Vision 2015 and Delaware’s Race to the Top conference recap

Today, the the University of Delaware, the Rodel Foundation and many other organizations teamed up to present the “Vision 2015 and Delaware’s Race to the Top” conference at Clayton Hall in Newark. In all, the conference was very informative and a positive event for improving education in our state.

Below is a recap of the event as well as some reactions to what was discussed.

Two themes throughout the panel discussions were how the state should recruit, retain and reward educators to improve performance; and how policies can be changed to allow more aggressive intervention when schools are failing our students.

One of the presenters, Sandi Jacobs, the VP for Policy at the National Council on Teacher Quality discussed how the trend in the U.S. is for the cost per student to increase, class sizes to decrease and student achievement to remain flat.

Based on this data, a possible question is whether spending more money on education is the answer. If governments have already been throwing more money at the problem and results haven’t improved, what will make this different?

A possible answer is that the Race to the Top funds aren’t typical of government spending where the money is spread across the board. Instead, these funds are a reward to qualifying districts who meet numerous criteria and are thus able to achieve a critical mass of funding to actually make a difference. This is certainly a reasonable response.

Jacobs also spoke about five key areas where Delaware can focus to better prepare teachers.

1)      Require teachers to pass a basic skills test prior to entering prep programs.

2)      Implement requirements for elementary teacher candidates and require a passing score for each subject (as opposed to an overall passing score) on licensure exams.

3)      Clarify requirements to ensure middle school teachers have adequate subject matter preparation.

4)      Require content prep for special education teachers. (It was noted that Delaware does well in this category).

5)      Improve teacher prep program accountability.

Jacobs’ presentation also covered linking tenure decisions to teacher effectiveness and making student learning the main factor of teacher evaluation. Further, she recommended that districts not base compensation solely on experience and degrees. For the most past, the panel agreed with this recommendation, though the complexity of such a practice was highlighted during the discussion.

Similarly, there was general agreement that incentives to succeed need to be changed. There was an interesting exchange on what motivates teachers – intrinsic rewards inherent in the job of teaching vs. extrinsic awards such as performance bonuses and higher salaries. Dr. Jeff Raffel of the University of Delaware noted that he doesn’t think the answer is one or the other, but is instead much more complex. More on this in a later post.

Diane Donohue, President of the DSEA was next to speak and seemed to bemoan the scheduling of the conference during the school day when a key stakeholder, teachers, couldn’t attend because they were hard at work in Delaware’s schools. For her part, Donohue soundly represented her role on the panel as President of the DSEA. She was protective of teachers and defensive of putting too much onus on them when they need more resources to improve results.

Donohue noted that parent accountability is as important a factor as teacher quality and accountability and resisted calls to make student performance more prominent in teacher evaluations. Indeed, she stated that the current system is a perfect measure of teacher effectiveness. She mentioned that data from one test should not be used to evaluate a teacher, make tenure decisions or dismissal decisions. It was clear that nobody on the panel was suggesting that the results from one test be used to judge teachers, but that test results over time and progress/improvement measures should be used.

Donohue also made the point that in her travels, she has seen schools that don’t have toilet paper, supplies, etc… and that before we can discuss innovative ideas, the lack of basic materials needs to be addressed.

One suggestion for Ms. Donohue on this point – maybe the DSEA should use more (if they are using any funds now) of their PAC money to provide these things rather than spending thousands of dollars on political campaigns. It would seem that such an action would be a great gesture towards showing the public that the DSEA cares more about educating children than elections and political campaigns.

There was much more to the conference, including the perspectives of Jack Perry of Prestige Academy, Daniel Weisberg, VP ofor Policy and General Counsel fo the New Teacher Project, more from Dr. Raffel, Andrew Cowling, Principal at The Harvard School of Excellence in Chicago, Bill Guenther of MassInsight Education and Research Institute, Mervin Daugherty, Superintendent of the Red Clay School District, Cristy Greaves, Principal at North Laurel Elementary, Howard Weinberg, Executive Director of the DSEA and the keynote address by US Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan.

More recap of the conference to come later…