CHAPTER 12: Educational Reform and You

1. CHAPTER 12: Educational Reform and You Introduction to Teaching: Becoming a Professional 5th Edition Don P. Kauchak and Paul D. Eggen

2. Educational Reform • Educational Reform: • Changes in teachers, students, classrooms, and schools all designed to increase the amount students learn • Examples of reform include: • The way you will be screened, such as requiring that you pass a licensure exam, before you enter the profession • The way you’ll be evaluated when you teach, such as including your students’ performance on standardized tests as part of your evaluation • Requiring students to meet prescribed performance standards before they are promoted from one grade to another, or graduate from high school • Providing parents with choices about where they send their children to school • The creation of standards, holding students accountable for meeting the standards, and making teachers responsible for students meeting the standards is at the heart of the reform movement.

3. Influences on Student Learning • Which of the following factors contributes the most to children’s learning and development? • Curriculum and materials available to them—the content students study and how clear and understandable their textbooks are • Facilities and extracurricular activities—access to a good library, the Internet, and athletics, clubs, and after-school music and drama • Class size—the number of students in a class • Leadership—such as the school principal and district superintendent • You—their teacher • No organization, system, institution, or enterprise is any better than the people in it, and the same applies to schools. • The quality of a school is determined by the quality of its teachers. • You, you will be the most important factor influencing your students’ learning!

4. The Importance of Teachers • . . . In recent years researchers have discovered something that may seem obvious, but for many reasons was overlooked or denied. What really makes a difference, what matters more than the class size or the textbook, the teaching method or the technology, or even the curriculum, is the quality of the teacher (Thomas & Wingert, 2010, p. 25). • Elementary- and middle-school teachers who help raise their students’ standardized-test scores seem to have a wide-ranging, lasting positive effect on those students’ lives beyond academics, including lower teenage-pregnancy rates and greater college matriculation and adult earnings, according to a new study that tracked 2.5 million students over 20 years (Lowery, 2012, para. 1). • Americans singled out improving the quality of teachers as the most important action education can take to improve learning (Bushaw & Lopez, 2010, p. 15).

5. Teacher Evaluation • Value-added models of teacher evaluation: • The process of assessing the amount students learn—as measured by their performance on standardized tests—while in a particular teacher’s classroom and using that information as part of a teacher’s evaluation • This means that your students’ performance on standardized tests, such as state-level high-stakes tests, or end-of-course exams, could influence your evaluation, and, in some cases, your salary.

6. Merit Pay and Arguments Supporting Merit Pay • Merit pay • A supplement to a teacher’s base salary used to reward exemplary performance • Arguments supporting merit pay: • Rewarding exemplary teaching performance makes sense, and money provides incentives for teacher excellence. • Effective merit pay systems encourage brighter and more competent people to consider teaching as a career and encourage the best and brightest teachers to remain in the profession. • Evidence from student achievement data exists to support the process.

7. Arguments Critical of Merit Pay • A close look at merit pay systems indicates that they’re ineffective. [For instance, a merit system in the New York City schools was permanently discontinued because research indicated that it failed to produce gains in student achievement.] • Merit pay is divisive, damages morale, and makes teachers less likely to cooperate with each other • The assumption that teachers will work harder for more pay doesn’t make sense. • To believe that teachers will try harder if offered a financial incentive is to assume that they aren’t trying hard now, that they know what to do, but simply aren’t doing it, and that they are motivated more by money than by their students’ needs. These are unlikely and unsupported conclusions, which teachers find insulting rather than motivating. (Gratz, 2009, p. 40) • Do you, or do you not support merit pay? • What is the rationale for your opinion?

8. Teacher Tenure • Teacher tenure: • Status granted to teachers after a probationary period (typically three years), indicating that employment is essentially permanent • Some states have eliminated, or are in the process of eliminating, teacher tenure. • Do you or do you not support these moves? • What is your rational for your opinion?

9. Reforming the Curriculum • What do the following three descriptions have in common? • 1. 6.A.1a Identify whole numbers and compare them using the symbols <, >, or = and the words “less than”, “greater than”, or “equal to”, applying counting, grouping and place value concepts. • 2. 12.7.91 Understanding that objects in the solar system are for the most part in regular and predictable motion.  Know that those motions explain such phenomena as the day, the year, the phases of the moon, and eclipses.  • 3. Students analyze the effects of the Industrial Revolution in England, France, Germany, Japan, and the United States. • 1. Analyze why England was the first country to industrialize. • Each is a standard, a statement describing what students should know or be able to do after a prescribed period of study. • The first is an elementary math standard, the second a standard in middle school science, and the third a standard in high school social studies.

10. Interpreting and Teaching Standards • Look again at the following standard and imagine that you are a science teacher. Describe two decisions that you will be required to make as you plan to help your students reach the standard. • 12.7.91 Understanding that objects in the solar system are for the most part in regular and predictable motion.  Know that those motions explain such phenomena as the day, the year, the phases of the moon, and eclipses.  • First, you will need to decide what [exactly] the standard means. For instance what does “know that these motions explain such phenomena as the day, the year . . .” mean? • This decision is yours—alone—to make. • Second, you will need to decide how you will teach the topic(s) so that your students will reach the standard. • As an example, you will likely teach your students that a year represents one full revolution of the Earth around the Sun, and you will illustrate it with models of the Earth and Sun. At the same time you will use the tilt of the Earth on its axis to help your students understand the four seasons.

11. Accountability and High-Stakes Testing • Accountability • The process of requiring students to demonstrate that they’ve met standards and making teachers responsible for ensuring that they do. • High-stakes tests • Standardized assessments that states and districts use to determine whether students can advance from one grade to another, graduate from high school, or have access to specific fields of study, such as advanced math. • If, for example, graduating from high school depends on students’ performance on a standardized test, the stakes are “high,” which is why the assessments are called “high-stakes tests.” • All states have created standards, and all states hold students and teachers accountable for meeting the standards. • They will be a part of your life when you begin teaching.

12. Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSSI) • The CCSSI is a reform effort, launched in 2009, that is designed to establish a single set of clear educational standards for all states in English-language arts and mathematics • What would be the logical reason for creating the common core state standards? • Different state’s standards vary widely in quality and rigor, and the inconsistency among states has been a matter of concern for educational leaders. • The common core state standards are very similar in format to existing state standards, so applying them in your classroom should be no more difficult than applying your state standards.

13. Controversies with Standards and High-Stakes Testing • Arguments Supporting High-Stakes Testing • Educational systems that require content standards and use tests that thoroughly measure the extent to which the standards are met greatly improve the achievement for all students, including those from disadvantaged backgrounds. • High-stakes tests are the fairest and most effective means of promoting success for all students. • Arguments Critical of High-Stakes Testing • Because high-stakes tests focus on math, reading, and science, teachers spend the majority of their time on these subjects and de-emphasize other content areas, such as social studies, art, and music. This narrows the curriculum, deprives students of a well-rounded education and stifles teacher professionalism and creativity. • Tests are not adequate for making crucial decisions about students’ lives, and cut-off scores are often arbitrary. For example, when the state of Virginia lowered the cutoff score for a test by 1 point, nearly 6,000 failing scores became passing scores. • The pressure to score well on a single test is so intense that it leads to unprofessional practices, such as cheating on tests and manipulating test data.

14. Race to the Top • Race to the Top is an Obama administration school reform effort announced in 2009 that has the following goals: • Improve teacher and principal effectiveness through performance-based assessments (student test scores) • Encourage the adoption of Common Core Standards and develop corresponding assessment systems • Target low-performing schools and either improve them, or convert to charters or privately managed schools • Improve existing data management systems to provide better information to teachers and decision-makers. • States compete for federal funds to support their reforms initiatives.

15. School-Level Reforms • Charter Schools: • Alternative schools that are publicly funded (i.e., public schools) but independently operated. • KIPP Schools (Knowledge Is Power Program) • A national network of free, open-enrollment charter schools that has the goal of preparing students in underserved communities for success in college and in life. • Vouchers • Checks or written documents that parents can use to purchase educational services at schools other than the ones their children are assigned to attend based on their geographical location. • Homeschooling • The process of parents educating their children at home. • Each—charter schools, vouchers, and home schooling—are forms of school choice.

16. Discussion Questions 1-5 • 1. What are the advantages and disadvantages of teacher tenure? What arguments might there be for a longer period of probation before granting a teacher tenure? A shorter period? Should teachers be reviewed periodically after tenure is granted? • 2. Has the “standards movement” had a positive or a negative effect on students’ learning in this country? • 3. Is merit pay for teachers a good idea? Would you like to work in a school that has a merit pay system? What can you do right now to ensure your success in such a system? • 4. What could you do in your first job to ensure success? • 5. Are value-added models of teacher evaluation a good idea? How would they affect you as a teacher? What would you have to do or change to make sure you scored well on these systems?

17. Discussion Questions 6-9 • 6. Will you join a professional organization when you teach? What are the advantages and disadvantages to joining a professional organization? • 7. Will reforms that emphasize choice, such as the use of school vouchers and enrollment in magnet schools, likely increase or decrease in the future? Why do you think so? • 8. Will school choice be a positive or negative development in education? Why? • 9. Should vouchers be made available to private religious schools? Why or why not?