Pairing recruit and retain when we talk about teacher policy is as common and natural as pairing peanut butter and jelly.  The Two Rs roll ff the tongue together and suggest that we give equal weight to the different stages of the teaching career.  In fact, much of the policy focus since the ‘90s has been on new teachers.  The current, growing emphasis on defining effective teaching presents an entry point for getting serious about retention.  It acknowledges a growing body of research that verifies what all teachers know to be true: There is a steep growth curve in teaching. Even the best first year teacher serves her students better when she reaches in her third, fourth or fifth year. Experience is correlated with effectiveness. Retention matters.

At Teach Plus, we seek to create a vibrant second stage of the teaching career that motivates excellent teachers to remain in the classroom, improve the lives of their students, and build a modern teaching profession.  We focus on the retention segment of the human capital pipeline.

Yet, the term “retention” conjures up an image that is neither vibrant nor forward-looking.  I picture an editorial page cartoon: a principal has caught a teacher with an oversized net and won’t let go. Retention subtly suggests stagnation—just the opposite of what students need in a teacher, just the opposite of what young teachers are seeking in a career.

My suggestion that teacher retention should be an education reform goal is often met with puzzlement. The first comment I hear is usually: “Retention of all teachers?  Not all new entrants are a good fit for teaching.“ The second is: “Retention for a lifetime? Those days are gone.”

I agree wholeheartedly with both of those points, but I don’t think that lets us off the hook from actively working to create the conditions an incentives that will improve retention… of promising teachers…through a second career stage… or longer.

So what’s the term for a bounded, modernized  version of retention? I’ve consulted the thesaurus to no avail. Sure, “growth” and “development” fit in some ways, but they are not synonyms. I suppose it’s more accurate to focus on “talent management” than retention. Yet, talent management seems built on an underlying assumption that a robust pipeline of talent is already being retained.

I’m stuck. Any ideas?

–Guestblogger Celine Coggins, Founder of Teach Plus

As a parent trying to help my preschoolers develop an attention span and a simple love of books, I find this trend overwhelming, but fascinating.

–Guestblogger Celine Coggins, Founder of Teach Plus

Five years ago, I was fresh out of the Boston Teacher Residency and ready to begin a career in teaching.  I was deliberate in choosing my school:  I wanted one of those seemingly-intractable urban public schools that I had studied both at BTR and at Harvard.   I found just the place and went in with my eyes wide open.

My first year, I was busy, exhausted, and strangely content in the struggle.  And, I had a strong footing in what teaching was supposed to be all about:  I felt successful with my students. I had a desire to innovate; Some of my colleagues said I was a “breath of fresh air.” My passion for the potential I saw in our students – even the ones who were not in my classroom – buoyed me as I began a long and arduous swim against the tide in my school building.

Fast forward to now.

This past June, on a steamy hot Friday afternoon, I packed up the last relics of my classroom and turned off the light in Room 10 for the last time.  It was an emotional moment; the memories of the 87 children I taught in that classroom formed a tangible lump in my throat.  An unfamiliar sensation of failure and guilt washed over me.  So, what happened?

The best way I can describe what happened over the course of four years is a gradual wearing down of my spirit.  Am I being dramatic?  Yes, because it was dramatic.  I had never experienced anything like that before.   I. Just. Couldn’t. Do. It. Any. More.  It was not a question of effort.  It was certainly not a question of efficacy.  It was, however, a perfect storm: change-resistant colleagues, a principal unable or unwilling to motivate and lead them.

Having success within the walls of my classroom left me wanting more.  Last year, I quietly struggled through the most difficult year I have faced as a teacher.  Solitary and cold mornings prepping for the day’s lessons were lonelier and colder than in past years.  The most shocking thing to admit – even to myself- was that my own intrinsic motivation was not enough.  I did not have the energy, the passion, or the self-discipline to truly carry out the work of an excellent teacher each and every day.  That was a crushing realization.

It is from an intensely personal place that I helped to draft our Ready for the Next Challenge proposal.  Our work so closely mirrored my daily reality – the importance of being part of a team of like-minded colleagues echoed through the empty hallways of my school building each and every day.  It was the people – the grown up ones – that would have made the difference for me.

My newfound teacher friends who described different work environments convinced me that I could find a school with excellent peer teachers and outstanding leadership.  I found one and that’s where I’ll be next year.

But, back to the lump in my throat from the last day of school.  It’s still there.  What will happen to my students?  What will happen to the handful of teachers in my school who are excellent?  Will the woman who replaces me soon become a shadow of her former teacher self? My new school is literally around the corner from the old one – you can glimpse one from the other on the top floor.  We serve the same neighborhood, but in dramatically different ways.

I can find solace in the fact that I was able to make changes in my old building.  I am not leaving the profession entirely.  I am not even moving out to the suburbs.  But, I am doing what so many of us Gen Y-ers will do:  I am voting with my feet.

-Guestblogger Maria Fenwick, Teacher, Boston Public Schools

From the WaPo, Sarah Fine on all that is not fine with the teaching profession.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/07/AR2009080702046.html

–Guestblogger Celine Coggins, Founder of Teach Plus

Quick  break from some time-off  for a brief note about John Hughes.   References to his work and influence have popped up on this blog from time to time, whether the trivial (Cameron Frye’s house going on the market) or the serious (the rough social side of high school).   While he’s rightly being remembered for a lot of films today and for helping to launch more than a couple of careers, it was his films about high school that were truly genius.   Films about high school and adolescent angst are a common genre and most are forgettable.   Yet Hughes got that age and the awkward sometimes agonizing cross-pressures and was able to translate it to film.   It’s easy to give us candy in films about high school but Hughes gave us spinach.  And he still made it taste great, too.   Although he’d been out of the public eye for some time, his work still mattered and remains relevant.

… the most important variable on the road to successful competition would be the athletes, the people executing the plan on the field.  It is the athletes that the nation fixes its hopes on.  It is the athletes— much more than their coaches, personal trainers or other supporting cast members— that can actually bring home the gold.

In the “race” to dramatically change the lives of students trapped in failing schools across the country, it is teachers who are on the field; it is teachers who will ultimately determine whether we succeed with kids. Given the once-in-a-lifetime infusion of resources that the Race to the Top represents and given the unparalleled commitment across levels of the system to aggressively turnaround low-performing schools, can we field a team equal to the enormity of the task?

For the past two years, we have been working with a group of outstanding early career teachers in Boston, asking them to weigh in on this very question.  We call them Policy Fellows and through the fellowship we connect them to research, policy, and best practice ideas from around the country. They’ve met with both national and local education leaders, tested their ideas in various forums, and debated with one another.  Through this process, they’ve developed a compelling strategy for staffing low-performing schools.

Their report Ready for the Next Challenge is a must read for anyone interested in understanding the power and promise of the incoming generation of teachers and their passion for improving the lives of children of poverty.

First, and perhaps most important, they identify staffing low-performing schools as a problem that can be solved:

We believe that, given the right supports and conditions, there is no shortage of talented and experienced teachers willing to teach in low-performing schools. There are many teachers who are unsure if they will be able to build fulfilling and sustainable careers in their school building, but who are searching for reasons to stay. We count ourselves among them. We believe that teaching in high-need urban schools is uniquely challenging but also uniquely rewarding. We maintain that so-called “hard-to-staff” schools are not inevitable.

Second, they propose a comprehensive model for staffing low-performing schools with highly effective teachers.  They call the schools Excellence Collaborative Schools and they call the team of teachers staffing these schools the Excellence Corps. The model is based on 5 principles:

1. A cohort model of staffing where at least 1/3 of the staff (in some cases perhaps the entire staff) is hired as a team.
2. Rigorous selection criteria that begin with two basic qualifications: three years urban teaching experience and demonstrated effectiveness with urban students.
3. Career growth with a focus on classroom teaching that values the interest great teachers have in continuing to work with students.
4. Differentiated pay for individuals selected to the Excellence Corps and in the form of schoolwide bonuses for schools that meet their growth goals.
5. Dramatic culture change facilitated by key supports such as a high quality principal, expanded time for collaboration and intensive training.

President Obama has articulated a vision of reform that is “done with teachers rather than to them”. We couldn’t agree more with his belief that from teachers can come viable ideas to address the most intractable problems facing urban education today.

Can we field an effective, experienced team of teachers to fiercely compete on behalf of kids and succeed in closing the achievement gap? Ask the very teachers you’d want on the team.  Their message is clear and compelling: It can be done.

-Guestblogger Celine Coggins, Founder of Teach Plus

First, I want to thank Andy for generously inviting us to guest blog. Teach Plus is a young nonprofit and we really appreciate the opportunity to talk about our work and connect it to the larger policy issues of the moment.

Second, I’m thrilled about the timing. By this point in the summer, we’ve all gotten the chance to shake off the last school year and start looking forward to the next. Summer allows us to re-connect to our own sense of the possible. While I no longer have my own classroom, it’s that sense of the possible that I encounter in teachers every day that drives the work of Teach Plus.

Third, I want to start with a preview: the next week is likely to be heavy on teacher quality/ teacher effectiveness. With Andy, readers have come to expect commentary that spans the gamut of education issues and deftly weaves in erudite cultural references. My interests aren’t that broad. I founded Teach Plus because I’m somewhat obsessed with one question:

How do we transform teaching into a profession that motivates its most promising newcomers to extend their commitment to urban schools?

I believe this is the single most important question we can be asking on behalf of kids. Given what we know about 1) the primacy of the teacher’s role in student achievement, 2) the pace of attrition among new entrants in urban schools, and 3) the time it takes each teacher to reach his or her peak effectiveness, it is time to get serious about creating a second stage of the career that inspires more to pursue mastery in teaching.

At Teach Plus, our goal is to improve student outcomes by ensuring that a greater proportion of students have access to high quality, experienced teachers.  In service of this goal, Teach Plus supports the retention of effective teachers in urban schools by expanding leadership opportunities and performance incentives for those who demonstrate success with students. It is founded on the premise that teachers want to learn and grow in the profession, and want to ensure that their development results in increased learning among their students. In order for schools to continuously improve student achievement, teaching must become a career that motivates and rewards continuous improvement among practitioners.

Our approach is two-fold: First, we work with teachers to help them articulate their vision for transforming the profession. Our focus is on teachers in years 3-10. Second, we work with districts and schools to help them implement reforms aimed at retaining experienced, effective teachers in urban classrooms.

Our work to date with teachers gives us optimism that targeted strategies aimed at retaining effective teachers will have a significant impact—on student outcomes as well as on retention itself. We’ve had several hundred teachers apply to and inquire about our programs. The message across all of these individual teachers is remarkably similar and its significance for the future of the profession is profound. They tell us:

I love teaching; I know that I’m having a greater impact on my students now then when I first started; I liked the steep learning curve I encountered in my first years in the classroom and want to extend that challenge and  growth.

That message frames the problem Teach Plus seeks to address. Students suffer because we have low expectations for retaining effective teachers in urban classrooms. It is time to find a way for teaching to live up to its potential as a learning profession that challenges and rewards practitioners. In the coming days, we’ll be sharing our ideas for transforming the profession and enlisting the participation of some of the most inspiring teachers we know to share their views and experience.

– Guestblogger Celine Coggins, Founder of Teach Plus

If you look on the right sidebar and scroll down a bit there is now a recent comment feature.   Old posts long off the front page were getting some comment traffic and this tool will make them more visible.   There is also a share feature for posts on the front page. 

Coming up, I’ll be in and out in August after today, so some guest-bloggers stepping in.  First Celine Coggins from TeachPlus and some TeachPlus teachers will be here starting tomorrow and then, in what’s becoming a summer ritual, Michael Goldstein from MATCH school will go wild for two weeks.  Enjoy!

Last week I noted in passing that politically there may be an inverse relationship between health care reform and education reform in the sense that if health care doesn’t pass or ends up small you’re going to have some vulnerable members of Congress looking hard for something to run on in 2010.   Education authorizations always a fave because you get big ticket spending numbers without the hassle of actually having to come up with the cash.  Interesting side note, while the House wants to move the student loan bill before the end of the year, it doesn’t seem to be a big priority on the Senate side in terms of what leadership says they want to see finished before the end of this year’s session.  That could figure into all this, too.

But stepping back from the politics, on substance there are some interesting similarities and differences between health care.  In both cases you have systems with unsustainable cost structures and misaligned incentives and goals.   That’s obvious, but it’s unclear how much this round of reform will seriously affect either — on health care or schools.    But on health care you have a push for a public option, in other words greater public involvement, as a remedy.  Yet on K-12 education the bloodiest fights today remain about what might be called a “private option” whether it’s vouchers or even non-profit but non-governmental providers of services (e.g. public charter schools).   Interestingly, we don’t really have those fights on early-childhood education or higher ed* with the same intensity at all, public and private providers share the marketplace with public subsidies and it’s pretty non-controversial…So OK, never mind, perhaps this is a political story after all…

*Student loans aside.

Update:  Related, see Josh Greenman on the same issue.

Ed Week’s Sawchuk is killing it on his blog.  Must-read post on the TIF debate.   Don’t want to paint a bulls-eye on his back but he gets research and data…if you know what I mean!

Smart Ed Week story on the complexity around school turnarounds.  Meanwhile, from VA,  a textbook example of pretty much exactly how not to do turnarounds…

Important new policy brief from CAP on Title II of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.  That’s the section governing teacher quality programs.   Builds on some of the issues raised in this ES policy brief (pdf) that I penned last year:  Namely professional development is important and can be effective but federal programs do little to foster that today and Title II (about $3 billion) needs a pretty dramatic overhaul.   Implications for this class size debate and also the ongoing debate in the Senate over the Teacher Incentive Fund.

The WSJ goes all CSNY on the teachers’ union while the LAT ed board says the times are a changin’.

I can only imagine that this sensible Times overview story about test scores in New York will occasion yet another round of debate…(and by the way, this issue is one where there are actually unsettled issues, conflicting evidence, and real nuance).

Per all this, over at Flypaper Jamie O’Leary makes a smart observation about the class size debate re last week’s AP story.  It also speaks to this more general problem of “on the one hand, on the other hand” reporting of education research and education evidence even in the cases when there actually are not two hands…In this case, there is a debate about how much class size matters to student outcomes but no serious debate about whether smaller classes matter more to student learning than effective teachers.

Update:  Goldstein goes typology below.