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race to the race to the top
November 16, 2009
State plans to link teacher certification to student performance
The New York State Board of Regents wants to certify new teachers based on their students’ academic achievement in their first two years of teaching, Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch and Education Commissioner David Steiner announced today.
The proposal came as part of a plan to overhaul the way teachers are trained and placed in classrooms that state officials hope will help them win competitive federal Race to the Top grant money.
Under the plan, a new teacher would also face a tougher set of tests and must prove to the state that he or she is ready to enter the classroom before receiving their initial certification, possibly through portfolios of lesson plans and videotaped teaching sessions.
“Instead of just a paper and pencil test, instead of looking simply at course credits, instead of waiting until the last semester for a formal experience of student teaching that has a different caliber of qualities associated with it, we want to use these performance assessments to ensure that our candidates for teaching have the skills that matter,” Steiner said in a press conference today.
The proposed changes to teacher training also include an expansion of alternative teacher certification programs, allowing a wider variety of organizations to train new teachers.
In an interview last week, Tisch described the plan as a way to “break down the barriers between academia and practice” in teacher training. Traditional, university-based teacher training programs have been criticized, most notably by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, as being out-of-touch with actual skills teachers need to succeed in the classroom.
Tisch and Steiner said today that they would like to begin altering the assessments required for initial certification now, but that a program to link student performance to professional certification may take years to develop. The state will need to first develop a more rigorous data system before linking the performance of new teachers back to their students, Steiner said, though the state is already at work building such a system. Steiner also said that a request for proposals for new teacher certification programs will be released before the end of this year.
The speed at which the program is implemented will also depend heavily on funding. Tisch and Steiner are hoping that the proposals will help the state win Race to the Top funds, which could then be used to hasten the development of the new certification systems.
Here is the full set of proposals considered by the Board of Regents today:
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November 16th, 2009 10:08 pm
I understand that the 2 year window is supposed to thread the needle between Race to the Top and tenure but this kind of reactive policy-making is misguided. How many first year teachers are successful? Anything worth doing well is worth struggling for at the beginning.
-David -
November 17th, 2009 11:00 am
So now we’ve reached the point where all classes will have to end in an exam so teachers can meet certification qualifications. Standardized assessment is for the teachers instead of the students.
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November 17th, 2009 11:28 am
Yay! I love real accountability for adults. Yay! Maybe the lazy teachers will get a clue now and leave.
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November 17th, 2009 5:06 pm
Wow, if only this much accountability was directed towards Wall Street in the past, and present for that matter, 16% more of the nation might actually have a job….Nah, teachers are the problem. Let’s target them.
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November 17th, 2009 7:36 pm
As I’ve mentioned here and elswhere, as long as teachers and schools are being judged by their results, why don’t we include the MBA programs - and especially all those McKinsey consultants who are stamped out of Harvard and have been infesting Tweed - and graduate economics programs?
17.5% actual unemployment, trillions - yes, that’s trillions with a “t” - in taxpayer bailouts that are funding a new round of multi-million dollar bonuses for investment bankers, bankrupt state and local governments, and we don’t even get a lousy t-shirt. Just charter schools.
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November 18th, 2009 1:34 am
Many factors contribute to students under achievement. While policy makers use of power focuses on accountability that links students performance and teacher activities, may have some value, the real human response may needs to be central to, the needs of the child. Schools desire to gain more funding may well reduce teachers to academic robust individuals who may fail to develop the human qualities of children that are so required in the world today. Test scores represents a very small aspect of the whole child and a low performing student maybe doing all that he/she can under his/her circumstances to have made the score gained on the test but who celebrates that child’s effort. Maybe, only the teacher, the same teacher policy makers may well de-motivate by their comments.
What is the real problem? The school, the program, the child, the parents, the system that facilitates pregnancy by those unable to provide meaningful educational support for their child or those who have power to speak and plan for an education process of which they least understand.
My advice - if you are paid to plan for educators and children then find time to personally listen to them before planning for them.
As we move towards year end, wherever we are, may we all be granted the wisdom and understanding necessary to guide education for the development of happy and peaceful children.
–Jemima
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November 18th, 2009 9:01 am
In their proposal initial certification will not be linked to student achievement gains but to a portfolio of student work, video taped assessments, etc. Right now, you complete a BA/MA program and you can get initial certification. The proposal would require more evidence that you are prepared to step into the classroom. What’s so controversial about that reform? Makes common sense that we look beyond the degree to assess whether teachers are ready to step into the classroom for the first time.
The awarding of professional certification would be linked to student achievement gains. Lots of things to be worked out on that proposal. Would the entire certification depend on value add student achievement gains? What happens in subjects that do not have standardize tests? To me the jury is still out on this proposal. I need to know more. Ideally, it would be a host of factors that determine whether or not a teacher gets professional certification. Weighing student achievement too highly may have the perverse effect of driving teachers further away from teaching in NYC as they may worry about its impact on their ability to get prof cert.
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November 18th, 2009 12:16 pm
As a former member of the State Professional Standards and Practices Board for Teaching, formerly known as TECAP[ 1993-2003], I strongly agree with those criticizing the recent attempts on the part of the Regents to link teacher certification to student achievement. The same issues raised by Joe P. Frey are in essence the same issues we discussed for over ten years at the NYSDE! It is an insult to teachers and the public at large to think the way Joe, the state educational technocrats and policy makers do, and to ignore the real issues confronting a significant number of teachers in NYC. To think that while a new breed of abusive principals and supervisors are moving into these schools to ” make sure” that teacchers comply with mandates and initiatives such as the one mentioned above, constitutes an insult to all of us. The mistreatment of teachers, intimidation, insensitivity,unreasanable demands, lying and other behaviors reflected by a good number of these so called administrators have become the norm in most of our shools. This trend has taken epidemic proportions in our schools. The State has to explain how they expect our teachers to perform effectively under these conditions. Joe and his colleagues better sit down and figure out how to put an end to this atmosphere in our schools if our teachers are to teach effectively. We must alert the public of this situation. This situation is causing serious and extensive harm to our teachers and their work affecting their performance and that of their students.
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November 18th, 2009 1:41 pm
To Dr. Ramirez:
You ask the question: “… how to put an end to this atmosphere in our schools if our teachers are to teach effectively”. The answer is simple, get rid of ineffective teachers and the atmosphere will change overnight. Why are teacher unions so opposed to teachers being judged by the quality of work they perform? While I accept that standardized test scores aren’t a perfect measure of performance, they are a fact of life and like it or not, performance on standardized tests is a very good predictor of students’ academic success and future earning potential. If not standardized tests. how should we judge the effectiveness of teachers? Or are you just arguing that we shouldn’t measure teacher effectiveness at all and continue with the same broken system we have today in most urban districts? -
November 18th, 2009 8:08 pm
To Mr. Strong and others:
I wish it were that easy. I’ve used this anaolgy elsewhere and nobody has ever come up with a reasonable dispute to it. You have two factories, Factory A and Factory B. An audit shows Factory A is turning out many more defective widgets. The staff at Factory A obviously are not doing their jobs as well as at Factory B. Off with their heads. Then they discover, lo and behold, the raw materials being furnished to Factory A are defective and the reality is that Factory A, in turning out as many non defective widgets as they did, is doing a far better job than Factory B. But you wouldn’t think it just by the simplistic data of defective widgets.
The same thing holds in education. The most important variable for success on standardized tests is what the student brings to the table. What makes good schools? What makes good teachers? What makes good Principals? By and large, bgood students. Does anybody think the quality of teachers at the Bronx High School of Science is better than the quality of teachers say at Jamaica High School? Maybe in getting whatever they can get, the teachers at Jamaica are doing a great job under far worse conditons than at Science.
No, I am not opposed to properly evaluating teachers. Of course, there has always been a system of evaluating teachers with properly licensed and trained Assistant Principals and Principals. It is their job to work with teachers, do everything in their power to assist the teachers to improve instruction within their departments and schools. And if they can’t, then it is their job to institute proper 3020 procedures to terminate said incompetent teachers; of course with proper due process rights afforded to teachers. I am sick and tired of hearing it can’t be done. As a retired Assistant Principal, I did what I had to do when necessary. And my judgments were not based on flawed test scores. Where we had to, I worked with my Principal to weed the incompetent out. The problem is that under the inept, unqualified civil rights lawyer masquerading as an educator who knows nothing about education and is not properly certified to serve in his position, the role of the Principal has changed not to the Principal Teacher but to CEO. Many of the new Principals lack the proper training and experience to properly evaluate and assist teachers and where necessary provide the documentation needed to terminate the incompetent. They fall back on the excuse that the nasty union makes it impossible for them to do. Of course, with the abolition of the large high schools, we have lost the subject area specialists who supervised academic departments and could be looked up to by teachers in that department to assist. Instead we have many untrained political assignments of coaches. Coachs are not qualified to properly supervise a teacher or assist in developing 3020 documentation but some Principals use them illegally to do so. We had a case not too long ago as described by one CCNY professor of education of a coach coming to see him to find out what math classes she should take. When he suggested a beginning class in calculus, she said it was too difficult for her. This, bear in mind, was a serving math coach.It is the lack of proper supervision that is killing the proper training of teachers. And if we don’t have the proper supervision of teachers, then of course we can’t properly document a case. To simply claim a teacher is not doing a good job on the basis of flawed standardized exams and Regents is asinine and has nothing to do with reality unless you look at where the kids each teacher has come from and whether they meet the requirements for that particular grade level or course. Until we have that situation resolved, it is idiotic and unfair to use any of the flawed standardized tests in any way to evaluate a teacher.
But again, that is completely different from saying anybody is opposed to proper teacher evaluation and the removal of incompetents. For that, you will always need properly trained and experienced Assistant Principals and Principals who are educators first. And that might even be true for Chancellors too.
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December 11th, 2009 12:03 pm
[...] State plans to link teacher certification to student performance [...]
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