After the release last month of The New Teacher Project’s Cincinnati-focused human capital reform report (see Jamie’s take here), both district and union leadership seemed genuinely intent on using their upcoming contract negotiations to work together toward improving the district’s schools.  Education-reform-wise, things seemed to be looking up in the Queen City, a place where I’ve long been optimistic about the potential for improving education, given the city’s dynamic school choice market and the fact that the district is one of the few in the Buckeye State to actually shut down persistently failing schools. But now with district-union contract negotiations just around the corner, my optimism is waning. 

The Cincinnati Enquirer’s Ben Fischer reports that in the first few months of the school year, the union filed 51 grievances against the district for low-level contract violations and asked the State Employee Relations Board to investigate an unfair labor practice charge related to the superintendent’s plan for addressing persistently failing schools. The number of grievances isn’t unusually high, but the unfair labor practice charge puts at risk the district’s attempt to close and redesign its worst schools. If the district can’t do that, and if the new collective bargaining agreement is more of the same-old, same-old and not informed much by TNTP’s findings, Cincinnati’s education reform efforts might be doomed to suffer the same fate as its beloved Bengals. (Good call, Stafford and Mickey.) 

- Emmy Partin

Cincinnati Public Schools (CPS) has the highest number of teachers with certification from the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (139) of any Ohio district, but the way these teachers are distributed across the district threatens to undermine CPS’ mission to improve learning for all students. 

The Enquirer recently posted numbers illustrating the inequitable spread of Board certified teachers. Unsurprisingly, they are more likely to be located in buildings that are higher performing, and children in  schools rated “D” or “F” are less likely to come into contact with such “highly qualified” teachers.

The discrepancy between “A/A+” schools and “F” schools is stark, with 213 students per one board certified teachers in the highest achieving CPS schools, and 1,097, or five times as many students per one such teacher in the most struggling CPS schools.

Student/teacher ratios for National Board certified instructors in Cincinnati Public Schools (broken down by academic rating)

Source: Ohio Department of Education and Cincinnati Enquirer article

Whether National Board certification improves a teacher’s classroom effectiveness is up for debate, as is the relationship between a school’s academic status and the number of “highly qualified” teachers who teach there (e.g. is the school “F” because its teachers are not “highly qualified,” or do no “highly qualified” teachers want to work there because it is an “F” school?)

Nevertheless, National Board certification is a selective process and signifies that a teacher has put in the effort to apply for the honor (it takes up to three years). And while teacher effectiveness (measured in part by student test scores) is more important than teacher quality (measured by degrees, certification, years of service), we’d guess that this uneven distribution of Board certified teachers mirrors the larger pattern of inequity between highly effective and less effective teachers, with less effective teachers migrating to or stagnating at the worst schools.

In a recent analysis of human capital in the Queen City, The New Teacher Project (TNTP) recognized the problem of inequitable distribution of talent and made several recommendations to combat it, including: making hiring and transfer processes less burdensome; giving principals more authority over hiring (e.g. the ability to reject less effective candidates); and increasing the concentration of highly effective teachers in low-performing schools through tools such as performance-based pay. CPS superintendent Mary Ronan has agreed that channeling effective teachers to the most high-need schools will be a priority in the upcoming union contract negotiations.

Regardless of how you measure teacher quality or effectiveness (through National Board certification or another measure), it is clear that CPS – and all Ohio districts – must find ways to encourage the most talented teachers to go where they are needed.

 - Jamie Davies  O’Leary

This week The New Teacher Project (TNTP) unveiled its Cincinnati-focused report on human capital reform. The report’s recommendations for Cincinnati Public Schools and the Cincinnati Federation of Teachers (CFT) are similar (predictably so) to client reports for other districts, like Indianapolis, Los Angeles, and Chicago. That’s because problems related to teacher quality are ubiquitous in American urban education.

Read the Cincinnati findings as well as the defensive reaction of the CFT, and you’ll swear you could be reading a narrative of any city’s human capital challenges: late hiring timelines prevent districts from snagging the best teacher candidates; evaluating teachers once every five years is meaningless; single step salary structures aren’t the best way to recruit and reward excellence. It’s chocked full of a lot of common sense. But common sense doesn’t always translate into political action and policy reform.

Where TNTP’s client cities part ways is in their willingness to truly make “teacher effectiveness” the helm of the human capital ship, and to measure this with student performance data. (There are other ways that districts/states can improve teacher quality but whether they place “effectiveness” at the core of their human capital philosophy says volumes.) 

In Ohio, the budget bill raised the bar for teacher tenure to seven years (the highest in the country among tenure-granting states) and made it easier to dismiss the worst teachers. These changes are positive, but ultimately don’t overhaul the way that teachers are evaluated. Without meaningful evaluations linked to student performance, Ohioans won’t know whether the needle on teacher quality is really moving.

At the TNTP release in Cincinnati, one audience member argued that Cincinnati’s teacher evaluation system isn’t all that bad and shouldn’t be scrapped. In response, Dan Weisberg, vice president of policy at TNTP, offered facts straight from the horse’s mouth. When CPS faculty were asked whether there are teachers in their schools who should be terminated for poor instructional performance but have not been, 34 percent of teachers and 57 percent of administrators surveyed said “yes.” How high do those numbers have to go before Cincinnati (and the rest of Ohio) realizes that rigorous teacher evaluations are one of the single most vital elements of improving student learning?

“Are there continuing contract teachers in your school who you think should be terminated for poor instructional performance, but have not been?”

Source:  Human Capital Reform in Cincinnati Public Schools: Strengthening Teacher Effectiveness and Support, The New Teacher Project, Dec. 2009

-Jamie Davies O’Leary

The holiday season has arrived – and here at Fordham Ohio we’re feeling pretty darn generous.  We’ve decided to bestow upon you this week not one, but TWO Ohio Education Gadflies!

Hot on the heels of Monday’s Special Edition, the regular Ohio Education Gadfly returns and you won’t want to miss it!

This edition features a Q&A with Mark North, superintendent of Lebanon City Schools whose district is facing challenges from the unfunded mandates in H.B. 1. Jamie provides timely coverage of a report from The New Teacher Project that could have profound implications for improving teacher effectiveness in Cincinnati Public Schools. And be sure to check out a recap of Checker’s recent keynote address at the Ohio Alliance for Public Charter Schools Annual Conference. (You can find the full text here and the Q&A session below.)

The Dayton Daily News asked today why the “big names” in education from the Dayton area weren’t on the state’s new “Ohio School Funding Advisory Council”. The names referenced included Fordham’s Terry Ryan.

Capital Matters overfloweth with timely coverage of the recent flood of education-related legislation. Among them are bills that address the Buckeye State’s bid in Race to the Top, and the proposed changes to the Ohio school rating system and its all-day kindergarten mandate.

Rounding out the issue are several excellent short reviews and Flypaper’s Finest -this is an issue you definitely don’t want to miss!

OAPCS Q&A with Checker Finn

Sec. Arne Duncan made the first (of three) speeches intended to recruit an “army of great teachers” when he spoke to UVA’s Curry School of Education last Friday. But his address wasn’t the typical rally cry for the teaching profession (although it did include feel-good phrases like “Our children need you” and “A great teacher can change the direction of an individual’s life”).

Duncan’s take on America’s teacher preparation programs was in tune with other parts of his agenda that have surprised (and angered) teachers unions – such as Race to the Top’s guidelines emphasizing charter schools and teacher evaluations linked to student test scores, and his speech to the NEA last summer that pointed out the tendency for teacher contracts to “put adults ahead of children” and the subsequent need for teacher merit pay. 

His Virginia speech called out teacher training programs for being “theory-heavy and curriculum-light” and for not preparing teachers “for what awaits them in the classroom.” Duncan outlined the need to expand human capital pipelines such as Teach For America and The New Teacher Project, in addition to overhauling teacher preparation programs (which certify 22 times as many teachers as alternative programs). Specifically, he cited the need for education programs to train teachers in the use of student achievement data, to better prepare them to work in high-need schools, as well as to track graduates in order to measure their success in the classroom.

Duncan’s unapologetic focus on critical reforms, despite angering constituent groups like teachers unions, is refreshing. Unfortunately for Ohio, however, while reform-minded Republicans push for much-needed reforms such as alternative teacher licensure that would make it easier for TFA veterans to work in Ohio and softening of charter school caps, the Ohio Democratic party remains wedded to teachers unions and refuses to poke its head outside of its traditional ideological camp. For example, Ohio Senator Jon Husted (R-Kettering) recently introduced legislation that would make the Buckeye State more competitive for Race to the Top dollars by including a stipulation that would make Teach For America teachers eligible for an Ohio teaching license. Currently, this legislation is going nowhere as no Democrats support it and the House is controlled by their party.

While our education secretary calls on the nation to improve teacher pathways and training programs, boldly blurring partisan lines and taking a stand for students instead of interest groups, count on Ohio Democrats (at least for now) to act in predictable ways that align with the interest of adults, mandating distracting reforms (e.g. reduced class sizes, “community liaisons,”) instead of seeking substantive changes centering on teacher quality.

The Cincinnati Enquirer reported on Friday that Cincinnati Public Schools will be the focus of a study by The New Teacher Project (TNTP). TNTP will analyze teachers’ contracts in hopes of proposing policy changes in a report scheduled to come out a few weeks before the district’s contract expires with the Cincinnati Federation of Teachers.

There are two reasons this is such exciting news. First, TNTP is well known for creating effective partnerships with urban districts and churning out reports that can improve district staffing practices immensely.  Cincinnati Public Schools could greatly benefit from this. For two of TNTP’s very impressive reports that offer recommendations on improving district staffing procedures, see Missed Opportunities and Unintended Consequences.

The second reason to be excited is simply that Ohio needs more partnerships with groups like TNTP, whose consultants can offer a great deal of insight on how  to improve  teacher hiring, firing, recruitment and retention procedures (much needed in a place like Cincinnati). TNTP also can circulate innovative ideas – all the more important in a state like Ohio, which isn’t keen on brands such as Teach For America, or robust alternative teacher/principal programs that spur entrepreneurialism in districts that need it.

Admittedly, there is no guarantee that Cincinnati Public Schools will take TNTP’s recommendations to heart, or that the district’s staffing practices will improve enough to have a tangible impact on student achievement. But it’s like getting excited when a new restaurant comes to town, or a sports team finds its home in your state or region. You have no idea whether the food will be any good or whether the team will have a winning season, but still, there is potential. In Ohio, where we are starved for innovative partnerships and alternative ways of doing things, that alone is exciting.

A new value-added study in Louisiana has found that teachers certified under non-traditional programs, The New Teacher Project’s training program in particular, are more likely to be effective. The New York Times editorial board thinks this is great news–and perhaps a model for other states.

A taste from TNTP’s press release:

The state-sponsored study, led by researcher Dr. George Noell of Louisiana State University, uses a “value-added” model to measure the effect that teachers from the state’s preparation programs have on student achievement.  The study examined seven programs, including both university-based certification pathways and alternate routes to teacher certification such as TNTP’s program.  Each was given a performance rating based on an “effect estimate” of the teachers they produce.

TNTP’s Louisiana Practitioner Teacher Program earned especially strong results in the preparation of effective math teachers, with a mathematics effect estimate of 3.1.  This effect estimate is greater than the average degree to which poor students typically fall further behind each year in achievement. “In the year that new TNTP teachers teach poor students, they, on average, help those students close the math academic gap with more economically advantaged students,” said Dr. Noell. This is especially noteworthy because virtually all LPTP teachers work in high-poverty schools, where students are normally more than twice as likely to have unqualified math teachers as more affluent students.

Check back for more of our thoughts on Monday.