Teachers grade Common Core: C+ and room for improvement

Teachers grade Common Core: C+ and room for improvement
A survey of teachers on Common Core education standards showed mixed results. Half of teachers surveyed think Common Core standards help students with critical thinking, but their enthusiasm has waned.
By Stacy Teicher Khadaroo
CS Monitor
OCTOBER 3, 2014

"Teachers feel more prepared to teach the Common Core State Standards and are already starting to see students improve their critical thinking skills. But the enthusiasm has dipped since last year, and only half say the new standards will be positive for most students.

Those are some key findings in a survey of 1,676 K-12 teachers in the 43 states that have adopted Common Core, released by Scholastic and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation...

The survey found clear progress on implementation of the standards. Twenty-five percent of teachers said implementation is complete in their schools, and another 39 percent said it is mostly complete (up from 13 and 33 percent last year).

In schools where implementation was fully complete in 2013-14, most teachers agreed somewhat (62 percent) or strongly (24 percent) that implementation was going well.

Seventy-nine percent of teachers said they feel somewhat or very prepared to teach the new standards, up from 71 percent a year ago.

In schools where implementation is under way or complete, 53 percent of teachers said students have already improved their ability to think critically, use reasoning skills, and present their ideas based on evidence; 50 percent said students are better able to comprehend informational texts; and 46 percent said students are working more collaboratively with peers.

However, the percentage who said they are enthusiastic about the standards declined from 73 percent to 68 percent. And the percentage who said implementation is or will be challenging has climbed from 73 percent to 81 percent.

Teachers are split on the impact on students: 48 percent said Common Core will be positive for most students, 17 percent said they will be negative, and the remainder said they won’t make much difference. Last year, 57 percent said the standards would be positive and only 8 percent said they would be negative.

Teachers are concerned with what will happen to students who have the longest road to travel to meet the standards and how student scores on new assessments will affect teacher evaluations.

But “the teachers who were more negative were also less involved with implementing the Common Core,” and tended to get information more from the media than from their own districts, says Margery Mayer, president of Scholastic Education. The survey findings suggest that when it comes to Common Core implementation, “the more you do it, the more you love it,” she says.

Report: U.S. teacher training an "industry of mediocrity"

Report: U.S. teacher training an "industry of mediocrity"
AP
June 18, 2013

The nation's teacher-training programs do not adequately prepare would-be educators for the classroom, even as they produce almost triple the number of graduates needed, according to a survey of more than 1,000 programs released Tuesday.

The National Council on Teacher Quality review is a scathing assessment of colleges' education programs and their admission standards, training and value. The report, which drew immediate criticism, was designed to be provocative and urges leaders at teacher-training programs to rethink what skills would-be educators need to be taught to thrive in the classrooms of today and tomorrow.

"Through an exhaustive and unprecedented examination of how these schools operate, the review finds they have become an industry of mediocrity, churning out first-year teachers with classroom management skills and content knowledge inadequate to thrive in classrooms" with an ever-increasing diversity of ethnic and socioeconomic students, the report's authors wrote.

"A vast majority of teacher preparation programs do not give aspiring teachers adequate return on their investment of time and tuition dollars," the report said.

The report was likely to drive debate about which students are prepared to be teachers in the coming decades and how they are prepared. Once a teacher settles into a classroom, it's tough to remove him or her involuntarily and opportunities for wholesale retraining are difficult — if nearly impossible — to find.

The answer, the council and its allies argue, is to make it more difficult for students to get into teacher preparation programs in the first place. And once there, they should be taught the most effective methods to help students.

"There's plenty of research out there that shows that teacher quality is the single most important factor," said Delaware Gov. Jack Markell, a supporter of the organization's work.

Democrat Markell said: "We have to attract the best candidates" possible.

To accomplish that goal, Markell earlier this year signed into law a measure making admission to education programs more difficult in his state. Potential teachers must either post a 3.0 grade point average or demonstrate "mastery" results on a standardized test such as the ACT or SAT before they're even admitted to a program.

It's an idea the council has applauded and suggests other states should consider to limit the number of candidates entering teacher training programs.

"You just have to have a pulse and you can get into some of these education schools," said Michael Petrilli, a vice president at the conservative-leaning Fordham Institute and a former official in the Department of Education's Office of Innovation and Improvement. "If policymakers took this report seriously, they'd be shutting down hundreds of programs."

Some 239,000 teachers are trained each year and 98,000 are hired — meaning too many students are admitted and only a fraction find work.

Among the council's other findings:

— Only a quarter of education programs limit admission to students in the top half of their high school class. The remaining three quarters of programs allow students who fared poorly in high school to train as teachers...

Outcry as teachers at Oldham school use staff training day to attend a wedding

Outcry as teachers at Oldham school use staff training day to attend a wedding
Kim Pilling
Independent
07 November 2012

A headteacher has defended her staff who attended a colleague's wedding after the school closed early for training purposes.

Pupils at St Hilda's School in Oldham, Greater Manchester, were sent home early on the afternoon of October 30.

Parents received a letter which gave a reason of "staff development training".

One of those parents drove past the voluntary-aided school on the training day and noticed the Tilbury Street car park was empty.

He said he later found more than 20 of the teachers at the wedding celebrations in the nearby Grand Venue.

Father-of-two Kamal Hussain told the Oldham Evening Chronicle: "As taxpayers, we pay their wages and now they're being paid to lie to us and go to a wedding.

"I want an inquiry to the bottom of it because it's unfair on the children."

Headteacher Gillian Pursey told the newspaper: "Staff were given that hour and a half of staff development time to research things for our golden jubilee celebrations.

"They could do that research on or off site, and whenever they liked. Some decided to do it straight away, and others decided to do it after the wedding. It was all agreed with the school governors and is all above board."