What Should More Education Money Buy--Better TeachingPart 2

What should more education money buy?  Jvonkorff on Education has been writing extensively about the Supreme Court's holding that the constitution requires enough money for districts to meet "all state standards."   What would more money buy -- what is more money needed for?   We've started a series to examine that question, and this second post examines the importance of buying  time and resources to improve what teachers can accomplish in the classroom. 

The Education Trust has been authoring a series on teaching that engages students.   In one research piece, the Education Trust describes the importance of using motivating and engaging assignments.  (Click here).  The Trust writes:

When students have the opportunity to attend classes that are engaging, creative, and relatable to their lives, they are more likely to succeed academically. Unfortunately, several new analyses have found that far too many students experience classroom assignments that fail to prepare them for life beyond school.  

In another article on mathematics assignments the Trust writes:

our analysis revealed that although roughly three-fourths of all assignments at least partially aligned to the grade- or course-appropriate math content, they also tended to:

• Have low cognitive demand
• Over-emphasize procedural skills and fluency
• Provide little opportunity for students to communicate their mathematical thinking

And this tendency was often worse in higher poverty schools.

The Education Trust argues, and jvonkorff on education agrees that better teaching clearly makes a huge difference in educational outcomes, and the assignments evaluated by the Trust represent one concrete example of the importance of good teaching.  Not enough attention is paid, however, to the amount of time and money that is required to develop good teaching--to the direct connection between great teaching and the proper allocation of more resources to developing good teaching in each school.

Too often advocates argue that we get better teaching by rating their performance, by conducting high stakes evaluation, and by "getting rid of bad teachers."  That strategy was behind, for example, the recent Forslund litigation, which challenged the use of tenure and seniority as a primary cause of poor educational results.  This strategy fails to recognize that good teaching depends upon the allocation of, and proper use of significantly more resources to the development of great teaching, to the development of great curriculum, to the intentional use of collaboration, teamwork, and expertise in the building of teaching capacity.

Seldom do we recognize that delivering good teaching requires a tremendous amount of time outside of the classroom, and that this time costs money.    We too often  think of a teacher as either being a "good teacher" or a "bad teacher" as if that is an inherent quality, and we fail to recognize that good teaching is the product of devoting a significant amount of time to the teacher's own development and to providing the time and leadership support to that development.

A great athlete spends countless hours practicing, in skill development and utilizing good coaching.   For every hour that a football player is on the field, there are many times more hours developing personal skills, studying a playbook, attending coaching meetings.  The athlete spends personal training time in College, develops skills, reviews film of performance and adjusts to input. The greater the athlete, the more time typically spent on development and coaching.  What makes us think that a great teacher can merely be plunked down in a classroom and become a super-star teacher.  It it this great American flawed belief that greatness comes from talent instead of hard work?

If we want teachers to develop excellent assignments, we need to assure that they have the time and support to do that.  In Minnesota, time is purchased through collective bargaining.  The bargaining agreement typically governs the number of actual teaching hours purchased per day; it often guarantees each teacher with a minimum amount of "prep-time" each school day, but traditionally, that prep time belongs to the teacher.  Perhaps the teacher gets third period, say, to lesson plan, grade papers, run down the hall and get advice from a mentor, or check in at the office.  In some districts, the school is entitled to little or none of this time for school directed planning activities, or for team collaboration. 

In most Minnesota districts we do not buy enough time from our teachers to assure that they can develop the lesson materials that the Education Trust is calling for.    A middle school teacher or high school teacher will be preparing four or five lessons a day; will be grading papers; dealing with disciplinary issues; attending IEP meetings, department meetings and all the rest. In elementary school a teacher is preparing lessons in multiple disciplines and attempting to address students who are on grade level and others who are several grades ahead, others several grades behind, some who have specific disabilities and others who speak little English.   Its simply not practical to expect teachers to develop the kind of outstanding assignments, tests, and other activities of the kind that Education Trust properly calls for, unless we are buying more time to do that, and providing sufficient time during the year for that purpose.

The Brooke East Boston Example 

We are fond of using as an example Brooke East Boston, a charter school serving large numbers of students who would be typically regarded as low performing in Minnesota. The school is top ranked in K-8 for math proficiency in the State of Massachusetts, and highly ranked in reading.  The school does many exceptional things, but one of its strengths is the amount of effort it expends on teacher development.  The school doesn't live by the idea that good teachers need to be left alone: it invests large blocks of time in professional development.   And, one might ask, if a school performing that well needs massive professional development, what is the basis for our expectation that schools where most of the students are not proficient can get by with a bit of professional development here and there? 

Here taken directly from the Brooke East Boston website is a summary of their teacher training and development program.

We believe that teaching is a knowledge profession, much like medicine or law. To excel, teachers must have the opportunity to continually improve their practice. Whether as a first-year Associate Teacher or a seasoned professional, all Brooke teachers view themselves as lifelong learners. As individuals and as a team, we are committed to becoming the best educators possible. We pursue great teaching through:

• Weekly professional development: Every Wednesday afternoon (1-4pm weekly) is dedicated to teacher professional development. We spend four hours working in a school-wide group and in grade-level teams to learn from each other’s successes, brainstorm solutions to challenges, and analyze what works and doesn’t work in each teacher’s style and lesson plans. These sessions are oriented around clear learning goals that we set as a group at the outset of the year.

• Video review: Each teacher is videoed at least 10 times throughout the year. We then critique those videos as a group. The videotaped teacher leaves with direct, personalized suggestions. Every other educator benefits from watching successful (and not-so-successful) teaching strategies and from hearing their peers’ critiques.

• Collaboration and co-planning: Brooke teachers work as a team to close the achievement gap for all scholars in the school, not just for the scholars in their classroom. Teachers use daily dedicated co-planning time to design lessons with their grade-level team. Teachers upload their best curricula and lesson plans onto our internal server, allowing all Brooke educators to learn from and adapt successful materials. Our “open door” policy encourages teachers to view each other as teammates available for help and guidance throughout the school day.

• Observation and feedback: Teachers are observed, formally and informally, at least 30 times throughout the year. Those observations result in immediate, real-time feedback on strengths and weaknesses.  These observations then feed into twice-yearly formal evaluations, which are based on the Brooke teaching standards. The evaluations also consider scholar performance (as measured by state test scores and classroom outcomes) and contribution to school-wide professional development activities.