If you want great schools, you have to have great teachers. Lots of other things are important. Strong school culture, appropriate instructional materials, good curriculum, robust relationships with parents, all necessary. But it is the person, the actual human being, that puts all of that into play that is most important.

Mimicking the Tennessee Teacher Evaluation Model

Missouri could better support teachers by providing meaningful guidance and feedback. One promising model comes from Tennessee.

Launched in 2012, the Tennessee Educator Acceleration Model (TEAM) was designed to help educators improve. Teachers frequently express a desire to improve, but often lack resources or guidance on how to get better.

By using announced and unannounced in-class observations, academic growth data, and student performance data, TEAM calculates a teacher score (1–5 scale) that provides information to teachers and school leaders about teacher performance. The goal is not to punish teachers, but to coach them and help them improve. Observers identify one strength and one area for improvement in each lesson, keeping the process constructive, focused, and encouraging. The Tennessee Education Research Alliance at Vanderbilt University found that teachers in schools with stronger implementation of TEAM improved faster than those in schools with weaker implementation.

The evaluation promotes ongoing dialogue about what happens in the classroom and how it affects student performance, and provides a basis for professional advancement—e.g., high-performing teachers can be identified through TEAM for mentoring roles.

Initially, there was strong pushback against teacher evaluation in Tennessee, which is not surprising. At its launch, only 28 percent of teachers believed TEAM would improve student outcomes, and only 38 percent believed it would improve teacher performance. But those numbers changed quickly once teachers actually experienced TEAM, rising to 71 and 76 percent, respectively, by 2019.

Missouri should consider emulating Tennessee’s commitment to rigorous and constructive teacher evaluation. If we’re serious about improving school quality and student outcomes, we need to be serious about improving teacher quality.

The post Improving Teacher Quality to Improve Reading Quality appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The Tennessee Educator Acceleration Model (TEAM) was implemented in 2012 with the goal of providing educators with a model that helps them continuously improve their practice. By using announced and unannounced in-class observations, academic growth data, and student performance data together, TEAM calculates a teacher score (1–5 scale) and allows teachers and school leaders to have an ongoing dialogue about how what happens in the classroom impacts student performance.

In 2011, student performance in Tennessee was lagging behind Missouri. In 4th grade mathematics and reading, Missouri was 7 points and 5 points ahead of Tennessee on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). In 8th grade math and reading, Missouri was 8 points ahead. In 2022, Tennessee is now 4 points and 1 point ahead of Missouri in 4th grade math and reading and tied in the same subjects for 8th grade. While TEAM is certainly not the sole reason for this rapid growth (as a plethora of free-market policies have been implemented), Tennessee education researchers regard this system as beneficial in refining the Tennessee teacher pool.

Show-Me Institute researchers have repeatedly demonstrated how teacher quality is one of the most important factors for improving student performance, and TEAM allows for more informed hiring decisions and growth in teacher’s skillsets. By assisting teachers in developing their full potential, and showcasing high-scoring teachers, TEAM allowed for teacher quality to improve by coaching less-effective teachers and retaining high-quality ones. This is not simply theoretical; lower-performing teachers were more likely to exit Tennessee public schools, and stronger teachers were more likely to be retained.

However, TEAM is not simply a hiring and firing tool for schools, but more importantly, it’s an improvement system that helps coach teachers to enhance their skills and strategies. Through individual observations and one-on-one pre- and post-lesson conferences, an outside observer identifies key strengths from their lessons and asks teachers to self-analyze. Asking questions such as, “When developing lessons, how did you decide on the pacing so sufficient time is allocated to each subject?” allows teachers to reflect on their own strategies and brainstorm areas to improve. These evaluations work; teachers in schools with more robust TEAM evaluation systems (frequency of observation, number of evaluators) improved their students’ math scores faster than those with less robust systems.

Missouri teachers have expressed discomfort with increased accountability programs, but they need have no fear. Tennessee teachers certainly had reservations when TEAM was introduced with only 28 and 38 percent of Tennessee teachers believing that TEAM would improve student performance and teacher performance, respectively. Now those numbers have reached 71 and 76 percent.

It’s understandable that some teachers may have reservations about increased scrutiny on job performance—many may feel the same in their own jobs. In Tennessee, teachers are improving, the best teachers are staying, and teachers believe in the system. This evaluation system is one we should emulate, and we cannot let fear interfere with providing our children with the best education possible. Too much is at stake.

The post Missouri vs. Tennessee: An SEC Showdown appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Teacher compensation is an important policy discussion. Yet, too often the mere suggestion of change is met with hostility by teachers. As a former teacher myself, I understand that there is safety in salary schedules along with uncertainty about what they might be replaced with. Indeed, one retired teacher took to the newspaper’s pages to make this point. Although she didn’t argue specifically for salary schedules, it was clear that she was averse to change. But many people are examining how we pay teachers, and they often reach the same conclusion I reached—we need to change how we do business. But what should that change look like?

On July 27, a National Public Radio station in Michigan ran a story called, “Are we thinking about teacher pay all wrong?” The piece described Washington, D.C.’s merit-based pay system. As the piece notes, “There are two parts to the D.C. pay system: an annual bonus of up to $25,000 after one year of being rated ‘highly effective,’ and an increase in base salary of up to $27,000 for teachers who are rated ‘highly effective’ two or more years in a row.” Rigorous evaluation has shown that D.C.’s system, which is a combination of pay reform and a new teacher evaluation process, has improved the teacher workforce and led to an increase in student achievement.

There is of course still debate as to whether the D.C. model could be effectively implemented in other cities, let alone in rural parts of Missouri. Nevertheless, Missouri students and teachers would benefit from a critical examination of our teacher pay policies.

Unfortunately, too many teachers (like the one who wrote a response to me) and their union representatives seem unwilling to have a serious discussion on this important matter. One teacher in the NPR story suggested that we “need to offer starting teachers an apprentice pay for 5 years at $55,000. If they are effective after 5 years, bump them up to $75,000. If they are highly effective pay them $100,000.” Such a structure simply is not economically feasible. The response from David Hecker, of the American Federation of Teachers of Michigan, was equally unsatisfying. He first suggested that “starting pay should be comparable to other professions,” but went on to ask, “Should the senior teacher get more for experience, or the younger teacher who needs to make a decent living so they can be attracted to and stay in the field? That should never be the trade off.” His answer displays a fundamental lack of economic understanding. Of course there is a trade-off! There is always a trade-off.

We should not continue to pay teachers solely based on years of experience and extra degrees, especially when those things are not closely related to student outcomes. But in any case, if we are going to have a fruitful conversation, teachers need to come to the table with thoughtful suggestions. Maybe then we could create a system that truly fosters excellence and rewards teachers for the hard work they do.

The post Reconsidering Teacher Pay appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

This admonition is often forgotten in the world of education reform, where advocates wade hip-deep into the trenches of political warfare, researchers build staffs that require ever more philanthropic dollars, and writers make the TED talk circuit. Saying “I was wrong” can be seen as suicidal.

But it doesn’t even have to go that far. Policy ideas like charter schools, teacher evaluation, and high standards first exist in the abstract. When they are actually implemented, they look quite different from state to state or district to district. What one state calls “charter schooling” might look different from charter schooling in another state. So, if charter schools struggle in one state, it isn’t necessarily an indictment of the idea a whole. It might just be that the implementation didn’t match the specific environment where it was tried. In an ideal world, we’d learn from that, and do better.

But we don’t. When a new study comes out that says a policy has “failed,” we man the ramparts. Opponents (who were against the policy before any data was available) come out and tut-tut at advocates, telling them to “follow the data” or not to “cling to ideology.” Advocates circle the wagons. They spin the findings or pettifog the implications. They counter with personal stories or impugn the motives of critics. Rinse and repeat. (By the way, much of this is covered much more in depth than I can manage here in Rick Hess’s great new volume Letters to a Young Education Reformer).

Now I’m not naïve. Part of this is the way of the world. We live in a dynamic, diverse, pluralistic, democratic republic; the politics that define us, as the old saying goes, ain’t beanbag.  I’m hard pressed to advise one group or another to unilaterally disarm and allow people who aren’t dealing in good faith to seize the high ground. Still, if we want to be better, we’ve got to do better.

For our part, Jay Greene (head of the University of Arkansas’ Department of Education Reform) and I are co-hosting a conference in Kansas City on May 22 where top education researchers are going to talk about failure. We have recruited a rock-star set of presenters who will discuss papers that are slated for publication in the near future by Rowman and Littlefield as an edited volume. Local education figures will serve as discussants, preventing any conversation from being too theoretical.

Authors will tackle many of the major topics of education policy of the last quarter century: Test-based teacher evaluation, technology in classrooms, teacher Preparation, No Child Left Behind, and more.  But rather than trying to make some kind of global statement about whether or not something like evaluating teachers based on performance or having the federal government intervene in low-performing schools is a “success” or “failure,” authors will dig into specific examples, what went wrong, and most importantly, what we can learn from it.

Anyone who has spent more than a day in front a classroom knows that failure is an essential part of learning. You’ve got to let a student get a math problem wrong so they can learn how to avoid that mistake in the future. You wouldn’t tell her that she should never try and solve for a missing side of a triangle using the Pythagorean Theorem. You’d help her figure out how she applied it incorrectly, or if it was a right triangle in the first place. That’s how children get better. It’s how adults get better too.

We have to be humble. We are going to get stuff wrong. The more honest we can be about that, and the sooner we can admit we made a mistake, learn from it, and fail better, the better our overall system will be.

The post Who Wants to Talk About Failure? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

What does this mean?

·         Missouri does not base tenure decisions on demonstrated teacher effectiveness

·         Missouri does not ensure that districts use teacher evaluation results when selecting professional development activities.

·         Missouri does not pay better teachers more.

·         Missouri does not specify that ineffectiveness is grounds for dismissal for teachers or principals.

·         Missouri does not require that teacher effectiveness be taken into account when teachers are looking to renew their licenses.

·         Missouri does not make evidence of teacher effectiveness the basis for granting Missouri licenses for teachers with licenses from out of state.

·         Missouri does not place its student teachers in classrooms with teachers that have demonstrated effectiveness.

I’ll be the first to say that student test scores should not be the sole measure of a teacher’s effectiveness. An over-reliance on standardized tests has led to many unintended and unfortunate consequences.  But two course corrections working in tandem—rethinking what tests we give children and how we use the results, and rethinking how we help recruit, reward, and retain great teachers—have a great deal of potential for improving Missouri’s education system.

If we’re going to have policies like licensure and tenure, they should be based on teacher effectiveness, not simply how long someone has been in the classroom.  If districts are going to spend millions of dollars on professional development activities, the money should be in areas where teachers are struggling to improve student achievement.

Ultimately, a move towards a system with greater school choice would diminish the need for heavy-handed, centrally-driven teacher evaluation policies.  Individual school leaders would be responsible for putting together the best possible staff so families would want to send their children to that particular school. Parents, who have access to detailed information both about their child and how well he or she is doing, would be the ultimate arbiters of teacher quality. But until such a system is in place, we must work harder to identify great teachers, recruit them into our schools, and then do what is necessary to keep them here.

The post New NCTQ Report Highlights Holes in Missouri Teacher Policy appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

But you want to know the truth?

I could have been better.

The sad thing is, I didn’t have to be.

The structure of public education is such that anyone with a decent head on their shoulders can become a teacher and, with minimal effort, remain a teacher for rest of their career.

Compared to many other professions, becoming a teacher is relatively easy. In fact, many consider an education degree one of the easiest degrees to obtain. On average, students going into education as a college major have lower scores on college placement tests. In 2014, prospective educators scored an average of 20.4 nationally on the ACT, below the national average of 21.0. The people entrusted with educating our children scored more than three points lower, on average, than individuals going into engineering or English and foreign languages.

Despite having lower aptitude as measured by college admission tests, teachers receive incredibly high marks in their college courses. According to Corey Koedel, an economist at the University of Missouri, the average grade point average for undergraduate education courses is 3.8. What’s more, Koedel found that 20 percent of undergraduate classes in the college of education gave every student an “A.”

Students who graduate and get teaching jobs are rarely challenged to grow, because they rarely receive the types of evaluations that will truly motivate them and help them improve. In many districts, new teachers are only evaluated a handful of times. In most cases, these formal observations are announced in advance. Thus, teacher evaluations are based on snapshots of what should be a teacher’s best lessons. Little wonder, as a report by The New Teacher Project noted, that almost all teachers are given superb marks.

While the fear of losing his or her job may motivate a teacher to work hard, social norms and school staffing policies effectively counter this motivation. Teachers, unlike most workers, are typically paid according to a predetermined salary schedule. No matter how hard they work, a teacher cannot earn a raise. Truly motivated teachers who go above and beyond face considerable pressure to conform. Nobody likes a rate buster.

Over time, the fear of losing one’s job fades. A teacher who reaches tenure—after three years in most states— has what state statutes call an “indefinite contract” or a “permanent job.” Of course, those terms, “indefinite” and “permanent,” come with a small proviso that a teacher doesn’t do anything egregious to a student. Barring that, the job is basically secured.

These were the realities when I was a teacher, and they are the realities today. Had the structures of education been different; had I been motivated and challenged by administrators; had my performance been really evaluated; or had I had the opportunity for advancement, recognition, and raises, things may have gone differently. Maybe I would have improved from a good teacher to a great teacher. In fact, I might still be in the classroom. 

The post I Was a Good Teacher. I Could Have Been Better appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Interestingly, a growing body of research is finding that traits like grit might be more important to children’s success in life than traditional academic knowledge.

The Washington Post recently reported:

[Angela] Duckworth, a former middle school teacher [and University of Pennsylvania researcher], is known for helping to popularize the notion that a student’s success is correlated to that student’s level of self-control and “grittiness,” or ability to keep working toward goals.

Her research has shown that grittier students are more likely to graduate from high school, score higher on SAT and ACT exams and be more physically fit. Grittier students also are less likely to get divorced, and they typically experience fewer career changes.

Dr. Thomas Hoerr, head of New City School in Saint Louis, is the author of Fostering Grit: How Do I Prepare My Students for the Real World? Hoerr’s instructional suggestions echo Duckworth’s findings. “Teachers should embrace teaching the whole child, and should consciously seek to foster the intrapersonal and interpersonal qualities which will make a difference in life—such as grit,” Hoerr said in an email.

Given the fact that grit is important, and it appears that teachers can have an effect on the “grittiness” of students, there is a movement around the country to link measures of students’ grit to the evaluation of schools and teachers.

Even though they both feel that fostering grittiness is important, neither Hoerr nor Duckworth are pushing for tying teacher evaluations to student grittiness.

Why? The biggest issue is measurement. Student self-assessments are commonly used to measure social and emotional factors, requiring students to self-evaluate their level of hopefulness about their future and asking questions like, “Did you laugh or smile a lot yesterday?” Duckworth has noted that grittier students, those who tend to have more self-awareness, are more likely to rate themselves lower. The very thing that makes them gritty drives them to hold themselves to a higher standard. If teacher or school evaluations are based on this measure, they will be inaccurate.

While grit is clearly important, the measures for determining teachers’ impact on it are not ready for prime time. It took decades to be able to link simple math and reading scores, and we’re still working out the bugs on those. It will be some time before new measures are available.

The post From Standardized Tests to Standardized Character appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In my opinion, there are three things that must happen for our district schools to be able to effectively manage their teacher workforce and for them to have the incentive to do so.

First, we must remove state restrictions that make it incredibly difficult to remove a teacher after their fifth year in the classroom.

Second, the state must make it possible for school districts to develop value-added measurements of teacher effectiveness. After all, these are sophisticated analyses that must be conducted and not all districts have the resources necessary to compute these measures. While the state should provide guidelines and assistance, local districts must have the flexibility to make these teacher evaluation systems their own.

The first two points will be moot if school leaders lack the appropriate incentive to actually evaluate and remove ineffective teachers. This, however, does not mean that accountability should come from on high. The best way to ensure school leaders will put in place effective evaluation practices is through market pressure. Providing families the ability to choose where their child goes to school encourages school leaders to constantly look for ways to improve. If they do not, they risk losing students.

A good example of a bill that attempts to balance these issues is Senate Bill 408. In my estimation, it is much more in line with local control than the current state provisions regarding teacher tenure.

The post Part II: Squaring The Circle Of Tenure Reform And Local Control appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

It is no secret that I support reforming teacher tenure, using value-added student achievement to evaluate teachers, and removing ineffective teachers from the classroom. Therefore, you might expect me to completely support a bill that would do these things. Yet, I find it very difficult to support legislation that does these things at the expense of local control.

While it is true that some tenure reform proposals in the Missouri Legislature may not be completely pro-local control, we must remember that the status quo is not pro-local control, either.

Last week, the Missouri House of Representatives voted down a bill (102 to 55) that would have changed the way teachers are evaluated, tenured, and dismissed. In response to the vote, Missouri State Teachers Association lobbyist Mike Wood stated, “We were very excited to see that kind of support for local control of public education.” This sounded very much like comments from former Missouri Speaker of the House Jim Kreider. In a recent opinion piece, he wrote, “We want less government in local schools, not more needless government mandates.” You can read my reply to Kreider here.

The problem with both of these arguments is that doing nothing to reform teacher tenure is not a pro-local control position; it is a pro-tenure position or a pro-state restrictions position.

When it comes to tenure, a true pro-local control position would support:

• Removing provisions from state statutes that require districts to award permanent contracts after a teacher’s fifth year.
• Removing restrictions that prohibit schools from laying off low-performing veteran teachers before high-performing novice teachers during a reduction in force.

Local school districts are limited in many ways and the bill that was voted down did not infringe on local control any more than the current policies do; the bill simply infringed in a different manner.

In my next post, I will discuss how we square the circle. How do you get school districts to implement rigorous evaluation systems and remove low-performing teachers, while still giving school districts maximum local control?

The post Part I: Squaring The Circle Of Tenure Reform And Local Control appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The proposed bill essentially accomplishes five things:

1. Establishes school letter grades.
2. Requires teacher evaluations to be conducted annually based in part on increasing student achievement.
3. Removes the state requirement of Last In, First Out when a district is undergoing a reduction in force.
4. Requires school districts to depart from the single salary schedule and develop a performance pay system based on the evaluations.
5. Removes permanent teacher status for newly hired teachers.

What makes this bill stand apart from other bills that deal with letter grades and teacher policies is the flexibility it provides to schools to determine their own policies. The bill would not mandate exactly how a district must evaluate teachers, nor would it mandate how they must award pay increases. It simply provides guidance and a framework with which school districts are free to determine their own policies. Moreover, it does not change tenure or pay policies for current teachers, unless the teacher chooses to opt into the performance pay program.

I submitted written testimony to the Senate Education Committee and concluded:

Senate Bill 408 would remove some restrictive regulations that inhibit schools from making important staffing decisions and would replace them with good governance that provides school districts a lot of leeway to develop their own policies. For all of these reasons, I am in support of this bill.

And that is why I am awarding this bill the James Shuls Favorite Bill Award.

The post And The Award Goes To . . . appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Obviously, there are two ways to control Baumol’s disease. One is to slow the rate at which spending increases and the other is to increase output.

We are in a time of declining state budgets and Missouri already spends approximately 34 percent of general revenue on K-12 education. This may force us to curb or slow education spending, but the public has shown little interest in holding education spending constant or even decreasing spending.

The other option, increasing output, is easier to say than to actually do. And, as we have noted on Show-Me Daily, Missouri has seen very little in terms of gains in academic achievement.

Students and taxpayers cannot support this type of system indefinitely, but fixing Baumol’s disease is not as simple as saying “we will do better.”

If we want to cure this disease, by increasing achievement and putting education on firmer financial footing, we need to rethink schooling.

Harness the power of technology

We at the Show-Me Institute have written at length about the potential benefits of using technology more effectively.

Rethink how we staff and operate schools

The traditional education system is designed to treat teachers like widgets, because teachers are paid in lock-step fashion, they are almost entirely evaluated with high marks, and we retain low-performing teachers just as readily as high-performing ones.

Missouri schools need to do a better job of identifying and rewarding good teachers and removing the worst. Furthermore, educators must figure out how to expand the reach of great teachers so they can have an impact on more students, not just the 25 students in their class.

The post Curing Baumol’s Disease In Public Education appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

One of the challenges of our schools is attracting and retaining great teachers. Top-performing teachers generate learning gains almost double that of a teacher in the bottom 20 percent, equivalent to almost six months of learning (see study). Unfortunately, institutional rules and burdensome legislation make it difficult for schools to hire and retain great teachers or to remove low-performing ones. In fact, a recent study revealed schools retain teachers from the top and bottom at “strikingly similar rates.”

Part of the problem is schools treat teachers like they are interchangeable. In reality, teachers vary wildly in terms of performance and have markedly different opportunities based on their expertise.

Bold Solution 1:

Empower schools to attract and retain the best teachers and promote a system that equips schools to remediate or remove the worst.

Schools need to be able to hire the best person for the job, regardless of certification, and they should be equipped to pay each teacher what they are worth based on their performance and market options. To do this, schools need control over their compensation system, including the retirement package they offer to their employees. Additionally, schools must be able to identify and remediate or remove poorly performing teachers.  One way of doing this would be to actually evaluate teachers based on their performance and make tenure decisions based on their ability to impact student achievement (see here for an example).

Some teachers are great and some are not so great, some have a lot of other employment options and some do not. We need to be smart in how we staff schools and stop relying on an antiquated system that treats teachers as if they are all the same.

The post Stuck In The Middle: Empowering Schools appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The National Center for Education Statistics webpage has NAEP data for each state. It shows that Missouri students ranked about average in comparison to students from the other states and the District of Columbia:

Fourth-grade reading: 32nd

Eighth-grade reading: 25th

Fourth-grade math: 28th

Eighth-grade math: 33th

Missouri is a wonderful state, but sadly, not every student is above average.

Wood made these statements to argue that the state does not need to remove teacher tenure. He notes that the current process for removing teachers is “concise and inexpensive” if handled properly. Make no mistake, however, MSTA does support tenure reform; tenure reform that benefits its members:

Indeed, there are reforms that can be made to the tenure law in Missouri. Currently, Missouri has the longest probationary period for teachers. MSTA would support the lowering of the probationary period to three years. Along with this, MSTA would support making changes to the hearings during the termination proceedings . . . MSTA would propose that hearings be held before an independent hearing officer. This would ensure that both the teacher and the school district present fair and relevant information for an impartial, trained, and qualified official who would then render a decision.

Apparently, to MSTA, tenure reform means making it easier to get tenure and more laborious to fire teachers. That type of system may be great if every teacher were above average, but sadly, we do not live in Lake Wobegon.

To read more Show-Me Institute blog posts on teacher tenure, click here, here, or here.

The post Has MSTA’s Legislative Director Moved To Lake Wobegon? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

This means that when school administrators and board members consider layoffs and teacher termination, many of them may have fresh memories of serving as a teacher. Many may also have friends who continue to serve as teachers in the district. As a result, people who consider layoff and termination decisions in Missouri’s school districts may consider the impact on teachers more carefully than the long-term impact on students.

Though Missouri law technically allows for teachers to be terminated on the basis of “incompetency,” we have shown here that districts rarely fire teachers. For example, the Parkway School District, which employs more than 1,200 teachers, has terminated just five in the past 10 years. Though state law is part of the problem, school leadership certainly plays a role.

Education expert Rick Hess writes about school administrator’s lack of leadership triggering similar teacher tenure reform efforts in Massachusetts. He writes:

Given the freedom to craft sensible, quality-sensitive evaluations that thoughtfully give some weight to seniority, the state’s school boards and superintendents have . . . punted.

Hess’ observation is likely relevant to Missouri. In our collection of teacher tenure data, we have also requested some districts’ termination policies. Frequently, those policies follow state law, with little added.

So, even though Missouri law states that teachers “shall be retained on the basis of performance-based evaluations and seniority . . .” during layoffs, districts can, in practice, choose to favor teachers who have seniority.

This is why a legislative fix is needed. Missouri House Bill 1526 would require that a teacher’s individual performance be the “most heavily weighted factor” when layoffs are considered. School districts, which receive a tremendous amount of state funding, should not be allowed to make decisions that favor teachers at the expense of students.

The post Lack Of Leadership From Schools Requires State-Level Policy Changes appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

This may have a marginal positive impact, allowing school districts more time to weed out ineffective teachers before they gain tenure. But frankly, I am skeptical that this provision will do much. Many of the school districts we highlighted on this blog earlier this week that had terminated just one or no teachers since the year 2000 also reported low non-renewals of teachers who have not attained tenure status.

For example, the Belleview School District, which reported not terminating a single teacher since the year 2000, reported only three non-renewals. The DeSoto School District, which reported terminating one teacher, reports zero non-renewals since the year 2000. The Potosi School District, which employs about 170 teachers and has not terminated a single teacher since the year 2000, reports 10 non-renewals.

However, I do think a provision in the Teacher Multiyear Contract Act may give school districts the latitude needed to terminate poor-performing teachers when needed. Under existing law, if a school district needs to lay off teachers due to budgetary concerns, the district is required to lay off its newest teachers.

The Multiyear Contract Act would change that. The legislation states:

Seniority or years of service shall not be used as criteria for reduction in force; effective teacher performance shall be the deciding criterion.

This provision would allow districts facing financial distress to keep the best teachers — not those who have stayed on the longest. This would certainly help struggling school districts prioritize providing a good education to students, instead of being required to provide employment to those who have been there the longest.

The post Some Progress on Teacher Tenure Reform appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The Show-Me Institute is in the process of researching the impact of Missouri’s existing teacher tenure laws. We have made hundreds of information requests to school districts throughout the state to discover just how many teachers have been terminated in the past decade. Generally, we are seeing few — and in some cases no — teacher terminations. Clearly, some of these school districts continue to employ bad teachers.

I have listed teacher termination statics that we have received from school districts that fall within Engler’s Senate district. Three districts report that they have not terminated a single teacher since the year 2000.

Senator Kevin Engler’s Area:

Arcadia Valley R-III: Reports terminating one teacher since 2000.

Belleview School District: Reports that the district has not terminated any teachers since 2000.

DeSoto School District: Reports terminating one teacher since 2000.

East Carter County R-II: Reports terminating one teacher since 2000.

Potosi R-III: Reports that the district has not terminated any teachers since 2000.

Van Buren School District: The superintendent writes that “There were no teachers [since 2000] that were asked to leave, terminated, or were fired by the district.”

Legislators should remember that the purpose of public education is not to employ as many teachers as possible; it is to provide education to Missouri students. As we have pointed out on this blog, we must acknowledge the uncomfortable truth that not all teachers are above average. A consistent finding in academic studies is that teacher quality matters. In fact, a study by Eric Hanushek of Stanford University found that students can learn three times as much from a good teacher than they do from a bad one.

Restricting school districts’ ability to fire bad teachers ensures that some Missouri students are receiving a poor education. As shown in the school districts from the area Engler represents, some districts rarely terminate teachers. Is this practice the best for Missouri students?

The post Some School Districts Rarely Terminate Teachers appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

All the children in Lake Wobegon are above average. In the past 10 years, the Parkway School District in Saint Louis County, which employs more than 1,200 teachers, has terminated five teachers. Perhaps all the teachers at Parkway are above average. More likely, poor-performing teachers continue to teach Parkway students.

Teachers can make all the difference in a child’s education. This is precisely why we should reward our best teachers while encouraging teachers with a track record of failure to find another job. The only way to do this is to reform Missouri’s existing teacher tenure law.

The Missouri Legislature is considering a bill that would end teacher tenure and help districts and school boards implement performance-based evaluation systems.

If the bill passes, teachers could be fired for doing a bad job. For most of us, consistently doing bad work means losing our job. Not so for teachers. Current laws state that a tenured teacher can be fired only for egregious conduct, such as willful or persistent violations of the school laws, excessive or unreasonable absences, and felony convictions. Even then, a severely truant (or criminal) teacher receives generous procedural protections. Teacher tenure reform would allow schools to dismiss teachers for unsatisfactory performance.

The reform bill would eliminate “permanent” teachers and indefinite contracts. Most of us operate with at-will employment. Again, not so for teachers. Currently, a teacher who survives a five-year probationary period becomes “permanent personnel” with an indefinite contract. Even if a district reduces staff due to budgetary constraints, school boards must thin the ranks on a last-in-first-out basis. The most senior teachers stay on the job regardless of their teaching ability.

The proposed legislation gives school administrators more discretion to retain the best teachers. Schools could contract directly with teachers for up to four years, but the board would retain the power to terminate a multi-year contract if the teacher scores poorly on evaluations. The last-in-first-out policy would be eliminated and school boards would be required to base staffing decisions on teacher performance.

Teacher tenure reform would ensure that teachers get paid for what they do, not how long they have done it. School districts currently are prohibited from basing salaries on performance-related criteria. Instead, districts pay their teachers based on length of service and level of education. The proposed bill removes this prohibition and requires school boards to consider teacher evaluations when making decisions related to pay, retention, promotion, and dismissal.

Enacting a performance-based scheme would be a big change for Missouri school districts. But the bill addresses implementation as well as substance. It requires districts to create a performance evaluation system, and mandates that certain criteria be considered in teacher evaluations, while allowing school boards and administrators to tailor the system to fit their own needs.

Not surprisingly, teachers’ unions have criticized tenure reform. Missouri National Education Association President Chris Guinther told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that “we’ve got to be given the protection that we need to give those kids the quality education that they need.” Teachers do not need protection. They need accountability. A bad teacher can teach bad classes for years. Year after year, students cycle through this teacher’s classroom, only to receive an inadequate education. Wouldn’t these students have a better education if teachers were held accountable?

Teachers do not have a right to their jobs. The Missouri Constitution gives students the right to a public education, and they should have good teachers.

Audrey Spalding is a policy analyst and Ben Barnes is an intern at the Show-Me Institute, which promotes market solutions for Missouri public policy.

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Op-ed: Teacher Tenure: Why Should Educators Be Different? By Audrey Spalding and Ben Barnes

Blog Post: One Hundred Days of Bad Teaching (Or More)

The post Teacher Tenure: Time for a Change appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Adams said:

It takes 100 days to remove a teacher after you give a teacher a plan. In every other city or county in the state of Missouri, it takes 30 days. So if there’s a bad teacher in the classroom, I have to work with that teacher for 100 days with a detailed plan, called a PIP, a professional improvement plan, to remove that teacher . . . I’m not talking about the hearing process, I’m just talking about getting them out of the classroom. No other place has that in the state of Missouri but Saint Louis.

You might find Adam’s statement difficult to believe. But he is correct. According to state law, if a teacher is doing a poor job, that teacher cannot be dismissed quickly. Instead, in Saint Louis City, the teacher needs to be notified in writing at least one semester before the superintendent can even present the charges against the teacher.

Actually, after looking over the statute, I think that Adams is being kind. One school semester is 87 days (half of the 174 required school days), and the law requires a 30-day notice before any hearing can occur. Once you start counting weekends, holidays, and everything else, it looks like it takes a lot more than just 100 days to remove a bad teacher from the classroom.

The city school district is struggling to boost student academic performance. It is one of the small number of unaccredited school districts in the state. And, it is common knowledge that teachers can have a large positive (or negative) impact on their students’ education. That is exactly why laws that severely limit districts’ ability to remove bad teachers hurt students.

Just think: Thanks to state law, an ineffective teacher could continue teaching students for more than 100 days. That teacher might have a little more job security, but those students will continue to receive a mediocre education. It is time to focus on helping students, instead of teacher job security.

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There also was good news for some teachers in Dieckhaus’ 2011 legislation. The proposal called for the best teachers to be paid at least twice as much as the poorest-performing teachers. While this may seem like common sense (why not pay the best teachers more, as a reward for their effort?), it runs contrary to the current system of paying Missouri public school teachers.

The 2011 legislation did not pass. However, Dieckhaus is considering submitting tenure reform legislation again this year. The bill is not yet available, but I have listed two areas of reform that are needed to help improve student academic achievement in Missouri. Our priority should be educating  children, not rewarding those who happen to have been teaching for the longest period of time.

Let’s pay good teachers more: In Missouri, teachers are paid under what is known as a “teacher salary schedule.” Broadly, teachers who have more years of experience and higher levels of education are paid more (here is an example). At many school districts, these are the only components of teacher pay — teachers who teach difficult subjects, at-risk students, and teachers who have the best track record of helping students learn do not get a pay boost.

Teachers who do a poor job of teaching students can actually earn more than the good teachers if the poor teachers have a higher education level and/or more years of teaching experience.

Dieckhaus told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 2011 that “It’s time we move away from paying people based on how long they’ve been teaching and what piece of paper they have hanging on the wall.” I certainly agree.

Paired with the issue of teacher compensation is the question of how to deal with teachers who have a track record of failing to teach students. Right now, those teachers can stay at a district for years, if not indefinitely.

Let’s help school districts get rid of bad teachers: State law awards teachers “indefinite contracts” if they have taught at the same school district for at least five years. These “permanent teachers” can be terminated, but only through a lengthy process. If a school district terminates a teacher (after going through all of the notification requirements specified by state law), that teacher can appeal the termination, triggering a court case. If the teacher wins in court, the school district must pay that teacher all of the compensation he or she would have received had he or she stayed at the district during the period of appeal.

I suppose that if you are trying to discourage teacher termination, the above makes sense. But, as a state, our concern should not be to hire and keep on as many teachers as possible. We should instead be concerned with how to provide quality education to students. Allowing failing teachers to continue to teach students does nothing to help students, and may be hurting them.

It is an uncomfortable truth, but one we must acknowledge. As U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan put it, “We can no longer pretend that all teachers or all principals are from Lake Woebegone where everyone is above average.” Many academic studies have shown that teacher quality matters. Eric Hanushek, an education economist at Stanford University, has shown that good teachers can teach students three times as much as bad teachers — in a single year. Improving student academic achievement can be achieved in part by attracting more good teachers to the profession, and encouraging the bad teachers to leave the field.

I hope that the 2012 teacher tenure reform legislation can help enable school districts to have more autonomy when it comes to rewarding good teachers and terminating the worst teachers. When the full text of the bill becomes available, I will post my take on it here.

The post It Is Time To Reform Teacher Tenure In Missouri appeared first on Show-Me Institute.