Group Launches Reform Effort Focused on Teacher Quality
A report released Wednesday, the result of a year-long effort from a commission of top education thinkers, offers a sweeping set of recommendations aimed at improving the teaching profession in the state — and sparking reform during the next legislative session and beyond.
The package of policy priorities from the Texas Teaching Commission, launched by Educate Texas, a nonprofit funded in part by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Communities Foundation of Texas, takes up teacher recruitment, compensation, evaluation and retention. It proposes changes at the state, agency and district level to address the challenges of getting and keeping ...
Comments (7)
Kathy Kilmer Moak via Texas Tribune on Facebook
As a retired teacher, I will wait to see the entire set of recommendations before passing judgement. I do agree teacher prep needs reforming. Along with the "more rigorous, annual teacher evaluation system" mentioned in the article, I hope suggestions were made for more rigorous training of administrators who make those evaluations. An effective teacher is so much more than the sum of the students' standardized test scores.
Texas Parents Opt Out of State Tests via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Evaluating teachers based on student test scores is WRONG!
Texas Bookworm
I wonder how many of these "reformers" are actual educators? They have a hidden agenda, don't fall for their lies! Similar "reforms" elsewhere have done nothing but destroy public education.
Sally Baulch via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Other than the teacher associations, were there any practicing teachers on the commission?
I support mentoring--very helpful to get another's advice when learning how to manage a diverse and opinionated group.
blanca fogleman
I just retired this past June. I taught for 30 years. What a terrible state of affairs public school is in. To penalize teachers for low student performance is wrong and a slap in the face to our teachers. HISD took their very best and then paid them very well to teach in high risk schools. The result was that the same amazing teachers could only do so much. A hurting child, a hungry child, a neglected child, has more things on their mind besides learning. A teacher should give her very best but she should not be held accountable for problems that are not her fault. If we go down this road our best rookie teachers will do all they can to teach in middle or high income schools. If we want better teachers begin with the very next college freshman class and select the best GPA's, SAT and ACT scores.However, then those highly trained minds will expect pay that matches what they have to offer. The state has been fortunate to have many very good teachers, in spite of low pay. With the stress that is increasing in the classroom our best minds are looking at other fields, walking out of classrooms and never looking back. Corporate world is not a piece of cake but at least the pay is better. Right now why should anyone want to teach.
Alice Taylor
I will wait to read the entire report, but when I look at a commission with precious few experts in education in it and not a single teacher of any type (from what I see in the article), I really am not surprised that they came up with a proposal that none of the teacher's organizations could get behind.
The article says Texas wants better teachers but nothing listed in the proposals here on TT makes teaching more attractive to top teacher candidates. I often here apologists say that Texas teachers are paid well "considering the lower cost of living in Texas." In the spirit of comparing apples to apples, I rebut that by noting that in the '80s the average Texas teacher made twice the wage of the average Texas nurse. Now Texas teachers make half the wage of a Texas RN. While cost of living raises have occurred in other profession, they've been slow to non-existant for teachers.
And let's not mention the horrible retirements with no COLA or the high cost of health insurance compared to other public sector workers. The vast majority of Texas teachers get no SSI and those that came in as a second career, like myself, have 75% of their SSI clawed back even if you paid in. A Texas teacher is better off working at Wal-Mart than going in to teaching when it comes to Social Security.
Teacher candidates know that many school districts already offer 41K as starting wage and that once they get to 10 years of service wages stagnate. A nurse with 10 years experience can expect a significant wage increase over a trainee. But that might be moot when schools are no longer required to meet a state wage schedule. When districts no longer offer time-in-grade raises, what is the guarantee they'll offer raises for competence? What will stop ISDs from simply offering even higher wages to football coaches and cronies at the expense of classroom teachers?
I see proposals here that look good to every one but teachers, but I don't see anything that makes teaching a more attractive profession. All motivation is a combination of a carrot and a stick. The State of Texas has been willing and able to use the stick on teachers when it comes to trying to get better results in the classroom, but not the carrot. Anyone in business, sports or psychology can tell you that doesn't work. Where is the carrot?
Dormand Long
One no-cost process improvement some school districts could implement to enhance both new teachers and student outcomes is to emulate the simple process in place at high performing Plano ISD.
For its freshly minted new college graduates hired into teaching, Plano ISD allows these green teachers to check out the textbooks that they will be teaching from immediately upon signing their contracts.
This empowers inexperienced teachers to have all summer to thoroughly master the texts. The new teachers thus can identify obsolete or even incorrect content, identify supplementary enrichment material, and even develop information on how and why specific subject matter will be used in the students' lives.
Having the use of the textbooks for all of the summer allows the inexperienced teacher to meet the class on the critical first day of school far more confident as there can be mastery of the textbook.
It is well known that those parents having the highest expectations for their students to achieve the maximum potential subject mastery will purchase a textbook a full year in advance. Their student is then expected to have full mastery of every key concept in that textbook prior to the first day of class.
If an inexperienced teacher meets her class having had the textbook for a couple of weeks and finds that some of the students display full and complete subject mastery of the key concepts of the text, the teacher's confidence is thus undermined.
Next to the Plano ISD is the Richardson ISD, which substantially underperforms when compared to Plano ISD in the key areas of a ) number of National Merit Scholar semi-finalists, and b ) graduates performing well enough to take regular college courses, as opposed to developmental ( aka remedial ) courses.
While RISD has 60% of the students that PISD has, it had fewer than 20% of the NMS semifinalists that PISD reported. Richardson ISD outcomes reflect a far greater percentage of graduates who are shunted into developmental classes as compared to Plano ISD.
One root cause of this marked difference in student achievement is that Richardson ISD keeps its textbooks locked up tight in its warehouses all summer long. Its newly hired and inexperienced new college graduates do not get to see the textbooks that they will be teaching from until the new teacher orientation, which is held some two to three weeks prior to the first day of class.
As the inexperienced new teachers are swamped during the period just prior to the first day of class with shopping for items they must have, but could not previously afford, such as appropriate attire, a reliable car, and an apartment suitable for work at home, in addition to the vital preparation of the classroom, there is little time available for in-depth study of the textbook.
The Richardson ISD and others who currently defer issuances of the textbook could obtain a substantial increase in new teacher confidence, student subject mastery and student outcome simply by the process improvement which costs nothing of emulating Plano ISD's practice of issuing textbooks to inexperienced new college graduates immediately upon contract signing.
Process improvements which cost little yet offer substantial increases in student outcomes should be high on the priority list for school districts.