Gates Foundation officials discuss teacher quality
Shirin Parsavand | 12-7-2009 | Comments | Bookmark and Share | Print this Page



An initiative by five charter school operators to make teachers more effective could have benefits well beyond the schools involved, speakers at a news conference said Monday.

Representatives of the College-Ready Promise coalition talked Monday at Cal State Los Angeles about plans for a $60 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The Gates Foundation last month announced the grant to the coalition, as well as grants to three school districts that have developed plans to improve teacher effectiveness.

Of the factors schools can control, teacher quality is the most important one affecting student achievement, Gates Foundation officials said during the news conference.

“We know from research that nothing matters more to youth than to have a highly effective teacher,” said John Deasy, deputy director of education for the Gates Foundation.

The College-Ready Promise is made up of five public charter school management organizations in Los Angeles: Alliance College-Ready Public Schools, Aspire Public Schools, Green Dot Public Schools, ICEF Public Schools and Partnerships to Uplift Communities.

The five organizations operate 85 public schools, including schools in and around South Los Angeles, that together enroll more than 28,000 students. Most of the schools are in Los Angeles County.

Charter schools are funded with public dollars, but are run independently of school districts and are exempt from most state laws governing school districts.

The members of The College-Ready Promise said they plan to use the Gates funds to design new ways of training, evaluating and paying teachers. So far, their plan for the seven-year, $60 million grant includes:

· Higher salaries for teachers who are deemed “highly effective,” who would serve as master teachers and mentors;
· Professional development opportunities targeted at helping teachers improve their practice. Teachers also would go through a year-long teacher training academy prior to the start of school;
· Evaluation of teachers’ job performance that considers multiple factors, including whether their students show growth in academic achievement.

Teachers unions sometimes have raised objections to merit pay and to using student test scores in teacher evaluations. But a study released last month by the nonprofit organization Public Agenda found that younger teachers were more open to merit pay than their older counterparts. Also, a report commissioned by the National Education Association and released this year expressed an openness to performance pay, as long as it is based on an evaluation system that is well implemented and supported by teachers.

The rest of the $290 million in grants under the Gates Foundation’s Partnership for Effective Teaching went to the Hillsborough County Public Schools in Tampa, Fla. ($100 million), the Memphis City Schools ($90 million) and Pittsburgh Public Schools ($40 million).

Through the Race to the Top grant program, the Obama administration also is promising funding to states and school districts that use innovative practices, particularly those that support effective teaching. California lawmakers are considering legislation to be sure the state is eligible for the grant competition.

Assemblywoman Julia Brownley, D-Santa Monica, said at the news conference that further changes in state policy could come as a result of the charter school organizations’ work on teacher evaluation.

“There is still some learning and collection of data that we need to do to have a firm policy,” said Brownley, chairwoman of the Assembly Education Committee.
Deasy said the work of the coalition also should affect traditional public schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

“This is about highly effective public schools, period,” he said. “This is the nation’s second-largest school district and we expect those borders to be very porous.”

According to the College-Ready Promise coalition, more than 75 percent of those who have graduated from its schools over the past two years are attending four-year colleges.

Across California, only 34 percent of high school graduates in 2008 completed the courses required to gain admission to the University of California or Cal State University, according to the California Department of Education. Among black and Latino graduates, just 23 percent of students completed the required courses.

Charter schools around the country have shown mixed results when compared to traditional public schools. A Stanford University study released earlier this year found students in most charter schools made no greater academic progress than those in traditional schools. But poor students performed better in math and reading in charter schools than in traditional schools in many states, including California, according to the study from Stanford’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes.
 

Tags: college-ready promise coalition gates foundation julia brownley race to the top south los angeles