AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC POLICY RESEARCH The Common Core Standards and Teacher Quality Reforms Morgan Polikoff University of Southern California [email protected] Draft: Please do not cite without permission from the author. Prepared for the American Enterprise Institute Conference, “Common Core Meets the Reform Agenda” March 25, 2013 The collected papers for this conference can be found at http://www.aei.org/events/2013/03/25/common-core-meets-the-reform-agenda/. Draft: Please do not cite without permission from the author. The last half-decade has seen a monumental shift in teacher policies in U.S. K-12 schools. Perhaps most notably, at least in part spurred by the Obama administration's Race to the Top (RTTT) Program and Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) waivers, there is now unprecedented pressure to improve the quality and usefulness of teachers' evaluations. Major elements of the teacher evaluation reforms being implemented include a) the inclusion of student achievement data in evaluations, b) the use of research-based rubrics or observational protocols to rate pedagogical quality, c) the placing of teachers into three or more categories of effectiveness (i.e., rather than satisfactory vs. unsatisfactory), and d) the use of evaluations to inform teacher staffing decisions. High-profile backers, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Michelle Rhee's StudentsFirst, have supported these types of reforms. More than two-thirds of the states have now revamped their teacher evaluation policies, requiring schools and districts to adopt these more comprehensive systems.1 Teacher and teaching policies are changing in other important ways, as well. For instance, there have been widely-publicized battles between public sector teachers unions and Republican governors in several Midwestern states. There have been prominent pushes to change or end teacher tenure rights in other states, or to tie teachers' ongoing employment to performance as measured by the new evaluation systems. During the recent economic downturn, there has been a push to end so-called LIFO (last-in-first-out) policies that protect teachers with more seniority, regardless of quality, when layoffs are required. And finally, there has been a great deal of discussion and concern, perhaps spurred primarily by the forthcoming report from the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ), about the quality of pre-service teacher education programs and their impact on teacher performance. 1 Draft: Please do not cite without permission from the author. At the same time as these important changes to teacher policies have taken place, there have been tremendous changes in the nature of standards and accountability policy in U.S. schools. Arguably the most prominent reform in this area is the development and adoption of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in K-12 English language arts and mathematics. Originally a state-led effort, the Common Core was encouraged by the Obama administration's RTTT and ESEA waivers, and 45 states and the District of Columbia have now adopted the standards to replace their previous state standards in both subjects. The standards call for substantial modifications to the content and form of teachers' instruction,2 and numerous organizations are developing aligned curriculum materials and assessments to the Common Core. Together, these two sets of reforms (the Common Core and teacher policies) are perhaps the most influential policy reforms happening now in U.S. K-12 education. In this chapter, I highlight some of the ways that these two reforms are likely to intersect and influence one another. There are two main goals of this analysis – first, to present both opportunities and challenges for the intersection of the Common Core standards and the new teacher quality policies; and second, to make policy recommendations that should maximize opportunities and minimize challenges when it comes to their intersection. My central premise is that, for the Common Core and teacher policies to be mutually beneficial, classroom teachers must faithfully implement the standards. Given this premise, I reach several conclusions about the necessary elements for effective standards implementation that will complement teacher policy reforms: 1) The Common Core Standards are but one part of a larger standards-based policy system. Thus, policymakers must carefully align all components of these policy systems 2 Draft: Please do not cite without permission from the author. if we are to see the kinds of instructional effects we desire. This means getting serious about the alignment of assessments with standards in a way that we never have before. 2) All beginning teachers need to be effectively prepared to implement curricula aligned with the standards. Given the resistance in the teacher education community to preparing teachers to implement standards in the classroom, this will be a challenge that will require increasing attention and oversight. 3) Teachers must be supported once they are in the classroom to teach aligned curricula. They will need well-designed and effectively delivered professional development and high-quality, aligned curriculum materials. While the Common Core creates tremendous economies of scale, there is little trustworthy information to help judge the quality of both professional development and curriculum materials. Thus, states and districts will need a reliable way to vet instructional materials and ensure that they are aligned to the standards. If each of these items is addressed, there will be an unprecedented opportunity to learn about effective instructional practices for teaching the content in the Common Core. While the Common Core movement may have a net positive influence on the effectiveness of teacher quality reforms, this positive impact may well be diluted or even reversed if policymakers do not carefully attend to the nuances of implementation. The most difficult period for these two policy reforms will be in the next two to three years, when implementation challenges with the Common Core will clash with the rapid intensification of teacher evaluation policies. Because these changes are happening simultaneously, both reforms might be more faithfully applied if there were a moratorium on making high stakes decisions about teachers (e.g., hiring, firing, tenure) until after the Common 3 Draft: Please do not cite without permission from the author. Core and its assessments are fully implemented. (This would also have the beneficial side effect of allowing us to learn more about these policies before using them to make important decisions about individual teachers.) Unfortunately, while both sets of reforms hold some promise for improving the quality of U.S. schools, political challenges arising from poor implementation may derail both policies in the long run. Trends in Teacher Quality Reform Teacher Evaluation Policy Teacher evaluation has long been a pro forma exercise; generally percent or less of teachers have been rated unsatisfactory under traditional teacher evaluation systems.3 Thus, poor performance has gone unaddressed, and strong performance has gone unrewarded. The lack of meaningful evaluation has also meant that teachers have historically received little quality information about their effectiveness as educators, thus inhibiting their ability to improve their instruction. Recognizing these problems, policymakers have turned to teacher evaluation reform. Between 2009 and 2012, the number of states legislating that student performance must be an important criterion in teacher evaluations rose from 4 to 22; the number of states in which annual evaluations were required for all teachers rose from 15 to 24; and the number of states where evidence of teacher effectiveness was the preponderant criterion in teacher tenure decisions rose from 0 to 9.4 These trends will continue as the 34 states approved for ESEA waivers implement their reforms. A central condition for receiving flexibility from No Child Left Behind’s accountability mandates was that states create and adopt teacher and principal evaluation and support systems that take into account student achievement as a measure of teacher performance. States 4 Draft: Please do not cite without permission from the author. responded to the waiver requirements by proposing dozens of new teacher evaluation policies. For instance, states are implementing systems that rate teachers on four point scales (often ineffective to highly effective), require multiple classroom observations each year, and use student achievement as a substantial portion of a teacher’s overall evaluation. While preliminary evidence suggests that inflated ratings continue to be a problem in new systems, there is hope that evaluation will become more meaningful and useful over time.5 Teacher Tenure A second prominent teacher policy reform is the recent push to revamp tenure rules and curtail collective bargaining powers. These reforms are inextricably tied to evaluation reforms; with higher-quality evaluations, it is only logical that we would begin to ask "What should be done with unsatisfactory teachers?" Across a wide array of states, legislatures and governors have changed laws to make it increasingly challenging for teachers to obtain and keep tenure. A total of 34 states have made changes to tenure laws since 2008 (18 in 2011 alone).6 While some states went so far as to end tenure, most states simply made tenure more difficult to obtain by strengthening requirements