Education Secretary Arne Duncan today (7/27/10) released the list of finalists for the second round of the Race to the Top federal grant program.  Arizona is one of the 19 finalists.  The other finalist are California, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and South Carolina.  All finalists are invited to make a presentation to the review committee the week of August 9th.  The winners will be announced in September.
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Governor Jan Brewer released a statement praising those who worked on the Arizona application.  She cited Senator Huppenthal’s SB 1040 (Teacher and Principal Evaluations), Representative McComish’s HB 2298 (Preparation Providers; Teacher Certification), and Representative Crandall’s HB 2733 (Department of Education; Data Collection) as legislation important to the Arizona application.  Brewer said, “[t]hese bills provided for the adoption of new teacher and principal evaluations, alternative teacher and principal certification, as well as an assessment of and governance for our data system.”
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On March 4, 2010, Secretary Duncan announced the sixteen finalists for the first round of the program.  Arizona’s application came in 40th out of 41 applications.  Ultimately, two states were awarded the first round of program grants.  Tennessee was awarded almost $500 million and Delaware was awarded almost $100 million.  The U.S. Department of Education later released the scores and feedback for all applicants to review.  Arizona applied for the second round of the Race to the Top in June.

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To read more, see below:

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18 States and D.C. Named as Finalists for Race to the Top, US Department of Education, ED.gov, July 27, 2010

Statement by Governor Jan Brewer, July 27, 2010

Secretary of  Education, Arne Duncan’s Remarks at the National Press Club (announcing the finalists), July 27, 2010
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What to Expect: Arizona’s Race to the Top Application, Arizona Education Network, December 17, 2009
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Arizona Doesn’t Make “Race to the Top” Cut, Arizona Education Network, March 5, 2010
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Only Two States (TN & DE)  Win Race to the Top Grants; Arizona’s Scores Released, Arizona Education Network, March 30, 2010

Identification of successful teachers is one of the key components of many new federal and state programs to improve education.  The Obama administration’s Race for the Top standards require outcome-based assessments that measure the abililty of teachers to move students successfully through a year or more of benchmarks.  While merit pay for teachers that meet high accountability standards is proposed–financial incentives may not be able to create the success needed on a large scale.  While assessing the ability of teachers to meet high achievement goals is quantitatively possible, discerning the qualities these successful teachers possess is far more difficult–and may make replication of outstanding teaching difficult to achieve.

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The New York Times has published a fascinating in-depth article that looks at efforts to identify the qualities that make successful teachers. The article points out that in a study in Tennessee, “[t]eachers working in the same building, teaching the same grade, produced very different outcomes. And the gaps were huge.  Eric Hanushek, a Stanford economist, found that while the top 5 percent of teachers were able to impart a year and a half’s worth of learning to students in one school year, as judged by standardized tests, the weakest 5 percent advanced their students only half a year of material each year.”

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The article features two education researchers, Doug Lemov and Deborah Loewenberg Ball.  Lemov has conducted a study of teachers working in high poverty areas with high student performance.  He has identified forty-nine teaching techniques that contribute to excellent student outcomes.

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Ball has focused specifically on math creating a set of standards codified as Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching (M.K.T.) representing, “[t]he idea that just knowing math was not enough to teach it….”  Ball and Heather Hill tested the theory by creating , “a multiple-choice test for teachers. The test included questions about common math, like whether zero is odd or even (it’s even), as well as questions evaluating the part of M.K.T. that is special to teachers.  Hill then cross-referenced teachers’ results with their students’ test scores. The results were impressive: students whose teacher got an above-average M.K.T. score learned about three more weeks of material over the course of a year than those whose teacher had an average score, a boost equivalent to that of coming from a middle-class family rather than a working-class one.”

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The story concludes that, “[b]y figuring out what makes the great teachers great, and passing that on to the mass of teachers in the middle…’we could ensure that the average classroom tomorrow was seeing the types of gains that the top quarter of our classrooms see today.’”

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To read the full article go to:

Building a Better Teacher, New York Times, March 2, 2010

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In January 2010, AEN reported on the widely debated topic of what makes a better teacher by featuring an article from Atlantic monthly on Teach for America.  The article, What makes a better teacher?: Teach for America may have the answer, discussed efforts by the Teach for America organization to identify characteristics using data compiled by the organization.

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Tucson Unified School District is responding by offering the First Choice Schools program, which offers options including; OMA Gold schools (Opening Minds through the Arts), International Baccalaureate schools, artful learning schools, Montessori schools, and Reggio Emilia schools

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Sunnyside School District is using technology to encourage students to remain in the district.  They are utilizing $213,300  to keep eighth-graders from leaving by loaning laptops this summer to qualifying students and enrolling them in a college-prep program.

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Districts are even moving into the charter school arena.  Vail Unified already runs two charter school in their district; Vail High and Civano Community School. Mesa Public Schools recently announced that they received state approval to establish  charter schools in their district using a non-profit group created by the Mesa Unified School District.

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For additional information, see below:

Sunnyside, TUSD work to counter charters’ lure, Arizona Daily Star, Jan. 24, 2010

Searchable database of private, charter and magnet schools (Tucson Area), Arizona Daily Star, January 23, 2010

Mesa district nonprofit group gets OK to run charter schools, East Valley Tribune, January 25, 2010

Arizona Charter Schools Association

The recent issue of  The Atlantic looks into the hotly debated question of what makes a good teacher.  Proposals in the new Race to the Top standards will require teacher compensation tied to student performance.  Under this teacher accountability model, identifying teacher excellence will be even more important.  The article points out that; “[s]tates must try to identify great teachers, figure out how they got that way, and then create more of them.” 

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Reporter Amanda Ripley was given access to the extensive records of the organization “Teach for America” to try to identify these aswers.  Teach for America is a non-profit organization started 20 years ago and works to place outstanding graduates in low-income areas with  a minimum commitment of two years.  What make this organization unique is that, “the organization tracks test-score data, linked to each teacher, for 85 percent to 90 percent of those kids. Almost all of those students are poor and African American or Latino.”  In addition,  Teach for America keeps an unusual amount of data about its 7,300 teachers—a pool almost twice the size of the D.C. system’s teacher corps.”  What is really astounding about the organization is it’s success among minorities.  “In 2007, 24 percent of  Teach for America teachers moved their students one and a half or more years ahead,” according to the organization’s internal reports. In 2009, that number was up to 44 percent.

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Using this data, and Teach for America’s own studies, Ripley reported several factors that seem to indicate success for a potential teacher.  These include:

•  history of perseverence  and long term goals by the candidate
• achievment of big measurable goals in college
• GPA in the final two years of college
• majoring in the subject taught

Interestingly, the data shows that a master’s degree in education seems to have no impact on classroom effectiveness.

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To read the article in full, see the link below.

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“What Makes a Good Teacher?”  Amanda Ripley, The Atlantic, January/February 2010

Teach for America

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Looking at test scores, the new structure of the public school system seems to be succeeding.  “New Orleans’ school district’s performance score — a tally of test scores and other performance measures — jumped from 56.9 pre-Katrina to 66.4 last year, according to state Department of Education figures. Statewide, the average during that same period stayed roughly the same: 87.4 pre-Katrina and 87.2 last year.” (USA Today).

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The experiment with charter schools in the city is not without it’s critics.  Some have noted  that charter schools do not have the same percentage of special need students; “[t]he average special education population in traditional schools is 12 percent, but at charter schools, it’s less than 8 percent.” (PBS Newshour).  This has led to charges that charters discriminate among the students they accept.

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To read more about this unique situation.  See the articles below.

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Charter Schools Rise in New Orleans After Hurricane Katrina, U.S. News & World Report, Jan. 5, 2010

High marks for New Orleans’ charter schools, USA Today, Aug. 27, 2009

New Orleans Charter Schools Produce Mixed Results, PBS NewsHour, Originally Aired May 6, 2009
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Arizona Schools Replace Textbooks with Digital Media

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Empire High School and Cienega High school in Vail, AZ are at the forefront of Arizona schools replacing traditional textbooks with Digital versions.  With the prevalence of laptop computers and the advent of digital readers like the Kindle, the days of traditional textbooks may be numbered.  One major issue in this movement will be the availabilty of technology in the homes of poor students.  Another is the use and accuracy of “open source” material on the internet that is provided free of charge.  To read more about this trend see the article below.
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In Digital Future, Texbooks Are History.  New York Times, August 8, 2009.
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