Archive for the ‘Commentary’ Category

By Jamie Woodson

Earlier this month, the Tennessee Department of Education released our state’s 2011 results on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Tennessee students scored about the same as two years ago.

But by standing still, we dropped in the national rankings — from 45th to 46th in the nation in fourth-grade math, and 34th to 41st in eighth-grade reading. These results remind us that our work has just begun to ensure every child graduates from high school prepared for post-secondary education and the workforce.

Still, it has been encouraging to see the growing sense of urgency among Tennesseans to make meaningful improvements in public education for our state’s highest-need students. We know that to create a truly effective system it will require hard work, collaboration, sound policies, and most certainly the energy of strong leaders in our classrooms.

In 2009, SCORE issued its “Roadmap to Success.” Based on the consensus of state education, political, business and community leaders, it detailed more than 60 policy recommendations aimed at embracing high academic standards, cultivating strong school and district leaders, ensuring excellent teachers are in every classroom, and using data to enhance student learning.

One of the key recommendations in SCORE’s report was a charge to ensure that teacher training programs in our state are producing high-quality teacher candidates who meet the needs of local school districts. We proposed revising the “teacher training report card” to measure the success and effectiveness of teachers in the classroom after they have completed teacher training programs.

The 2011 Tennessee Higher Education Commission Teacher Training Program Report Card, also released this month, provides vital information on teachers who graduate from a range of training programs. Of the state’s 43 programs, three stand out: Teach For America Memphis, Teach For America Nashville and Lipscomb University.

The report says these programs “tend to produce teachers with higher student achievement gains than veteran teachers.” For example, 52 percent of Teach For America Nashville teachers ranked above the 80th percentile in effectiveness, and 64 percent of Teach For America Nashville algebra teachers ranked in the 80th percentile or higher.

While the Report Card is only one source of information regarding teacher preparation programs, the information should not be ignored. Research shows that effective teaching is the top school-based factor in improving student achievement. Learning what works and what doesn’t to successfully prepare teachers for the classroom can improve the quality of instruction for more of our students.

Ultimately, Tennessee must continue seeking robust approaches to bring in new talent, and support teachers and administrators to meet the educational challenges our state faces. Innovative traditional preparation programs, as well as alternative pathways to teaching and leadership, are both important pieces of this complex puzzle.

By Jamie Woodson

The recession has hit hard in rural Tennessee. While statewide unemployment hovers at 9.7 percent, in the past year a few of our rural counties have faced jobless rates near 20 percent. Additionally, rural poverty in Tennessee is well above the national median.

In today’s global economy, Bell Buckle is competing with Shanghai for the jobs of the future. The question is: What can rural communities do to improve their economic outlook and ensure job opportunities and success for their citizens?

It all boils down to public education. Strategies to improve K-12 schools and boost student achievement are the key to building thriving communities. And improvement can’t stop with high school. Seven of the 10 fastest-growing occupations in Tennessee require some form of postsecondary education.

Having an educated, skilled and productive workforce will make it more likely that a new company will invest in Tennessee or an existing business will choose to expand its presence in our state. Yet, the connection between education and rural economic health has not received the attention it deserves.

One-third of Tennessee’s K-12 students attend schools in rural communities. These schools face different challenges than those in Nashville, Memphis or Knoxville. Rural teacher salaries in Tennessee are among the lowest in the U.S. Teachers may teach many subjects across multiple grade levels, making it difficult to specialize in one area. Students in rural communities often lack access to resources and organizations to help them overcome the barriers associated with poverty.

To ensure rural communities have a skilled workforce, we must find innovative education strategies that speak to the unique needs of these communities. For example, rural schools need more flexibility to provide distance and online learning so that students always have access to high-quality, advanced coursework. Recruiting and retaining great teachers needs to be a priority in hard-to-staff rural school systems — including offering incentives to teach, providing high-quality professional development, and creating a pipeline of effective educators through partnerships with nearby colleges and universities.

Because the success of rural schools and their communities are inextricably linked, community support is vital. This means building and expanding current partnerships between rural schools and local businesses, forging stronger connections with higher education, mobilizing nonprofits to engage parents and families, and encouraging philanthropic investment. Above all, business and community leaders must keep sounding the alarm that a high school diploma and postsecondary training are critical to individual and community prosperity.

Finally, innovation in rural education means identifying best practices and replicating them — a task we hope will get under way at the Southeast Regional Rural Education Summit, hosted by SCORE and our partner organizations, today and tomorrow at Lipscomb University in Nashville. The summit will bring together rural educators, administrators and policymakers to influence state, regional, and national policies on rural education.

Education reform is a hot topic in Tennessee and across the U.S. In rural communities, improvement is especially important. Our state’s economic future and quality of life depends on it.

Jamie Woodson is the president and CEO of the State Collaborative on Reforming Education (SCORE).

By Bill Frist, M.D. and Michelle Rhee

In the past few years, Tennessee has transformed into a national leader in K-12 education reform. Last year, the Volunteer State demonstrated its commitment to improving outcomes for students and won the inaugural Race to the Top competition, resulting in $501 million in funding for innovative education efforts.

The state legislature passed the First to the Top Act, the largest piece of education reform legislation in Tennessee since 1992. This year, the important work of reform has continued, and recently passed legislation will help ensure that Tennessee is able to identify and reward effective teachers and replace ineffective ones by changing the way tenure is granted. We applaud Tennessee for these important achievements.

Though these accomplishments are significant, there is more to be done.

Research has consistently shown that teachers are the most important school-based factor in determining how much a student learns. An important way to ensure that there is an effective teacher at the front of every classroom is to tie teacher evaluations to important school personnel decisions.

Current teacher contracts feature “last in, first out” (LIFO) requirements mandating that if teacher layoffs are necessary, they be done by seniority instead of effectiveness. These requirements could do damage to children, teachers and schools. A recent national poll shows that 74 percent of Americans support dismantling LIFO, and with looming budget cuts, we have a critical responsibility to save our best teachers.

Indeed, Tennessee faces a $1 billion budget gap, and recent news reports have suggested that some school districts across the state may unfortunately lay off teachers to balance their local budgets.

If cuts and layoffs are inevitable, we must ensure that they have minimal impact on children. Unless LIFO is eliminated, not only will more teachers need to be let go to close the budget gap, but also our children risk losing some of their most highly effective teachers; this is unacceptable.

Education, jobs linked

Any change to Tennessee’s collective bargaining laws for teachers must include explicit language removing seniority as the basis for making personnel decisions. Legislation currently moving through the General Assembly and endorsed by Gov. Bill Haslam (HB 130, Amendment 1) contains this important language.

Tennessee must also work to create an optimal environment for students by allowing principals and teachers to decide teacher placements based on mutual agreement or consent. Students benefit when both principals and teachers are working in an environment of their choice rather than one in which arcane personal rules dictate who goes where. When instituted in other states, the mutual consent system has resulted in benefits for teachers and schools by offering better choices, increased flexibility and greater transparency throughout the staffing process.

To be clear, there is much work to be done. In Tennessee, only half of students score proficient or advanced in reading, and only a third score proficient or advanced in math. Recent economic investment in Tennessee has proven the vital connection between education and jobs, and Tennessee students will not be prepared to compete in the global economy without significant improvement.

Thankfully, Tennessee stands ready to take on these critical issues. Support exists across multiple sectors for making further improvements to our educational system. We are excited to build on the tremendous progress made to date, and to continue enacting reforms that put the students of Tennessee first.

Dr. Bill Frist is a former U.S. Senate majority leader and is currently chairman of the nonprofit Tennessee State Collaborative on Reforming Education (SCORE).

Michelle Rhee is the former chancellor of the Washington, D.C., Public Schools and founder and CEO of StudentsFirst.

By Bill Frist, M.D. and John Podesta

Though bipartisanship now feels like a footnote in a history book, both parties have an opportunity to work together again on a big issue: education.

The revised Elementary and Secondary Education Act, known as No Child Left Behind, passed in the Senate and House with overwhelming bipartisan support under George W. Bush. Now, Congress must come together again to reauthorize it.

No Child Left Behind made a good first pass at making school boards and districts responsible for all their students’ achievement. But its outdated approach needs to be revised. Strengthening the law in reauthorization could help ensure that every student has the opportunity to succeed through public education.

There are four compelling reasons to act here. First, the law’s current accountability framework is outdated. No Child Left Behind provided pressure and political cover for local school boards and district officials to spur improvement. But the way the law measures results is flawed.

School districts are now required to have all students proficient in reading and math by 2014. Each year, however, the current accountability framework penalizes more and more schools that may not have met the standards but actually made real strides in improving academic performance.

Second, our schools need an overarching principle that reflects the challenges we face in the 21st century. In particular, economic competitiveness requires that all students graduate from high school ready for college or a career.

A revamped law, focused on college and career readiness, would reward states for voluntarily developing clearer, higher academic standards consistent with this goal. It should encourage schools to share best practices and implement better assessments to gauge students’ progress. The law must do more than label failing schools based on proficiency rates.

Third, a reauthorized No Child Left Behind law should integrate competitive grant programs, especially ones spurring innovation, which Congress has funded but not authorized. Many states, including Race to the Top winner Tennessee, used data collected under No Child Left Behind to build comprehensive plans to transform K-12 education.

Competitive grants reward excellence and innovation with a less prescriptive federal role. The new Investing in Innovation program, for example, enhanced the country’s educational research and development capacity. The Teacher Incentive Fund program overhauled the way we pay teachers and principals in participating states, districts and charter schools.

Finally, it’s urgent that Congress act on the most important finding of No Child Left Behind: The caliber of teachers and principals is the most important lever for improving academic achievement.

Action starts with recruitment. We know that countries that draw teaching talent from the top third of their college graduates outperform the United States in student achievement.

Encouraging districts to use meaningful performance evaluation systems for both teachers and principals is also an important step toward putting the best possible teachers in the classroom — particularly for the kids who need the most help. Another is to require teacher preparation programs to track and publish information about the characteristics of candidates entering their programs and these candidates’ success in promoting student learning gains once they begin teaching.

Reauthorizing No Child Left Behind provides an opportunity for Democrats and Republicans to work together to develop important solutions on a key policy issue. Including these initiatives will go a long way toward making sure our children — especially children living in poverty — receive the comprehensive, globally competitive education they deserve.

Bill Frist, a former Republican Senate majority leader, is chairman of the nonprofit State Collaborative on Reforming Education.

John Podesta is president and chief executive officer of the Center for American Progress and former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton.

This Op-Ed originally appeared in the February 9, 2011 Politico.

By David Mansouri

As a former Williamson County public school student, I would like to respond to the recent column by Sykes Cargile, “Value added calculation baffling, destructive.’’ (Jan. 14)

In the column, Mr. Cargile explained how Woodland Middle School, where he teaches, received very high achievement scores in eighth-grade science, but low value-added scores, leading him to conclude that value-added measurements are “absurd.’’

It’s important for Tennesseans to understand the Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System (TVAAS). TVAAS follows the progress of every Tennessee student from third grade through high school and provides a precise estimate of how much a student learns in a given year. In the third- through eighth grades and at Woodland Middle School, value-added scores are calculated by comparing how much a student learns in a given year to a “state-growth standard,’’ which outlines how much each student is expected to learn that year.

The question of why growth is measured in addition to achievement is a good one. A student’s achievement scores are strongly correlated with a student’s family background, socioeconomic status and a host of other factors. Measuring growth allows comparison between different schools and districts.

For instance, a teacher at an inner-city school might begin the year with students who were 30 percent proficient in reading at a seventh-grade level, and end the year with a proficiency of 60 percent at an eighth-grade level. A teacher in a suburban district, however, may begin the year with students at 90 percent proficiency in reading at a seventh-grade level and end the year at 80 percent proficiency at an eighth-grade level. While the suburban teacher’s students have higher proficiency levels, is the suburban teacher as effective as the inner-city one? Almost certainly not.

To assert that Woodland Middle School has little room for improvement, as Mr. Cargile does, is inaccurate. Brentwood Middle, La Vergne Middle and Grassland Middle schools are examples of other Middle Tennessee schools that received A’s or B’s in achievement in eighth-grade science, but also received A’s and B’s in value-added. At these schools, students have both high levels of academic achievement and significant year-to-year learning gains.

Value-added may not be perfect, but it does provide an important measure of how much progress our students are actually making each year.

David Mansouri is director of advocacy for the nonprofit Tennessee State Collaborative on Reform (SCORE).

This letter to the editor originally appeared in the January 18, 2011 Tennessean.  Photo courtesy of the Tennessean.

By Bill Frist, M.D.

During my years of public service, there has been no more exciting year for education in Tennessee than 2010. Last year state and local leaders joined together, across party lines, to commit to reforming our state’s education system and improving education for every Tennessean.

The list of accomplishments is long – winning a $500 million federal Race to the Top grant to support innovative K-12 education reforms; attracting the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to invest over $90 million in the state to improve teacher effectiveness; and passing historic education legislation in the state legislature, Tennessee’s largest piece of education reform legislation since 1992. 2010 will be remembered as the year Tennessee leaped to the forefront of the national education reform movement.

This commitment to reform could come at no better time. As statistics show, producing an educated workforce is critical to creating jobs. Seven of the ten fastest growing occupations in our state require some type of postsecondary degree. Many of the state’s newest employers – including Hemlock Semiconductor in Clarksville and Volkswagen in Chattanooga – require at least some type of postsecondary training for their employees. And estimates have shown that over the course of a lifetime, a college graduate makes nearly a million dollars more than a worker with only a high school diploma. Improving our state’s education system means attracting more and better paying jobs for Tennesseans.

But while 2010 was a banner year for education reform, we are just getting started. The first step to achieving more is expecting more, and new data released this week reflect that this is exactly what Tennessee is doing. For the first time, the state Department of Education is publishing yearly achievement data on individual schools and school districts based on new rigorous academic benchmarks implemented just last year, benchmarks that raise the bar and more accurately reflect how Tennessee students perform relative to their peers across the country. In Tennessee we are now asking more from our principals, teachers, and most importantly, our students.

While we now know where Tennessee students stand, the data released this week also show how much work we have left to do. According to the state’s data, only 26% of 8th grade students in Tennessee are proficient in math, and only 42% are proficient in reading. Other recent studies have shown that only 16% of 11th grade students in Tennessee are prepared to enter college without taking remedial coursework, and only 2.9% of Tennessee students scored “advanced” on international math tests, ranking Tennessee students behind students from Russia, Germany, Turkey, and thirty-six other nations.

2011 therefore will be a critical year for education in Tennessee as the work of implementing the reforms of 2010 begins. For policymakers, this means demanding timely and successful execution of key reforms, especially the development of a new teacher evaluation system that can help improve the effectiveness of principals and teachers across the state. For educators, this means rising to the challenge of teaching to higher standards and using new data about student progress to ensure every child’s achievement improves. And for communities and parents, this means expecting more from our children and providing them with the support they need to succeed.

So while we should applaud our many accomplishments from 2010, we must redouble our efforts in 2011. Our work as a state will remain unfinished until every Tennessee child graduates high school prepared for college or the workforce.

Dr. Frist is a former US Senate Majority Leader and is currently Chairman of the non-profit Tennessee State Collaborative on Reforming Education (SCORE)

This opinion piece originally appeared in the January 9, 2010 Tennessean.

By Bill Frist

Something remarkable is happening in American public education.

In a matter of months, the Obama administration’s Race to the Top competition engineered the kind of wholesale reform that ordinarily would take a generation to pull off. Ideas once considered to be the realm of conservative education policy are seeing a refreshing bipartisan embrace. In contrast to the partisan feuds defining the health care debate, Race to the Top is remaking public education as a practically non-partisan issue.

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I read with interest Dr. Richard L. Allington’s recent guest op-ed in Friday’s Tennessean. His perspective is a great one, and we need more voices like his in the state as we work to improve Tennessee’s schools. In his op-ed, Allington mentions our Tennessee SCORE interim report and some of the more troubling numbers about Tennessee’s schools, particularly the number of students underperforming in reading. He goes on to say “[i]mproving the quality of the reading instruction schools offer will raise reading achievement. But both the state and SCORE have seemed to ignore this fact.”

While I agree with most of Dr. Allington’s points, I have to disagree with his assessment that SCORE’s interim report ignores the importance of quality reading instruction. Specifically, our interim report highlights five areas where the state could improve its education system. First among these areas is ensuring we better support teachers and school leaders as they work to implement the Tennessee Diploma Project, which will raise high school graduation standards and ensure that students learn to read in the early grades. Our report also notes that the state must continue to focus on producing and supporting highly effective teachers, which are critical to improving our state’s performance in all subject areas, including reading.

I encourage all those who are interested in helping improve Tennessee’s schools to visit our Web site, www.tnscore.org, and download a copy of our report. If we all work together, Tennessee’s education system can become the best in the Southeast over the next five to ten years.

Bill Frist

Nashville, Tenn.

Mr. Frist is a former U.S. Senate majority leader and is currently the chairman of Tennessee Score.

This letter to the editor originally appeared in the September 21, 2009 Tennessean.

By Bill Frist and Richard Riley

As our nation’s students and teachers return to school in uncertain economic times, Americans across party lines agree that a quality education is indispensable to the future of each child, our competitiveness, and our country.

Fully 30 percent of our nation’s students drop out of high school each year and most high school graduates don’t complete college. While America was first in the world in high school and college graduation rates 30 years ago, we have slipped back into the middle of the pack among industrialized countries. Our results have stagnated while other nations are racing ahead of us.

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Your July 31 editorial, “Obama’s ‘Race to the Top,’
” highlights the ongoing struggle to reform our nation’s schools and some of the hurdles President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan may encounter from established education advocates, particularly teacher unions. Systemic and meaningful reform cannot occur without all stakeholders working together.

You note how eligibility requirements for Race to the Top funds are pressuring some states to change their laws “in hopes of tapping the fund.” This is true in Tennessee. After public calls from Secretary Duncan, both parties in our state legislature agreed to pass a law expanding access to charter schools. But these legislative actions alone are not enough.

That is why I established a statewide education initiative earlier this year called Tennessee State Collaborative on Reforming Education (Score). Score’s steering committee includes every major education stakeholder in the state, including business leaders, elected officials and union representatives. If we want to move Tennessee’s schools from 41st in the country into the top half of the nation, we must all work together.

Since we launched Score in February, we have already made significant progress in developing an education reform agenda that we will begin implementing this fall, hopefully with the assistance of Race to the Top funds.

You are correct that Race to the Top will be successful if it can influence a broader discussion on how the rest of our education funding is spent. However, this will only be possible if every stakeholder is engaged in the process.

In Tennessee, we are hoping to lead the way forward.

Bill Frist

Nashville, Tenn.

Mr. Frist is a former U.S. Senate majority leader and is currently the chairman of Tennessee Score.

This letter to the editor originally appeared in the August 5, 2009 Wall Street Journal.