I learned a new application for an old word in a recent article in Education Week (Vol. 31, No. 27).  The word is “churn”.  While the traditional definition is “to stir or agitate violently”, in this article, it refers to the practice of moving teachers around and compares this churn to a hurricane.

Urban school districts suffer the most from this type of disaster.  New teachers often leave the teaching profession within the first five years or they at least leave the urban schools for suburban institutions.  This creates a stir in the school or the entire district as educators move in and move out and others move in to take their place.  This interferes with relationship building between staff members and with their students.  This instability creates obstacles in developing trust and understanding.

A more complicated problem is that teachers not only leave urban schools, but often , those schools will move teachers around within the building (and sometimes between from one school to another) treating them as objects or widgets, merely filling a scheduling or staffing hole.  Teachers are not given the opportunity to develop expertise in a grade level or subject as they are moved about by the hurricane.  The article states, “For every two teachers who left the district or the profession during our study, another three were moved from subject to subject, grade to grade, or school to school.”  In addition to personal mastery, educators who are blown about are not able to form stable professional learning communities in which to grow in their abilities.

Educators, researchers, and policymakers have learned to accept churn as “background noise.”  The constant movement has become a fact of educator’s lives.  Further research showed that of controlled studies attempting to measure the effects of new interventions churn was ignored as a possible reason for failing to find effects from the interventions.

Churn is apparent even in the world of administrators where principals are switched about in efforts to turn around struggling schools.  As a result, teachers are constantly adjusting to new leadership styles.

What does this mean for teachers?

• Less knowledge. When teachers are moved from grade to grade, they need to learn new curriculum materials and new educational standards.  Looking at the National Common Core State Standards, it is obvious that a teacher would find differences and variance in the standards.  
  
• Weak relationships. Teachers in schools with a high-level of churn, fail to make lasting relationships with co-workers.  In fact, they may feel less inclined to even attempt the effort of connecting with colleagues if they feel that the coworker will only disappear at the end of the year. 
  
• High turnover. Teachers who feel like widgets will leave the profession http://widgeteffect.org/  Teachers who feel valued for their contribution to the education of children, stay.
  

What does this mean for students?

We have to remember that students ultimately suffer due to churn.  Students cannot build relationships when teachers are moving to other buildings.  Without a degree of staff stability, students encounter a new school climate every year of their education.

What does this mean for policymakers?

Teacher turnover has been talked about for many years.  Teachers leave the profession for a variety of reasons, but the fact remains that teacher turnover has related economic costs.  It takes money to train teachers and to provide them with materials to meet educational demands.  It takes money to recruit qualified individuals.

Turnover has educational costs.  If students are consistently taught by less experienced teachers, they will experience less effective teaching on the whole.  If students are taught by teachers who are always new to the curriculum, they will not benefit from a teacher’s deep understanding of a subject matter or grade level.

Turnover has personal costs.  Educators and administrators are never able to develop confidence in an area, a building, or a subject area if they are constantly tossed around by the winds of change.

Churn needs to be recognized and addressed.  It cannot be a necessary evil involved in education.  The root causes of churn need to be examined.  How arbitrary is churn?  What are the reasons that are given when teachers and administrators are moved or choose to move?  How can we convince teachers to stay?  How can we convince administrators to let teachers stay in one place long enough to develop a level of expertise?

Final Thoughts:

Educators leave the profession of teaching for a variety of reasons.  Although teachers may seek higher paying jobs, more often teachers site the reasons for leaving as “environments that lack essential professional supports including:

1. support from school leadership,
   
   
2. organizational structures and workforce conditions that convey respect and value for them, and
   
   
3. induction and mentoring programs for new and experienced teachers.”
   
   

When teachers feel valued and respected, they will stay – through thick and thin.  When teachers are treated like warm bodies to fill a classroom based on scheduling needs, they feel undervalued and unable to fulfill their role as a mentor for the future.

Some people think that anyone can teach.  That is a widget mentality and teachers are not widgets. 

Teachers: What are your misconceptions about the Common Core?

I recently read an article in the Washington Post written by a disgruntled teacher who just received his ”training” in the Common Core.   As a Student Achievement Partners (SAP) Fellow, I have had the opportunity to work closely with the Common Core.  SAP is a nonprofit working with teachers to develop an online library of resources for teaching the new standards. I have assisted with the introduction and explanation of Common Core to district leaders from across the country and have worked with the standards extensively in my own classroom.

I would like to direct my comments to Jeremiah, the teacher from the Post article and any other teacher experiencing difficulty understanding and incorporating the Common Core.

As a teacher with 9 years of experience, five of them in high-needs public schools in New Orleans, I recognize that even the best of initiatives can be foiled with poor preparation. This is my greatest fear for the implementation of Common Core.

Jeremiah, reading about your experience makes me truly sorry that the Common Core was presented to you in such a scripted and uninformative light.  I would react to the training you received in the same way.

However, let’s talk through the intentions vs. actual practice. Allow me to explain the intention of the Common Core, as I understand it given my experience.

Exemplars

An “exemplar” is not and should not feel like a prepackaged lesson. It is a model. It is important for new teachers and veterans alike to have models and exemplars of what excellence looks like. We would never ask our students to produce mastery work without first providing them with examples. Why would we not provide the same scaffolding and support for teachers?

The exemplar is not meant to be scripted or read verbatim– it is a model of excellence that you, as an effective teacher, then modify to meet the needs of your room.  Teachers understand that each child needs something different – an exemplar cannot meet all of those needs. Those are your responsibility, as the purveyor of knowledge in your classroom.

Alignment to good teaching

Common Core asks that our children to be able to access informational and rigorous literary text, analyze it and defend answers with textually-based evidence, write eloquently by making connections between these texts, and use academic vocabulary appropriate to their grade level.  These requirements are directly, explicitly aligned to the needs of our children. I would never implement a set of standards that I did not feel aligned to the needs of my students and the world they will be entering.

Prior knowledge

Informational texts, such as the exemplar Jeremiah witnessed, are intended to be cornerstones to a unit – not the unit itself. It is not the intention of the Common Core to imply that other information should not be taught. We ought to remember that the activation of prior knowledge can put some children at a disadvantage, putting them at odds with the text before they even begin. Common Core does not ask that you do not teach historical context – it asks that you do not require it as a prerequisite to mastery.

Text-to-self connections

Common Core emphasizes that text-to-self connections should not take precedence or be made to feel more important than connections to other texts. As a teacher, it’s my job to know my students well enough to provide the connections that are right for them, whether linking the lesson to personal experience or other literature I know they have encountered.

Literary instruction has gotten to a place where if it doesn’t connect easily to a student’s life, they believe that they do not have to care about it. Are we, as teachers, helping them ready themselves for a global business community by saying, “How does this make you feel?”

The world will not care about the ability of our students to express their opinions about informational text. It is our responsibility to prepare them for what they will have to do with these texts and the Common Core supports the development of these skills beautifully.

Policy makers: What can be done to prevent chaos when implementing the Common Core?

“The best laid schemes of mice and men…” absolutely cannot apply to the Common Core!  This is a chance for our children to receive rigorous standards and an education will help them compete globally. When it comes to implementation, it’s clear there needs to better communication and better training for teachers. Here’s what I recommend:

1. State policy makers should band together in developing a team of expert educators who can conduct national trainings. If possible, they should coordinate with Student Achievement Partners (SAP). This will ensure proper alignment and messaging.
2. Use this educator team to vet materials being developed by textbook companies by rating them on quality and alignment.
3. Use the team to train and develop state and district Common Core experts.
4. Have the team develop meaningful professional development and training that is meaningful and closely linked to standards and real life classroom experience.
5. Regularly evaluate this team against rigorous goals to ensure quality.
6. Encourage districts to hire an expert – whose credentials have been vetted through SAP – who can support the implementation of the Common Core. This would not only ensure alignment but high quality professional development and the effective creation of materials.

Innovation, autonomy, and flexibility are just some of the buzz words resonating through our nation’s education reform efforts to provide more local control to schools and teachers.  Because the contexts of school communities and students’ lives matter, it is critical to offer avenues through which teachers and school leaders can effectively tailor their schools to the specific needs and strengths of their families.

The White House has been recognizing and celebrating Champions of Change working on the front lines to help students “Win the Future.”  Our national government is offering flexibility and incentivizing effective reforms through initiatives such as Race to the Top and the recent NCLB waivers.  A few states and districts are encouraging school leaders to implement innovations that will improve student achievement. Colorado, where I am currently working at my second innovation school, thanks to the Innovation Schools Act of 2008, is just one example.

Academic achievement data has continued to reveal a gap for many generations, clearly indicating that what has been done in the past is not working for all students.  It is obvious that we must begin to do things differently and do so beyond a few successful pockets.  However, before swarms of well-intentioned educators unleash the innovations that our historically failing system needs, let me offer these points of reflection from a practitioner’s perspective,

“What are the questions to consider before designing and implementing an innovation at the school and classroom level?”

1. To what end are we designing and implementing this reform?
   
2. If the answer to the first question is, “improved academic achievement as measured by growth on standardized tests,” of what longer term, desired outcome are we hoping improved academic achievement is an indicator? 
   
3. What rich body of research proves that this idea has a significant chance to achieve the longer-term, intended outcome?
   
4. What are the unintended consequences of this proposed program?  Is it possible that while it may increase test scores, it could also be a detriment towards our larger purpose and vision for educating youth?
   
5. Before we design and implement this reform, have all stakeholders (students, teachers, families, etc.) agreed on what the problem is that we are trying to address with this innovation? Do most stakeholders agree on what the root-causes are of this problem?
   

  6.  What are the resources we need to implement this reform with integrity through the depth of its intention and across the breadth of its scale with fidelity?  (qualified staff, funding, facility, etc.)

Now that we have vetted our plan with these questions, “How can district, state, and federal policies support the design and implementation of these thoroughly vetted innovations?”

1. Ensure that school leaders, while being held highly accountable, have full capacity to manage all available resources (including financial ones) in order to focus the application of them towards the reform’s intended outcome.
   
2. Ensure full transparency about what resources are available.
   
3. Encourage directors of centralized systems to be as flexible as possible when asked by school leaders to provide services that lie outside of the typical way their resource has been used in the past.
   

If reform leaders use the first six questions to carefully vet their plans and policymakers support those that survive this rigorous vetting process in the three ways listed above, we would see a dramatic increase in both the effectiveness and sustainability of those ideas currently waiting in the innovation bullpen.

Dru Davison and I were invited to represent Hope Street Group to interview Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan about teacher evaluation.  What an honor it was!

It was a whirlwind tour and in a matter of hours, we had met with Secretary Duncan, his chief of staff Joanne Weiss, and the Department’s Teacher Ambassador Fellows. I am still in a dream state about it.  We first met with Joann Weiss and Sec. Arne Duncan where we spent an hour talking with them about the federal role in education. They talked to us about their experiences, answered our questions, and to our delight, listened to what we as teachers had to say about what we are seeing in our schools. We discussed the importance of including professional development as a vital component of a teacher’s evaluation and supporting the Arts as part of a well-rounded education.  It was an experience that is truly memorable and inspirational.

To finish up our meeting at the Department, we met with the Washington DC Teacher Ambassador Fellows and learned what their daily work encompasses. Each fellow is assigned to work with a specific person and section within USDOE, such as communications, reading, technology, etc.  The Teacher Ambassador Fellows are currently recruiting next year. This is where one can apply: http://www2.ed.gov/programs/teacherfellowship/applicant.html

Since my return to the real world, I have been able to speak to numerous people in my school district about the discussions we held.  The most valuable part of this whole experience has been the ability to see firsthand that our policymakers care about what teachers have to say. They not only care about our input but they want our ideas and they want us involved in the implementation of new policies. Teachers as well as the administrators in Delaware have been so grateful to hear that their issues are being heard and that the federal government supports teachers in doing what they do best, helping their students achieve.  I’m grateful that teacher voices are counted as important and essential in the policy process because as the professionals we are, we should have a place at that table.

In Malcolm Gladwell’s book, “Outliers,” he takes a close look at the many details behind successful people. In looking at highly successful people he defines as “outliers,” Gladwell cleverly reverse engineers three secret ingredients necessary to becoming a highly successful person on top of just being smart and hardworking: opportunity, strong community, and cultural legacies.

These ingredients have huge implications for education and ultimately confirm that we must address the “whole” child.

Each ingredient as you might guess is complex and not created easily, For example, if a lasagna recipe calls for tomato sauce, you better not add a can of Ragu and expect great things.  To do it right we must start from scratch using only that which is fresh, ripe, and organically grown.

INGREDIENT #1: OPPORTUNITY

In his book, Gladwell uses several examples to show us that in addition to innate talents and individual effort, highly successful people have unique opportunities that add to their practical intelligence. Practical intelligence includes things like “knowing what to say to who, knowing when to say it, and knowing how to say it for maximum effect.”

While practical intelligence matters for success, it only matters to a certain extent and intellect and achievement are far from being perfectly correlated. Gladwell makes this point through the comparison of two geniuses: Chris, with an IQ of 195 and Robert, with an IQ of 130. Chris lacked many of the opportunities that Robert was given. He was poor, abandoned by his father, had an uneducated mother, and was often beaten at home by his mother’s partners. Chris never finished college and became a horse rancher. Robert won the Nobel Prize.

Being a speech language pathologist and reading about practical intelligence, I immediately correlated it with pragmatics, otherwise known as social language. This social piece of teaching a child is something we talk about in education, but it is often far from the priority.

If we accept that social skills will play a significant role in student achievement, then the teaching of this practical knowledge ought to be part of our strategic plan as educators.  While many students may learn good social skills from their parents, many others do not.  In order to create equal opportunity, we need to recognize and rectify this imbalance. That may require extending the school day/year, providing broader experiences, and teaching basic lessons on social skills.

INGREDIENT #2: STRONG COMMUNITY

Cognitive science teaches us that children learn best when their stress levels are low and when they engage in regular positive social and communicative interactions with peers. As such, we could conclude that the creation of strong school communities yields optimum learning.

Gladwell in fact supports this conclusion with an example about a community in Pennsylvania called Roseto.  The residents of Roseto had remarkable health statistics.  After researching diet, exercise, genes, location, etc, a physician named Stewart Wolf was left with only one conclusion:  “the Rosetans had created a powerful, protective social structure capable of insulating them from the pressures of the modern world.”

INGREDIENT #3: CULTURAL LEGACIES

The discussion of cultural legacies is fascinating and a must-read.  One example he gives is that Korean pilots have a statistically high crash rate.  After detailing the conversation between a NYC air traffic controller and a Korean 1^st officer and Korean Captain, he shows us how the different communication styles of the different cultures resulted in a fatal crash that could have been avoided. In response to these cultural legacy issues, the Koreans are now being trained differently on how to express emergency situations with less mitigation and more commands regardless of job hierarchy.

As we think about cultural norms among Korean pilots, is it so different to compare to our students? They have all come from different homes and have been taught a variety of behaviors. It’s up to us, as educators to better understand the cultural legacies of our students so we can teach them the skills they need to be successful.

So there you have it, the three secret ingredients necessary to address the whole child and create a successful adult. All of these are well within our control if we decide as a society that that is our goal. As teachers, we understand we have students from all backgrounds with various needs. We need the school structures, supports, and accountability to help us provide opportunity for all students, even those who may not have it at home.

With these secret ingredients would Chris not have also been an outlier?

What if his educators had considered his cultural legacy and determined that he needed strategic efforts at improving his practical intelligence and created a stress free community filled with positive peer/teacher interactions for which to help teach these skills and also gave him more opportunities to gain more practical intelligence with teachers/peers through such things as summer school and extended school day activities, so that he was logging more social savvy hours? Would the smartest man in the world then be curing cancer instead of shoveling manure?

How does budget transparency, or the lack thereof, impact school and classroom level programming for students?

Across states in our nation, property owners pay taxes to provide the youth in their community with an education.  While there are many current debates about how much those taxes should be, I don’t often hear debates about how states, districts, and schools should report how those funds are being spent.  And I’d like to hear what people have to say about budget transparency.

I currently serve as a program director at an urban high school daring to both extend our school year by 39 instructional days and provide several travel excursions related to what our students are learning in the classroom.  While everyone I’ve spoken with about these programming decisions agree that they are good for our students, the biggest questions and concerns arise around cost.

Of the dollars paid per student by the state to our school district, a portion is kept by the district for administrative and facility operating costs.  While working to establish a reasonable budget for our students’ travel excursions, many have chuckled at my naiveté when I dare to ask, “How is our district spending the portion of per pupil funding that they keep?”

Perhaps the amplification of district budgeting details, as they pertain to a particular school, would unnecessarily stir up distracting conversation among teachers, administrators, parents, and other school stakeholders.  Since district administrators have been hired to make those budget decisions (and hired without the expected collaboration of other school stakeholders), perhaps it would be a moot effort to be more transparent about where exactly the dollars that our district keeps in per pupil funding are spent.  Would the can of worms opened by this proposed transparency and resulting conversation end up costing the district more money as they manage the discourse and publicity around their budget decisions?

I’m too in the dark, as a school program director, to know the answers to these questions.  I crave the budget transparency that would help me and my colleagues make more effective decisions about instructional programming for our students.

How can policymakers promote more budget transparency between districts and schools?

While each state in our nation has its own right to run its education system independent from any federal expectations, perhaps continuing with the federal theme of incentivizing, The U.S. Department of Education could incentivize budget transparency between districts and the schools/communities they serve.  From my point of view, this would allow teachers and program directors to make the most effective decisions about what instructional practices would best serve their particular students.

However, I’m curious to know other peoples’ experiences and thoughts around this budget transparency issue.

Is Alternative Certification Enough?

A generation ago, teachers became teachers by the same path that nurses became nurses- they attended colleges, majored in their subject area, received teacher training, and entered the classroom.

Within the past 15 years or so, this landscape changed, largely with the formation and rapid expansion of Teach For America, and today there are more paths to the classroom than ever before. While I am not a “TFA Corps Alum,” I became a teacher through a similar group called teachNOLA, run by the New Teacher Project.

After a infinitely brief summer training and a couple weeks of summer school assistant teaching, I found myself in the second worst performing high school in the district, attempting a reclamation of a classroom two other teachers had walked out of by October.  I am still in the classroom 5 years later, but in retrospect realize that I was grossly unprepared to meet the needs of the population I was supposed to serve.

Each year, thousands of well-meaning, enthusiastic college graduates enter TFA, teachNOLA, or a similar “fast track program” and find themselves faced with the worst schools, most deplorable school conditions, and greatest academic deficits. They attend “alternative certification classes” while teaching and receive their teaching certification at the end of the year.  We ask them to roll up their sleeves, work hard, have high expectations, and “close the achievement gap.”

And they do roll up their sleeves – they work hard, they do the best they can with the tools they have, and some of them stay… but not nearly enough. Often, the experience of alternative certification routes becomes a “stepping stone” to another career – in education or otherwise.

While Teach For America offers up statistics that more than 60% of their cohorts end up staying in “some form of educational work” after their two year commitment is at an end, many of these promising teachers leave the classroom before they have had a chance to fully develop their craft.

All of this leaves me with several questions. Where should these skills actually be developed? Is a “summer training institute” enough? How are these programs, or colleges for that matter, held accountable for providing high quality training for their cohorts and students? I have a 15-year-old sister – would I trust her education to a 22 year-old Yale grad armed with an English degree and three-months of training? In his recent blog, Doug Clark makes some excellent suggestions, and we as a nation need to begin to consider this as a national, not simply an educational, issue.

How are schools and training programs held accountable to excellence?

I went back to college, while teaching fulltime, and spent three years and thousands of dollars attending the graduate level education courses in order to become certified and – I thought – learn more about becoming a teacher. I was shocked at the lack of attention and rigor brought to these courses. Of all of the classes I attended, only two of them were of any quality.

There is absolutely no alignment between colleges on what it means to prepare a teacher for a classroom.  Standards for excellence among teaching programs differ from college to college. Imagine if this were true for doctors and their preparation for the surgery room wildly varied depending on the university they attend!

I strongly believe that standardization for teacher certification is needed to establish consistency, credibility, and a level of accountability for excellence. How can we possibly expect to prepare prospective teachers for the classroom if the curriculum is not vetted and prepared by experts who are in communication and are constantly pushing their programs to be up to date?

Moreover, once teachers have come through these rigorous programs, they need to continue to develop their skills. In the United States, we have barely begun the process of teacher evaluation. In countries that have high performing educational systems, teachers begin excellently and are expected to continue to be so. In Singapore, teachers complete 100 hours of professional development annually. A similar program is true in South Korea, and while high school is not compulsory I that country, 97% of its population finishes.

Preparing teachers for the challenges they will face, demanding that the programs that prepare them are effective, and continuing a teacher’s education throughout their career. These are the qualities of an educational system that works and we will continue spinning our wheels with new initiatives until we truly begin to value the teacher as the integral part of the system, and prepare them effectively for the job.

The views expressed are the writer's own.

Ed Nation Blog Post, Doug Clark, Teacher Fellow, The Hope Street Group

What a wonderful experience to attend the 2^nd Education Nation produced by NBC News in New York. I am very grateful to the Hope Street Group for obtaining invitations for several of the Hope Street Teacher Fellows to attend the event. NBC did an outstanding job of providing relevant and thought-provoking discussions, presentations and interviews with many of the top players in the education arena. I was especially interested in the presentation on Monday, “Brain Power: Why Early Learning Matters.” This presentation was given by several leading academics from leading universities who presented real and solid research, followed by discussions on how to apply the findings in our work as teachers. There was lots of “meat” and very little “fluff.”

My experience with Education Nation began before I left for New York. I received a call from the Austin, Texas NBC affiliate requesting an interview to talk about why I was attending, the role of Hope Street Group and what I hoped would happen as a result of the event. I was truly humbled by the request, as classroom teachers do not usually get offers from the media to do interviews. I included my heart-felt thoughts on the recent firestorms in Bastrop, Texas and the significant role that teachers played in volunteering at shelters, food banks, etc., even though over 200 teacher families had lost their homes as well. My “pre-education nation” experience told me this was going to be a special event and well worth the time and effort to attend.

As I reflect on the many presentations, interviews and networking opportunities available to us, I realize the potential for this and similar events to effect real and systemic change is significant. Clearly, the conversations and activities that I have been involved in with the Hope Street Group throughout the past months and years are matched very closely with last week’s Education Nation dialogue. The challenge for all education reformers is to now take this great information and make something happen in a real and sustainable way.

One of the many highlights of the event was when New Haven Conn. Teacher Matt Presser, one of the winners of the Education Nation essay contest, told Brian Williams, “Too often school reform is something that is happening to our students as opposed to with them or for them, and so many decisions are being made by people in board rooms, people in the White House, when the real people who know what our students need are the people here today, the people in our classroom every day”. The work of Hope Street Group and NBC Education Nation supports the notion of “teacher voice” in the discussion.

I believe the key is for teachers to move this agenda along by taking the energy and information created by this event to create real change at the local level. The feedback I have received from the general public in my home town regarding education reform is outstanding and has shown me that, with a local contact or facilitator, local educational reform can occur.

For those of you who were unable to attend, I hope you will take some time and check out the videos on NBC of the activities from last week. I can’t wait to see what’s next!