Remarks from Allan Odden, Co-Director of SMHC

Today, Jim Kelly and I released an urgent report from Strategic Management of Human Capital (SMHC), Taking Human Capital Seriously: Talented Teachers in Every Classroom, Talented Principals in Every School. The report calls for close cooperation between states and districts, determined commitment from all parts of the education policy community including teachers, teacher union/associations, and administrators, and strong political leadership. The report is based on several SMHC principles, including the following:

• Develop an explicit vision of teaching and learning as one key element of an effective improvement strategy.
• Principals bear the ultimate responsibility for implementing school-wide reforms that will lead to high academic achievement for all students.
• Strategic human capital systems continually improve the teacher and principal workforce by responding appropriately to evidence of effectiveness on the job, using the two metrics of measures of teaching practice and measures of student learning.

We are proud of the bold actions this report advocates for at the state and district levels, specifically:

• At the state level, require districts to use the results of performance-based teacher and principal evaluation systems to identify professional development needs, career leadership opportunities, and specific emphases in ongoing professional development.
• At the district level, systematically develop new teacher intensive induction and mentoring.
• At the district level, provide intensive, ongoing and high quality professional development. A critical element of any reform effort is an intensive, targeted and sustained professional development program that brings consistency to teaching and assessment.

This report lays out a clear blueprint for reform.  We urge state and local policymakers to implement these recommendations as soon as they are able.

Click here to download the report.

To view other resources from SMHC, visit the Resources section of the SMHC Web site at http://www.smhc-cpre.org/resources/.

To read Teachers are the Center of Education, visit http://www.pdkintl.org/publications/collegeboard.htm.

According to Daniel A. Domenech, a member of the SMHC Task force and executive director of the American Association of School Administrators, “Odden offers a sound program of ten steps school leaders can implement to significantly improve student academic achievement in their districts.” Through these steps, Odden defines the most important practices for creating strong professional communities of the future.  Notably, his chapter on the human capital side of improving performance explains that class size, location, and school demographics are challenges easily mitigated. Other chapters offer vivid illustrations about how to excel in the extremely competitive education space.  

Jack D. Dale, also a SMHC Task Force member and superintendent of Fairfax County Schools, VA declares, “Odden not only thinks big, he provides specifics examples from real school districts to support his ten-step program. His systemic analysis of school district improvement and specific examples create a road map for the nation.”

Linda Darling-Hammond, Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education at Stanford University, also praises the book, saying “…Allan Odden vividly illustrates many of the most important practices for creating strong professional communities. From the organization of time to the development of productive curriculum and instruction, school leaders will learn how to create a framework for school reform grounded in research and the wisdom of practice.”

10 Strategies for Doubling Student Performance can be ordered at http://www.amazon.com/ or directly from Corwin by telephone at 800-233-9936 or 805-499-9734, or Fax at 800-417-2466 or 805-499-5323 or online at http://www.corwinpress.com/booksProdDesc.nav?prodId=Book233486&.

• TEACHER PAY – Almost three out of four Americans favor merit pay for teachers. Advanced degrees, student academic achievement, and administrator evaluations are the three most favored criteria for awarding merit pay. Americans estimate that teacher salaries are lower than what they believe teachers should receive. Americans also believe that beginning teachers with a bachelor’s degree and teaching certification should earn more than they are currently paid by their community’s schools. 
• TENURE – Americans are split on teacher tenure, depending on how the question is asked. They disapprove of teachers having a “lifetime contract” but agree that teachers should have a formal legal review before being terminated.
• ECONOMIC STIMULUS – Economic stimulus money should be used to retain teachers slated to be laid off, followed by support to the lowest performing schools.
• TEACHER CERTIFICATION – Three out of four Americans believe we should have national standards for the certification of public school teachers.
• TECHNICAL TEACHERS – Americans overwhelmingly favor increasing the number of scholarships to college students who agree to teach science, math, and other technical subjects, while only three out of 10 Americans approve relaxing certification requirements to allow more teachers to teach these technical subjects.

SMHC supports new ways to pay teachers, including incentives for teachers of STEM subjects and new approaches to teacher tenure. How we compensate teachers can have a significant impact on teacher recruitment and retention in subjects and schools with teacher shortages. SMHC research shows that schools need a strategic reward systems that is aligned with the needs and goals of the education system.  In setting pay levels, states and districts should consider how people are paid in comparable jobs outside of education. Additionally, to make teaching more attractive to young teachers and principals, states and districts should consider rewarding individuals for expertise and providing a fast track towards instructional leadership.

“There’s been so much debate about what constitutes effective teaching and learning,” said United Federation of Teachers chief Michael Mulgrew. “We’re looking at this as an opportunity to get to the bottom of this.”

Chancellor Joel I. Klein and Mulgrew jointly issued a letter asking for 1,000 teachers from 100 different schools to volunteer to participate in the study. The study will use student test scores, student and teacher surveys, and video observations of teachers to assess teacher performance. Participating teachers will receive a $1,500 stipend.

Measuring teaching performance is a popular and contentious topic and SMHC is deep in the conversation, having recently unveiled a working paper on measuring teaching performance. Review of Teaching Performance Assessments for Use in Human Capital Management, by Anthony Milanowski, SMHC Senior Researcher, reviews the current state of the art in teaching assessment by examining seven assessment systems. Check out the resources section of the SMHC Web site to read other papers from the Consortium for Policy Research in Education on measuring teaching performance.

http://www.nycleadershipacademy.org/aspiringprincipals/app_overview

Graduates of the New York City Aspiring Principals Program (APP) have successfully increased English test scores at traditionally low-performing schools, says a study released August 24 by the Institute for Education and Social Policy at New York University. APP is part of the New York City Leadership Academy, which was formed in 2003 to recruit, prepare, and support the professional development of aspiring principals in the New York City Department of Education (NYCDOE). The Leadership Academy is particularly focused on improving leadership in historically high-poverty, low-performing schools. APP has 390 graduates who comprise approximately 15 percent of NYCDOE’s principals.
 
The report studied student outcomes at schools led by APP graduates and at comparison schools led by other new principals. Prior to the arrival of a new principal, the average elementary and middle school students at APP principals’ schools performed significantly below their citywide grade level in English language arts (ELA) and mathematics. In contrast, students at the comparison principals’ schools scored approximately at citywide grade-level average. According to the study, in “the initial years of their leadership, elementary and middle school APP principals had comparable or better growth trends than comparison principals” in ELA. Additionally, while comparison schools’ scores dropped behind citywide averages in their third and fourth years, APP schools remained stable.

1. A succinct summary of Race to the Top application and selection criteria;
2. An analysis of each of the four Race to the Top “assurances”: standards, data systems, great teachers and leaders, and school turnarounds;
3. Practical questions for districts and states to ask as they assess their progress and plans; and
4. Preliminary analysis of each state’s current competitiveness for funding, given its existing policy framework.

The recommended checklist for states and districts available in TNTP’s PowerPoint may be very useful in helping states and districts identify their current competitiveness for funding. It raises key questions about what elements in states’ current policy frameworks may benefit or inhibit them as they pursue Race to the Top reforms.

For additional guidance on Race to the Top, view SMHC’s “State and District Roadmaps to Federal ‘Race to the Top’ Proposals,” available here.

Montgomery CO schools Superintendent Jerry Weast is responsible for much of the district’s high academic achievement, Doyle writes. The greatest testament to Weast’s success is not his function as an irreplaceable leader, but rather his ability to inspire followers. In Leading for Equity: The Pursuit of Excellence in Montgomery County Schools, a recently published book by Doyle and Stacey M. Childress and David A. Thomas of the Harvard Business School, Doyle documents Weast’s strategies in an effort to develop “the architecture of success from which his successors and colleagues can (and must) learn.”

School leadership was a focus of the recent SMHC National Task Force meeting. Task Force members deliberated extensively how to produce effective principals, and looked in particular at Chicago Public Schools’ ongoing efforts to reform their approach to principal recruitment and placement.

According to Clift, Duncan has moved swiftly and effectively – and largely under the radar – to advance the agenda of tying data on student achievement back to individual schools and to teachers. Forty-six states have signed on to voluntarily work together to adopt common core standards and assessments of student achievement. The move towards common standards is critical to successfully reforming and restructuring school human resource practices. SMHC has emphasized the need for rigorous, clear standards that provide school districts with a single instructional vision, to which all human resources functions can be aligned.