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Marc Waxman, who is opening a charter school in Denver, and Stacey Gauthier, principal of Renaissance Charter High School, are corresponding about school policy. Read their entire exchange.

Stacey,

Even though I won’t use this post to react to all the ideas you listed in regards to “what makes education in Finland that good,” please keep the lists coming!

If there is a dominant theme that runs through your list, it seems to be that teachers in Finland are truly valued and respected — that the profession on teaching is truly that — professional. I know I don’t need to go into the myriad ways that is not true in America, especially right now.

Moving the American education system, and the larger society in which it exists, to a place where teaching is truly a profession will require more than just changing the system; it will require systemic change.

But as school leaders at autonomous schools we need not wait for larger change. So I am going to throw my own list at you that describes efforts to value teachers at our new network of schools in Denver.

1. It’s hard to become a SOAR teacher. We have a competitive, extensive, and intensive selection process for new teachers. Entry into our community isn’t easy.
2. Teachers are held to high expectations. In education we often talk about the importance of high expectations for students. We also must have high expectations for teachers. Our teachers know that great things are expected of them.
3. Accountability must support the culture of high expectations. And I don’t mean the student growth-data type of accountability that is coming into vogue. (more…)

Marc Waxman, who is opening a charter school in Denver, and Stacey Gauthier, principal of Renaissance Charter High School, are corresponding about school policy. Read their entire exchange.

Stacey,

Thanks so much for your letter. In your last post, you write:

I would like to ask you for a moment to pretend that we had the advantage of knowing all we know right now about the school systems we work in and we were starting from scratch to set-up the best infrastructure to support a system of great schools.

You ask eight specific, intelligent, and important questions. And your post ends with:

So, I am tossing this ball to you. You now have the ability to build a school system from scratch knowing all you know now. What would you do?

In answering your questions I would explain my ideas on how to change the system. I certainly have lot of ideas about this. But when I read your letter I couldn’t help but think about the difference between focusing on changing the system versus the idea of systemic change. In my professional life, I am all about changing the system, and I spend a lot of time and energy on it. But in my intellectual life I think about systemic change. (more…)

Marc Waxman, who is opening a charter school in Denver, and Stacey Gauthier, a co-principal of Renaissance Charter High School, are corresponding about school policy. Read their entire exchange.

Dear Stacey,

In your last letter you listed nine “attributes of an effective school.” All the attributes are indeed important. The ones that caught my attention, however, were numbers 3, 4, and 5. These specifically inspired me to reflect on the inherent conflict between school and system.

For attribute number 3 you wrote that effective schools must possess “school-level autonomy on matters such as programming, curriculum, budgeting and staffing and other policy decisions of importance.”

As individual schools have increased autonomy, how can we maintain continuity of education across the system of schools serving a community? For example, schools may use their autonomy to serve specific grade levels. In Community X, School A serves K-5, School B serves 5-8, and school C serves 6-12.  All three configurations might make sense at the individual school level, but as a system of schools within a community they may not meet the needs of students and families. (more…)

Marc Waxman, who is opening a charter school in Denver, and Stacey Gauthier, a co-principal of Renaissance Charter High School in Queens, are corresponding about school policy. Read their entire exchange.

Stacey,

Let’s shift gears slightly from teacher incentives to a connected topic — teacher effectiveness. As with so many terms in education, this is a bit of a jargony term and also one that 20 people might give 20 different definitions for. The concept of teacher effectiveness as currently used as part of the dominant narrative seems to be pretty straightforward — the more academic growth students show while the responsibility of an individual teacher the more effective that teacher is. Of course, this definition opens up a slew of questions. Here are just a few: What data are used, and how are they used, to measure academic growth? How is an individual teacher’s impact on a student or group of students differentiated from other variables that might also impact growth?What happens in those subjects and/or grade levels where standardized assessments don’t yet exist?

The concept of teacher effectiveness has been used by schools and districts as the underpinning of merit pay and incentive systems. I found it interesting to learn through your last post that your school does not tie incentives to individual teachers’ effectiveness. I wonder if this is because of the difficulties in evaluating effectiveness or because the potential impact on the culture of collegiality you have built or for some other reason.

A new trend in public education is to use teacher effectiveness as a concept to underpin teacher evaluation. I won’t claim to be an expert on all the current plans across the country or even in Denver (where legislation was recently passed on this topic specifically). At schools I have helped start and run we have never considered using student growth data as part of a teacher’s evaluation, and I don’t think we will any time soon even though the schools themselves have to meet very specific benchmarks in order to remain open. (Among other issues, I have definitely seen years where weak teachers have students show strong growth in test scores while the students of great teachers show little growth in test scores. It happens.)

I have started to spend time thinking more deeply about the idea both as it might play out in the larger public school system and how it could play out at an individual charter school. (more…)

Marc Waxman, a principal of a charter school in Denver, and Stacey Gauthier, a co-principal of Renaissance Charter High School, are corresponding about school policy. Read their entire exchange.

Dear Stacey,

As I was preparing to write back to you I decided to read a column in Huffington Post by Randi Weingarten. And, as I was reading it I saw the link to the “manifesto” signed by your chancellor in New York City and my superintendent here in Denver. I won’t get into the arguments for or against each of these articles other than to say that the answer probably lies somewhere in the middle. But, interestingly, the “manifesto” has a direct connection to your last correspondence to me. It states:

District leaders also need the authority to use financial incentives to attract and retain the best teachers. When teachers are highly effective — measured in significant part by how well students are doing academically — or are willing to take a job in a tough school or in a hard-to-staff subject area such as advanced math or science, we should be able to pay them more. Important initiatives, such as the federal Teacher Incentive Fund, are helping bring great educators to struggling communities, but we have to change the rules to professionalize teaching.

In last correspondence, you wrote, “Four years ago teachers voted overwhelmingly to participate in the Teacher Incentive Fund program (Partnership for Compensation in Charter Schools, a collaboration between CEI-PEA and nine charter schools).”

You may remember that the conversion charter school I co-founded and co-directed in Harlem, Future Leaders Institute, also voted on whether to participate in the Teacher Incentive Fund program. There, teachers narrowly voted against participation.

Now that your school has been part of the program for several years, I would love to hear more about how it is going. (more…)

Hi Stacey,

In your letter to me, you ended by writing “… I would love to hear how unions and charter schools co-exist in Denver.”

While I don’t pretend to be an expert on the teacher union in Denver, I do have some experience on the issue. (Over the past couple years, I worked for Denver Public Schools in its New Schools Office  — now the Office of School Reform and Innovation — in various capacities including as executive director.) Long story short, out of the 30 or so charter schools in Denver, I am not sure any (maybe one) has a union presence. In fact, in Denver it is not obligatory that teachers in traditional public schools join the union, so in many schools there is quite a mix of teachers that are in the union and those that are not.

This being said, I think there are some really interesting things going on with collective bargaining agreements, and in some real ways there is a blurring of the lines between charter schools and traditional public schools. What has made this possible is a law that came on the books shortly before I got to Denver called the Innovation Schools Act of 2008. Here’s how the act describes itself:

The Innovation Schools Act is intended to improve student outcomes by supporting greater school autonomy and flexibility in academic and operational decision-making. The Act provides a means for schools and districts to gain waivers from state laws and collective bargaining agreements.

The Act allows a public school or group of public schools to submit an innovation plan to its school district board of education to implement innovations that result in improved student outcomes. Once approved, school district boards of education must submit the innovation plans and waiver requests to the Colorado State Board of Education for ratification.

(more…)