Credentialing body’s new focus
Darling-Hammond discusses her ideas
Last summer, Gov. Jerry Brown appointed Stanford University School of Education Professor Linda Darling-Hammond to what the state auditor called one of the state’s worst-run agencies, the Commission on Teacher Credentialing.
Now, as the newly elected CTC vice chair, Darling-Hammond, a national authority on preparing new teachers, shared her thoughts on how the Commission should view its role as overseer of the state’s teacher training programs.
Start, she said in a video interview, by identifying “high quality, intellectually rigorous, and exciting” credentialing programs in California (UC Berkeley, Cal State Long Beach and Northridge, and, of course, Stanford, to name a few) and then requiring weaker programs to rise to their level of excellence. The state lacks uniform standards, she said, particularly in the area of the length of time teachers must do practice teaching under the eyes of master teachers. (Go here for a transcript of the Linda Darling-Hammond interview.)
One way to leverage improvement is to focus on the back end – by measuring what newly licensed teachers can do. The state has pioneered the creation of teacher-performance assessment. All program graduates must demonstrate a range of skills that new teachers are expected to know: “that they can plan a curriculum, that they can adapt that curriculum for English learners, special-education students; that they can be videotaped teaching; that they collect evidence of student learning and can demonstrate how their students are learning, and analyze what to do next.”
The requirement that new teachers show what they know is already forcing schools of education to take a hard look at what they do; it’s leading to “very productive, very high-quality innovation and reform.” The next steps, she said, are to standardize the scoring of the assessments and to use the data from them in program accreditation.
Over the long term, she said, the state should consider using gains in student achievement as a measure of teacher training programs. This is an intensely controversial area, and Darling-Hammond joins those critical of using student test results to evaluate individual teachers.
“We have seen that looking at the student results for individual teachers is much more problematic, much more error-prone, very unstable,” she said. But using aggregate data “across a number of graduates over time, you can get some potentially useful information” about programs, she said.
CTC, schools of ed under fire
Darling-Hammond was elected vice chair last month, four months after Brown nominated her to a four-year term. She will serve with newly elected chairman Charles Gahagan, an English teacher for 40 years at Moreno Valley’s Canyon Springs High School. His term expires in November.
They will lead a troubled agency that has undergone a turnover in administration following revelations that the Commission had failed to quickly investigate complaints of misconduct and follow up on criminal charges against teachers. Policing of the profession is one of the CTC’s responsibilities.
Schools of education have faced increasing criticism nationwide for failing to adequately train teachers. In September, U.S. Secretary Arne Duncan called for holding programs more accountable, with more reporting requirements for the federal money they receive, so the CTC faces urgency in focusing its attention on California programs.
In response to budget cuts and teacher layoffs, fewer college graduates are pursing teaching as a career, with the number of new credentialed teachers falling 40 percent since 2003, according to a recent report from the Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning at WestEd.
But Darling-Hammond said that there remains a shortage of well-prepared science, math, and special education teachers in high-needs areas with lower salaries and poorer working conditions. The state and the Commission should turn special attention and focus limited resources there. One way is through year-long residency programs, placing aspiring teachers and principals under the tutelage of skilled practitioners. Districts like San Francisco Unified and the charter organization Aspire Public Schools have set up residency programs, which should be encouraged, Darling-Hammond said.
Such programs will help attract high-ability teaching candidates to the profession, and better trained teachers will find the work more satisfying. That will help with teacher retention in the long run.
“If we get programs that people want to be in because they are intellectually exciting, and help them be successful with kids, they will also stay,” she said.
Does anybody have the stats on how many teachers trained through STEP, UCB, and the other mentioned programs actually enter the California school system?
And … attrition rates?
I took several classes at UCSD’s TEP years ago to meet California’s Credential Requirements (utterly useless and expensive process), and was shocked by how few of those students actually entered the teaching profession, let alone in CA public schools.
Is videotaping student teachers new? That was part of teacher ed in UK when I trained - back in the dark ages.
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I think it’s worth looking at Lee Shulman’s work on defining pedagogies in professional training. Most of us know what law school training is like–theater lecture hall, case studies. Med school is rounds and clinical training. There is no analogous definitive pedagogy for teacher training, other than student teaching which is inconsistent.
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Linda Darling-Hammond is certainly on the right track. Andrew’s point is also vitally important. Subject matter craft knowledege is crucial to student performance (for example, teachers need to know the mathematics underlying fractions, why they are difficult for many students, and how to help them understand them.) There is a powerful body of knowledge that has been built up over the years on these questions. Some teacher training programs such as Deborah Loenberg Ball’s work in Michigan have demonstrated how powerful this knowledge can be. She has statistics which show that prospective teachers understanding of this craft knowledge in math predicts mathematics performance better than any other attribute far outstripping socio-economic status of the students, the second most powerful indicator. All students coming out of our teacher training institutions and induction programs should have much of this knowledge under their belt and our state policies should assure that they do.
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Huh. I read this several times, but I’m missing the part where a 5 week summer session produces a highly qualified teacher.
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Does anyone ever want to talk about the student anymore & how this society promotes attitudes inconsistent with valuing public education? I’m not saying that teacher education programs couldn’t be better, but the true problems come mainly from about three sources: 1) Lack of a serious attitude amongst students (especially older ones) 2) Lack of support by administrators in maintaining an orderly & relatively disciplined student body 3) Scheduling of the academic day getting rid of some of the fun & games that administration seems to adore. You could cut back on class size too, freeing up teachers to do more planning, preparation, assessing & feedback to students.
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I found her comments on the difference in reliability between aggregate and localized/small-sample performance metrics as part of an evaluation process noteworthy. As John points out, using student achievement is a controversial topic, though I believe infinitely more so when it is attempted to be used as a measure for individual teachers, schools or even communities, especially to the exclusion of teaching environment (her comment “So we have to be cautious not to draw inferences about teachers that are actually about the context in which they teach…” was crucial, imho).
Its also important to note that the mentioned evaluation more about programs and policies, and less about people (eg teachers). I know John included that statement explicitly, but I think its easy to miss that when one sees the term ‘performance-based evaluations’.
In any case, it is heartening to hear someone with influence actually talk about these nuances.
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Don’t disagree, but I also missed the part on how a piece of paper makes someone a highly qualified teacher. I know many credentialed teachers who are terrible and many non-credentialed teachers who are amazing. I’m not optimistic the CTC will move the ball at all.
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Briefly mentioned was the shortage in science/math teacher in poor districts. I am not so sure that is true, but if it is, here’s the solution:
Pay math-science people what industry pays the way industry pays it. No retirement plan other than a 401k and Social Security and pay what otherwise would be the retirement benefit contribution up front. Summer school teaching would be paid for as part of the regular salary. Right now, effectively half the teacher pay is received in a retirement package that half or more of those currently entering teaching will never see because they leave teaching.
Not being in SS is a real barrier to a lot of people who might want to enter teaching in mid-career. Having your salary reduced by 25% because you have a forced 3 month Summer break is another disincentive.
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If You looking for outstanding teacher program, then Pepperdine University teacher ED UPTEC . Pepperdine University UPTEC have prepare young pres-service to work in inner city school for over 6 years. UPTEC stand for Urban Partner Teacher Education Collaboration that bring parent education into curriculum for 1 year. Parents are Co/instructor to pre-service teacher and nit exposure to inner city parent only by reading book but interaction on daily basic. Parents also help in finding placement for pre-service teachers, and advocate at their local school to hire the pre-service in the community. In the last five all the teachers that came through UPTEC are department chairs, football coaches, and have highest score on CST. I am most proud that all previous UPTEC , praise their interacting with parents and students before they were place in the community. The UPTEC students got to get the know the community and peoples expectation before they are place in community. The UPTEC students must eat in the community twice a month and attend local churches where majority of family attend. Plus, they must do a civic service at local schools. The civic service is project that school have need of but can’t create it in regular school day. The result is that schools tha t we work with their API and AYP when up and one school exit out of school improvement. UPTEC students have created science lab, literacy lab for ELL students. UPTEC isn’t mandate class at Pepperdine but students who want to work in inner city volunteer to be in program. This program is best practice program that have been kept a secret.
Mary Johnson,
http://www.21stparent.com
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I hope someone asks teachers who have been credentialed in the last few years what THEY think the weaknesses of their program were and what would better prepare them, because trust me, they’ll get an earful.
There is a shortage of good teachers to be master teachers for student teaching despite any incentives (free units, etc.) because it is work for the master teachers, but increasing the time in student teaching without something to compensate master teachers for their time and/or not evaluating the master teachers to make sure they ARE good models for new teachers is unlikely to be productive and improve teacher preparation.
And Michael, teachers don’t get 3 months off. They get 2, mid-June to mid-August or with the new shifted schedules early June to early August. Nearly all end up having to go to some kind of training for a week or more (training is paid for, the teachers are not) every summer, plus all the time unpaid spent setting up classrooms for the new school year, etc. etc. Getting a summer school position is extremely competitive, but that is especially so because we only offer migrant ed and remedial ed in the summer, but teachers do get paid proportionate to the salary they receive for the school year.
But Michael, you are right about something– some people do get a clue and are discouraged to get or stay in teaching because they operate outside of social security. Deferred compensation isn’t so bad if you’re sure you can get to the end, but budget cuts and teacher layoffs create more uncertainty– and Wisconsin created a swirling vortex of uncertainty. If we really lost 30,000 teacher positions due to the economy (as stated in another article on SVEF) then it’s not really a problem that teacher credential programs have fewer applicants/enrollees.
And it’s possible that you can get a better credential-prep education at Stanford vs. SJSU, I might even bet on it. But since the ending salaries are the same, which are all low for a high COL state, getting double in debt for that education stops making much sense. I don’t care how stimulating the work is when you’ve got as many vermin as students in your classroom (and not in a cage), no copy paper, no computers, and no administrative support when behavior problems erupt. At some point, you just can’t get up and go back there every day, esp. when the radio in the morning is bashing your profession once again for something new our children don’t do well that seem rather out of your control. Just a thought.
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“But since the ending salaries are the same, which are all low for a high COL state, getting double in debt for that education stops making much sense”
This is exactly right. I went to STEP right before the market crash, and thought of it as a luxury I could afford because of loan forgiveness. Then the market crashed and it got harder to get jobs–plus, there’s a bias against older candidates (something they never mention when pushing mid-career switches). Looking for a job while worrying that if you don’t find one, you not only don’t have money but will owe MORE in loans is a scary proposition.
And trust me, the principals don’t care where your degree is from.
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