NYNP blog post 2-15-10

Teacher Training: A Key to Education Reform

Last Thursday (February 11), I attended a panel at New York University on Teacher Quality: The Key to Closing the Achievement Gap?

The panel was moderated by Dr. Amy Ellen Schwartz, NYU Professor of Public Policy, Education, and Economics, and Director of the NYU Institute for Education and Social Policy. It was presented by The Wagner Education Policy Studies Association, The Wagner Economic and Finance Association, and the Institute for Education and Social Policy.

The panelists were:
* Sara Coon, Director of Evaluation and Organization Development at Achievement First, a network of charter schools in New York and Connecticut
* Kim Marshall of the Marshall Memo and New Leaders for New Schools, a nonprofit that recruits, trains, and supports urban principals
* Jen Mulhern, a Partner for Policy at The New Teacher Project, a nonprofit that recruits and trains teachers with the goal of ensuring that children with high need get outstanding teachers
* Peter Oroszlany, founding Principal of Mott Hall V Middle School in the South Bronx, one of the top ten schools in NYC

Dr. Schwartz opened by discussing the persistent and disturbing achievement gap across the US between children from poor and wealthy communities and between children of different races. She pointed out that the national discussion once focused on fixing this problem by tackling it at a macro level, but because the problem still persists, national attention is now turning toward the micro level, specifically focusing on teacher effectiveness in the classroom. Marshall pointed out the importance of this focus by referring to widely cited research showing that five years in a row of effective teaching for every child could completely close the achievement gap (Hanushek, Kain, O'Brien, & Rivkin, 2005), but right now any US child has only a 1 in 17,000 chance that this will happen (Walsh, 2007).

The panelists discussed ways to recruit and retain excellent teachers, measure teacher performance, develop a culture of high performance, and hold teachers and principals accountable for student outcomes. One key they mentioned was teacher professional development.

Key notes about teacher professional development
* Marshall said that "teacher mediocrity is widening the achievement gap" and one way to change that is by providing the professional development needed for teachers to improve dramatically. He said this should involve catching teachers' issues in real time and fixing them right away so that they don't build up, as well as having teacher teams look at student data in real time and decide how to take action.
* Oroszlany suggested that professional development is essential for modeling lifelong learning and for professionalizi ng teaching as a respected career; he encourages the teachers at his school to invest in their own professional development, and he creates opportunities for them to take the time for development.
* Mulhern said that meaningful professional development is essential for supporting teachers, particularly new ones, so that the job is not sink or swim; she noted that there is a lot of bad professional development out there, so there "needs to be a sea change" in improving the quality and applicability of teacher training so that it covers how to use and apply data and strategies immediately.
* Coon said that the best professional development is ongoing and job-embedded, with a great deal of coaching and feedback, which is why Achievement First assigns a coach to every teacher and treats "teaching as a team sport." For schools without the resources to do this, she said that online professional development that includes video will be necessary to help develop teachers.

Panelists' recommended readings
* Vivian Troen and Katherine C. Boles. Who's Teaching Your Children? Why the Teacher Crisis is Worse Than You Think and What Can Be Done About It.
* Daniel Weisberg, Susan Sexton, Jennifer Mulhern, and David Keeling. The Widget Effect: Our National Failure to Acknowledge and Act on Teacher Differences.