The idea here is reform, change, and all that…if everyone left out gets a story this could become exhausting…

In the Moby Dick  v. Marvel Comics debate that is breaking out, Panic at the Pondiscio is pretty spot-on with his parody of yesterday’s New York Times account of a new approach to teaching literature — let kids read whatever they want.  (Times story here)  It’s not that students shouldn’t read things they like and chose to — of course they should.   Rather, the issue is whether that should augment or replace some defined curriculum.   I’m pretty firmly in the augment camp.  Here’s why:  First, there is shared social and cultural capital that it’s important for all students to be exposed to.   Ensuring that all students get this material is a key social equity and mobility strategy and it is intrinsically good:  It simply helps a person better understand the world around them.   Second, as a matter of teaching, there are ideas, themes, skills, and concepts we want students to learn in English-Language Arts and as a practical matter it’s more effective to teach those things built around common content than trying to do it across 20 or 25 books (or comics) all at once.  And thankfully, within reason, we don’t have to choose between shared content and encouraging students to read on their own. 

Kevin Carey stakes out something of an extreme position here.    He’s right about the first mover advantage of some books now commonly used, but that’s an argument for making some tough calls here around curriculum, not just throwing it out.

We should also step back and ask for a moment whether many of today’s students who are disengaged are because of the substance of the material, the quality of the teaching, or because they haven’t been taught to read so encountering challenging literature is frustrating for them?  Good stories have timeless appeal and as the Eduwife – a former high school literature teacher herself — likes to point out, if you can’t  make many of the classics, with their sex, violence, and foul deeds exciting for students then you’re in the wrong line of work…As with most education questions this one is bound up in some larger issues facing the field.

Dan Willingham and I take a look at the big challenges that 21st Century Skills enthusiasts are going to have to engage with to genuinely improve instruction and learning in our schools — and not do violence to efforts to improve equity for poor students.

Before  you panic over the Petrilli-Loveless Times op-ed on the plight of high achieving students be sure to check out Patte Barth’s take.  In addition to Patte’s points, there is also the issue that a lot of this concern is based on an unknowable counterfactual:  What might have happened for these students absent No Child Left Behind?  Given what we know about the capacity of the system today and its past performance my guess would be not as much as people might think…

So the teachers’ unions start the week with the simply devastating New Yorker story on New York’s “rubber rooms” and end with this sharp-edged Times editorial on Race to the Top and accountability that singles them out as a problem.

Time to either get some new PR help or, even better, get some new policies?

Update:  First they lose The New Yorker, now they’ve even lost Sherman Dorn?

Update II:  Tom Vander Ark says the ‘for sale’ sign is out.

By now there is not a lot to be said about Senator Kennedy that hasn’t been said.  But his truly was a great story, even more so considering the long shadows hanging over him.   What impressed me most was his work ethic.    A lot of pols work hard, but he was a force of nature.   When you first encounter him, or at least when I first did, it was the whole Kennedy mystique that captivated.   In my case that this was Bobby Kennedy’s brother (but I’m sure for many people that it was Jack Kennedy’s brother).  In any event, after watching him in action it’s the incredible work ethic, tenacity, and force of personality that leaves the more powerful and lasting impression.  We surely won’t see another like him in our lifetimes and we’re the poorer for it.

That’s because Geoff Garin nails it in this Wash Post op-ed as does Bruce Reed in this Slate piece.   Kennedy was a partisan without peer but at the same time he was a legislator without peer as well.   We’ve got plenty of partisans but a real shortage – at all levels of government – of people who can work together to find and cultivate common ground and solve shared problems.   It’s why government increasingly has trouble solving the easier problems we face; leave aside the really complicated ones.  This is no doubt a problem within both parties but as Republicans assume an increasingly obstructionist posture in Washington it’s particularly conspicuous among their ranks –who are the great Republican compromisers in the U.S. Senate?

Finally, there is inevitably some speculation about Kennedy and the No Child Left Behind law.   For a long time the narrative was that he was snookered into it by President Bush.  That was nonsense and is now generally recognized as such.   So the narrative has evolved into ‘he might not have done it if he’d known what was going to happen on the funding.’   Yet that narrative fails to get at the nuance here, too.  

Kennedy was the fulcrum on No Child in the Senate, bringing together the various factions on education policy to pass the law.   In the years following No Child’s enactment Kennedy had some quibbles with the policy implementation around issues like how civil rights laws should affect private tutoring providers and other issues that while not unimportant were derivative from the primary policy.  And coming into the law’s reauthorization he had changes that he wanted to see – for instance more support to turn around low-performing schools.    

But he never went after the main thrust of the policy or its main tools.  Instead, he cleverly made funding the key area of disagreement thereby shifting some of the focus away from the policy.   Funding is a perennial debate in education (and don’t believe the rhetoric, the dollars that have gone into education over the past decade are staggering)  and consequently a fairly harmless venue for political fights.  In other words, by doing this Kennedy likely contributed to the policy’s survival and increasing durability.  Had he wanted to undo the law or reverse course he likely could have succeeded.  He didn’t.   In fact he rebuffed specific efforts – by Democrats as well as Republicans – in the Senate to do just that including in votes on the floor.   So we don’t have to speculate about whether he’d do it all differently, his votes tell the tale.

Oddly, in the end, the No Child law ends up being very much like what Bobby Kennedy had in mind when the first Elementary and Secondary Education Act was passed in 1965.  So, as we pray for him let’s also pray that it doesn’t take 40 years and another figure of Kennedy’s stature to bring about the next substantial consensus and advance in national education policy.

A big thanks to Celine Coggins and Mike Goldstein for some great guestblogging.  The online and offline feedback was great.  Please continue to keep up with their great work.

Folks, it’s been real.  School starts next week.  Thanks to Eduwonk for the chance to blog, and thanks to the commenters for all your thoughts.  

 My final question: 

What would happen if, fueled by twin engines of Gates Foundation and RTTP, the success or failure of each Ed School’s teaching grads becomes transparent?  

1. Would Ed Schools grant a teaching license after completing their coursework, but withhold the masters degree until there was some evidence of classroom success, possibly one full-time year later?  The evidence might be: observation by the university’s own external team (maybe comprised of alums); value-add gains in student tests where possible; and principal evaluation?  

2. Would a Newsweek re-rank the Ed Schools based on these outcomes, and steal US News’s “grad school rankings” thunder in the process?  Will potential customers weigh this data in choosing Ed Schools? 

3. Would university presidents call the Ed School dean in, and say something like “Our university is ranked Top 50, but our teacher training is ranked #487.  The trustees aren’t real happy about that.”

4. Would some Ed Schools split into two institutions, one devoted to research, the other single-mindedly devoted to training rookie teachers? Would a few elite Ed Schools leave the teacher training business entirely?  

5. Would Ed Schools courses beef up the nuts-and-bolts stuff sought in this Eduwonk thread, like “How do I build a productive relationship with parents, and how do I handle irate or crazy ones?”

6. Per above, would schoolteachers who know the nuts-and-bolts stuff suddenly be in demand at the university level?  Instead of being lowly adjuncts getting a couple grand per semester, might there be “Professors Of The Practice” getting real money, offices, assistants, and prestige?  

What would happen?

-Guestblogger Mike Goldstein

Interesting thread over at Core Knowledge.  In comments, Robert Pondiscio: “If you gave me a magic wand to waive at problems in education, I wouldn’t even aim it at teachers first. In fact, teachers might not even make the top five. I’d fix curriculum, disruption, parenting and ed schools before I’d even consider teachers.”

On a Boston math teacher’s blog, questions about consistency in the “charters cream” charge.  

From 2 weeks back, if you missed it on Gotham: Diana Senechal’s Guessing My Way To Promotion.  

I’ve observed a similar phenomenon here in Massachusetts: the MCAS cut scores are incredibly low, not just for “passing” but for “proficient” and even “advanced.”  While my DOE friends make a reasonable argument — thousands of kids still MISS those incredibly low cut scores — the signaling to kids and parents is way off.  A kid who scores “Advanced” should reasonably conclude “on track to be college ready.”  Yet that is not true.  That’s one reason our school requires AP courses for all upperclassmen.  Which is why I like…

 …Jay Mathews’ notion, that AP might replace SAT.  

 -Guestblogger Mike Goldstein

Let’s leave aside the thorny question of whether bad teachers exist and what rights they should have in being evaluated. And forget about money. Imagine there were only good teachers. What “rights” should good teachers have?

My Top Ten in the comments below.

- Guestblogger Mike Goldstein

New poll: Folks still don’t know what charters are, but more like ‘em.  

How Should Students Be Prepared For College?  ”There is one straightforward change that policymakers in every state could make to help improve not only college readiness but more general post-secondary readiness as well:  Make the college prep curriculum the default curriculum for all students…”   

Finally, per Ted Kennedy’s passing, this.  

~  Guestblogger Mike Goldstein

Common problems cited:

Bad Ones

*Mentor teacher doesn’t actually mentor.  Instead, treats student teacher as labor saving device.  Ends up in faculty lounge.  

*Diligent mentor, bad at coaching.  Not exactly unique to teaching.  Many star athletes are bad coaches.  

*Seems like few bad mentors are actually fired, but I’m not sure if anyone publishes data on this.  Is there a bad mentor Rubber Room?  

Good Ones

*Is 1 hour a week from a diligent mentor enough dosage?  Are 2 observations enough?  

*Low mentor pay.  Holy Toledo.  No merit pay for excellent mentors.  

*Most universities seem to reserve 5% to 10% of total tuition for mentor stipends.  Way out of whack?  Should it be more like a 50-50 split between funding profs and funding the coaches?  

*Focus on inputs, not outputs.  I.e., does any university hold mentor teachers accountable for the ultimate first-year success of those they mentored?  

Ed School Paralysis

*From an Ed School’s point of view, don’t 50+ mentor teachers invariably have very different ideas of what constitutes good teaching or how to get there?  Doesn’t that preclude much link of classroom to practice with any level of specificity?  Wouldn’t mentor teachers frequently contradict the professors back at home base?  

Chime In:

*How to solve these problems?

*Are these the right problems to solve?

 ~ Guestblogger Mike Goldstein

Proving once again, teachers will do anything to avoid wrestling with crappy copy machines.

Seriously, would you have done this?  

(Hat Tip: Joanne Jacobs )

 ~ Guestblogger Mike Goldstein

There’s a lot of hand-wringing about today’s Ed Schools.  Change from within.  Change from without.  

Let’s say, for the sake of argument, you were creating a brand new Ed School from scratch.  What would you do?  

I’ll ask 4 questions over the next 4 days: about ed school classes, student teaching, coaching dosage/style, exit standards.  Chime in below.  

Today: Ed School Classes.

Let’s assume, at least in some form, your new Ed School would still have 5 to 10 “classes” to get an education degree.  Let’s call it 6 core courses, like many masters programs require.  

Here’s a typical 6 from different colleges: 

Education and Society

Adolescent psychology 

Inclusion stratgeies

Literacy

Curriculum Design

Methods 

What would you nix?  What would you add instead?  Or is there a course that you’d keep, but teach in a radically different way?  One of my ideas in the comments below.  

~ Guestblogger Mike Goldstein

USA Today Editorial: If there was any silver lining to the devastation that Hurricane Katrina wrought in New Orleans four years ago, perhaps it is this: The water washed away one of the nation’s worst school systems and left New Orleans determined to rebuild in a wholly new way.

In related news, New Orleans NBA star Chris Paul (channeling Uncommon Schools Brett Peiser): “If everybody comes back 1 percent better, that will make our team better. So I’ll try to do my part and come back better than I was last year.”

The reason that charter schools are tagged with failing to create “best practices that transfer to other districts” is because so many of the best practices are simply 1% micro-solutions.  Each by itself elicits shoulder-shrugging.  But if you add enough 1% solutions together, you put teachers in a position to succeed.  

 ~ Guestblogger Mike Goldstein

In yesterday’s Boston Globe, an ailing Senator Kennedy is planning for succession, hoping to change the law so that Dems hold at 60.  The edu-angle is Senator Chris Dodd would become chairman of the Senate Education committee.   

He hasn’t been on the national edu-radar that much.   Chime in the comments if you’re in the know.  My sense is that vis a vis Obama, Dodd perhaps likes the national standards push, but probably tepid on charters, turnarounds, merit pay.  His sister is an elementary teacher (she’s blind). 

And at least back in 1998, he’s been willing to ask some hard questions about the sustainability of special education funding.  

~ Guestblogger Mike Goldstein

Um, probably not.

Fordham data rolls into the ATL.

LA Mayor wonders “How did Bloomberg do it?”  

 ~ Guestblogger Mike Goldstein

From the Chronicle of Philanthropy:   OK, maybe backlash is too strong a word. But some distance-learning leaders are starting to raise questions and concerns about President Obama’s new online-education proposal, a great course giveaway that would pump $500 million into freely available Web-based courses. Are new courses needed? Would students get help working through them? Would their privacy be protected as they use the material? 

* * *

A wonderful emeritus MIT professor, Woodie Flowers, has a different concern about the $500 million plan.  Woodie is a co-founder of FIRST.  We had coffee the other day.  I think the Obama folks should talk to him.  He mused: 

“Many parts of the proposed program are very close to what I have been dreaming and preaching about for years!   However, I have serious reservations about the ‘open’ model.  A SUSTAINABLE model is far more important than ‘open.’

If we spend $500 million on even as many as 500 courses, I believe we will have missed a chance to do it right.  $1 million per course is far too LITTLE.  Spreading that money over hundreds of faculty members in many institutions seem like tackling the electric automobile battery problem by giving Gilbert Chemistry Sets to thousands of high school freshmen.

I do not think that “supporting courses” is the most appropriate guiding principle.  I believe the more general and more important idea is that we need to develop the system that replaces textbooks.   Such a system could be used to support courses, but could also be used to REPLACE courses.”

~ Guestblogger Mike Goldstein

I love Learning Matters.  It’s John Merrow’s group; they do reports for Jim Lehrer on PBS.  The 10-episode documentary about Michelle Rhee, produced by Jane Renaud, Cat McGrath and David Wald, is well worth checking out on their website or your Ipod.  An “oldie” but goodie is their series on Turnaround Specialists from 2006, about Boushall Middle School in Richmond.  It’s a reality check on how hard it is to do what the President aspires — turn around 5,000 failing schools.  Here’s an update on that school from last week (scroll down).  

~ Guestblogger Mike Goldstein

I believe a key source of wisdom has not been examined in our quest to fix failing schools.

And that source of wisdom is the movie Three Amigos.  

1. In the minds of some in the K-12 chattering class, school turnarounds will never work. 

Ned Nederlander: This is not a town of weaklings! You can use your strengths against El Guapo. Now, what is it that this town really does well? 

Townspeople: Hmmm. Hmmm? Ummm.   [long pause] 
Mama Sanchez: We can sew! 

Dusty Bottoms: There you go, you can sew. 

School Turnaround Version

Ned: You can use your strengths to turn this school around and close the achievement gap!  Now, what is it that this school does really well?

Staff: Hmmm.  Hmmm?  Ummm.

[long pause] 

Teacher: We can have long, circular meetings where nothing concrete is ever decided.  

Dusty:  There you go, you can have long, circular meetings where nothing concrete is ever decided!  

* * *

2. In the minds of other K-12 commentators, school turnarounds will never work — but for different reasons.  

El Guapo: Jefe, you do not understand women. You cannot force open the petals of a flower. When the flower is ready, it opens itself up to you. 

Jefe: So when do you think Carmen will open up her flower to you? 

El Guapo: Tonight, or I will kill her! 

School Turnaround Version

Bushy-Tailed Turnaround Guy: You do not understand teachers. You cannot force them to change.  You have to work with them collaboratively, build a sense of trust and mutual respect.  

Jefe: So when do you think the teachers will change?

Bushy-Tailed Turnaround Guy: Today, or I will fire them all!

* * *

3. And last but not least, some believe turnarounds will work.  

Lucky Day: Well, we’re just gonna have to use our brains. 

Ned, Dusty: Damn it! 

Guestblogger ~ Mike Goldstein

Summer reading, yay.  Catching up on books while drinking (pick your social class) Sangria/Corona/Bud Light/Pabst on the beach.  

Not getting to the beach?  You could knock out this few-months-old Boston Globe Magazine article during a Dunkin Donut pitstop.  

Neil Swidey (author of The Assist, must reading for hoop-loving eduwonks):

It’s a path ingrained in us: Go to a university right after high school and graduate in four years. But that couldn’t be further from reality. And until education leaders take that into account, too many students will lose out.

Dearest readers, to what extent, if any, do you fear that college readiness default of our many K-12 course titles does not come close to actual college readiness?  

My opinion is we have the worst possible scenario out of the three possible ones.  

1. The top one would be vast numbers of 18-year-olds legitimately prepared for college, which I think is a key driver of the Gates Foundation mission.  

2. The middle option is at least honest — and common in certain countries.  Many who won’t end up with college degrees are steered during high school to some sort of vocational training.  

3. Our system tells lots of 9th graders they’ll be taking classes to prepare them for college, knowing statistically that, except in some suburban and private schools, the majority of those 9th graders will never graduate from college. 

 -Guestblogger Mike Goldstein

Not to go all John Kerry on you, but it’s time for a French lesson.  In cycling, “drafting” — riding close behind someone else — saves 20% to 40% of your energy; someone who leads the way so others can follow is a “domestique.”  

One less unnoticed contribution of Teach For America is as an 800-pound domestique.  Not only do they do a hell of a job recruiting top college grads, but they make it easy for other little organizations, like ours, to do that.  

We started a small program in 2004 called MATCH Corps.  It’s a one-year full-time tutoring gig.  Housing, health care, small stipend, occasional homemade lasagna.  Optional teacher training component.   

This year 1,871 applied*  for 70 slots.  We had to turn away amazing people.  We had to reject 10 out of 11 applicants from Yale.  ”No” to all 17 applicants from UC Berkeley and all 13 applicants from MIT.  We turned down 23 out of 25 from Northwestern and 24 of 26 from UPenn.  It was insane.  I won’t even talk about what happened with the good folks of UVa, or Andy R will delete this post.   

We try to guide these talented applicants to other service programs.  

We’re hardly the only program to draft off TFA.  They educate tens of thousands of seniors on America’s K-12 needs.  Some apply to TFA, sure. But some apply to programs they never would have explored.  I bet a few even end up in Ed Schools!  

Policy lesson: While there’s obviously not infinite “scalability” in deploying top college grads, we’ve hardly tapped out this human resource.  

- Guestblogger Mike Goldstein

*Measurable spike around Obama’s inauguration.

Give it up for Celine Coggins and her merry band of bad-ass teachers, everyone.  Lots of ideas in this space about sustaining teachers in Years 3 to 10.  

For the next 2 weeks, this guest blogger is mostly talking rookies. Teachers in Year 1.  

Let’s start here.  Do teachers need education degrees?  The New York Times offers 9 opinions (including mine).  

Pat Welsh suggests “Stop filtering candidates through personnel offices obsessed with education courses and ‘certification,’ and allow individual schools to advertise for the positions they need, and then allow principals along with panels of teachers to” choose the right fit.   (Sounds like: charter schools?  Oh wait.  Can’t be.  They’re not innovative.*  

Columbia’s Margaret Crocco trashes the parents who “may think that the best teacher their child could get would be a Teach for America recruit…As far as these parents are concerned, teaching boils down to talking.”   Wow, I’m glad someone has analyzed the attitudes of some 300,000 parents across 35 high-poverty geographies….hmm….actually…I can’t quite find her research on the topic…maybe someone can provide linky help in the comments?  Oh well, we all know that single moms living in poverty believe teaching boils down to talking, and therefore that TFA is bad.  

What’s your take, folks, on ed degrees?  

- Guestblogger Mike Goldstein

*Why is it that if a charter does an obvious thing that traditional schools nonetheless don’t do, it doesn’t count as an innovation; but if a charter school does something unusual, it’s too weird to be replicable?

Teach Plus is hiring for a bunch of positions:
http://www.teach-plus.org/about/JoinOurStaff_000.htm

–Guestblogger Celine Coggins, Founder of Teach Plus

I attended an inspiring event Wednesday night, the Education Pioneers’ End-of-Summer Showcase. The last speaker of the evening was former Pioneer, Justin Steele, who talked about the importance of one’s own personal story in motivating us to do the work we do.  That’s where I’d like to end my blog run.

My father was a teacher until his recent retirement. My mother was a teacher as well. I only remember one time that they expressed complete and unified disappointment in me— it was when I told them I wanted to become a teacher. The chasm between the reaction I anticipated and the one I received seared the conversation into the foreground of my memory. Teaching, they drilled into me frequently thereafter, is not for smart and ambitious people. I disagreed with that statement then, and I still disagree. I think too highly of them and too many other teachers I’ve known along the way to accept it. Yet, I understand why they said it. (I’m one of the thousands (millions?) who entered teaching and LOVED it, but who ultimately left because the world outside the classroom was the only way to find the continued challenge and career growth I was seeking.) For me, their message created a straightforward imperative: The teaching profession needs to fundamentally change. Quite simply, I’d rather take that on than admit that they were right.

My mom died 17 years ago this week, about half a lifetime ago for me.  People often ask when I started Teach Plus. The real answer is then. Yes, I started Teach Plus because I believe we can do more to retain effective teachers in years 3-10. I started Teach Plus because I believe young teachers, the future of the profession, need to have more of a voice in policy. But the heart of why I started Teach Plus because a profession into which veterans are ashamed to send their own children doesn’t work.

Through hundreds of applications to our Policy Fellows program, I’ve learned that my story is not rare. The topics of status and aspiration came up frequently with our Policy Fellows (all current teachers). When I sought bloggers for this week, I asked if anyone wanted to try a post on those issues. A couple of teachers wrote back, capturing the prevailing group sentiment: While it’s a big deal, they were uncomfortable discussing their personal ambitions in a public format—it wasn’t kid-focused. There’s a concern that their desire for a profession that offers “more” (more recognition, more growth, more money) will contribute to a negative stereotype of Generation Y. I think my story illustrates that these status issues affect Boomers and newbies alike.

I recently had the privilege of hearing a talk by Jean Martin of the Corporate Leadership Council. Their research across many fields, including teaching, has led them to identify three key areas that work needs to address in order to help employees enhance their commitment and reach their potential.

• The first is engagement. In my mind, teaching kids is the ultimate in engaging work.
• The second is ability. Professional development and mentoring could certainly be improved, but as a field, we have a commitment to helping teachers develop their skills and ability.
• The third is aspiration. This is where teaching fails. Things like TAP, PAR and NBPTS are a start, but not nearly enough.

As Justin Steele so eloquently discussed the other night, every person is in the process of creating their own personal story, a story that makes sense of their experiences, is dynamic, and allows them to feel purposeful and successful. Teachers give the ultimate gift in helping to create a positive story for the children with whom they work.  If we hope to keep the best among them, we need new teachers to be able to see a second chapter of their own story in the classroom– one that values their effectiveness with students and rewards them for their contributions.  At Teach Plus, we believe such a story need not be fiction. And that’s our story.  Thanks for the air time this week!

–Guestblogger Celine Coggins, Founder of Teach Plus

As education policy makers have discussed appropriate uses of stimulus funds, I’ve watched the debate with mixed feelings. While initiatives like performance-based pay, removing the charter cap, and extended school days might yield higher student performance in the short-term, none of them address the most critical issue to academic success in the long run—teacher sustainability. We know that the single most important factor in a child’s education is a quality teacher. That said, teachers are not replaceable cogs in a system, to be used for a few years, disposed of, and replaced with newer, shinier versions. Yet many of the proposed reforms seem destined to result in burnout.

The notion that teaching has become an unsustainable profession is both well known, and unknown. We know that many teachers leave within the first 3 years. Yet, as a society, we don’t seem to know that teaching has become so demanding that it’s difficult to consider a lifelong career as an educator. Teaching, after all, has long been viewed as a profession with “mothers’ hours”, allowing parents to be home when their children finish school. But in an era of standards-based reform, the term “mothers’ hours” refers to the contractually-mandated time teachers must spend at school, but it does nothing to encompass the amount of work that teachers must do to ensure their students’ success. In the face of disaggregated student achievement data, constant AYP status updates, and high-stakes testing, teachers have a very clear sense of their students’ academic performance, as well as how they need to be performing in order to meet state standards. If data shows that a child is reading 2-3 years below grade level, how can any teacher sit with that knowledge, and still leave the building at 1:40 in good conscience? Most can’t, and those that do are frequently not meeting their students’ needs. So while bad teaching is sustainable and adheres to mothers’ hours, good teaching is neither sustainable, nor limited to the confines of the 7-hour school day.

Planning engaging lessons, making regular contact with families, assessing student work, holding after-school tutoring sessions—these aspects of teaching are just as important as the lessons delivered within the context of a school day, and they cannot be completed within a 45-minute P&D period once each day. Many teachers I know start their school days at 6:30 a.m., and often don’t end them until 8:30 or 9:00 p.m. We try to keep Saturdays sacred, but know that our Sundays will be given over to work again. And we wonder, all the while: How will I keep working at this level of intensity for 10 years, never mind 20 or 30?

Teachers who leave within the first three years walk out just as they are beginning to develop the skills necessary to be effective. In recent years, new teacher induction has come to be seen as a way to help teachers in years 1-3 hone their craft and stay in the classroom. But what of teachers in subsequent years? Why do we assume that once teachers make it over the 3rd year hurdle, they will commit to the profession for life? As teachers get older, their responsibilities outside the classroom also increase. Eventually, they may reach an intractable dilemma—forced to choose to be less effective teachers, or less involved in their home lives. As a result, many leave the profession. This attrition is even more damaging to our students than the departure of early-career teachers. Most mid-career teachers have developed the skills necessary to be successful in the classroom. They haven’t burnt out, and haven’t given up. They don’t leave at the moment when they are “getting good”—they leave after they’ve proven to be adept teachers. Their loss, therefore, is sure to have an effect on the academic success of students, particularly when inexperienced teachers replace them.

How do we redesign the work of teaching so that it is both focused on efficacy and sustainability? How do we broaden the conversation on boosting/rewarding teacher performance past the topic of teacher salaries? How do we expand the vision of teacher retention past the first three years? As we consider sustainability in so many other facets of our lives—transportation, housing, use of natural resources—how do we bring that mindset to the education world as well?  Effective teaching is not a resource easily found or manufactured, and thus, demands that we find ways to sustain it if we don’t want to lose it.

–Guestblogger Neema Avashia, Teacher, Boston Public Schools

Two days ago, I returned from my honeymoon on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State. Before my trip, I never even knew there were rainforests in the U.S. The Hoh rainforest is an ecological wonder, with new trees sprouting right on top of older, “nurse” trees, creating an miracle of sustainable resources. I could have looked at the pictures all day, but I became distracted by an envelope on the kitchen table. I knew it contained the annual summer letter from my principal about our week-long summer institute scheduled for next week.

Even after a summer focused on wedding and honeymooning, I am anxious to get back to school on Monday, for what I fondly call “teacher camp.” My colleagues and I join together, tanned and rested, energized to analyze last year’s data, to newly align curriculum maps, to engage in meaningful workshops (often led by our own teachers). I’ve been at the school for seven years, and I swear each year’s institute is better than the last. Every year, the teachers at my school just seem to improve.

This shouldn’t be, according to empirical data. The 2006 Hamilton report shows that teacher effectiveness begins to plateau at year three. I’m sure that it does, in most schools– in schools with just a few excellent teachers. But if the same analysis were made in schools where a significant percentage of the staff were already labeled as measurably effective, I predict researchers would not find a plateau but an increasing curve.

From the description so far, you might think I teach high-income students in a suburban utopia or in one-of-a-kind charter. I work in a Boston Public k-8 school where I am surrounded almost exclusively by energetic, dedicated and highly-effective teachers. My colleagues get better each year. They push me to get better. I push myself to read, study, innovate, stay late or come in early because of them. It’s evident in the scores of our students and in the practice I observe in my colleagues.

Furthermore, I believe we have a higher standard for what excellence is. Because teachers at my school stay in the profession longer than the average (entering my eighth year of teaching, I am still in the lower half of the experience curve), our definition of excellence is both quantitative and qualitative. We definitely hold ourselves accountable for value-added data, even at the kindergarten level, but we also hold ourselves accountable for the skills teachers don’t learn at first, that aren’t going to come naturally in your early twenties, like how to talk to parents as partners in their children’s long-term educational goals or how to balance your own work life and home life. Yes, I consider balance of work life and home life a part of career mastery. When teachers do not learn this essential skill, they leave teaching altogether. Then three years of growth leads not to a plateau, but to a cliff with a sudden drop, because that teacher who has become effective leaves the children with zero benefit of all he has learned to do.

I work in a school where excellence is the norm among teachers. Like the rainforest I experienced this summer, we are a sustainable system where new teachers are nurtured, thrive, and become excellent mentors, but we are also too rare and too often unseen by the casual traveler. I believe it is possible to replicate the teaching conditions of my school in other urban schools. Providing incentives for the movement of whole teams of experienced, excellent teachers into the schools that need them most is our best chance at closing the achievement gap today and sustaining those gains into the future.

–Guestblogger Melanie Allen, Teacher, Boston Public Schools

I found it strange that a story in the Providence Journal on stimulus funds for education made no mention of the possibility of winning competitive funds. Then I saw their other big education story of the day. I’ve participated in providing testimony for education lawsuits in multiple states, but I still have questions about the legal process. In a lawsuit such as this, how does our societal obligation to provide students with the best possible education get weighed in with the legal obligations of NCLB, state law, collective bargaining agreements, etc?

–Guestblogger Celine Coggins, Founder of Teach Plus

No doubt about The New Teacher Project’s role in helping move the needle on improving teacher evaluation and fostering a policy climate that values effective teachers. Today TNTP released Interpreting Race to the Top, with useful information and tools for stakeholders involved in applying for the funds. Sure to spark some controversy is their analysis of each state’s current competitiveness for funding.

–Guestblogger Celine Coggins, Founder of Teach Plus

Arguably the coolest life experience I’ve had is hanging onto the dorsal fin of a shark and getting pulled along for a ride while diving off the coast of Belize.  Its sparked an enduring curiosity about sharks which led me to flip on a new show called Shark Tank a couple of nights ago. Instead of being about big, toothy fish, it was about entrepreneurship, with contestants pitching ideas to investors (sharks) and hoping for funding. Education has its own version of Shark Tank in The Mind Trust.

Too often our field is skeptical of competition, as if having a competitive spirit is at odds with an ability to be a team player who looks out for the interests of all kids.   Adults in a school building need to be both collaborative and competitive to help their students succeed. We need to teach kids both collaboration and competition.

The Mind Trust is an extraordinary example of how a competitive process coupled with collaborative supports for selected entrepreneurs can make a tremendous impact on the lives of kids. See here, here, here and here.

We know that many young professionals are driven toward careers that enact their commitment to social justice.  That orientation is, in part, driving record applications to programs like Teach for America. The Mind Trust challenges the assumption that this desire to change the world through one’s work is time-limited to the first few years out of college.  If we really hope to transform urban education, we need to be challenging that assumption from all angles.

–Guestblogger Celine Coggins, Founder of Teach Plus