College readiness is fundamentally different than high school competence, according to a report commissioned by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Yet we continue to measure college readiness by the same standards used in secondary education: GPAs and scores on national standardized tests.

Yes, content mastery is important. But we also must develop and measure students’ cognitive strategies such as analysis, reasoning, problem-solving and interpretation. In addition, students must be prepared “to navigate college as a social system and learning environment.”

Published last March, the report “Redefining College Readiness” (it was previously titled “Toward a More Comprehensive Conception of College Readiness”) is compelling reading for high school administrators, teachers, parents, and students. 

That’s because an ill-prepared college freshman faces a stacked deck in a college classroom. According to the report, “students who must enroll in remedial courses or who fail entry-level courses find it much more difficult to graduate from college.” Only 17 percent of college students who take remedial reading classes go on to earn bachelor’s degrees or higher.

And children from low-income families tend to be disproportionately affected by poor college prep. They depend on their high schools even more because they likely are the first generation in their families to attend college. Only 60 percent of these youth can expect to graduate from high school, only one in three will enroll in college, and only one in seven will earn a bachelor’s degree.

“No system exists or is being developed to integrate the information and, more importantly, shape high school preparation programs so that they do a better and more intentional job of developing student capabilities,” wrote author David T. Conley of the Educational Policy Improvement Center.

“…A more robust, inclusive definition of college readiness can help shape student behaviors and high school practices in ways that lead to more students entering college ready to succeed.”

For example, while a high school course and college course may share the same name, the expectations are drastically different.

The college instructor expects “students to make inferences, interpret results, analyze conflicting explanations of phenomena, support arguments with evidence, solve complex problems that have no obvious answer, reach conclusions, offer explanations, conduct research, engage in the give-and-take of ideas, and generally think deeply about what they are being taught.”

Is this level of learning occurring at most high schools?

Among other tasks, kids that are college ready can:

• Write a three- to five-page research paper that is structured around a cogent, coherent line of reasoning; incorporates references from several credible and appropriate citations; is relatively free from spelling, grammatical and usage errors; and is clear and easily understood by the reader.

• Interpret two conflicting explanations of the same event or phenomenon, taking into account each author’s perspective.

• Utilize key technological tools including appropriate computer software to complete academic tasks.

• Locate websites that contain info on colleges, the college admissions process, and financial aid.

Read the entire report to learn more about what kids should master and what schools can do to help them be college ready.

There’s a lot of conversation in reform circles about what teachers think.

Education Sector decided actually to ask them.  

Results moved beyond anecdotes. The think tank’s systematic survey of more than 1,000 teachers reveals a wide range of views and, according to the report, a real opportunity for advocates hoping to engage teachers in the conversation about reform.

The authors of “Waiting to be Won Over: Teachers Speak on the Profession, Unions, and Reform” (May 2008) surveyed teacher 1,010 K-12 public school teachers about their views on the teaching profession, teachers’ unions, and a host of reforms aimed at improving teacher quality.

Points of view varied as much as the respondents themselves.

“…It is hard to place teachers definitively in any one camp, even though advocates on all sides of various issues do just that,” the study’s authors wrote. As a whole, teachers today are what political analysts might describe as ‘in play’ and waiting to be won over by one side or the other.

“Despite frustrations with schools, school districts, their unions, and a number of aspects of the job in general, teachers are not sold on any one reform agenda. They want change but are a skeptical audience.”

For example, while most teachers deemed unions “absolutely essential” (54 percent), even larger numbers expressed willingness to reform the tenure system (79 percent) and provide financial incentives for teachers who work in tough neighborhoods with low-performing schools (80 percent).

Seventy-six percent — three out of four teachers surveyed — agreed that too many veteran teachers who are burned out stay because they do not want to walk away from benefits and service time accrued. Yet 74 percent said that “without collective bargaining, the working conditions and salaries of teachers would be much worse.”

Teachers “recognize the problems that undermine their profession, including job lock, weak evaluation and reward structures, and too much bureaucracy,” the report states. But “with reformers pushing hard for change and teachers’ unions holding tight to tradition, teachers are caught in the middle, unsure of how their profession should change but very aware that it needs to.”

The study’s authors cautioned that some change must occur as a precursor to efforts aimed at teacher quality.

School district management “must meet its core obligation to create a well-functioning workplace for teachers,” and “Unions must take on, in a meaningful way, some of the chronic problems that damage their public brand, frustrate teachers and have an adverse impact on students…”

Read the entire report here, and share your thoughts.

In a fascinating report, “How the World’s Best-Performing School Systems Come Out on Top” (September 2007), McKinsey and Company comes to a singular conclusion: quality teachers.

Then it goes a step further and tells poor-performing districts how to get them.

Using examples from Finland, Singapore and elsewhere, along with districts closer to home, particularly Boston, the report dissects practical strategies that transcend governmental policy, cultural issues and — perhaps most importantly – money. (Yes, compensation is one of the ways to lure better teachers, though the report provides strategies – such as frontloading compensation – that enable districts tight on cash to lure good hires and retain committed teachers.)

While high-performing systems “differ strikingly in construct and context,” the report states, they consistently do three things well: get the right people to become teachers; develop these people into effective instructors; and put in place systems and support to ensure every child is able to benefit from excellent instruction.

For those who discount a singular emphasis on teaching quality (vs., say, class size or curriculum), the report makes a strong case otherwise.

• Research 10 years ago in Tennessee showed that if two 8-year-old students were given different teachers – one high performing and the other a low performer – their performance diverged by more than 50 percentile points within three years.
• Another study in Dallas showed the performance gap between students assigned a high performing teacher for three years in a row and those assigned three ineffective teachers in a row was 49 points.
• “At the primary level,” the study states, “students that are placed with low-performing teachers for several years in a row suffer an education loss which is largely irreversible.” According to McKinsey’s research, children who score in the top 20 percent on tests of numeracy and literacy by age 7 already are twice as likely to complete a university degree as children in the bottom 20 percent.

So what can urban districts learn from Finland or Singapore? Plenty. In Singapore, for example, teaching students are recruited from the top 30 percent of their classes, therefore establishing respect for the profession. In Finland, where salaries are frontloaded, the difference between a teachers’ starting salary and the maximum pay is only 18 percent; teachers who are committed to the profession stay despite moderate salary increases.

However, perhaps the most inspiring examples came from Boston, a large urban district once caught in a downward spiral. The district, now seen as exemplary due to marked improvement, established a teaching residency to both heighten the prestige of the profession (one of the report’s key recommendations) and provide up-and-coming teachers with more classroom experience prior to starting their careers (another key McKinsey recommendation). Boston’s one-year Teacher Residency program places trainees in classrooms four days a week.

In Boston, teachers are not made permanent until they have been teaching for three years, allowing the district to eliminate poor performers early – before they have a chance to hold students back

And Boston and Chicago both provide literacy coaches to work with teachers one-on-one in classrooms to help them improve their instruction.

“The three pillars of reform were professional development, professional development, and professional development…,” a Boston policymaker is quoted as saying. Boston “aligned everything – resources, organization, people – with professional development…

“The only way to improve outcomes is to improve instruction.”

It’s a lesson from which all urban districts could benefit.

Check out the entire report at http://www.mckinsey.com/clientservice/socialsector/ourpractices/philanthropy.asp
 (Click on “How the World’s Best-Performing Schools Come out on Top” under the heading “Featured Information.”)

Many of us interested in different, innovative approaches to teacher compensation were encouraged by a report issued last month by the bipartisan Citizens’ Commission on Civil Rights.

The report was not critical of teachers unions. Rather, it sought to applaud unions in Denver, Minneapolis and elsewhere that adopted sweeping initiatives - including merit pay and reshaped seniority policies - that benefited students, especially those who are disadvantaged or have special needs.

While benefiting students, these same initiatives also benefited teachers by boosting pay and providing better opportunities for professional development and career advancement.

How did these districts achieve this win-win scenario? In two ways:

One was using merit pay rather than performance pay. The difference? Performance pay links pay solely to students’ achievement, while merit pay bases rewards on several factors. In Denver,  the new salary system – averaging $5,000 more per teacher annually than the traditional pay system - is based on teachers’ knowledge and skills, market incentives, professional evaluations, and student growth. In Minneapolis, where teachers can earn an additional $2,000 annually, merit pay is determined by the combination of regular staff evaluations, students’ achievement, and by earning professional growth credits.

The other thing these districts did was to forge partnerships between unions, residents and government. When the Denver Classroom Teachers Association balked at a pure pay-for-performance system, a committee made up of union members, representatives of the superintendent, and two citizens hammered out a new system. The resulting merit-based system was paid for with a $25 million tax increase approved by Denver residents in 2005. In Minneapolis, a joint effort by the public school system and the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers resulted in ProPay. It was funded by a state grant.

Yes, merit pay (specifically pay for performance) remains controversial; only 14 of the 50 largest school districts in the country allow it, according to the National Council on Teacher Quality. And the commission’s report notes that National Education Association policy “forbids providing assistance to any union affiliate pursing a pay for performance plan.” The American Federation of Teachers “does not favor pay for performance,” the report states, “but has informally established conditions under which it will accept such agreements if endorsed by local unions.”

Yet a growing body of statistics supports the benefits such programs hold for both students and teachers. In Denver alone, 586 more teachers applied to work in high-needs schools in 2006-07 than in the previous academic year. Applications for hard-to-staff positions increased 10 percent.

Eight months after the release of the landmark Tough Choices or Tough Times report by the National Center on Education and the Economy, it remains the foundation of the movement to overhaul our nation’s education system.

The problems it addresses are no less pressing with the passage of time. If anything, the problems grow worse.

That is why I chose to highlight Tough Choices in my first blog post for the Cleveland Foundation. Twice each month, I will highlight reports and research relevant to reshaping our schools locally and nationally.

It’s easy to discount reports as mere banter, a din rising from academics too far removed from classrooms. That is hardly the case. Such research goes beyond test scores to probe what students must know and be able to do in order to be successful in today’s world. Quality reports address the reasons kids aren’t performing, the ways teachers can improve, and the best practices administrators can adopt to offset shrinking budgets or voter or parent apathy. Think of it as market research, the kind used by large corporations to assess competitors in China or India.

Our nation’s educational system faces these same competitors – and more.

Over the past 30 years, according to Tough Choices or Tough Times, “a swiftly rising number of workers at every skill level are in direct competition with workers in every corner of the globe.

“It used to be that almost all jobs subject to automation were low-skill jobs,” the report states. “Now it is more accurate to say that the jobs that are most vulnerable are the jobs involving routine work.”

“Routine” doesn’t mean manufacturing jobs anymore. An engineer in India makes $7,500 a year vs. $45,000 for an American engineer. In the Internet age, what’s to prevent a U.S. company from hiring that engineer in India? Nothing – save for innovation and creativity possessed by the American. In other words, the very things our education system tends to downplay – creativity, innovation and other hard-to-quantify skills – will differentiate two individuals able to calculate math problems identically.

That’s where our schools come in.

“This is a world in which a very high level of preparation in reading, writing, speaking, mathematics, science, literature, history and the arts will be an indispensable foundation for everything that comes after,” the report states.

How can schools do this? By starting over…completely. As a nation, we must completely rethink what we teach, how we teach and who teaches it.

Read the executive summary of “Tough Choices or Tough Times” at http://www.skillscommission.org/executive.htm to see the authors’ roadmap for reworking America’s schools.