The Challenge for Our Schools

The Challenge
Today, for the first time in our nation’s history, the next generation will likely fare worse than their parents – unless we intervene. We live in a global marketplace where American children will inherit astronomical deficits and expensive, antiquated systems – oil dependence, an inefficient and ineffective health care system – that cannot be sustained.
Ensuring equity of opportunity for all children is a tremendous challenge for New Rochelle. Even states that provide excellent public education suffer from unacceptable achievement gaps between white and minority students. Providing equal opportunity for all children is today’s civil rights struggle, a moral imperative we cannot and will not ignore. Here are some suggestion to make our education experience better and whole
• Include impact on student academic growth in the evaluation of teacher preparation programs.
• Use a performance evaluation system that distinguishes teachers based on their impact on student academic growth and includes frequent observations to grant continuing contracts.
Cultivate partnerships: A number of federal and state grants require partnerships with outside organizations, ranging from nonprofits to colleges and universities. Race to the Top places a high premium on letters of support from stakeholders, such as teacher unions, foundations and civic/business leaders. It also requires memoranda of understanding with districts that the state plans to involve.
Supporting and empowering all teachers to become effective will require all school districts have:
– Practical and high-quality preparation programs.
– Valuable, research-based induction experiences as they begin their teaching careers.
– Job-embedded, collaborative professional development opportunities throughout their careers (plus meaningful mentorship programs that last throughout the tenure experience of the new teacher).
– Access to evaluations that help them improve their practice (are the ones used in NR appropriate and up to date or is the same form been used for a generation?)

Other considerations for New Rochelle: The five dimensions that must be identified and evaluated in order to recognize effective teaching include –
1 Purpose: Is learning clearly defined, intentional and focused on what students need to know and be able to do?
2 Student Engagement: Are students discussing, thinking about and connecting to intellectually demanding work?
3 Curriculum and Pedagogy: Are materials appropriate, lessons scaffolded, teaching explicit?
4 Assessment for Student Learning: How are students able to demonstrate learning, and does the teacher use data to make instructional decisions?
5 Classroom Environment and Culture: Is the classroom conducive to student learning, do systems foster independence and are students expected to meet high expectations with appropriate support? Has anyone measure the success or progress of small learning communities in NRHS? Have the original goals been met? Where there goals?

According to a recent study from The New Teacher Project, called The Widget Effect: Our National Failure to Acknowledge and Act on Differences in Teacher Effectiveness, the problem of teacher evaluation lies in the inability of schools to assess instructional performance accurately or to act on this information in meaningful ways. School districts like New Rochelle default to treating all teachers essentially the same in terms of effectiveness and the need for development. Teacher evaluations should be the primary tool for assessing variation among teaching effectiveness and be used for more than retention and dismissal decisions.
Distinguishing between teachers based on their ability to improve student academic growth will:
– Focus professional development needs;
– Ensure that the most effective teachers are placed with disadvantaged or underperforming students;
– Identify teachers who would excel in teacher leadership and coaching positions;
– Recognize and reward effective teachers;
– Expand career opportunities based on proven skills and performance; and
– Clarify renewal decisions for less effective teachers.
– Guide displacement (excessing), reductions-in-force and dismissal decisions

Leading experts agree that a credible and fair teacher evaluation system should have:
– Clear and straightforward performance standards including student academic growth;
– Multiple distinct rating options (e.g. Superior, Excellent, Satisfactory, Unsatisfactory);
– Regular monitoring of administrator judgments through peer evaluations, independent reviews, and/or teacher surveys;
– Frequent, regular, and specific feedback about how teaching performance meets, exceeds, or fails to meet standards;
– Professional development that is linked to performance standards and differentiated based on teacher needs; and
– Intensive support for teachers below standard.
As a Human Resources professional all of the above is incorporated into Professional Development Reviews or more commonly called annual assessments. There is no reason why schools should not implement these same principles of evaluation.
Right behind excellent teaching in importance is excellent school leadership. Common sense and research tell us that effective instructional leaders are second only to classroom teachers among all school-related factors that contribute to
student success. High-performing schools are led by highly effective principals
who skillfully share their leadership in a strategic effort to improve student achievement. Everything principals do–setting a vision, setting goals, managing staff, rallying the community, creating effective learning environments, building support
systems for students, guiding instruction and so on–must be in service of student learning.
The majority of this article is extrapolated from the organization Stand for Children in Oregon, which does amazing work.