May 2005 Edition of the Skills for Tomorrow Activities and Updates Listserv

The May edition is packed with information specifically for teachers. Find out what’s going on in the world of education in the U.S. and Canada. We have researched some of the top web sites for you to consider as you reach out to students and educators.

To submit information on your organization, or career development curriculum, please email Sharlene Mentor at smentor@teamster.org

Thank you!

Education Department Staff
International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT)
http://www.ibtstw.org

This year, the Teamsters Women’s Conference 2005 was held in Niagara Falls, Canada, March 30–April 3, 2005. On April 2, Teamsters Communications Assistant Sharlene Mentor presented a workshop entitled, Youth 2 Labor: Why Do We Need Youth in Our Union? Almost 200 Teamster members and officials were present.

Participants were invited to share ideas regarding approaching and encouraging youth to become involved in the Teamsters Union. Through interactive exercises they were guided to share testimonials with young people regarding the impact of belonging to a union family. What it means to them and their own children.

The conference attendees received age appropriate, fun and interesting examples on “Breaking the Ice” with young people and keeping their attention. Participants received materials to take back to their locals to assist them with implementing youth programs.

Talk to own children about benefits and the rising cost of healthcare. Explore the benefits of belonging to a union.

Share vital information to make the connection with union members and their communities. The UPS delivery person is a union member, so is the postman and teachers, bus drivers and cafeteria workers at their schools.

Contact the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Education Department for materials to educate youth on the labor movement at 202/624-8966.

HARD BARGAINING (5/3/2005): Coolidge Senior High School students learned about unions and participated in a hands-on simulation of a collective bargaining contract negotiation at the first local Collective Bargaining Institute for District of Columbia secondary students. The Institute was held at the University of the District of Columbia (UDC), and was co-sponsored by the Washington Teachers Union and the Community Services Agency of the Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO.

Labor Speakers’ Bureau members from the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Washington Teachers Union and the George Meany Center coached the students at their bargaining sessions. For additional information, contact Jim Auerbach at jauerbac@dclabor.org

~~~~> National Media Education Conference 2005: Giving Voice to a Diverse Nation

The Alliance for a Media Literate America (AMLA) is committed to promoting media literacy education that is focused on critical inquiry, learning, and skill-building. This national, grassroots membership organization will be a key force in bringing media literacy education to all 60 million students in the United States, their parents, their teachers, and others who care about youth.

National Media Education Conference 2005
Giving Voice to a Diverse Nation
June 25-28, 2005

The American Labor Studies Center (ALSC) is proud to announce a new and innovative standards-based thematic unit for high school and college students entitled "Hardball and Handshakes: Labor Relations in Baseball History" completed in cooperation with the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York and the New York State United Teachers (NYSUT).

Even in an era of free agency and million dollar agreements, baseball is more than money. Beyond the big salaries is a complex process of finding common ground individually and institutionally. As players and management organized themselves, the transition of our National Pastime from a social sport to a professional industry provides a unique lesson in free enterprise through the evolution of contracts and commerce.

Critical thinking and decision-making skills are engaged in this fascinating look at the relationship between employer and employee. How does baseball compare to other entities that utilize collective bargaining and contract negotiation? From boardrooms to locker rooms, the teamwork to earn a voice and a seat at the table has forged an important, time-tested principle: labor is not a commodity.

Examine historical data from various perspectives, including museum and library collections, player contracts, labor agreements, organizational structures, artifacts and primary sources.

Compare and contrast models of resolving differences throughout various player organizations in baseball's labor history - such as individual contracts, management philosophies, meet and confer, collective bargaining, mediation and arbitration.

Understand, through research, discussion and role play: human and civil rights with responsibilities; the purpose and concept of organizing a labor union; the decision-making process that defines the employer-employee relationship, including negotiation, conflict resolution and contract management.

Teacher Magazine’s Take on Education News From Around the Web, April 22-28.

As we get into the thick of spring, Illinois lawmakers are considering some weighty matters—specifically, a bill requiring school districts to limit the weight of the textbooks kids lug around. “Serious injuries are being reported, ... including spinal damage and chronic backaches,” said the state senator who introduced the legislation. Similar bills have been passed in California and Virginia, but Illinois wouldn’t require strict weight limits because “children are different sizes,” Senator Donne Trotter explained. That said, he did offer one suggestion: Break up lengthy textbooks into semiannual parts “since you don’t need the last chapters until the end of the year.”

Students at Tamaqua Area High School in Pennsylvania won’t have to worry about book bags at all for the rest of the year. Following two back-to-back bomb threats, school officials opted to ban bags of any kind at the school until the term ends. Now students cradle books and binders in their arms, though a few stopped to point out that the policy is relaxed after school hours for athletics and other activities. “Like nothing bad can happen or will happen after school. ... They’re saying, ‘Wait 10 minutes, and it will be fine,’ ” one sophomore said.

Another springtime ritual, at least in the Detroit area, is the annual flurry of pink slips—some 1,900 full-time teachers within the city limits alone were issued layoff notices this year. It’s part of the annual budget dance in cash-strapped Michigan: Districts make budget projections for the upcoming year and issue pink slips in April, then recall most of those teachers before fall. While education officials hold out hope for a $175-per-pupil funding increase proposed by Governor Jennifer Granholm, they fear that many of this year’s pink slips will become permanent. The superintendent of one district, which hasn’t seen a funding increase in four years and has cut everything from library books to buses, isn’t optimistic. “We’re hanging on by a thread, [and] this ... can’t continue any further without dismantling our district and other districts brick by brick.”

While Margaret Spellings is certainly hanging on by much more than a thread, it’s safe to say that, in PR terms at least, the ed secretary’s tenure hasn’t enjoyed the most placid of beginnings. First there was all that unpleasantness with the cartoon rabbit, and more recently she suggested that Connecticut lawmakers critical of NCLB were “un-American.” Yet it’s clear, observers say, that the White House is determined to avoid any wholesale changes to the law before it comes up for reauthorization in 2007, and Spellings unspoken role is to ensure that states put up with NCLB’s unpopular provisions until then. It isn’t the first time that Spellings, who wins high marks from many for her candor, has been portrayed as someone who relishes playing hardball—Texas teacher groups have called the longtime Bush ally the “princess of darkness.” “I don’t think I’m terrifying,” Spellings responded to a D.C. lobbyist’s characterization of her. “I’m a 47-year-old soccer mom.”

When it comes to enticing students to report classmates with guns or drugs, schools across the country don’t always play hardball. Instead, some are offereing cash, prime parking spaces, and pizza parties to student snitches. About 2,000 schools and colleges have already promised rewards for anonymous tips, though critics complain that mistrust among students is the inevitable byproduct. At Model High School in Rome, Georgia, candy and soda sales now fund cash rewards for informants, though no one has stepped forward thus far. “Everyone just thinks it’s a joke,” one senior said. “If someone brings a gun to school or is doing drugs in the bathroom, no one has to pay me to let the teachers know.”

As many of us know, this week marks “Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day,” which brings millions of school-age children into their parents’ offices. But one Illinois district has warned that starting next year, the day will be considered an unexcused absence. It’s an increasingly common stance; Arizona’s superintendent went so far as to say that “playing hooky from school ... doesn’t prepare you for work.” Beyond the bluster is the less-publicized fact that in many places, including Arizona and Illinois, the day conflicts with standardized testing. So even if they can’t watch their parents push paper, kids will still get the chance to do it on their own.

Sources for all articles are available through links. Teacher Magazine does not take credit or responsibility for reporting in linked stories. Access to some may require registration

~~~~> State is Seeking a Way to Reward Good Teaching, and Houston's System is Seen as Lacking

By Jason Spencer

In their search for a performance pay plan to reward the state's best teachers, Texas legislators aren't likely to copy Houston's approach.

Virtually everyone — from the teachers to the man in charge of the state's largest school district — agrees something is wrong with the merit system that last year deemed 80 percent of the 12,000 eligible Houston teachers worthy of a bonus. Most of them received the maximum payout of $440.

All told, the Houston Independent School District spread about $6.5 million among employees in 81 percent of the 288 eligible campuses because their students achieved their goals on standardized tests and other criteria.

Teachers say the $440 bonus wasn't what motivated them to put in extra hours and effort helping students learn.

"It's not an incentive," said Gayle Fallon, president of the Houston Federation of Teachers. "It's almost a joke."

Others argue that the standards used to determine who gets the extra pay are too low when the teachers at a campus such as Kashmere High School, which has been on the state's "academically unacceptable" list since 2002, were among those who got the bonus.

"When it's clear that (80) percent can get $440, it's not much evidence that it's truly a merit pay program," said Kate Walsh, president of the National Center for Teacher Quality in Washington, D.C. The group recommends average teacher incentives of $5,000.

Legislation passed by the Texas House and now under consideration in the Senate would require school districts to devote one percent of their operating budgets to an incentive plan that rewards teachers and other employees for improved student achievement. Under that proposal, Houston, which has a $1.3 billion budget, would spend $13 million on performance rewards, about double the current amount.

Local school systems would get to design their own plans as long as objective measures, such as test scores, are the primary criteria for deciding which employees get the money.

The Texas Association of School Boards, whose members include HISD, has come out against any incentive plan that doesn't also come with an across-the-board state funding increase for other school expenses.

"We want to see that the state fully funds educational opportunities for the students before we look at that," said Glenn Greenwood, a spokesman for the association.

A Range of Incentives

Last year's checks in HISD ranged from $132 for cafeteria workers to $5,000 for principals and $20,000 for upper-level administrators. The percentage of schools qualifying for the incentive money last year was the highest in recent years, according to HISD figures.

HISD Superintendent Abe Saavedra acknowledged that the merit pay system needs fixing.

"The number of campuses identified for (incentive pay) this past year was an aberration of the program," he said. "We need to be very careful when we identify the standards that we ensure that it's actually a stretch. ... We didn't set the standard high enough."

Houston was among the first Texas school districts to offer some form of merit pay to teachers beginning in 1995 under then-Superintendent Rod Paige. Today, about one in 10 of the state's school systems, including Aldine and Spring, offer some sort of performance incentive to employees. Spring's system gives principals broad discretion in determining which employees are rewarded, while Aldine's is more directly tied to test scores.

Under HISD's program, which evaluates schools based on gains in test scores, graduation rates and other criteria, almost every employee at qualifying schools gets a cut of the money. As a result, top teachers who happen to work at underachieving schools don't get the extra pay.

The Davis High School math teacher who won last year's HISD secondary teacher of the year award was among the few who missed out on the bonus.

"That's why you've got to take a totally different approach," said school board trustee Greg Meyers. Meyers said he would favor a merit pay system that evaluates teachers individually in terms of how much students learn under their guidance, taking into account each student's academic performance at the start and finish of the year.

'Doesn't Influence Behavior'

Board President Dianne Johnson agreed the current system isn't producing the intended results.

Saavedra said he could support an incentive plan that recognizes individual teacher performance in the 209,000-student school district but wants to study the issue further.

Nearly 1,600 teachers were not eligible for the bonus for reasons other than their students' academic performance. HISD policy, for example, requires teachers to return to work the following year in order to get the incentive pay, so those who retired or resigned were not eligible. Teachers at about 30 campuses, primarily HISD-supervised charter schools, also were not eligible because they are not on the school district payroll.

Talk among Texas lawmakers has focused on offering bonus pay to those working in schools that post the biggest gains on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, the standardized test that students take in grades 3-11.

Some Texas business leaders called on state lawmakers last week to offer $7,500 bonuses to the top 10 percent of teachers who boost test scores among poor students. The second 10 percent would get $5,000 bonuses, and the third 10 percent would receive $2,500 under the plan offered by the newly formed Texas Businesses for Education Excellence.

"We would like to see $200 million of the roughly $30 billion spent on Texas public schools every year used for teacher performance rewards," said Sandy Kress, a paid lobbyist for the business coalition who formerly advised George W. Bush on state and federal education policies.

Teacher groups denounced the suggestion, arguing that Texas should first bring all educators up to the average national salary before talking about merit pay.

"What we need is to look at how we marshal the state's resources and local resources to go in and implement programs that are going to work," said Richard Kouri, spokesman for the Texas State Teachers Association. "But it's not going to be easy and not as quick or cheap as any of them would like."

The debate over whether to base teacher pay on anything other than seniority has been going on for years, but proponents of results-based pay, mainly from the business community, are gaining momentum. The Denver teachers union recently agreed to a merit pay plan, and the Florida state legislature requires each school district to come up with a way of rewarding teachers for performance. Still, such programs haven't been around long enough to provide strong evidence of their effectiveness, said Richard Ingersoll, a University of Pennsylvania researcher specializing in teacher workplace issues.

"The obstacles lie in implementing it," he said. "You first have to decide, 'What's meritorious? What is a good teacher and good teaching?' It turns out that we don't always agree on that."

One merit pay program that seems to have raised student performance so far, Ingersoll said, is operated by the Milken Family Foundation, which began five years ago in Arizona and has since expanded to 75 schools in 11 states. The foundation's Teacher Advancement Program pays bonuses beginning at $2,500 to teachers who receive positive reviews from their supervisors and whose students show significant academic improvement.

"Any program that's going to do something like this requires a lot of work, and I think that when you end up dealing with $440 for all the effort that's required, that's one of the major reasons why these programs fail," said Lewis Solmon, a former dean of graduate education at the University of California at Los Angeles now running the Milken Foundation's teacher program.

Texas, Solmon said, shouldn't adopt a merit pay system unless lawmakers are committed to giving it adequate funding.

"We need to make sure we do it properly," he said. "My worry is they are going to do it with very small amounts and without the support of a solid evaluation system and they will peter out."

~~~~> Teachers at Progressive Schools are Collaborating to Improve Their Students Learning—And Their Own.

Imagine, for a moment, that you want to learn how to play a sport or a musical instrument, but you’ve never seen the sport or heard the instrument played well, and there are no coaches available. You can only practice in a room all by yourself, day in and day out. How good will you be?

Of course, athletes and musicians, even amateurs, have ample access to coaches and to examples of best practices, and they are constantly subjecting their performances to the judgments of others. But most of us who are educators have none of the benefits enjoyed by even serious amateurs in other fields. Good coaches for teaching and leadership, or even videotapes of excellent teaching, are virtually nonexistent, and our “performances” are rarely critiqued by others.

In many ways, teaching and leadership in schools and districts are still more like 19th-century “handicrafts”—which usually required skills that you learned on your own and practiced alone for most of your career. And as with handicrafts like weaving or pottery, how skillful you become may be more a matter of having an innate “gift” than learning how to improve. Some craftsmen are, indeed, artists, but many are not. Most of us in education are mediocre at what we do, despite our talents and good intentions, because we have too few opportunities to observe and be observed, to discuss “problems of practice” with colleagues—in a word, to be a part of what educational researcher Etienne Wenger calls “communities of practice.”

I speak from personal experience. During my master of arts in teaching program at a name-brand school of education, most of my time was spent studying subject content, education theory, and curriculum. There was almost no discussion of the craft of teaching. There were no videos of teachers to analyze. I was required to spend a certain number of hours observing “master teachers,” who in retrospect were not especially effective. Finally, I was observed and “coached” a few times by a university “supervisor,” but he had no training for this role and so could offer little helpful advice.

When I finished the program and was officially certified, I went to work in a high school English classroom where I was observed once in my first year of teaching by the principal, who stayed for perhaps 10 minutes. Later, we talked for a couple of minutes, and he gave me a checklist to sign. I was proficient at everything, it seemed. The same thing happened during my second and third years of teaching. And then I became tenured. For the next nine years, teaching in both public and independent schools, I was never observed. If I improved at all, it was mainly through an often lonely and painful process of trial and error. Later, when I became a school principal, the experience was essentially the same. I ran into trouble because I was too young and inexperienced for the job, and there was no one to whom I could turn for coaching.

A unique experience? Hardly. Many veteran teachers chose the profession because they wanted security and autonomy, and most schools and districts are organized to maintain this status quo. We are the last bastion of the would-be self-employed, having really only moved our 19th century one-room schoolhouses into larger buildings. Many of us try to improve, as best we can, without taking real risks or giving up a shred of our independence. And for those who do seek help from others, it is often not available.

Most of us in education are mediocre at what we do, despite our talents and good intentions, because we have too few opportunities to observe and be observed.

I recently talked to a former businessman who has “retired” to teach middle school math in the inner city. Accustomed to giving and receiving feedback, he has begged his principal and department chair to come into his classroom, but no one has. Many principals with whom I’ve worked complain that the yearly classroom visits required by the central office feel like a bureaucratic formality because they have neither the time, nor the training, nor the “permission” to do real supervision. It has become a numbers game for them—whether they have observed their quota of teachers and turned in the requisite number of evaluation forms for the month. And meetings with colleagues are primarily a time for announcements rather than substantive discussion of their real work as building leaders.

Remember Perry Mason and Marcus Welby from 1960s and ’70s television? They were Lone Rangers, like Jaime Escalante of Stand and Deliver fame; but unlike Escalante’s contemporaries, they’re long gone. Today, people in law, medicine, and business rarely work alone—either on television or in real life. Today, people work in teams at all levels of organizations because teams can take on challenges and find new solutions far more effectively than can individuals working alone. Even solo practitioners like psychologists have ongoing clinical supervision and seminars for peer review of cases. Nearly every profession has reinvented itself to create forms of collaborative problem-solving—except education.

How might groups of educators be organized to go beyond mere “professional learning communities”—a current catch phrase—to deal with ongoing problems in schools and districts? What might communities of practice look like in education?

There are already some examples of teachers working together, with varying degrees of effectiveness. “Critical friends groups” have been used by schools for the past decade as a means of voluntarily organizing teachers to discuss their work. These groups, however, often do not go beyond looking at student work to analyze the “teacher work” that may yield better or worse results. For critical friends groups to be more effective, they need to be data-driven.

I was recently in a middle school where two earth science teachers taught similar groups of students, but one managed a 92 percent pass rate on the state test among her students while just 49 percent of the other’s students passed. Only the principal knew this, and he couldn’t tell me why the two instructors had gotten such different results. We need to break down data by teacher, not to expose those with poor results but to identify and learn from those who are getting results far above average with comparable groups of students.

Perhaps the most well- developed model of teacher collaboration is the “lesson study” process, described by James Stigler and James Hiebert in The Teaching Gap. Used in Japan as a primary means of professional development, lesson-study groups are organized by grade level or subject area. These teams meet regularly to discuss the learning challenges of their students and to collaboratively develop lessons that more effectively meet the kids’ needs. Teachers take turns conducting these model lessons and critiquing one another’s work until they feel it’s polished enough to share with colleagues. Stigler and Hiebert believe this process goes a long way toward explaining why the level of instruction in most Japanese classrooms appears to be consistently higher than that of other countries.

Unlike critical friends groups, however, ultimately this new organization of work cannot be left only to those who volunteer; it must become the way we all do our work in schools and districts. Superintendent John Deasy’s work in California’s Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District suggests a strategy for such a transition. He recently gave teachers in his small high schools additional planning time, but only if they formed triads to visit each other’s classes to give and receive feedback. School and district administrators need to think creatively about a variety of incentives for participation in communities of practice that can, over time, become part of the culture of accountability and how work gets done.

~~~~> Reward Teachers Who Get Results, Particularly Those in America's Most Challenging Classrooms, Spellings Says

"We must treat our teachers like the professionals they are," U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings told more than 300 educators and others attending the Milken Family Foundation National Education Conference today in Washington, D.C. "That means we must reward teachers who make real progress closing the achievement gap in the most challenging classrooms."

Spellings noted that the Milken National Educator Awards presented to teachers and principals at today's event offer the opportunity to reward educators for their hard work. "That's something we don't do often enough for teachers in this country. And it's something we must change if we want to realize the promise of No Child Left Behind," she said.

Citing studies that show the importance of strong teachers to a child's educational achievement, Spellings explained, "That's why No Child Left Behind requires that by 2006, every classroom must have a highly qualified teacher. The president's new budget includes almost $3 billion to help states meet this goal."

However, she noted that the students most in need tend to be taught by the least qualified teachers. Further, public school systems often do not reward those teachers willing to take on the hardest assignments: "Teachers with the skill and desire to close the achievement gap find themselves drawn away from the schools that need the most help. Many school systems even offer de facto incentives for teachers to leave these schools." Such a system often has "devastating results" for students who fail to learn and energetic teachers who find their dedication to help the most needy underused.

To address the problem, President Bush has proposed a new $500 million Teacher Incentive Fund, Spellings said. The fund will provide states with money to reward teachers who take the toughest jobs and achieve real results. Spellings noted that, according to a recent study by the bipartisan Teaching Commission, 76 percent of Americans and 77 percent of public school teachers supported incentive pay.

Under the program, states have the flexibility to design their own systems for rewarding teachers. A portion of the Teacher Incentive Fund would be reserved to help states and districts develop new performance-based teacher compensation systems that reward experience, results and hard work rather than credentials and seniority.

Spellings noted the success of the Denver public schools' pilot-program for performance-based pay. A study has found that student performance has improved under the program, and Denver voters are now considering making it permanent.

Spellings also credited the Milken Family Foundation's Teacher Advancement Program (TAP), which has benefited over 2,000 teachers in nine states since its inception, with advancing the issue of the importance of teacher quality. TAP encourages teachers to pursue professional development and mentoring, and rewards success.

In addition, Spellings noted that the nation's public schools will need to hire an estimated two million new teachers over the next decade. "The president's budget includes almost $100 million to help schools meet this demand, including $40 million for a new Adjunct Teacher Corps Initiative," Spellings explained. The Adjunct Teacher Corps Initiative would help recruit professionals, particularly in the fields of math and science, into teaching.

In closing, Spellings said, "We knew when we passed No Child Left Behind that the hard work of closing the achievement gap would fall on your shoulders. We also knew that you wouldn't want it any other way. You never give up on a child. It's the same hope that drew you to teaching in the first place. And it's the same spirit that will lead us to the promise of No Child Left Behind."

Get Connected: Web Site Links

~~~~> Best Education Web Sites

The editorial team of Website Estates has searched the web to locate the best web sites for students and educators. The following list of links represent useful, legitimate, well-organized web sites with content and resources we are quite confident our readers will find of interest. With tens of millions of web sites available online, we hope our listings of 'Best of the Web' makes your life a little easier when surfing the web.

http://www.websiteestates.com/education/educationlinks.html

~~~~> Bilingual Education Website

For teachers of bilingual students: A web site providing information on classroom centered practices, organizations and programs, funding resources, and online resources related to science, mathematics, and technology education. Developed by the ERIC Clearinghouse on Urban Education at Columbia Teachers College and the National Clearinghouse for Bilingual Education.

http://eric-web.tc.columbia.edu/pathways/smt_literacy

End of Issue

To learn more about the Teamsters, a vital part of every community in the U.S. and Canada and our School-to-Career network, please log onto http://edu.teamster.org/edu.asp or http://www.ibtstw.org

You are receiving this email because you subscribed to the Teamsters Skills For Tomorrow listserv network. If you wish to unsubscribe, please click on the following link. http://www.ibtstw.org/listunsubscribe.asp

~~~~> Best Education Web Sites

~~~~> Bilingual Education Website

Send your questions or comments to: info@ibtstw.org ©2005 The International Brotherhood of Teamsters / Minnesota Teamsters Service Bureau

Send your questions or comments to: info@ibtstw.org
©2005 The International Brotherhood of Teamsters / Minnesota Teamsters Service Bureau