our stances on these issues is growing smaller and smaller, Duncan said at the
conference, held in Cincinnati. We have to walk that walk. We cant encourage states and districts to act a
certain way if were all still in our silos.
FOR FURTHER READING:Duncan circumvents Congress, CQ Weekly, p. 490; union flexibility, 2010 CQ
Weekly, p. 1325; Race to the Top (PL 111-5), 2009 Almanac, p. 7-3.
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Source: CQ Weekly
The definitive source for news about Congress.
2012 CQ Roll Call All Rights Reserved.
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