Testimony to Aspen Institute’s
Commission on No Child Left Behind

Statement of California Teachers Association
Testimony by Pixie Hayward-Schickele

April 11, 2006

Since 1992, the California Teachers Association (CTA) has supported a number of legislative efforts to address the problems of maldistribution, including:

• SB 1422 (Chapter 1245, Statutes of 1992, Bergeson) calling for the Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CCTC) to complete a comprehensive review of the requirements for earning and renewing teaching credentials;
• The implementation of new standards to govern all aspects of teacher development, including subject matter studies, professional preparation, induction, and continuing growth;
• The creation of a two-tiered teaching credential that would establish the completion of a standards-based induction program as a path to the Level II or Professional Clear credential;
• Program accountability using a teaching performance assessment into initial teacher preparation;
• The alignment of all teacher preparation standards with California's K-12 academic content standards for students and the California Standards for the Teaching Profession; and 
• The establishment of multiple routes into teaching that will meet the same high standards, including programs that "blend" pedagogy and subject matter courses into a single program.

CTA has worked collaboratively with multiple stakeholder organizations to understand the teacher quality issue and monitor program improvement activities of the state's policy, licensing, and legislative agencies:

• Legislation to recruit out of state teachers by lowering or eliminating reciprocity barriers;
• Advocating to maintain the incentives to attract National Board Certified teachers to work at low-performing schools -- at a time when the state's budget for many education programs had to be cut;
• Bargaining alternative salary schedules to create salary and performance incentives;
• Bargaining and implementing the Peer Assistance and Review and teacher induction programs in districts across the state to create an arc of professional development and support for beginning and veteran teachers;
• Participation on:
  • CCTC standards setting committees for licensure tests;
  • Accreditation committees to approve teacher and administrator preparation programs;
  • The legislature's NCLB advisory group;
  • Workgroups of the California Department of Education (CDE) and state board to develop the Title 5 Highly Qualified Teacher (HQT) regulations.

CTA has actively supported the state's programs for teacher recruitment and retention.  The state established several forms of financial assistance to teachers and teacher candidates. In addition to these direct financial rewards, the state has invested in forgivable loans for housing, financial aid for teacher preparation, and retirement contributions. Several of these loan programs specifically require recipients to teach in high-need areas. The multiple career ladder projects were the state's most successful teacher recruitment efforts; qualified paraprofessionals participated in a planned program of university based training and district mentoring to earn a credential.  In spite of the fact that these projects also reported the highest teacher retention rates, funds to support these projects were cut.
 
The US Department of Education commended California for the work done to develop its NCLB Teacher Quality regulations and guidance.  CTA worked to assure that California's HQT policies incorporated several important principles:

1. Process must be transparent.
2. Process must build upon existing information.
3. Must be generally accepted by teachers as defensible, fair and valid.
4. Minimize additional burden.
5. HQT evaluation/certification would be a one-time decision.
6. Appeal process must be fair and equitable.

California's process was not completed for four full years -- for a number of reasons:

• Multiple guidances from the US Department of Education (DOE);
• 17 different updates for the non-regulatory compliance guides; as many as 44 changes in the Department's answers to the frequently asked questions;
• Funding support in general for ESEA was never there; funding to support specified sections dealing with the HQT mandates was ill-planned and poorly considered in each area:
  • Title I, Part A
  • Title II, Part A
  • Title II, Part B
  • Title II, Part C
  • Title II, Part D
  • Title III, Part A
  • Title V, Part A
  • Title VII, Part A
• Technical assistance was not valid, reliable, consistent or transparent.  Instead of scientific, research-based advice on developing programs using these eight categories of funds to support teachers, stakeholders and policymakers heard a lot of personal opinion.

The fact that California does not have a statewide data system is a key barrier in dealing with the teacher quality issue. The problems stem largely from inappropriate infrastructure.  Statistics on program participation are typically compiled by one office, while data on teacher retention, job satisfaction and teacher and student learning are tallied in another.  Often there is no clear way to link the relevant databases; student achievement data are rarely disaggregated by race, ethnicity, and income. 

Districts and institutions of higher education (IHE's) do not have the tools to correlate data on teacher retention with participation in professional development or support programs.  In California, the state has no statewide teacher information database.  In counties where the data is collected, the information is inconsistently recorded, or gathered in separate offices or databases.  California will have to determine the necessity of including data links between certain types of induction experiences and longevity in its new teacher database.  As the project develops, county offices will be required to allocate resources for archival research and data entry.  CTA supports the current legislative efforts to get this database in place.

The Assessment and Accountability Branch (AAB) and the Finance, Technology and Administration Branch (FTAB) of the California Department of Education (CDE) have initiated a project effort to develop the Teacher Data System (TDS) as required by Senate Bill 77, Chapter 38, Statutes of 2005. The TDS project effort will implement a comprehensive strategy for allowing the integration of teacher data across existing data systems residing in the California Department of Education (CDE), the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CCTC), the State Teachers Retirement System (STRS), and county offices of education in order to meet the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) reporting requirements, and other state and federal monitoring and compliance activities. CTA has been involved in the discussions that created this legislation and will continue to monitor the state's effort to create a statewide teacher database.

Recommendations on improving the implementation of NCLB's existing teacher quality and highly qualified teacher requirements

• California's standards for becoming a certificated teacher are among the highest in the nation.  The requirements for full certification differ from state to state. So what it means to be a certified teacher in one state is not the same in another. Generic mandates for teacher quality should not eliminate rigorous state standards for subject matter preparation and authorization.
  
  
• CTA believes that all teachers should have full certification--and teachers who are in an alternative training program leading to certification should receive encouragement, support and the resources to achieve that goal.
  
  
• Further, CTA believes that increased teacher salaries and improved working conditions will do more to make this a reality than hundreds of rules and requirements for certification.  Unless teachers are paid salaries commensurate with their responsibility and training, districts will continue to have difficulty filling vacant teaching positions.
  
  
• Additional resources (which are not included in the ESEA) must be provided by the federal government to assist those teachers who are employed by districts and are progressing toward full certification through alternative means.  Without those resources, many of these teachers will leave the profession before they can become fully certificated. 
  
  
• California has the most diverse student population in the country. With more than 6 million public school students and a teacher shortage, especially in inner city and poverty areas, California struggles to keep qualified teachers in the classroom. Instead of branding them as not "highly qualified," the federal government should be providing assistance to retain these teachers and assisting them in reaching their goal of full certification.
  
  
• ESEA calls for states to implement education reform based on scientific research. The legislation itself creates policy that is not based on sound, scientific research.
  • Highly qualified teachers are necessary but not sufficient elements of successful schools. (Fullan, Chenoweth)
  • The effectiveness of professional development programs should be established according to the rigorous and widely accepted national program evaluation standards compiled and promulgated by the Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation. (Joint Committee)
  • If they are to be effective, professional development programs must be locally developed, based on rigorous and ongoing needs-assessment, designed and tailored to specific local needs, properly implemented, and sustained by fully funded multi-year appropriations.  (McKnight)
  • Commitment and support of educational programs replaces superficial compliance with programmatic provisions when all stakeholders are genuinely involved throughout. (Datnow, Walter)
    
    
• How does the data deal with teacher quality?  Nearly all current projection models focus on numbers of teachers -- avoiding the dimension of quality entirely.  This assessment places special emphasis on the initial tentative steps that have been taken but not the further steps that may be feasible to take teacher quality into account. How adequate are the present models and methods for estimating future levels of teacher supply, demand, and quality? How adequate are they for analyzing the effects of changes in pertinent conditions and policies on teacher supply, demand, and quality?

Recommendations on improving NCLB's statutory and regulatory provisions regarding teacher quality and highly qualified teachers

In The New Economics, Dr. W. Edwards Deming examined a wide variety of private sector data to develop his "85-15 rule."

• 85% of a worker's performance is determined by the system in which they work and the remaining 15% by their individual effort. (Ch. 2 - Out of the Crisis).
• In other words, it is the system that needs most of our attention--this is particularly true when it comes to teachers, teaching, and learning.
• Most teachers, including those in our low-performing schools, can develop into high quality teachers.
• Physical working conditions are a challenge, but so are years of poor professional development neglect, a past history of inadequate leadership, district-level neglect, the lack of appropriate materials, and the new challenge of rising numbers of children whose first language is not English in classrooms where the high quality standards aligned teaching materials -- necessary for good first teaching -- comes in the form of a supplementary guide.

Finding and recruiting the right teachers:

• "Highly qualified" under the law does not mean high quality.  Subject specific knowledge is important, but successful teachers need to know how to address different students' learning needs and skill levels. (Ferguson, 1991)
• In particular, CTA has watched other states adopt non-traditional teacher certification programs, like ABCTE, to give potential teachers a path to the classroom without returning to college.  Such alternate routes may put unprepared teachers in the most challenging classrooms. Does NCLB compliance mean high quality?
• While the solutions will not require rocket science, there is a science to putting the pieces of the teaching quality puzzle together. Over the last 15 years, research has consistently identified the inextricable links between the quality of teachers and teaching, and the achievement of students. (Sanders, 1996)

Regardless, of where they work, teachers also need to have the kinds of adult leadership skills that make them effective in building momentum for change among their colleagues.

• Very few of our best teachers have been fully trained to lead change and build collaborative teacher communities.
• Policymakers need to assure that effective processes are in place to identify and train high quality teachers as leaders. 
• Without developing teacher leadership skills and creating opportunities for high quality teachers to lead, they will not have the impact on school improvement that policymakers are seeking.

The Southeastern Center for Teaching Quality's (SECTQ) own analyses of teacher survey data in North Carolina reveal that certain aspects of teachers' working conditions, including principal leadership, teacher empowerment, and the quality of professional development, are highly predictive of both student achievement and teacher retention.

Unfortunately, many policymakers and administrators have given little attention to the working conditions that allow qualified teachers to be effective:

1. High quality teachers do not want to work for weak principals.
2. High quality teachers do not want to work in a school where they cannot use their teaching expertise (and are forced to use a highly scripted curriculum or pacing schedules).
3. High quality teachers need the right resources (e.g., classroom libraries, science equipment, current technology) to teach the way they know how.
4. High quality teachers would more readily move to low-performing schools if they could do so with "kindred" spirits--i.e., similarly skilled and valued colleagues who have the time to learn from and support each other.
5. High quality teachers would expect, and labor market forces would require, salary incentives to teach in hard-to-staff schools.

--Southeastern Center on Teacher Quality

Policymakers should not expect to recruit good teachers to low-performing schools without the presence of other high quality teachers, resources, and effective principals.

• Drawing on a range of different research studies, Judith Warren Little has outlined a number of working-conditions issues that can enhance or diminish teachers' motivation, as well as their opportunities to learn and be effective.
• These conditions include the extent to which teaching assignments are appropriate; adequate time to work with colleagues and students; professional development that focuses on the systemic, sustained, and collective study of student work; access to information, high quality curriculum materials, and technology; and feedback on teaching that is helpful.
• Teachers call this a professional learning community--the heart and soul of the teaching working conditions "package" that must be in place to improve student achievement.
• Experienced teachers have demonstrated their teaching prowess through years of practice. They know their students and the communities in which they teach. That's why it is good to focus on good teaching as a key to improvement.  If that's the case, policymakers and other educational decision makers would be wise to consider what contributes to the success of these veterans as they search for better ways to improve these schools.

References

Chenoweth, Thomas G. and Robert B. Everhart (2002) Navigating Comprehensive School Change: A Guide for the Perplexed. Larchmont,  N.Y.: Eye on Education.

Datnow, Amanda (2000, Winter) Power and Politics in the Adoption of School Reform Models in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 22 (4), 357-374.

Ferguson, Ronald F. (1991, Summer). Paying for Public Education: New Evidence on How and Why Money Matters" in Harvard Journal on Legislation, 28 (2), 465-498.

Fullan, Michael (2001) The New Meaning of Educational Change. N.Y.: Teachers College Press.

Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation. (1981, 1994) The Program Evaluation Standards. Newbury Park: Sage.

Little, Judith. W. (1996). Organizing Schools for Teacher Learning. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association. New York. April.

McKnight, Kathryn (2002) Evaluation of School Improvement Plans Developed  for II/USP.  Tucson, AZ: Evaluation Group for Analysis of Data.

Sanders, William L., & Rivers, June C. (1996). Cumulative and Residual Effects of Teachers on Future Student Academic Achievement. Knoxville, Tenn.: University of Tennessee Value-Added Research and Assessment Center.

Walter, Katie and Bryan C. Hassel (2000) Guide to Working with Model Providers. Naperville, IL: North Central Regional Educational Laboratory.