SCORE Announces Statewide Campaign To Recruit New Teachers

Today, the State Collaborative on Reforming Education (SCORE) announced a statewide campaign to recruit millennials into the teaching profession. The campaign–Teach Today. Change Tomorrow–will include statewide radio ads, resources for prospective teachers, and recruiting current teachers to help recruit others into the teaching profession.

I love the forwardness of this campaign to actively recruit the next generation of teachers, and I hope it works in recruiting great teachers. We need teachers out on the front lines showing college students how important education is for our country’s future. 

Here’s the press release:

Tennessee needs high-quality teachers across the state, and Teach Today. Change Tomorrow. is committed to helping place a great teacher in front of every student. With more than 20,000 anticipated job openings in education by 2024 in Tennessee, Teach Today. Change Tomorrow. seeks to motivate passionate young people to pursue a career in teaching and ensure future teachers are prepared.

The mission of Teach Today. Change Tomorrow. is to inspire talented young people across Tennessee to become our state’s next generation of teachers,” said Jamie Woodson, SCORE executive chairman and CEO. “By illustrating the positive impact that great teaching has on a community, we will show them that they have the power to change the future beyond the classroom.”

Teach Today. Change Tomorrow. will look to empower millennials to go into the teaching profession. Tennessee has many high-needs schools in rural and urban districts and needs to recruit more STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) teachers, an area where the state faces a critical shortage. Teach Today. Change Tomorrow. will also address the need for more diversity in Tennessee’s teacher ranks. Students of color make up 35 percent of the public school population, yet just 15 percent of teachers in the state identify as persons of color.

The campaign includes a website, TeachTodayTN.org, and presences on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, supported with statewide radio advertising. The website contains information about the path to an education career, testimonials from current teachers and links to all Tennessee educator preparation programs.

From mentorship through its Ambassador program, made up of teachers and education professionals throughout the state, to providing the tools and information necessary to become a teacher in Tennessee, Teach Today. Change Tomorrow. will be an essential resource for millennials who want to make a difference through teaching.

“Kids all across Tennessee deserve adults who will support them, cheer for them, and are champions for them,” said Cicely Woodard, a teacher at West End Middle Prep. “Our students need more educators who will listen to them and who want them to be successful in the future.”

More information can be found at TeachTodayTN.org.

Partners in this work include the Hyde Family Foundations, Nashville Public Education Foundation, Memphis Education Fund, Public Education Foundation Chattanooga, Conexión Américas, Lipscomb University, Teach for America Nashville, Crisp Communications, Tennessee Charter School Center and the Tennessee Department of Education.


 

 

4 Bills Teachers Need To Know About

While the debate around vouchers is loud and needed, we must not forget about the other bills that are making their way through the legislative process. Here are four bills that teachers need to know that will change how teacher effectiveness and preparation are measured.

The proposed bills all look like they will pass and become law. Spread the word about these bills so teachers will have the most updated information.

SB114/HB695 By Senator Bo Watson & Rep. Ryan Williams

There is a consensus that we need to improve the preparation of future teachers. Teachers need the most updated information from faculty that still have connections to the classroom.

The amended version of the bill requires education preparation faculty, including education deans, to have direct personal involvement in a school annually. The state summarizes that bill as follows:

Requires full-time educator preparation program faculty members, including academic deans, to have direct personal involvement in public schools or local education agencies (LEAs) annually. Requires faculty involvement to include professional learning targeted to pre-K through grade 12 teachers; learning focused on LEA specific initiatives; direct instruction to pre- K through grade 12 students; district-level partnership; or observation of pre-K through grade 12 teachers.

The bill has passed the Senate and is waiting to be taken up in the House Finance committee this week.

SB575/HB626 by Senator Dolores Gresham & Rep. Sabi Kumar:

Right now, you are able to log on the Teacher Prep Report Card to find out information about how teacher preparation programs are doing in preparing teachers for the classroom. This bill will add teacher observation data into this mix.

The bill requires the department of education to provide all state board of education approved teacher training programs access to annual evaluation data for teachers and principals graduating from the programs for a minimum of five years following the completion of the program.

It’s not clear if the public will be able to see the evaluation data from the different preparation programs. Either way, I hope the programs will use the data to improve.

The bill has passed the Senate and is waiting for the House to take it up this weeks.

SB1196/HB309 by Senator Mark Norris and Rep. David Hawk

This bill deals with assessment data that are used in overall teacher evaluations. The bill makes permanent the flexibility to use the most recent year of TVAAS student growth, if it leads to a higher evaluation score for the teacher. I’ve heard that some superintendents like this bill because it could be used to reward a teacher for a large one year growth. The three year growth option will allow teacher flexibility to change schools, grade level, or move to support a higher need population.

And here’s the state’s summary:

Requires the student growth portion of teacher evaluations to account for 10 percent of the overall evaluation criteria in FY16-17 and 20 percent in FY17-18 and each year thereafter. Requires that the most recent year’s student growth evaluation composite account for 35 percent of growth data in a teacher’s evaluation, if such use results in a higher evaluation score. Authorizes the use of educational progress and evaluation data for research purposes at postsecondary institutions. Requires Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program (TCAP) subject-area scores to make up the following percentages of elementary and middle school students’ final spring semester grades in grades 3-8: 10 percent in FY16-17; 15 percent in FY17-18; and 15 to 25 percent in FY18-19 and subsequent years.

This bill has passed the House and is waiting to be passed in the Senate.

SB250/HB67 by Senator Jim Tracy & Rep. Eddie Smith

This bill is trying to solve the problem that arises with teachers who teach in non-tested subjects. The state summary is pretty clear in this case:

Requires local education agencies (LEAs), by the 2018-2019 academic school year, to adopt at least one appropriate alternative growth model approved by the State Board of Education in order to provide individual growth scores to teachers in non- tested grades and subjects. Requires the Department of Education (DOE) to develop valid and reliable alternative student growth models for non-tested grades and subjects currently without such models.

What do you think?

Teachers, what are thoughts on these four bills? Let us know in the comments.

For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport.


 

 

Ten Years of TFA in Memphis

The Commercial Appeal in Memphis reported on the 10 year anniversary of Teach for America in Memphis. It was fascinating to see how the demographics of TFA Memphis has changed for the better over the last 10 years. What started out as mostly White teachers from outside Memphis has turned into a corps with more teachers of color and more teachers from Memphis.

“There were five people of color in the entire corps,” Turner, a member of that first local group, said. “Nobody from Memphis. In fact I think I might have been the only one in the corps who preferred to come to Memphis.”

This year’s incoming cohort has 138 teachers. A quarter are from Memphis. More than half are people of color, and half come from low-income backgrounds.

The demographic shift is intentional, Turner said, and indicative of the efforts TFA, and particularly the Memphis office, has made to respond to the needs of communities and critics of the organization’s work. The office added a local recruitment team that netted 24 corps members this year.

Compared to 10 years ago, more TFA teachers are staying in Memphis and many of those are still teaching.

I believe that TFA is a great way for mid-career professionals to come into the teaching profession with a great support network. Those support networks are not in place in some teaching colleges in Tennessee that offer transitional teaching programs.

Of the first cohort 10 years ago, 25 percent of the teachers remained in Memphis after their two-year commitment. The cohort that just wrapped its second year in schools this spring has 70 percent staying locally. Of those who are staying, 90 percent are still teaching, Turner said.

Corps members are also no longer nearly exclusively just out of college. Ten years ago, all but six were recruited their senior year of college. This year, 38 percent are just like Cassell — mid-career professionals looking for a change.

The 33-year-old former accountant came from an education nonprofit in New York City, passing up other big cities with TFA in favor of Memphis where she thought she could make the most difference. She also hopes to add an international flair — her family fled civil war in Liberia for the United States in 1991.

What’s great is that there are 250 TFA alumni in Memphis currently teaching and another 150 TFA alumni are still living and working in Memphis after their TFA time.

According to the Report Card on the Effectiveness of Teacher Training Programs, Teach for America Memphis teachers were better than beginning teachers in 4th-8th grade TCAP composite, science, and social studies and on the high school End of Course exam composite, Algebra I, and biology exams. The same group of teachers also struggled in reading and math compared to other teachers statewide.

For more on education policy and politics in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport.


 

Teachers Aren’t Dumb. Their Training May Be.

Daniel Willingham has a great piece in the New York Times today that discusses the notion that teachers are dumb. Of course they are not dumb! They just may have not been trained properly. This is totally true when it comes to reading:

Consider reading. In 2000, a national panel of experts concluded that reading teachers need explicit knowledge of language features that most people know only implicitly: syntax, morphology (how the roots of words can combine with one another or with prefixes or suffixes) and phonological awareness (the ability to hear parts of spoken language like syllables and individual speech sounds). Yet many undergraduates preparing to teach, fresh from their coursework in reading instruction, don’t know these concepts. In one study, 42 percent could not correctly define “phonological awareness.”

 

It could be that the professors don’t know it as well.

Of greater concern, those who educate future teachers don’t know them either. Emily Binks-Cantrell of Texas A&M University and her colleagues tested 66 professors of reading instruction for their knowledge of literacy concepts. When asked to identify the number of phonemes in a word, they were correct 62 percent of the time. They struggled more with morphemes, correctly identifying them 27 percent of the time.

Willingham makes the point that it is hard to evaluate the teachers on test scores of students when the teachers are not properly trained in the first place. They have been left in the dark. Let’s not leave our future teachers in the dark. Let’s get to work improving our teacher prep programs.

Much of what makes a teacher great is hard to teach, but some methods of classroom instruction have been scientifically tested and validated. Teachers who don’t know these methods are not stupid; they’ve been left in the dark.