You can listen to the Podcast at RiShawn Biddle’s radio page or download directly to your iPod, MP3 player or smartphone. Also, subscribe to the podcast series. It is also available on iTunes, Blubrry, Podcast Alley, the Education Podcast Network,  Zune Marketplace and PodBean. Also, add the podcast on Viigo, if you have a BlackBerry, iPhone or Android phone.

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Certainly Michelle Rhee knows how to stir up controversy — especially when it comes to her efforts as chancellor of D.C. Public Schools to improve the district’s abysmal quality of teaching and curricula. Her decision to dismiss 241 teachers rated as ineffective by the district’s year-old IMPACT system (which uses student test score data as part of evaluations) is going to be contested by the district’s dysfunctional American Federation of Teachers local and will play its part in the election battle between her patron, Mayor Adrian Fenty and rival (and Rhee foe) Vincent Gray. Rhee’s bedside manner isn’t exactly lovely. But she deserves much praise for her Churchillian commitment to seriously overhauling a school system once called the Superfund Site of American public education and for slowly revamping an obsolete regime of teacher compensation that is terrible for children and high-quality teachers alike.

In this clip from her 2008 testimony before the House Education and Labor Committee, Rhee not only explains why improving teacher quality is important, but why we can no longer count on integration and the noble desire to improve education for all children to address racial-, ethnic- and gender-based achievement gaps. Improving education for all children not only requires dedication to the idea that all children can learn and deserve the best education. It also means restructuring a system that has long damned itself (and kids) to low expectations. Also, watch this Dropout Nation video on how Rhee’s teacher czar, Jason Kamras, is working to improve teacher quality and the challenges he faces in doing so.

We need talented people like Dwayne Thomas of Mandarin Middle School in the teaching and principal ranks -- even for just a short time.

Based on the talk about (and derision from defenders of traditional public education over) the level of attrition of Teach For America graduates after entering classrooms, one would think that university schools of education were stellar in this regard. But as the eminent teaching guru Martin Haberman points out, half of all aspiring teachers coming out of ed schools never make it into the classroom in the first place. As Richard Ingersoll also notes, half of those teachers who enter the classroom leave within five years (and one third of them leave by their third year). All in all, no matter how you slice it, you have high levels of turnover in the teaching profession and this is a problem.

Or is it? As it may turn out, little of this attrition may be troubling at least in the main. If one looks at the research on teacher effectiveness and the talent arc of the average teacher, it may not make sense for many teachers to be in the classroom for longer than two decades at most. As Dan Goldhaber and Michael Hanson have pointed out in their 2009 study, a teacher with 25 years in the classroom is no more successful in improving student achievement than an instructor working for only four years. Just as importantly, the research is suggesting that in some cases, the best teacher may not be a tenured veteran of three decades, but a rookie teacher who will only get better still over time.

This isn’t to say that young teachers are naturally better than their more-senior counterparts. After all, there is just as much chance that the rookie is going to be a laggard instructor and will not improve over time, while the more-senior teacher is one who has always been really good at improving student performance and is a master at this craft. What it means is that the concern should not be so much about attrition, but about luring high-quality teachers into the classroom and getting as much out of their talent for the benefit of their students (our children) as possible while they are in the job.

Think about it: At its best, teaching is difficult work. Those who undertake it should be thrilled by the challenges and opportunities to improve the lives of every child with whom they work. They should be happy to be in classrooms and anticipate success every day, not be depressed about working with children who may need a lot of help. They must be competent in the subjects they teach and care for every child before them. Those who aren’t interested in such challenges or don’t care for children shouldn’t be teachers. It’s best that they move on to other pursuits.

As for the highly-talented good-to-great teachers? Just because someone is stellar at teaching, cares for children and enjoys the profession today doesn’t mean they just want to be a teacher for life. The kind of talented and gifted people who are best at teaching are also the very folks who are interested in other challenges. Some of them may involve some form of economic or social entrepreneurship. It may include the desire to be the next Steven Evangelista, Marva Collins, Michael Feinberg or Dave Levin. It could even mean rising in the education ranks to lead or shape charters, private schools or traditional districts (like Jason Kamras), become the next John Taylor Gattos or even lead path-breaking teacher training programs like Haberman. Or, they may just want to stay in the classroom and be what the Jaime Escalantes (or for me, Everett Brawner and Dave Gilbert) are for so many children: The men and women who go above and beyond to teach every child what he or she needs to achieve their economic and social destinies.

The real problem isn’t so much the turnover, but a system in which too few high-quality aspiring teachers are recruited; which trains aspiring teachers abysmally for teaching in the classroom (and whose training usually involves pedagogy over subject-matter competence and how to work with kids from backgrounds different than that of those who teach them); which instills teachers with a rather dispiriting vision of classroom teaching (especially in urban classrooms); and then compensates them in ways that are contrary to stirring high performance. As seen in the careers of Escalante and Gatto, great work is barely tolerated while mediocrity is the norm.

The union work rules that limit the amount of work teachers can do, along with the lack of performance management and rigorous evaluation, means that top performers get little feedback, support or recognition. Meanwhile mid-career professionals — who may have the stuff to work in the toughest urban classrooms — struggle to even get into the profession because of the emphasis on licensing instead of on quality of work and talent.

This isn’t just a problem within teaching. The school reform movement has shown the importance of fostering and coalescing entrepreneurship, system leadership and practical problem-solving. But it has only begun to crack traditional education circles. Far too many within traditional public education lack curiosity about how matters are solved in areas outside of education; if anything, they are hostile to anything that seems to smell of “hedge funds” or “Corporate America” or even Main Street, even though all three are the main generators of economic and social activity. There is no iPad or iPhone without Apple and Steve Jobs; no Windows without Bill Gates and Microsoft; and no Facebook, Warner Brothers or Hewlett-Packards without entrepreneurial activity. This anti-intellectualism results in an unwillingness to think outside of the traditional concept of unions, districts, and school boards.

The solution to these problems lies in recruiting and training high-quality teachers who can serve in the classroom and, if they so choose, foster new programs, nonprofits and ideas within education, Right now, however, it is afterthought, not the norm. Thanks to TFA, similar alternative training programs, and reformers within and outside of traditional public education, this is changing. But it is changing too slowly. We must reform smarter and faster.

Attracting great teachers must begin long before they enter the classrooms. As Arthur Levine has pointed out ad-nauseam, most ed schools do a terrible job of screening out teachers. Almost none use the Haberman method — put an aspiring teacher before a kid and watch how he or she interacts with them — or use PRAXIS I or the SAT to screen out the high-quality candidates from those who aren’t (although one state, Indiana, is making that a requirement for its ed schools this year). Nor do ed schools recruit in the same manner as Teach For America, seeking out black and Latino collegians for classroom careers. It is one reason — besides the dropout crisis — that we have so few minorities in the classroom.

Once the teachers get into the classroom, they must be rewarded early and often for great work. This means the traditional teacher compensation system — with its emphasis on near-lifetime employment and seniority- and degree-based pay and privileges — must go out the door. Performance pay is one way to reward teachers. Another is to provide them start-up money to start their own social entrepreneur programs — including schools, teaching fellowship programs or even the next Black Star Project. Spreading out the Chad Sansings of education into the wider world will help boost teacher quality — and the quality of education for every child.

At least these are my thoughts. What are yours? Feel free to respond.

Steven Evangelista with Eva Moskowitz. Photo courtesy of GothamSchools.org

For those who read the New York Times report on the use of Facebook by students to praise their teachers — or Bijan Sabat’s own thoughts on the matter — listen to this Dropout Nation Podcast on Harlem Link Charter School co-founder Steven Evangelista and how his rediscovery of one of his former students — and where the kid landed — is forcing him to look at one of the biggest challenges to stemming the nation’s dropout crisis.

In an age in which Facebook and Twitter can help friends and family deepen connection, why isn’t American public education using technology and social media — including school data systems — to broaden the crucial bond between teacher and student (especially a student who needs those bonds to stay on the path to graduation) long after the child leaves the classroom. Unfortunately, the same rules that hinder the development of school data system — a matter about which I discussed in A Byte At the Apple also complicate this work.

You can listen to the Podcast at RiShawn Biddle’s radio page or download directly to your iPod or MP3 player. Also, subscribe to the podcast series. It is also available on iTunes, Blubrry, Podcast Alley, the Education Podcast Network and Zune Marketplace.

Gut check time.

As I have pointed out since the beginning of the year, the efforts by congressional Democrats and President Barack Obama to keep control of Congress may be the most-immediate problem for the school reform efforts being orchestrated by Obama and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. As Republicans continue to gain momentum — and are likely to capture seats in Indiana, Arkansas and perhaps, even Connecticut — Democratic leaders will need all their activists on the ground to bring out the votes — especially the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, the single-biggest donors in Democratic (and general election) politics. But NEA and AFT support won’t come without a price — or without conflict with centrist Democrats who are driving Race to the Top and other Obama initiatives.

This was exemplified yesterday when outgoing Rep. David Obey proposed to use $500 million in dollars slated for Race to the Top to fund a $10 billion package to stave off an ever-dwindling wave of teacher and school staff layoffs. School reformers such as the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, Congressman Jared Polis and the Education Trust went on the warpath, wrangling support against Obey’s effort, while the NEA and AFT reminded other congressional Democrats that they better pay to play.

As Education Trust communications czar Amy Wilkins rightly points out, Obama and Duncan can’t afford to let Obey succeed — and not just because the administration will lose credibility among states and the school reform movement. The reality is that the Obama administration has little in the way of concrete achievements (at least those that don’t involve the controversial and still-likely-to get-partly-overturned health care reform plan). Education reform is one of those sparse achievements and anything that renders it a failure may lead to Obama going the way of Jimmy Carter in the re-election department.

Then there is the reality that this latest version of the education bailout plan (originally planned for $23 billion) is not even needed. A few months ago, it was assumed that as much as five percent of the 6.2 million teachers and school staffers would be laid off due to fiscal problems. Since then, as Mike Antonucci points out almost daily, those layoff numbers have dwindled further as school districts and states use furloughs, tighten belts and attempt to divert federal special education funding to keep teachers and staff on payrolls. That this comes after a previous $100 billion bailout (as part of the federal stimulus plan passed at the beginning of Obama’s term as president) — along with news that education spending hasn’t exactly been flatlined in the past decade — makes school districts and states look downright spendthrifty.

Obama and Duncan probably realize that ARRA II, as I call it, won’t force states to deal with the long-term causes of their fiscal woes: Pension deficits, overly generous benefits such as nearly-free healthcare for teachers, and the traditional system of compensating teachers, which has been costly to taxpayers and students alike. Even if ARRA II forced school districts to abandon the use of reverse seniority (or last hired-first fired) in layoff decisions, it wouldn’t mean much without the acquiescence of NEA and AFT locals, who oppose any change in the status quo.

But for the Democrats, other considerations matter. This includes bolstering the re-election prospects of vulnerable candidates and setting the table for Obama’s re-election effort two years beyond. For the Democrats to overcome the odds of a Republican victory in November, they need lots and lots of bodies. And money. The NEA and AFT offer plenty of that — including $66 million during the 2007-2008 election cycle alone — and far more campaigners on the ground than what school reformers can muster.

Which has always been the problem for the school reform movement. Sure, they have succeeded in winning over most of the policymakers within the Beltway and the nation’s statehouses. But the NEA and AFT have the advantage of strength in numbers. Until now, that intimidation power — the combination of teachers working the corridors of Congress and state capitals and the soft lobbying of parents in schoolhouses — is why the two unions have dominated education policy. Although teachers unions have fewer supporters and can no longer count on unquestioned support from Democrats, they can still whip up enough money and bodies to stave off the most-pathbreaking of reforms, and win over support for bailout schemes that benefit their rank-and-file.

School reformers need to pay attention to what is happening now and build stronger ties to grassroots advocates and parents on the ground; and challenge politicians opposed to school reform at the ballot box and in the hallways. Without them, Race to the Top will become crawl back to the past. The 1.3 million kids destined to drop out in the next year need more than that.

UPDATE (10:54 p.m., July 1): Proving my point, Obey rallied all but 15 Democrats to approve the Race to the Top cuts 239-182 [note: link still says vote not yet available). All but three Republican voted against it.

On this week’s Dropout Nation Podcast, I elaborate on famed teacher John Taylor Gatto‘s signature quote that we should educate from the perspective that almost all children are geniuses. The emergence of high-quality alternatives to traditional public education, along with research on child development and teacher quality shows that all children can succeed if we foster a culture of genius in American public education.

You can listen to the Podcast at RiShawn Biddle’s radio page or download directly to your iPod, MP3 player or smartphone. Also, subscribe to the podcast series. It is also available on iTunes, Blubrry, Podcast Alley, the Education Podcast Network,  Zune Marketplace and PodBean. Also, access it on Viigo.

For those further interested in learning how to solve America’s reading crisis — especially among young boys — that I discussed earlier this week in The American Spectator, listen to one of Dropout Nation’s most-popular podcasts. As I’ve noted, young men (and women) who have difficulty reading will also struggle with math and their other studies, contributing to low academic achievement and exacerbating the nation’s dropout crisis.

You can listen to the Podcast at RiShawn Biddle’s radio page or download directly to your iPod, MP3 player or smartphone. Also, subscribe to the podcast series. It is also available on iTunes, Blubrry, Podcast Alley, the Education Podcast Network,  Zune Marketplace and PodBean.

On this week’s Dropout Nation Podcast, I profile Harlem Link Charter School co-founder Steven Evangelista and how his rediscovery of one of his former students — and where the kid landed — is forcing him to look at one of the biggest challenges to stemming the nation’s dropout crisis. In an age in which Facebook and Twitter can help friends and family deepen connection, why isn’t American public education using technology and social media — including school data systems — to broaden the crucial bond between teacher and student (especially a student who needs those bonds to stay on the path to graduation) long after the child leaves the classroom?

You can listen to the Podcast at RiShawn Biddle’s radio page or download directly to your iPod or MP3 player. Also, subscribe to the podcast series. It is also available on iTunes, Blubrry, Podcast Alley, the Education Podcast Network and Zune Marketplace.

As you will see in this video, improving teacher quality isn’t just a business for Avila. It isn’t for me either. And it definitely shouldn’t be for you.

Watch more videos at Dropout Nation’s YouTube page.

On this week’s Dropout Nation Podcast, I discuss how poor-performing teachers damage the educational destinies of students, bring down the morale of their colleagues and foster the nation’s dropout crisis. The damage wrecked by ineffective teaching — and the culture of mediocrity they foster — is promoted and sustained by schools of education, collective bargaining agreements, state laws and cultures within districts.

You can listen to the Podcast at RiShawn Biddle’s radio page or download directly to your iPod, MP3 player or smartphone. Also, subscribe to the podcast series. It is also available on iTunes, Blubrry, Podcast Alley, the Education Podcast Network and Zune Marketplace.