The new professional teacher is not the teacher of your youth or your mother’s or grandmother’s. The words “new” and “professional” are used with a reason; the teacher of tomorrow will be a new breed.

I lay back on an examination table in a neurologist’s office recently. As any good health consumer, I studied the man’s professional data to learn where he was trained, where he practiced, and read reviews by his patients. I asked my GP if he would have this neurologist run nerve studies on him; he said he would. He checked out as a competent professional neurologist, so I lay on his table. As he ran small jolts of electricity down various nerves from my neck and shoulder to my fingertips and right hand, he began a small conversation.

“What do you do?” he asked.

“Retired school superintendent,” I said.

“I tried teaching when I was just out of college,” he said. “I don’t know why anyone would choose to be a teacher. It’s impossible work.”

“I’m glad you left the classroom,” I said. “Only those who can teach should be teachers.” He looked at me thinking I was kidding. I was not.

He proceeded to tell me about all the things he did not like about being a teacher and closed with “I tell lots of people I know who are thinking about being a teacher how terrible the work is and how little they will be paid. The best thing is summers off. I tell all of them – don’t be a teacher.” Thankfully, he was just finishing the nerve study and shifted into giving me a summary of his findings.

He was proof of the adage I have reversed from its usual wording. “Those who can teach should teach. Those who can’t should do anything else.” Happily for me, I have an entirely different perception, understanding, and vision for the teaching profession.

The new professional teacher will be more like this neurologist than he will like. This future teacher will be highly trained with a baccalaureate and many semesters of seminars, courses, and workshops, if not advanced degrees. Like an MD, the teacher will be able to display numerous certificates of academic and advanced pedagogical accomplishments on her classroom wall as a result of many years of continuing education. My neurologist and the future teacher each will be engaged in a decade of study and early work before they truly earn the acclamation of professional.

Yesterday’s teacher may say, “Just like me” when considering this schedule of post-baccalaureate study, but not really. Yesterday’s teacher most often took post graduate credits in order to renew a teaching license. Many took any credit, usually a course that was close to home and fit neatly into the family’s vacation plans. Too many took credits that were not related to their teaching assignment, because license renewal was only loosely connected to advanced training. I do recognize that many of yesterday’s teachers, less than 30% earned a Master’s Degree along their path toward license renewal and salary advancement. Almost all stopped their serious professional study at that point and enrolled only for renewal credits during the second half of their career. Not really like what the future teacher will need to do.

Tomorrow’s teacher will be a professionally trained educational specialist. The nature of specialty may be as an early or primary education teacher of reading, language and mathematics. Or, as an upper elementary teacher of extended reading skills, composition, and pre-advanced math. Or, as a secondary teacher of college and career readiness using reading and data analysis, technical composition, and collaborative skills. Or the teacher may be an expert instructor of music or Spanish or computer science. There are many flavors of specialty needed to teach tomorrow’s children. She will complete “clinical courses” and performance-based workshops directly prescribed to strengthen and extend specific teaching skills required by her teaching assignment. She will dive deeply into the science of teaching for advanced learning. She will have a professional resume just like the neurologist and any parent or community member or school administrator will be able to ascertain both the details of her training and annual reports of the quality of her teaching.

Tomorrow’s teacher will not work a nine-month or school-year contract like teachers today. Classroom teaching of children will only be part of her contract. Her calendar-year contract will include ample time for daily instructional planning and reflection regarding instructional effectiveness. She will have time dedicated for working with individual children who need more time and differentiated instruction in order to successfully learn their annual curriculum. She will have time for test preparation, test correction, and conferencing with children regarding their test performance. She will engage with her peers in lesson studies that will sharpen their collective teaching skills inside those lessons. And, she will have time and opportunity to engage with mentors and professional evaluators so that she can improve her professional work over the duration of her career.

Concomitant with her calendar-year contract, she will be paid a salary appropriate for a contemporary professional. Most career teachers will earn $100,000 per year or more. In contrast with today’s teachers, they will not be paid more based upon the completion of additional credits or degrees. Nor will their employer reimburse them for the cost of credit completion. These will be the expected obligations of a professional who is paid a professional annual salary as compensation for the quality of her contracted professional work. That is the most significant change in a future employment: pay quality teaching that causes quality learning not pay for calendared work.

In the years to come, there will be a change in the public perception of teachers. Today, too many hold the opinion that teachers are unionized, public employees who work less than full-year jobs. Furthering public disdain is the perception that too many tenured teachers go through the motions of teaching with little regard for student learning because their jobs are contractually protected. Instead, tomorrow’s teacher will be esteemed because of the quality of her work and the impact she has in shaping the life of a child. She will be held in the same regard as doctors, lawyers and engineers and referred to as “Professor,” a throw-back to the adulation teachers received generations ago.

Perhaps the aspect of tomorrow’s professional teacher I smile most about will be the realization, similar to that of my neurologist, that teaching for the purpose of causing demonstrable learning is exceptionally difficult work. Only highly trained, committed professional teachers should do the work of teaching, and, because of this tomorrow’s adults will be much more ready for the difficult challenges they face than are the adults of today.

Thelma and Louise taught us, “You get what you settle for.” They were discussing life’s ups and downs with men and money. Getting is one thing. Settling is yet another. If you get what you settle for, it is necessary to know your options before you settle. It is possible to settle up and receive more; settling does not have to mean that you always get less. It’s just good consumerism and, at heart, Louise Sawyer was a consumer advocate.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103074/quotes?ref_=tt_ql_3

Not so strangely, you also get what you settle for in schooling choices. But, unlike Thelma, you don’t have to drive your Thunderbird off a cliff to resolve what you may have settled for.

Our granddaughters will attend a neighboring elementary school next fall, one in second grade and one in a 4K class. The principal completed the task of student placements in May and notified parents of their child’s teacher assignment next year through a June mailing. As retired educators, my wife and I are very interested in our granddaughters’ education and we listen to how our daughter and son-in-law discuss important schooling issues. We think teacher assignments are very important issues.

Consumerism in general is elevated these days and can be applied to most things of value. It may be related to the state of the economy with increased costs and stagnant personal income. Or, it may be that folks are just more discerning in the value of their expenditures and investments. So, I look at how consumerism plays out in teacher assignments. Thirteen years of K-12 education is one of the most significant investments a parent will make in a child’s life. More than ever before, parents must be active consumer advocates for their child’s education.

When I was the local superintendent/elementary principal, I could anticipate a parent inquiry about teacher assignments from twenty percent of our parents. Most of those inquiries sounded like this. “We were hoping that our daughter could have Mrs. —-, because her older siblings had Mrs. —- and she is so nice.” Or, “We are requesting that you move our daughter into Mrs. —-‘s class because all of our daughter’s friends are in that class.” Consumerism for these parents was social; they liked a teacher for that teacher’s student-friendly characteristics or they wanted to be included in the social networks of others. There is a lot of social consumerism at school and, when schools can meet these low level educational demands, children and parents can be made happy. However, social interests really are at the low end of the advocacy totem pole.

Less frequently, parents inquired about the placement of their child because they knew that children in “Mrs. —-‘s“ class received a better education. These less frequent inquiries easily separated into two flavors; those that were a polite inquiry and those that were a demand for reassignment to the teacher of choice. A principal’s daily school life spins continuously and engaging in a discussion of teacher quality is like the spinning of a toy top – you never know how far out of bounds it will take you. I see teacher quality clinically and a demanding parent views teacher quality as a win-loss advantage; a winning advantage that they want.

When a principal takes the time to carefully assign children to their next teachers, parent requests for a change of assignment can be both problematic and irksome. An initial assignment that is carefully made is far from random. The decision considers a child’s learning achievements, learning needs and learning styles. The decision matches the child’s learning conditions with the teacher’s personal and instructional strengths. Many times this analysis creates what appears to be the perfect match, but most of the time an assignment is a pretty good match. Additionally, an assignment decision considers the social dynamics of the new class. The quality of the child assignment can also be dependent upon the characteristics of other children in the class as well as the teacher. Finally, the decision considers a sense of balance between sections of the same grade level or course. If the number of students in each section is too far out of balance, it is the teachers who make demands for reassignment.

Reassignment is problematic in that the pre-analysis and considerations led to a balanced, total assignment. Any change would create its own problems with the considerations that were balanced. And, once the teacher assignments for the school have been published, any change of assignment is public and the rippling problems from that reassignment erupt. Reassignment is irksome after the hours and days the principal invested in the process of making initial assignments. My first mumbled response sounded like this. “Who do they think they are? What gives them the right? Do they really think they know the best assignment for their child’s learning needs?” Irksome can be much more than irked.

Making a reassignment for a demanding parent typically was not easy or quick. It meant meeting with them and listening to their demands and rationale. It meant reconsidering the values within the initial assignment and how making a reassignment would affect the balancing of those values for all children. It meant listening to a teacher’s questioning the wisdom of “giving in to demanding parents” and the response of multiple teachers if the “balance” is upset.

In retrospect, I wish that more parents had taken the time and effort to form an opinion regarding the quality of their child’s teacher assignment. I wish that more parents had irked me. There is ample data available both in the state and local school public data bases and in the parent network of each school to provide any parent with a modicum of information relative to their child’s next teacher. Although there also is a lot of “hooey” involved in what some parents believe is their informed opinion, most of the time they are on the right track. I could take some comfort in the process. After listening to a parent’s argument, they also would listen to my reasoning. And, in most cases, many found their concerns answered by the detail and child-by-child nature of my placement processes. Every year, though, I made placement changes based upon a parent’s request. In each case, I liked their reasoning, their genuine interest in their child’s learning, and that they chose not to settle for less than what they believed was best for their child. As problematic and irksome as they are, responding to demanding parents assures the principal that consumerism is working effectively in our schools. This is why.

Educational consumerism should affect the quality of learning. Most of the demanding parents were driven by their perception of “best” instruction and “better” learning outcomes. The daily instructional of a school is not secret. Parents can learn to understand the differences between teachers who are more effective at causing all children to learn and those who teach to the middle of the class with little regard for more talented or more needy children. Parents can observe the teachers who academically challenge their children. Parents can know which teachers take a strong interest in how children progress in their learning and those teachers who are more casual or cavalier about how well children learn.

Data about school achievement also is not secret. Parents can observe and compare the achievement statistics of children depending upon teacher assignment. Too often there is a difference. Every year a small and perceptive group parents of the next Kindergarten class would request placement with one of our three K teachers because they knew that children in that teacher’s section annually had the highest reading and language test scores in second and third grade. The foundation that this teacher laid paid dividends for children over time. Demanding parents want their children to have the advantage of learning from a teacher whose instruction creates better achievement results.

Parents can observe and learn which teachers connect with their students and use that connection to create better learning. Better learning achievement may be caused by a more effective teacher and it also may be caused by a more caring teacher. Interestingly, these are the two qualities that children talk about at the fiftieth reunion of their high school graduation. The most effective and the most caring teachers make a difference over a life time.

Effective consumerism really should affect teacher employment. When a principal assigns children in multiple sections of a grade level or course based upon each child’s learning needs and teacher talents, there almost always is a resulting imbalance. The more effective instructors and more caring teachers will have more children assigned to their sections. Historically, it was more troublesome for everyone involved to try to dismiss or demote the teacher who annually was the less effective and less caring teacher. So, sections were balanced and all teachers retained.

Today, no one, schools, parents and children, can put up with a less effective or a less caring teacher. If these characteristics affect a child’s learning achievement, everyone suffers. Changing state laws regarding teacher contracts are relieving the legal frameworks that made dismissal or demotion of an ineffective teacher in the past. I applaud new teacher evaluation frameworks that use student achievement, especially value-added evidence, to form an annual rating for every teacher. And, for every principal and superintendent. I recall observing a teacher dismissal case in Minnesota several decades ago. The presented facts clearly established that the teacher was sub-standard. The problem was that neither the district nor the state had a history of establishing a definition of teacher competence. That problem no longer exits.

The irony of educational consumerism is that children, the ultimate consumer, are seldom involved in the discussion of the quality of their education. For that reason alone, everyone, parents and school personnel alike, should take a stand: We will not settle for less than assigning each child to a teacher(s) who will assure that this child will successfully complete their annual curriculum this school year. Educational consumerism, as Thelma and Louise roughly described it, is “getting what you settle for.” No one should settle for less than a very good teacher.

June, July and August traditionally are down time for scho0ls. Summer vacation! “Schools out! Schools out! Teachers let the monkeys out.” Traditionally, classrooms go dark in the summer and teachers either assume summertime, non-school employment or settle into “kicked back vacation mode.” Summer for children means daycare, playing at home, and, for older children, summer jobs. But, in 2014, any school that does not take advantage of summer as “school’s second season” is telling its children, parents, teachers and staff, and community “This school is not doing all that it can to cause all children to learn.”

The historic school calendar that limits public education to nine months with a three-month summer vacation is as out of date as believing a “Dick and Jane” reading program will meet today’s reading standards. School programming based upon the needs, requirements and calendar of the last century are not adequate. In fact, the concept of adequacy itself is defunct because adequacy connotes a static condition. Adequate for what? The goal of education is the “perfect school year” in which all children successfully learn their annual curriculum. In a parallel setting, baseball sets the goal of a “perfect game” in which the opposing team has no hits, no runs and no one left on base; 27 batters and 27 outs. In the 135 years of major league baseball’s recordkeeping, there have been only 23 perfect games. Yet, the idea of improving pitching and team defense to achieve a perfect game is always present. So it is with school programming; the idea of all children achieving their annual learning targets is always out there. This is why a school’s practices should be aimed at a “perfect school year.” That is why a school’s second season, summer, is so important.

The second season for a school is a summer session designed specifically for children who did not complete their annual learning goals in the regular, nine-month school year; the first season. The second season begins on the first Monday after the close of the first season and lasts until the Friday before next regular year begins in August of September. The goal of the second season, to continue the baseball analogy, is for every child to score and to leave no children stranded on the base paths of incomplete learning.

The structure of the second season is to provide additional time and instruction to move more and more children toward the goal of a “perfect school year.” The upside of a second season is that teachers work with fewer children. Children who met their annual learning goals are excused from the second season. Their absence clearly narrows and redirects teaching from the span of all children to the needs of fewer children who require specific assistance and help over increased time. As a deficit model, second season instruction targets only what a child did not achieve in the regular season. Second season teaching is not constrained to usual, school year instruction often aimed at the whole group. Instead, second season teaching is ultra-clinical and aimed at correcting the child’s learning errors and building and reinforcing new and correct learning. That’s it; no field trips, no enrichment, no extra credits. Teaching and time on task are directly focused on student performance.

An additional upside to the second season is that a child is excused from the summer session when achievement targets are reached. Vacation from school is earned when learning goals are accomplished. Vacation is not just a function of a date in June; it is paired with successful learning. Within the same model, assessment of learning is based upon the teacher’s confidence that the child’s new learning is strong enough to prepare the student for the next school year’s learning goals.

Another upside derived from the second season is that more children are ready to tackle their learning goals in the next school year. Past practices that promoted children with incomplete annual learning assured that these children’s teachers needed to begin their next school year in a remedial mode. A child entering second grade without mastering single digit addition and subtraction in first grade requires teaching time and effort to remediate this problem. A child who does understand or compute math problems involving fractions in elementary school faces a perpetual learning impediment in high school algebra and advanced math. A child with incomplete decoding skills usually achieved in the primary grade faces constant reading problems throughout school and adult life. Quality control in manufacturing looks for mistakes and errors early and consistently throughout the building process. Think of a second season classroom as a high quality processing center with inspection procedures addressing unacceptable skills or reasoning in the line of daily instruction so that only acceptable skills and reasoning are created. Education, unlike manufacturing, cannot discard its mistakes and errors; it must teach and reteach until all children are successful learners.

There are downsides. Achieving a perfect school year, like a perfect game in baseball, is very difficult. There are variables beyond the school and teacher’s control that get in the way of success. The most significant uncontrolled variable is child non-attendance and a lack of home commitment to the goals of a second season. The absent child cannot be taught. Success in the second season requires both a child’s commitment to personal success and a parent or guardian’s commitment to the child’s educational success. For the adult, this often means making adjustments to usual summer schedules, helping or supporting the child with second season home work, and staying the course until the child completes her annual learning goals. The second season can be very trying at home.

Downsides to a second season also exist inside the school. Just as a second season requires home commitment, a school’s second season requires school board support. The major impediment to board support is additional school expenses. In times when state aid for education is controversial and most legislators work to decrease state support, funding summer school is seen as an extra cost and receives little support. School boards, without additional state funding, must incorporate second season costs inside their annual school budgets. Or, school boards must levy locally for increased tax revenue. Levying for summer school is unpopular. But, promoting children with incomplete learning should be even more unpopular.

And, a second season requires teachers to change their perception of teaching from nine months to a full-year job. Summer vacation has been part of a teacher’s tradition just as it has been for children and families. Using verified learning to excuse a child from her second season of schooling may mean that some children will require teaching well into August. This is a significant change in lifestyles for many teachers. Yet, there are many teachers who believe that year-round work would benefit the public image of teaching as a profession. A second season will be good for teaching as it is for learning.

Achieving a “perfect school year” is very difficult. Its difficulty, however, is what makes a second season, a summer session, so important. It is probable that no school or school district has ever accomplished a “perfect school year.” It is time that every school moved closer and closer to a year in which every child successfully learned their annual curriculum. Finally, a school’s use of the second season confirms to every constituent of the school that “this school is doing all that it can to help all children be successful.”

The shade of influence cast by the person at the top of the school district’s organizational chart is wide and deep. It does not matter if the organization is an immense urban school district or a compact rural district. The style and values of the superintendent convey an ethos and way of doing business that must be understood and incorporated by any person engaging in the work of the school district. Those who are able to identify and work within the proclivities of the organizational leader can make significant contributions to the productive work of the schools. Those who cannot or do not understand their leader’s style and priorities face unavoidable frustration and dissatisfaction.

This article is written to assist school personnel to adapt and adopt to a new superintendent. The applications also apply to creating working relations with a new school principal. This is a true statement: During your career your school district will employ almost a dozen different superintendents. Your long term success can depend upon your ability to adapt and adopt when leadership changes.

Every year school districts seek and find new school superintendents. The average tenure for school executives in the same position was 3.6 years in 2010. Generally, superintendents are hired, work their leadership for several school years, and then they move or are moved on. Tenure for other central office administrators, principals and teachers is much longer than that of a superintendent. This turnover rate makes it imperative that school leaders below the superintendent become adept in working with different leadership styles.

I have watched with interest the drama surrounding the musical chair that is the Milwaukee (WI) Public Schools superintendency. The current occupant, Gregory Thornton, is moving his career to Baltimore at the end of this month. Thornton is the 6th person in the MPS superintendent’s chair during the past 20 years. In July 1, Darriene Driver, Chief Innovation Officer for MPS, will become the interim superintendent. For the past half year, the in-district and community conversations have ebbed around the generally very favorable effects of the Thornton era and how his personality and organizational leadership achieved these outcomes. This is the act of reviewing leadership. At the same time, those previewing the next leader want to know the extent to which Driver’s leadership values and skills will be different and how those differences will impact the school district.

I also am paying attention this summer to the leadership replacement efforts of small school districts. The dramas in large and small organizations are very similar in professional processes and legalities, but are very different in their everyday dimensions. The MPS Board of Education seeks a person who figuratively is in charge of the schools. When Thornton leaves Milwaukee, MPS loses its figurehead. Smaller school boards seek a person who literally is the school(s). When a small schools superintendent leaves, the district literally loses their head. It is the concept of “headship” that each school district seeks to replace.

Beginning with the Board of Education’s (BOE) naming of a new superintendent, every person engaging with the district has the opportunity and need to understand “how” the new superintendent lives and works professionally. In Meredith Willson’s Music Man, the traveling salesmen on the train to River City, IA, sang, “… you have to know the territory…” if you want to succeed in River City. Knowing how the superintendent leads and exerts leadership is the territory that enhances or obstructs a subordinate’s success in a school district.

One can be clinical about this. A Google of educational leadership styles will report that leadership has been a topic for the ages. There is a wealth of literature. Short of a dissertation, I offer four personal actions that will provide you with a quick understanding of your new superintendent and how to successfully adjust to his leadership.

1.  Understand and adopt the new credo. Successful superintendents develop a professional credo or set of philosophic tenets upon which they base their leadership. Often their credo is encapsulated in a slogan or motto. Their motto may read like one of these.

Equality of learning opportunities for all children

Assuring that all children are college or career ready

One year’s growth in learning for each year in school

Safe and secure schools for everyone

Closing all achievement gaps

A 21st century education for all children

Caring and nurturing schools

Cost effective schools

Every child a graduate

You can bet that the BOE knows their new hire’s credo and motto. So should you. Take the new super’s motto and apply it to your work. It may seem like sucking up, but, in reality, adopting the new super’s motto assures that your work is aligned with his.

2.  Adopt new accountability systems. A change of leadership often brings new metrics for measuring school success. Using new measurements devices does not change current realities, but it does allow the new superintendent to declare, “Beginning now….” New metrics are all about accountability systems. Understand and adopt the language of these new metrics. Make them a part of your professional conversation. This allows you to see your work in the framework of the new superintendent’s leadership and know that your work can be seen and valued by those doing the measuring.

3.  Adapt with patience, acceptance and resilience (PAR). New leadership can be traumatic to school organizations, especially if the Board expects the new superintendent to “change things.” Knowing that people are not always opposed to change, but are usually opposed to being changed, PAR gives you resources most others are not able to grasp during times of organizational trauma. Be patient in order to understand the big picture of your district’s new leadership. Knee jerk responses to every small detail only exacerbate the trauma. Let the new regime unfold. Patience allows you time to analyze, evaluate and make a judgment about the efficacy of the new changes. Be accepting that the BOE and new superintendent are on the same page related to these changes and that employees who cannot adapt to the changes may become unemployed. Most of the changes arising from new leadership will have a thread of consistency so look for those threads. Be resilient. Change theory says that any introduction of a new variable into an organization always causes conflict and a level of opposition. There will be a point in every leadership transition when one or more elements of change seem just plain wrong. Pick your battles wisely and do battle where and when it really matters. Questioning and offering a counter argument are necessary for big picture clarity. In doing so, know that all conflicts leave wounds. Be resilient and heal thyself. Success will come to those who understand the new leadership, accept the authority of the new direction, and are able to weather any conflict that arises.

4.  Adopt new organizational navigation skills. Each new superintendent will create his own vanguard. These are the persons and leaders who are at the forefront of the superintendent’s new organizational structure. Some within the vanguard may be new faces and others will be district veterans. Know who is responsible for what. Know how to access members of the leadership team in order to obtain the resources you need to succeed in your work. Often the new vanguard is viewed as a buffer between the superintendent and everyone else in the schools. The quicker you learn to navigate and connect with the district’s new leadership team, the more efficient and effective you will become in achieving your professional goals.

Navigation skills include an understanding of the new superintendent’s use of accessibility. In contrast, some supers use an “open door” system and anyone can approach the superintendent when the door is open. An open door superintendent typically is comfortable with spontaneity and ad libbed decisions. Other superintendents rely upon intermediaries to screen their accessibility. “By appointment only” allows the superintendent to foresee and prepare for potential decisions. Closed doors mean closed to less accessible superintendents. Quickly learn how the superintendent prefers to be accessed and adapt to this preference.

Each time a new superintendent is hired, all eyes in the school and community immediately go to that person. It is a new day! When this happens, use these adopting and adapting skills to assure your future success. Don’t get caught staring and wondering “What am I supposed to do now?”

I like James Durbin’s commentary on a life’s many turns. “It is what it is. It is what you make it.” Durbin is a singer-song writer living and succeeding with Tourette syndrome.

A bad public image is what it is. Bad is not good! However, it also can be what you make it. Once we accept that “what is” must be changed, the only real question is “What are we prepared to do to improve the public image of teaching?” The crux of the matter goes beyond problem recognition which has been pointed out over time. The crux of the matter is creating a resolve to overcome the dead weight of historic inertia and cause necessary changes that will result in a vibrant and sustainable new image for the professional teacher.

Several dozen re-readings of the following Education Week article excerpt and the National Online Survey of College Students findings only reconfirms that the analysts got it right. As a profession, teaching suffers from bad public imaging and, sadly, has not found ways to correct its lack of professional status or prevent its continuing self-denigration as a profession. I emphasize self-denigration.

“The teaching profession has a major image problem,” Third Way analysts Tamara Hiler and Lanae Erickson Hatalsky write in their analysis of the National Online Survey of College Students – Education Attitudes. “Unfortunately, this perception of mediocrity has negatively affected the national reputation of teaching, initiating a cycle of undesirable outcomes that can be felt throughout the profession.”

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/teacherbeat/2014/04/poll_college_students_dont_fin.html?qs=top+college+students+see

In the past week, the Vergara v. California decision from the Superior Court of the State of California could only reinforce a public opinion that teachers are a labor union and not a profession. The immediate “professional” response to the court’s decision by our two national organizations, the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, defended the very problem that the court pointed to – the right of tenured teachers to job security despite the quality of their teaching. The response was to protect the jobs of teachers of lesser quality over the employment of teachers of higher quality. Our professional unions showed what they are – unions that protect the employment of teachers and not professional organizations that improve teaching. Ouch!

http://studentsmatter.org/our-case/vergara-v-california-case-summary/

A headline related to Vergara read “American Federation Of Teachers Vows To Force Crappy Teachers On Poor Kids”. A quick read of the article indicates an anti-teacher bias in the reporting, but most readers don’t read to understand journalistic point of view. The headline in bold type caught the reader’s attention and reinforced a pre-existing opinion.

A week later another report put a second dope slap on the teaching profession. The National Council on Teacher Quality issued its “2014 Teacher Prep Review.” The Daily Caller reported it this way.

“The group’s 2014 Teacher Prep Review ranked the nation’s hundreds of teacher certification programs by factoring their admissions standards, academic rigor, syllabuses, and other factors, rating them from Level I to Level IV. Those ranked Level IV were considered top-ranked, while those at Level I were decidedly subpar or even failing.

At the elementary level, out of 788 evaluated programs, just 26 managed to hit Level IV, while a whopping 529 were stuck at Level I. Secondary programs fare somewhat better; out of 824 programs, 81 were Level IV and 319 were at Level I. Seventeen states and the District of Columbia have no Level IV programs at all.

A major reason for the low scores, the group said, is that schools continue to fail at training prospective teachers in scientific approaches to student learning, and fail to ensure teachers have mastered all of the content they will teach. While the vast majority of programs do ensure teachers have studied reading and composition, about half of all programs evaluated don’t have sufficient requirements in place to make sure teachers have mastered elementary math and science to the levels expected of teachers in nations with high-performing schools.

About three quarters of programs don’t even meet the ‘modest academic standard’ of requiring admitted students to be in the top half of their college class, the report said. A scant 5 percent have all the components the group views as useful for a strong educational training program.”

http://dailycaller.com/2014/06/17/report-most-us-teacher-training-programs-are-still-awful/#ixzz34w2hOSK5

So, what would James Durbin mean when he said, “Life is what you make it”?

The NCTQ laid out a set of recommendations. When taken at face value, each or all of these begins to make a difference by addressing a component of teaching that contributes to its bad public image. The findings go one step further and cite places where these recommendations are being enacted and are making a difference in teaching and learning.

http://www.nctq.org/teacherPrep/review2014/findings/nationalPolicies.jsp

• Make it tougher to get into a teacher preparation program. Some institutions set lower admission standards for entry into teaching than they do for their athletes to qualify for competition. Institutions need to admit only college students who are in the top half of their class.

Where it’s being done: In Delaware, teacher candidates must have a minimum GPA of 3.0 or a GPA in the top half of their college-attending class. Delaware also requires teacher candidates to pass a test “normed to the general college-bound population.” Rhode Island also requires an average cohort GPA of 3.0, and beginning in 2016, the cohort mean score on nationally-normed tests such as the ACT, SAT or GRE must be in the top 50th percentile. In 2020, the requirement for the mean test score will increase from the top half to the top third.

• Make it tougher to be recommended for licensure. States need to choose the right licensing tests — tests that will assess each and every subject a teacher could be assigned to teach — and make sure that the cut-scores are set high enough to ensure that new teachers really know their stuff.

Where it’s being done: Massachusetts sets high expectations for what elementary teachers need to know across the board and uses top-notch tests for reading instruction and elementary mathematics. Only Tennessee, Indiana, and Missouri ensure that their secondary teachers have thorough knowledge of each subject they may teach, eliminating any loopholes.

• Hold programs accountable for the effectiveness of their graduates by using data on novice teacher effectiveness.

Where it’s being done: Florida, Louisiana, North Carolina, Ohio and Tennessee have taken the lead in employing value-added analysis of student test scores to identify programs producing the most effective graduates. Louisiana is the only state to take a first step in using this data for program accountability, for a time prohibiting its lowest performing institution from accepting new students. A more promising alternative to value-added will be the use of aggregated results from the next generation of teacher evaluation instruments (which include measures of student growth), capable of yielding data on more teachers and more programs.

• Make program approval — and re-approval — contingent on passing rigorous on-site inspections.

Where it’s being done: Almost all states either conduct site visits of teacher preparation programs themselves or outsource site visits to accreditors, but these visits have not proven to be of much value. States should take a page from the experience of the United Kingdom, which has used professional inspectors in concert with other policy measures to drive up substantially the quality of its teacher preparation programs. Based on the UK model, NCTQ has served as an incubator for an inspectorate that is now run independently by TPI-US in partnership with the UK Tribal Group that deploys professionally trained and managed inspectors drawn from the ranks of PK-12 principals and teachers who carefully scrutinize all aspects of teacher preparation programs including program coursework and candidate teaching. Programs in Texas and New Mexico have participated in pilot inspections.

• Make the student teaching requirement meaningful. States should only allow student teachers to be placed with classroom teachers who have been found effective. Furthermore, districts could limit the number of student teachers they accept to correspond with their own capacity and needs.

Where it’s being done: Florida, Rhode Island and Tennessee require that only teachers who have demonstrated evidence of effectiveness as measured by student learning can qualify as cooperating teachers. However, no district we know of currently places limits on the number of teachers it accepts, and districts are clearly devoting precious resources to the training of teachers whom they will never hire. In the Chicago area, for example, teacher prep programs are producing three times as many elementary student teachers as there are effective and available cooperating teachers in the Chicago school district.

• Base state funding on the quality of teacher preparation provided by institutions.

Where it’s being done: Nine states — Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Washington — base at least some funding to public IHEs on meeting key goals (e.g., on-time graduation) as opposed to enrollment; Tennessee bases 100 percent of its higher education funding on this model. Another five states — Arkansas, Colorado, Missouri, South Dakota and Virginia — are transitioning to such a system. While none of these states specifically addresses teacher preparation, there is no reason that they could not do so.

• Set a fixed limit on the number of licenses in each teaching area that will be issued each year.

Where it’s being done: Despite the fact that teacher preparation programs collectively produce more than twice as many new teachers as are hired, no state has attempted to cap licenses. The United Kingdom, however, estimates how many teachers are needed and allocates enrollment slots to programs based on their quality. Combined with inspection, this has significantly reduced production at low quality preparation programs. Ontario, Canada recently halved the number of enrollment slots it allocates to teacher colleges to address significant oversupply of new teachers.

• Lower tuition for high need areas such as special education and STEM preparation programs.

Where it’s being done: Florida is considering lowering tuition for academic majors that are in short supply (e.g., engineering and physics). With college costs imposing an increasingly heavy burden, this tool has real promise to encourage aspiring teachers to go into the areas where school districts face significant shortages.

• Enforce existing teacher prep standards through the program approval process. Every teacher preparation program has to win and maintain state approval in order to be in business. States should use this process to ensure that programs meet existing standards.

Where it’s being done: Michigan ordered Lake Superior State University and Olivet College to stop enrolling candidates in most of their secondary programs because of low licensure test pass rates. Afterward, the president of Western Michigan University, whose programs were deemed “at-risk,” promptly announced that he would work to make his school of education to be among the best in the state in three years.

Several of these recommendations may be tough to implement. However, when taken as a whole, they make sense. Additionally, tough changes are in order when the purpose is to correct a degenerative problem. A good way to conceptualize recommendations such as these is to chunk them – chain them together so that together the chained effect creates the greatest improvement

First, more rigorous admission requirements to teacher preparation programs links with demonstrated subject-area mastery and this links with capping the number of teacher licenses issued annually. For too long, a teacher prep program was the default for collegian who wanted to major in a subject area, like history or literature or political science or science, but could not foresee a post-graduate opportunities. Their answer to a parent’s inquiry of “What will you do with a major in anthropology?” was to convert their study into a social studies teaching certification. Also, there were too many jocks who did not move beyond college athletics yet wanted to remain in athletics. Teaching so that they could coach became their fall-back employment. Making admission to a teacher prep program more rigorous assures that those who are admitted have the right academic credentials and a more potent academic record.

In the past, school districts did the sorting of all teacher candidates. Hundreds of candidates applied for a dozen jobs and included in the hundreds were very highly qualified and very poorly qualified teachers. Local administrators tried their best to identify and recruit what they thought were the best. There is very good reason for teacher preparation programs to limit their admissions and for teacher licensing authorities to cap the annual number of licenses granted. Tightening the so-called spigot of teachers into the educational job market can assure that only the best candidates for teacher preparation are prepared and only the best of those become licensed. Matching the number of licenses issued annually to recent projections of employment needs then allows schools to access a well-trained candidate pool of future teachers.

A second chunk of recommendations that makes sense is chaining together the accreditation of teacher preparation programs and the creditability of student teacher or practicum experiences within teacher prep programs. The proliferation of teacher prep programs, especially by online and for-profit institutions stretches the imagination when considering the rigorous support of teacher preparation. Access and accountability are two entirely separate values for aspiring teachers. Candidates want the first; the profession must demand the second. Coupled with strict inspection of preparation programs must be even stricter approval and support of teacher practicum experiences. Practicum students should be matched only with the best of instructional practitioners for an excessively clinical practicum. The clinical element is essential for aspirants to truly hone their instructional repertoire not just be allowed to “try things out.”

Concomitant to these two recommendations is the valid inspection and certification of programs. Over the past three decades, internal supervision of program vitality and direction has become the norm and fewer states and school districts have used the services of external, expert certification. As a sad result, programs teacher preparation programs have acquiesced to budget reductions (no external inspection costs) and non-critical analysis of program integrity. A return to external, expert certification based upon performance and data is necessary to rebuild both professional and public confidence in teacher preparation.

Almost every problem related to current and future conditions in our world includes, in a discussion of what be done, a process of education. Education is vital to every aspect of future life. If teachers are to play a role in this essential work, the public confidence in teachers must be changed. It is time to get a grip on the problem that many people hold the teaching profession in low esteem. We must repair what is wrong, commit with integrity to significant institutional changes, and teach the public once again the importance of the teaching profession.