Have you ever wondered why the California Teachers Association (CTA) has such an impact on politics in our state? It isn't because everyone loves teachers. It is because they outspend every other large campaign contributor by at least 100%. The California Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) released a report identifying the 15 groups that spent more than $1B on political influence in the last 10 years. As you might guess, CTA is #1 on that list. They've spend nearly double what their nearest competitor, the California State Council of Service Employees, which is California's SEIU affiliate has spent. Here is the list from the report.

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Today, as part of meeting new Federal requirements the California Department of Education (CDE) published a list of 187 "persistently lowest achieving schools" which will be required to implement one of four school intervention models:

• Turnaround Model: The local educational agency (LEA) undertakes a series of major school improvement actions, including but not limited to, replacing the principal and rehiring no more than 50 percent of the school's staff; adopting a new governance structure; and implementing an instructional program that is research-based and vertically aligned from one grade to the next, as well as aligned with California's adopted content standards.
• Restart Model: The LEA converts a school or closes and reopens a school under a charter school operator, a charter management organization (CMO), or an education management organization (EMO) that has been selected through a locally determined rigorous review process using state educational agency provided guidance. (A CMO is a non-profit organization that operates or manages charter schools by centralizing or sharing certain functions and resources among schools. An EMO is a for-profit or non-profit organization that provides "whole-school operation" services to a LEA.) A restart model school must enroll, within the grades it serves, any former student who wishes to attend the school.
• School Closure Model: The LEA closes a school and enrolls the students who attended that school in other schools in the LEA that are higher achieving. These other schools should be within reasonable proximity to the closed school and may include, but are not limited to, charter schools or new schools for which achievement data are not yet available.
• Transformation Model: The LEA implements a series of required school improvement strategies, including replacing the principal who led the school prior to implementation of the transformation model, and increasing instructional time.

One of the big news stories this week is Central Falls High School in Rhode Island. The school district is under pressure from their state department of education to make some changes at the low performing school. This Providence Journal story describes the details.

The state’s tiniest, poorest city has become the center of a national battle over dramatic school reform. On the one side, federal and state education officials say they must take painful and dramatic steps to transform the nation’s lowest-performing schools. On the other side, teachers unions say such efforts undermine hard-won protections in their contracts.

“This is hard work and these are tough decisions, but students only have one chance for an education,” Education Secretary Duncan said, “and when schools continue to struggle we have a collective obligation to take action.”

Duncan is requiring states, for the first time, to identify their lowest 5 percent of schools — those that have chronically poor performance and low graduation rates — and fix them using one of four methods: school closure; takeover by a charter or school-management organization; transformation which requires a longer school day, among other changes; and “turnaround” which requires the entire teaching staff be fired and no more than 50 percent rehired in the fall.

State Education Commissioner Deborah A. Gist moved swiftly on this new requirement, identifying on Jan. 11 six of the “persistently lowest-performing” schools: Central Falls High School, which has very low test scores and a graduation rate of 48 percent, and five schools in Providence. Gist also started the clock on the changes, telling the districts they had until March 17 to decide which of the models they wanted to use. Her actions make Rhode Island one of the first states to publicly release a list of affected schools and put into motion the new federal mandate.

Gallo and the teachers initially agreed they wanted the transformation model, which would protect the teachers’ jobs.

But talks broke down when the two sides could not agree on what transformation entailed.

Gallo wanted teachers to agree to a set of six conditions she said were crucial to improving the school. Teachers would have to spend more time with students in and out of the classroom and commit to training sessions after school with other teachers.

But Gallo said she could pay teachers for only some of the extra duties. Union leaders said they wanted teachers to be paid for more of the additional work and at a higher pay rate — $90 per hour rather than the $30 per hour offered by Gallo.

After negotiations broke down, Gallo said she no longer had confidence the high school could be transformed and instead recommended the turnaround model. Gist approved Gallo’s proposal Tuesday morning and gave the district 120 days to develop a detailed plan.

While I have another story about teacher quality, I'm not trying to pick on teachers today. Good education is about more than just teacher quality, but both of the stories I'm including today make the point that research shows that teacher quality is a major factor that shouldn't be ignored. In this Washington Post op ed, Melinda Gates writes about the importance of teacher quality and her foundation's efforts to improve it.

One reason I am so optimistic about these developments is because, after decades of diffuse reform efforts, they all zero in on the most important ingredient of a great education: effective teachers. The key to helping students learn is making sure that every child has an effective teacher every single year.

Teachers are at the center of our strategy at the Gates Foundation. Since my husband and I started investing in education 10 years ago, our foundation has partnered with more than 1,000 high schools. Our grantmaking wasn't always oriented around effective teaching, but gradually we noticed that the schools with the biggest gains were those doing revolutionary work inside the classroom.

Bill and I see evidence of this every time we visit a school. The 82 schools across the country that have implemented the Knowledge Is Power Program invariably get excellent results from the very same low-income students who tend to struggle at traditional high schools. Last year, we traveled to KIPP Houston High, where 90 percent of the students graduate, compared with 65 percent for the city as a whole, even though KIPP's students are poorer than their peers in Houston's public school system.

The key to this school's success is its principal, Ken Estrella, and the 44 dedicated and talented teachers on his staff. In one class, we observed three teachers leading small groups of students in integrated bio-engineering and world health exercises. By urging students to ask penetrating questions about the diseases of the developing world, the teachers were simultaneously helping them master the basics of biology. The lesson plan bore no relation to the passive lecture format that prevails in many schools.

Empirical research confirms what Bill and I have seen in classrooms nationwide. Data show that an effective teacher has more impact on student performance than any other school-based factor. If African American students could be guaranteed teachers in the top 25 percent of their profession throughout high school, the gap between their test scores and those of white students would disappear.

So why hasn't education policy focused more on raising teacher effectiveness? The country has tried a lot of (outrageously expensive) reforms that don't improve student outcomes -- such as reducing class size by one or two students and paying teachers to get master's degrees. Part of the problem is that it's so hard to measure teaching. Anyone who has ever been inspired by a teacher knows that pedagogy is both a science and an art. Finding a sensitive instrument to evaluate it has been a huge obstacle. Tests yield clear numerical grades, but they can't measure all the intangibles that make a teacher effective.

To help surmount this logjam, a team of researchers (with support from the Gates Foundation) is working with more than 3,000 teachers in seven school districts to develop measures of teacher effectiveness. The project uses seven methods, including videotaping classes, analyzing test scores, and surveying teachers, students and parents.

The Measures of Effective Teaching project will yield a wealth of information that educators desperately need. It will help school districts nationwide make informed decisions about rewarding effective teachers. And it will help all teachers get better at their craft. If we can understand what makes a great teacher great -- precisely what they do that helps their students learn -- then we can encourage average teachers to adopt those proven methods.

Stanford University Professor Eric Hanushek's recent speech at the University of Kentucky is sure to raise some eyebrows. Dr. Hanushek suggests that "Identifying and replacing 6 percent of a school system's least effective teachers can turn around student performance and have a greater and more positive impact than any other expenditure designed to stimulate economic growth."

Hanushek, spoke last Tuesday in a presentation entitled "Will U.S. Schools Drag Us Down?" at UK's W. T. Young Library as a guest of the Martin School for Public Policy and Administration. A leading authority in the analysis of the economics of educational achievement, Hanushek's research finds "an investment in education, designed to improve and increase students' skills, is the best and most effective strategy for stimulating economic recovery."

Speaking to a rapt audience of faculty and students, Hanushek lamented the years the United States has wasted on resource solutions to improve student outcomes that have not worked. Among the factors not found to impact student achievement were per-pupil expenditures, class size, pupil/teacher ratios, whether or not teachers have master's degrees, years of experience possessed by teachers and teacher certification. Hanushek concluded the United States is enduring the consequences of "losing focus and failing to direct sufficient attention to teacher quality and teacher effectiveness."

"Good teachers are ones who get large gains in student achievement for their classes; bad teachers are just the opposite," explained Hanushek, who said he uses a simple definition of teacher quality. Looking at data from a large, urban school district, he found that effective teachers at the top of the quality distribution got "an entire year's worth of additional learning out of their students, compared to those near the bottom."

Hanushek called for renewed and more aggressive methods of performance measures that would reward effective teachers for their "value-added" contributions to a child's education — what teachers individually contribute to learning in the classroom.

"We have to be able to track the progress of individual students, and we have to be able to relate this progress to the teachers who are responsible for it," Hanushek said. While there is substantial and significant evidence to relate teacher quality to student performance outcomes, according to Hanushek, "improving teacher quality meets with considerable resistance." But performance-based incentives that "hold teachers, as well as schools, accountable for the choices they make, is crucial if student achievement is to improve."