Resources

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has called the Race to the Top education’s “moon shot.” For states, it represents an historic opportunity to escape the gravitational pull of outworn policies and the failures of the past.

The challenge is meeting this opportunity with a reform plan that matches its vision and ambition. Now, as the Department of Education issues final guidance on Race to the Top and states begin to put together their Phase 1 applications, TNTP offers state applicants a blueprint for what we believe will be foundational to any winning Race to the Top proposal: a bold, coherent agenda for building a highly effective teacher workforce.

States that propose a series of disjointed initiatives or meet only the minimum requirements of the competition will not be successful—not only in the application process itself, but in achieving meaningful reform. How Bold is “Bold” provides a unifying framework and practical strategies that will enable states to establish and achieve clear teacher effectiveness goals.

As federal policymakers gear up to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), they have an opportunity to re-think the use of Title II funds, which total $3 billion annually.

Title II funding, designed to improve teacher quality, inadvertently reinforces the widget effect — the tendency of school systems to treat teachers like interchangeable parts. Currently, most of the money supports class size reduction initiatives and undifferentiated professional development, with little value to student learning.

With the right focus, Title II money could become a powerful lever to promote teacher effectiveness. TNTP urges policymakers to use the upcoming ESEA reauthorization to refocus Title II spending on four overarching goals for improving teacher effectiveness.

The New Teacher Project is encouraged to see the focus on better evaluation systems and teacher effectiveness data in July’s draft Race to the Top guidelines. The preliminary criteria reflect a real commitment to meaningful reform and echo many of the recommendations of TNTP’s recent report, The Widget Effect.

Now, districts and states face the challenge of responding to the guidelines with a smart teacher effectiveness agenda. To that end, TNTP has assembled a tool for education leaders and policymakers interested in pursuing Race to the Top reforms.

Interpreting Race to the Top includes:

1. A succinct summary of Race to the Top application and selection criteria;
2. An analysis of each of the four Race to the Top “assurances”: standards, data systems, great teachers and leaders, and school turnarounds;
3. Practical questions for districts and states to ask as they assess their progress and plans; and
4. Preliminary analysis of each state’s current competitiveness for funding, given its existing policy framework.

In June 2009, The New Teacher Project released data on teacher dismissals in Toledo Public Schools (TPS) in The Widget Effect. The data, collected in collaboration with the Toledo Federation of Teachers, reported five dismissals of non-tenured teachers for performance concerns and one dismissal of a tenured teacher for performance concerns in TPS during school years 2003-04 through 2007-08.

Following the report’s release, the Toledo Federation of Teachers contacted TNTP with concerns about the accuracy of the data. TNTP agreed to work with TFT on a careful examination of the data to reach a conclusion about final figures.

This memorandum provides an overview of the reconciliation process and a summary of our findings.

Almost everyone agrees that teacher evaluations are broken, and fixing them is critical to building a thriving teacher workforce. In 2009, The Widget Effect documented how poorly-designed teacher evaluation systems rate all teachers as “good” or “great” and provide little useful feedback on classroom performance.

Since then, states and school districts have begun to revamp outdated systems by passing new legislation and forging groundbreaking collective bargaining agreements with teachers’ unions.

The dilemma education leaders now face is, “How?” How can they avoid the pitfalls of past evaluation systems and create new ones that become useful tools for teachers and school leaders?

Teacher Evaluation 2.0 tackles this key question. It proposes six design standards that any rigorous and fair teacher evaluation system should meet. It offers a blueprint for better evaluations that can help every teacher succeed in the classroom—and give every student the best chance at success.