Making a commitment and reconsidering . . .

I would like to be posting about tonight's PSE Appreciation Dinner, but I'll wait until tomorrow when Kevin will get me some pictures for the post.  Instead, I'll share a decision I made and how two subsequent conversations resulted in wondering and revisiting the decision.

In this post from last week, I shared how competing commitments emerged in a meeting of superintendents and association presidents related to crafting a letter to legislators opposing changes to teacher evaluation to assure continuation of the NCLB waiver.  John Schuster, Tahoma President, asked if I would consider sending a letter from our system since consensus was not possible in the larger group.  It took a few days, but I made the commitment to take a position based on what is best for our system and not what would best benefit all school systems across the state.

Today, we sent this letter to all of our legislative representatives.  Though I understand that loss of the waiver will create issues for school systems across the state, I believe this was the right thing to do.  It will not resonate with most of my colleagues or the professional organizations that represent us, but this is a time to operate from belief not politics.

Later in the afternoon I received a phone call from Senator Mullet wanting to discuss the letter.  He was concerned and wanted to better understand our position.  He also shared some information that opened the door to consider a different context for the change.  Later, at the PSE Dinner, I had an opportunity for a brief conversation with Superintendent Dorn where he shared similar information and more detail that I didn't have that made me wonder.  It also made me wonder if I had done adequate research before commiting to the letter.

Based on these two conversations with men I respect I feel compelled to follow-up today's letter with a second rescinding my request for a no vote on House Bill 2800 while affirming my opposition to Senate Bill 5880.   I'm led to believe that this will result in an implementation delay until the 2017 school year and the locus of control for how we use state or other achievement data will continue to be determined in local bargaining.  Given this, it makes sense for me to reconsider and not add to the anxiety and stress created by the threat of waiver loss from Secretary Duncan.

I also had the chance for a brief conversation with John at the dinner and shared some of my thinking.  I'm not changing my belief that the best decision is no change to the existing law for all the reasons in the letter, but given the assurance of local control in the House Bill, I believe that we can maintain the positive impacts of TPEP without the burden of potentially negative change in how student growth is measured.

If you are looking for a short description of the struggle over this proposed legislative change I would recommend this short article in the  Bellingham Herald

Surprises me . . .

Thought you might be interested in this 2014 study from UNESCO on the daily wages of teachers.   I saw it on the Education by the Numbers Hechinger Report blog.   You may be as surprised as I was to find out that teachers in the United States are the sixth highest paid on a daily basis of the countries in the study. The methodology adjusts salary to reflect domestic purchasing power resulting in the ratings below.

I guess I'm surprised because of what we know about teacher wages in our country and the lack of information from other countries.  Though I find it interesting I don't see the need to analyze it or make comparisons such as the one below from the blog post.

The other interesting thing is that Asian countries, whose students top the international charts on PISA tests, don’t rank highly on this teacher salary chart. The highest paid teachers in Asia are in South Korea, the 21st county on the list.

I'm wondering . . .

As I catch up on my RSS reading that includes updates on the rapidly approaching last day of the state legislative session it makes me wonder what closed doors are precluding us from knowing our fate.  With the significant issues around the NCLB waiver, the 1080 hour requirement, and supplemental budget differences in the two houses I am sure that education is one of the major topics of conversation behind these closed doors.  Unfortunately, it is also the place where policy makers make trades at the last minute often resulting in decisions that influence our work without the opportunity to engage in the conversation.

After sessions I sometimes wonder how we lost something or how a particular requirement was added when it wasn't even on the radar before the last minute, closed door negotiating sessions?  An example would be when we lost the opportunity to apply for a waiver to use our Classroom 10 instructional model instead of one of the three state approved models.  What will it be this session?  Even with the teacher presence this past week lobbying against changing the language in the evaluation bill from "may" to " must" will they prevail or will the governor/state superintendent coalition prevail?  They have four more days before the scheduled end of the session before we find or before they decide that more time is needed behind closed doors.

Quality the Tahoma way . . .

An article written by Casey Henry was published in Our Kids Our Future.  It is about our We The People team and their preparation to once again represent our state in the national competition in Washington D.C. this April.  This is a rigorous learning opportunity that takes time and commitment on the part of these students beginning in the summer before school starts and on the adults and former students who support their learning.

This is one of many programs where our young people and adults have experienced success and that contribute to the positive reputation that we have in this state.  Teacher and mentor Gretchen Wulfing has earned our respect for building and sustaining success over time with fewer resources than other top ten teams across the country receive.  She will be taking our team to Portland to practice with a team that receives support from a legal firm each year and that are consistently in the top ten nationally.  This support results in their D.C. trip being covered and also provides each of the teams with a personal coach throughout the year and at the national competition.  No fund raising and no needing to stay up until the early morning hours preparing the night before the competition for their team.

Gretchen takes on all responsibilities without complaint and is taking our program to the same level without the monetary and other support provided to many state winners.  She has a team of high school teachers, parents, alumni of the program, and community volunteers that assist her in this work and that deserve our thanks and admiration for their commitment to what is another example of a quality Tahoma program.  Over time we have increased support and are reaching out to the legal community in different ways to seek their support not just for our team, but over time for the state representative.

Thank you Gretchen and your team.  Good luck and know that we are very proud of you.

Competing commitments . . .

Yesterday, John Schuster and I met with the other superintendents and association presidents that form the Center for Collaborative Support (CCS), an organization of five local school systems that formed a number of years ago to identify ways to support each other.  Though there have been common needs, we have struggled identifying structures to provide teachers across the systems with common support.  The exception to this are the Common Core online training opportunities that began last year and continue into this year and before that support provided for new teachers in the professional certification program.

At this meeting one of the topics for discussion was a request to consider writing a joint letter to key legislators currently struggling with the NCLB waiver issue I blogged about many times with latest being this past Monday.  Since that post two bills have emerged, one House Bill 2800 that would require the use of state test scores in teacher evaluation, but delays implementation until the 2017-18 school year.  The second is Senate Bill 5880 that contains the same requirement with implementation in 2014-15.  Similar bills with significantly different impacts making it a much more complex issue for legislators in a short period of time.  This is the same situation that usually results in last minute politicking and bills and/or budgets that surprise us and that result in mandates without the opportunity to engage with legislators around consequences and possible unintended consequences.

The issue is very complex.  Some of the issues resulting in this complexity include the following.

• If we lose the waiver and districts and buildings are forced to send letters home saying they did not meet the NCLB annual yearly progress it could influence next fall's state elections. 
• If districts lose control over part of their Title 1 federal funding to outside vendors it could cause the loss of teacher and paraprofessional positions across the state.  
• The loss of these funds could also then open the door for review and growth of charter schools in the state.  

What for some in the room started as a collaborative effort to influence legislators to not support changes to the evaluation process deteriorated rapidly when superintendents in the room spoke to a position that was forming in our ESD for a letter to the same legislators supporting the House bill.  It emerged for me as a very good example of competing commitments at work.  I shared my struggles with signing a letter of support for either bill because of my personal beliefs and because of the potential negative impact on our system.  When I go to the balcony, however, I can see the bigger picture and how loss of the waiver can have a significant impact on some school systems such as described in this Tacoma News Tribune article and possibly open doors to other negative unintended consequences.

So, once again we are confronted with difficult choices that we must  make as individuals and as representatives of school systems and organizations.  Everyone in that room yesterday is a caring, committed educator from a good school system.  It saddens me that we are placed in this situation by actions from policy makers thousands of miles away who rely on the threat of losing funding to promote their belief in a one size fits all strategy that will not achieve the stated and unstated results of these mandates.

Anyone's guess at this time . . .

Last week I shared the compromise bill that Governor Inslee and Superintendent Dorn are promoting to ensure that the state is removed from "high risk" status and is granted a continuing waiver from NCLB sanctions.  The Governor shared his reasoning in this press release that indicated a comfort level that the compromise bill will meet Secretary Duncan's standard for continuing the waiver.

“This funding is crucial in our efforts to support struggling students, and I think everyone in Olympia agrees we must do everything we can to preserve it,” said Inslee. “I assured Secretary Duncan that if he grants us this waiver, we will ultimately be able to deliver a stronger, more effective evaluation system that better serves our students and educators. He indicated that, given our demonstrable progress on a range of reforms, this is a positive step could provide a satisfactory path forward. ”

In this Education Week Politics K-12 post questions are raised about the certainty of the bill meeting the standard for waiver continuation.  Because the bill postpones implementation of mandating state test scores in teacher evaluations until the 2017-18 school year there are some raising questions.


Here's the thing, though: Waiver states were initially supposed to fully implement their teacher evaluation systems—meaning gauge teachers performance on use them for personnel decisions—by the 2015-16 school year. The Obama administration has allowed states to apply for an extension, to the 2016-17 school year. The flexibility offered by the department so far has only applied to whether the evaluations are used for personnel decisions—not to whether the state gauges teacher performance using local or state tests, which is what Washington would be asking for under Inslee's draft proposal.

And note that, under the draft plan, by the time the schools in Washington state have to start using tests for accountability purposes, the Obama administration will be out of office.

So, even if it passes in Olympia it may still face a rocky road in Washington D.C.  Want to make a guess as to what will happen?  It has become far too political for me to know what will happen, but I lean toward the bill passing and a waiver extension.  I would be surprised if the Governor would float the plan in the legislature without prior approval of the Secretary even though I was very surprised that the original bill did not make it through the Senate.

Remember context . . .

You may have seen this short video of a staff development session in Chicago facilitated by consultants from California and the United Kingdom.  It was included in an article by Valerie Strauss in The Answer Sheet. titled "A video that shows why teachers are going out of their minds.".

In a follow-up she shares reactions including from those that support the process being used in the professional development opportunity that was obviously video taped without the presenters knowledge.  I struggle with the process though we are missing the broader CONTEXT.  This could be an example and practice of choral recitation, a strategy used by some of our teachers, so we should be careful in making judgments from this snippet.  In the article, however, I was drawn to her citing of a 2013 National School Board study of professional development and the report summary she shared.

The reason traditional professional development is ineffective is that it doesn’t support teachers during the stage of learning with the steepest learning curve: implementation. In the same way that riding a bike is more difficult than learning about riding a bike, employing a teaching strategy in the classroom is more difficult than learning the strategy itself. In several case studies, even experienced teachers struggled with a new instructional technique in the beginning (Ermeling, 2010; Joyce and Showers, 1982). In fact, studies have shown it takes, on average, 20 separate instances of practice before a teacher has mastered a new skill, with that number increasing along with the complexity of the skill (Joyce and Showers, 2002).

This validates our focus on feedback, coaching, and peer observations, practices that are being used in our system to support changes in instructional practice.  We recognize the need for support not only in the learning phase , but also in the implementation phase over time.