Meet TAP’s New
Building and
Districts in Tennessee, Sustaining Talent
Minnesota and Iowa
Creating conditions in
high-poverty schools
that support effective
teaching and learning
Education Week
Teacher
Career-ladder
program centers
on teaching rubric,
targeted support
14
The TAP System
Training Portal
in Practice
How can career
teachers become
more involved?
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11
PAGE
6
PAGE
PAGE
PAGE
1
16
Increasing Educator
Effectiveness
Lessons learned
from Teacher Incentive
Fund sites
Meet TAP’s New
Districts in Tennessee,
Minnesota and Iowa
$40 million in federal Teacher Incentive Fund grants will allow TAP to help
schools in different ways—from reaching rural populations and strengthening
charters to building and developing a cadre of STEM teachers
Since its introduction in 1999, TAP: The System for Teacher and
Student Advancement has worked to address the unique needs of
schools and districts, while ensuring that the critical components
of its system for instructional improvement are successfully
implemented and deliver results. Whether it is closing persistent
achievement gaps in a Louisiana district, attracting and retaining
effective teachers to schools with historically high levels of turnover
in South Carolina, or better preparing teacher candidates for
positions in high-need Arizona schools, the TAP system has been
the cornerstone of many schools’ strategy for success.
The effectiveness of its four interlocking elements of career
advancement, professional development, teacher accountability
and performance-based compensation is backed up by research
and a growing body of evidence in the field. The TAP system’s
success in improving teaching and learning in high-need schools
has been recognized through the U.S. Department of Education’s
competitive Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF)
program. Since its inception in 2006,
the program has rewarded TAP-based projects with more than
$500 million in TIF dollars.
The funding has enabled TAP to expand its reach to more than
20,000 teachers and 200,000 students nationwide. 2012’s awards
totaling nearly $40 million will not only allow TAP’s impact to
expand, but also—building on NIET’s experience—to explore
different and innovative areas of focus for improving teacher
quality in high-need schools.
In Tennessee, NIET will work with rural Tennessee districts to
maximize the effectiveness of their teacher evaluation systems
by building better professional development and support.
In Minnesota, NIET will partner with a consortium of charter
schools serving high-need student populations to find new ways
to attract, retain and develop a highly effective teaching staff
through new career opportunities designed to support school
goals. And in Iowa—a state new to TAP—NIET will work with
schools in the Saydel and Central Decatur Community School
Districts to strengthen their Science, Technology, Engineering,
and Mathematics (STEM) teaching staff as well as provide more
challenging STEM learning opportunities for students.
“We are excited to work with such a diverse number of schools
and districts on comprehensive plans for improving teacher
and principal effectiveness,” said Dr. Gary Stark, president and
chief executive officer of NIET. “TAP puts teacher leaders and
principals in the driver’s seat to move the whole school forward.
Our proven work shows that when you create a collaborative,
nurturing environment for everyone to thrive, higher recruitment
and retention follow.”
1
Get to know
TAP’s new
districts
Creating a Corps of Science, Technology,
Engineering and Mathematics Experts in Iowa
The Teacher Incentive Fund’s new competition for developing highly effective Science,
Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) educators created a prime opportunity
for Iowa to take part. The TIF STEM grant supports full implementation of the TAP
system in high-need Central Decatur and Saydel Community School Districts with
an emphasis on finding new and innovative ways to attract, develop and retain STEM
teachers—a priority in Iowa.
The state established the Governor’s Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics
Advisory Council in July 2011. Co-chaired by Lieutenant Governor Kim Reynolds
and University of Northern Iowa President Benjamin Allen, the council was tasked
with helping Iowa provide world-class classrooms by increasing student achievement in
STEM, better preparing math and science teachers, and connecting STEM education
to economic development.
districts
Central Decatur and Saydel
Community School Districts
In summer 2012 the state built on the effort by creating six regional hubs to support
STEM education in K–12 schools. Led by an expert manager and governed by advisory
boards of cross-cutting stakeholders, each hub is charged with taking exemplary STEM
programming to scale. For the Central Decatur and Saydel Community School Districts,
located in the South Central hub, they saw TAP as a vehicle to enhance teacher-quality
reforms already underway, and to address the challenge of offering a high-quality STEM
learning experience to students.
projected 5-year tif grant
Nearly $9.6 million
focus
To increase teacher effectiveness in highneed schools, with a focus on recruiting and
developing Science, Technology, Engineering
and Mathematics (STEM) teachers
2
Chris Coffelt, superintendent of schools for the Central
Decatur district, said, “We are excited by the opportunity for
TAP to help provide more structure and better consistency to
sustain and improve student achievement.”
Saydel Community School District Superintendent Brad Buck
notes that the TAP system will give the district the resources
it needs to make its instructional vision a reality. “Our students,
faculty and administrators are eager to take learning to new
levels,” he said. “Between the expertise of NIET, the power
of TAP as a system, and local educators and others committed
to improvement, we believe this TIF grant is nothing short
of transformational.”
TAP’s culture of advancement, collaboration, support and
compensation will build on the skills of the current faculty
as well as draw talented people to these districts, including
STEM teachers. In addition to TAP’s rigor, STEM teachers in
the districts will look forward to participating in partnerships
with Graceland University (for Central Decatur) and Grand
View University (for Saydel) that will allow access to additional
training and STEM coursework. The grant will also support
the districts to recruit new STEM teachers. They will work
with their respective universities to place student teachers in
their classrooms and train them on the TAP system. This will
help develop the teachers from day one and ensure a smooth
transition to the classroom.
Another exciting opportunity to gain advanced skills and
content knowledge is through participation in the state’s
Real World Externship for Math, Science and Technology
Teachers program. The program matches secondary teachers
with industry hosts for six-week application experiences
funded through the National Science Foundation, the Iowa
Economic Development Authority, the Governor’s STEM
Advisory Council, and cost-sharing by many host businesses.
The Iowa regional STEM hubs will support teachers year-round
with access to programs and resources.
As a national organization, NIET will draw from the expertise
of more than 800 TAP master teachers from across its network
to further strengthen the work in this grant as well as ensure
that students have access to and participate in rigorous and
engaging STEM coursework. This network includes teachers
in South Carolina, who will be similarly enhancing their TAP
implementation through a $24.7 million TIF STEM grant to
the state department of education. Efforts undertaken there
will provide NIET with knowledge from a broader set of TAP
schools about how to increase the effectiveness of STEM
teaching and learning.
The TAP System Training Portal will also be a valuable tool,
complete with hundreds of hours of video, including classroom
lessons by exemplary classroom teachers, along with evaluation
results and post-conferences. NIET plans to coordinate a STEM
Symposium hosted by one of the districts in Year Three of the
grant, and will continuously work with higher education partners
and STEM experts to support students in taking advantage of
Iowa’s strong dual enrollment program as well as offer challenging,
ongoing STEM learning for teachers.
“We are incredibly proud of these two districts and their innovative
spirit,” said Dr. Jason Glass, director of the Iowa Department of
Education. “We look for them to lead the way in this exciting new
era of the teaching profession.”
3
Connecting with Rural Tennessee Communities
When representatives from rural schools in south and central Tennessee visited the
TAP system in action in Knox County Schools, it was an eye-opener. During the past
year, districts from across Tennessee have been implementing the state teacher evaluation
system called the Tennessee Educator Acceleration Model (TEAM), which is built on
the TAP Teaching Standards. Similar to TAP, TEAM measures teacher performance
through classroom observations, the learning growth of students in a teacher’s classroom,
and schoolwide academic growth. These districts were already using a new evaluation
tool based on the TAP rubric, and had professional learning communities (PLCs) in
place. TIF offered the opportunity to tie these elements together using teacher leaders to
connect evaluations with professional development and coaching, and to restructure the
compensation system to support educational goals.
districts
Rural schools in south and
central Tennessee, including
Athens City Schools
projected 5-year tif grant
$15.2 million
focus
To build schoolbased professional
development and
support in rural
communities
That’s where the TAP system comes in. Through a $15.2-million TIF grant, rural districts
will implement TAP in multiple schools. This means that they can build a “shared leadership”
model in which TAP mentor and master teachers work alongside the administrators to
create and then meet new school goals. Two key responsibilities of mentor and master
teachers are to lead the professional development sessions—for which the schools have
already set aside time—and to ensure that school-based professional development is
more coherent and effective.
After observing a TAP professional development “cluster” meeting, the directors from
the districts were excited by the opportunity to implement the system in their schools.
Dr. Robert Greene of the Athens City Schools district noted implementing the full TAP
system will “help us have a deeper understanding of the [TAP] rubric,” which underlies
the new statewide evaluation. Noting the significant difference that TAP brings to the
structure, impact and accountability of teacher learning, Dr. Edd Diden of Morgan County
Schools called TAP “PLCs on steroids.”
Dr. Ann Shaw, a senior program specialist for NIET and liaison for TAP throughout the
length of the grant, added that TAP’s cluster meetings let “teachers know what they need
to do to improve instruction.”
Shaw explained that this strong support and rigorous evaluation, along with TAP’s other
benefits of career advancement and competitive compensation, give districts an edge in
recruiting talented people to their remote locations. Principal retention is a particular
challenge for many rural districts. Through TAP, principals receive between $5,000 and
$7,500 more than their base salary. In addition, principals obtain meaningful feedback
about their practice through a well-rounded principal evaluation system. Measures of
principal effectiveness include their performance on the TAP Leadership Team Observation
Rubric; a 360-degree survey conducted by themselves, fellow faculty, and a representative
from the district or NIET; and schoolwide value-added growth.
As a supplement to the support offered through TAP, this grant will have access to the
TAP System Training Portal and NIET’s CODE data system to better track and analyze
educator evaluation information and results. For rural districts, these resources will not
only help them in their practice, but also enable them to connect to the greater TAP
network and colleagues.
“I look forward to the resources this grant provides to help our teachers and principals improve
instruction in every classroom, and enable our students to meet high achievement goals,”
said Greene. “The work of ensuring that every student has an effective teacher—and every
school is led by a great principal—is exactly where we should be focusing our greatest effort.”
4
“Chartering” a Path for High-Need Minnesota Schools
Minneapolis-St. Paul-area charter schools Emily O. Goodridge-Grey Accelerated,
Sojourner Truth Academy, Hmong College Prep and Partnership Academy may each
have its own mission and instructional vision, but they all share a common belief that
quality teachers make the difference in improving student achievement.
All four schools also voted overwhelmingly to implement TAP as their strategy
for success.
districts
Charter school consortium:
Emily O. Goodridge-Grey Accelerated
Academy, Sojourner Truth Academy,
Hmong College Prep Academy,
and Partnership Academy
projected 5-year tif grant
$13 million
focus
To develop effective
teachers in charter
schools serving
high-need student
populations
The TAP system’s laser focus on refining teacher practice, coupled with its high standards
for classroom instruction, will help the schools achieve their goals. Each offers a
rigorous, academic curriculum for high-need, traditionally low-performing student
populations. Rates of students eligible for free and reduced-price lunch range from
74 percent (Hmong College Prep) to 99 percent (Emily O. Goodridge-Grey Accelerated).
Their hopes for TAP are to have all students meet or exceed state proficiency standards
in all subjects and be prepared for college and careers.
The campuses have built a foundation by implementing Minnesota’s Q-Comp initiative,
based in large part on TAP, which incorporates career advancement, job-embedded
professional development, teacher evaluation, performance pay, and the creation of an
alternative salary schedule. They have worked with NIET’s Best Practices Center—
a provider of innovative services, support and solutions to schools, districts and
states to improve educator effectiveness—to help with their Q-Comp activities.
The implementation of the full TAP system will allow the schools to take these reforms
to the next level.
“Great teachers and visionary leaders are the key
to our success with students,” said Christianna Hang,
superintendent of Hmong College Prep Academy,
who is looking forward to the collaboration among
the TAP Leadership Team members when it comes
to professional development and teacher evaluation.
“This TIF grant and our partnership with NIET
provide significant resources to help us better
accomplish our goals.”
July Guy, director of Sojourner Truth Academy,
is excited about developing a cadre of master and
mentor teachers to serve in leadership roles while
maintaining a direct impact on teachers and students
in the classrooms. “Master and mentor teacher leaders
will provide direct feedback and development for each
teacher, benefiting every student.”
5
The Education Trust:
BUILDING
AND
SUSTAINING
TALENT
Creating Conditions in High-Poverty
Schools That Support Effective
Teaching and Learning
An Excerpt
6
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The following is an excerpt from a 2012 Education Trust report. Excerpt republished with permission.
Improving teaching effectiveness is a hot topic for policymakers
around the country these days. The gathering movement marks
an important step forward in the ongoing effort to strengthen
our nation’s schools. In many cases, however, these efforts start
and stop with improving outdated, inadequate teacher evaluation
systems. Such approaches fail to address a key problem: that our
most vulnerable students are consistently and disproportionately
saddled with the weakest teachers and seldom have access to the
strong instruction they need and deserve.
To correct this systemic flaw, districts and states must address policy
and culture issues that lead to higher rates of teacher dissatisfaction
and turnover in schools serving large populations of low-income
students and students of color. Teachers do not work in a vacuum.
Like most other professionals, their feelings about their jobs and
their decisions about where to teach are significantly impacted
by their work environments. Despite widespread assumptions
that students are the primary cause of teacher dissatisfaction
and attrition, research shows that the work environment in
schools—particularly the quality of school leadership and staff
cohesion—actually matters more, especially among teachers
working in high-poverty schools.
Around the country, too many states and districts are giving
short shrift to the teaching and learning environments in schools
serving students with the greatest need. But a few places are taking
this work seriously. In this report, the Education Trust highlights
five districts that recognize the importance of teaching and
learning conditions: Ascension Parish Public Schools in Louisiana,
Boston Public Schools in Massachusetts, Charlotte-Mecklenburg
Schools in North Carolina, and Fresno Unified and Sacramento
City Unified in California. These districts view building and
sustaining strong teaching and learning conditions as a key
strategy for attracting, developing and retaining strong teachers
in high-need schools. While each district’s approach is different,
some consistent themes emerge: a focus on strong leadership,
a campus-wide commitment to improving instruction by analyzing
student data and reflecting on practice, and a collaborative
environment that values and rewards individual contribution.
Done right, improved evaluation systems in coordination
with positive conditions for teaching and learning could
achieve equitable access to effective teachers for all students.
With information on how effective teachers are at growing
student learning, districts can be more deliberate and strategic
about creating conditions that attract, grow, and keep strong
teachers in the schools that need them most: schools serving
large concentrations of low-income students and students of
color. But this change will not occur on its own. States and
districts must be intentional about removing policy barriers
and creating conditions that ensure our neediest students
have access to great teachers.
Figuring out who the top teachers are is
crucial, but without attention to school
conditions that draw and hold on to good
teachers, this effort is meaningless to
struggling and low-income students.
7
Ascension Parish
Public Schools
Supporting and Developing Teachers
to Raise Student Success
Located along the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and
New Orleans, the Ascension Parish Public School System serves
more than 19,000 students and is one of the fastest growing
school systems in Louisiana. Roughly half of the students
Ascension serves come from low-income families and one-third
are students of color. While the district typically ranks among
the top 10 in the state, a closer look at the data reveals that the
strong academic performance of the district’s more affluent
schools on the east bank of the Mississippi river masks the poor
results of the largely African-American, high-poverty schools in
its west bank communities.
Jennifer Tuttleton, Ascension Parish’s director of school improvement,
says that until recently, recruiting teachers to the low-performing
schools in the west bank had been difficult. Among other obstacles
to student achievement in these schools, she says: “There was
not a culture of time reserved for professional development.”
And, she adds, there was no shared commitment to using data
to help students improve.
A NEW STRATEGY FOR TEACHER
DEVELOPMENT AND ACCOUNTABILITY
In the 2005-06 school year, two west bank schools serving large
percentages of low-income students and students of color fell into
state school improvement status. Lowery Intermediate School
and Donaldsonville High School posted School Performance
Scores of 55 and 58 on a scale of 0-200. The cut-off score was 60.
In an effort to lift the two schools out of school improvement
status and close the achievement gap between high-poverty and
low-poverty schools in the district, Ascension decided to focus
on improving the quality of teaching in these schools. To this
end, district leaders chose to implement TAP: The System for
Teacher and Student Advancement.
8
The TAP system focuses on four interrelated elements to
improve teachers’ instruction:
1. Ongoing applied professional learning
2. Instructionally focused accountability
3. Opportunities for career advancement through
multiple career paths
4. Performance-based compensation
TAP emphasizes learning opportunities that are relevant,
continuous, and led by expert instructors. To inform and
drive the system’s professional development efforts,
TAP employs a thorough instructional accountability
system that includes regular and rigorous performance
evaluations. The results are then used to inform professional
development planning, career advancement, and compensation.
The system also requires educators to participate in regular
and meaningful collaboration and self-reflection within the
structure of the school day.
Kim Melancon, associate principal at Donaldsonville High,
says the combination of these complementary elements was
critical to improving the teaching and learning conditions
at her school. “I don’t think we could have done this without
all four components of TAP together.”
Ascension chose the TAP model for these two struggling schools
because both were wrestling with environments in which teachers
were not working collaboratively to take responsibility for improving
student achievement. “At these two schools, the culture had to
be challenged,” Tuttleton explains, noting that the biggest hurdle
was getting teachers to examine their pedagogy and to accept that
their students’ failures were their failures as well.
District officials say they believe TAP forced teachers to explore
their commitment to new learning and helped to create a
collaborative environment. Once teachers saw that the more
rigorous performance evaluations were employed, first and
foremost, to improve practice, rather than as a punitive tool,
most embraced the new culture of shared learning and
responsibility that TAP brought to their schools.
“Even the best teacher in the world can be better,” says Shaneka
Burnett, a teacher at Lowery Intermediate School. She credits
TAP with helping teachers to embrace this perspective. “We all
understand where we want students to go, how to use the [TAP]
rubric to evaluate our practice, and what [the results] mean,
so we are able to collaborate and share ideas.”
“We have turned a corner
where when you ask teachers
to come to these schools,
they say it is an honor.”
IMPROVED TEACHER SATISFACTION
AND RETENTION
Although Ascension did not make any staffing changes related to
TAP’s implementation at first, it later replaced a small number
of administrators and faculty who did not demonstrate openness
to changing the school’s teaching and learning conditions. Many
teachers remained in the schools and thrived under TAP. “When
teachers see successes in their classrooms [as a result of new
practices], that really helps [change their mindset],” Melancon says.
Getting teachers to come to these two schools on the west bank
is no longer a problem at Ascension. “We have turned a corner
where when you ask teachers to come to these schools, they say it
is an honor,” Tuttleton says. Her impression is that many teachers
are now “waiting for the call.”
Monica Hills, principal at Lowery Intermediate School says that
what makes these schools so appealing is the opportunity to
work in an environment deliberately focused on supporting
teachers’ instruction through reflection, feedback, and mentoring;
providing teachers with non-administrative career growth
opportunities; and improving achievement for all students.
Ascension’s experience mirrors what Louisiana found in an
independent review of the TAP program in its schools:
“Teachers appear to be very positive about the levels of
collegiality, opportunities for professional development,
and the accountability associated with TAP.”i
TEACHER EFFICACY AS A PATH TO STUDENT
AND SCHOOL SUCCESS
For Ascension, TAP is a strategic attempt to improve the
conditions for teaching and learning in its highest poverty,
lowest performing schools.
“We want to build teacher efficacy to build school efficacy,”
Tuttleton notes. She and other district leaders are convinced
that helping teachers to become more successful and to feel
more supported will help them become more effective for their
students. Since TAP’s implementation, both Lowery Middle
School and Donaldsonville High have seen steady improvement
on their School Performance Scores. On another statewide
measure, Lowery received a “value-added” student achievement
score of 4, signifying above average individual student growth
compared with similar schools in the state.ii Neither school is on
the state’s “academically unacceptable” list any longer, although
both still have significant work to do to reach Louisiana’s new
School Performance Score goal of 120.
Burnett attributes her school’s improvement to two critical factors:
1) Teachers are now held accountable for what is happening in
their classrooms, and 2) all students are held to high expectations.
While Ascension continues to focus on the initial two TAP
schools, the district has expanded the initiative into six additional
schools. “The second two schools did not take much convincing
because they had seen the positive student achievement gains
from the first two [TAP] schools,” Tuttleton says. “The next
four schools joining our TAP team asked for the system to be
implemented on their campuses.”
i. “Louisiana Plan for Highly Qualified Teachers,” p. 7. March 2010.
http://www.teachlouisiana.net/pdf/LAPlanforHQTeachers.pdf
ii. http://www.tapsystem.org/newsroom/newsroom.taf?page=pressreleases&_
function=detail&id=117
COMMON THEMES
Strong school leadership matters, as does giving these leaders autonomy over staffing and other key decisions. District and school
leaders must intentionally focus on building a collaborative environment; developing reflective, data-driven practice; and securing
from everyone on campus—teachers and leaders—an unwavering commitment to professional growth and improving instruction.
In addition, flipping the traditional status hierarchy by deliberately making the highest poverty and lowest performing schools the
most coveted places to work is effective in attracting and keeping strong teachers.
What also is clear, when looking at districts engaged in this work, is that simply improving conditions at high-poverty schools doesn’t
guarantee top-notch teacher quality. Improved conditions may make it more attractive for all teachers, strong or struggling, to stay
put. To ensure that high-poverty schools are differentially retaining their top teachers (and moving out their worst), districts must
improve conditions for teaching and learning, and put in place systems that assess and address teacher performance.
9
ACTIONS FOR DISTRICTS AND STATES
There is no “silver bullet” strategy that can single-handedly
ensure equitable access to effective teachers for low-income
students. However, in every context, there is a role for both
districts and states, and there are steps they can take to promote
teaching environments that attract, sustain, and retain quality
teachers in high-need schools.
ʶʶ Put in place teacher and school-leader evaluation systems
States can help districts work strategically. While the difficult task
of improving teaching environments primarily rests with districts,
states must create a policy environment that removes barriers that
undermine this goal. Examples of detrimental policies include
requiring districts to fill vacancies based solely on seniority,
or preventing districts from using innovative strategies to recruit
top teachers to high-poverty schools. In addition, states must require
districts to implement teacher and school leader evaluation systems
that assess accurately and meaningfully differentiate educator
effectiveness based significantly on student learning outcomes.
Such systems are critical to helping districts identify which teachers
they want to attract and keep at their highest poverty schools and
which leaders will help accomplish this goal.
ʶʶ Provide teachers in the highest need schools with meaningful
There are two other important roles for states in this work. First, they
should monitor data on the equitable access to effective teachers
between and within districts, requiring action wherever inequities
exist. Second, states should identify districts and schools that are
using innovative strategies to improve school environments and
hold them up as examples of best practices.
ʶʶ Implement a tool to measure teacher perceptions of their
Districts can pursue this difficult and important work in various
ways. First and foremost, districts must use available data to
understand the distribution of their teachers and make equitable
access to top teachers an absolute priority. They must then assume
a responsibility for making all their schools places where good
teachers want to work. Specifically, districts should take the
following steps:
ʶʶ Recruit talented school leaders to their highest need schools,
and get them to stay. In addition to the districts spotlighted
earlier, the District of Columbia Public Schools has taken
a rigorous approach to principal recruitment. The district
scours student achievement data from school districts
around the country (especially those close to D.C.) and then
actively recruits principals of top-performing schools.
that differentiate educator effectiveness in order to identify
top-performing teachers and leaders. Using these systems in
conjunction with data on working conditions and attrition,
districts can study which teachers are more and less satisfied,
as well as which ones are staying and leaving—and why.
professional growth and career ladders as well as opportunities
to collaborate with other teachers, as Ascension Parish and
Boston Public Schools have done.
ʶʶ Avoid isolating their most effective teachers and, instead,
build teams of highly effective teachers in the district’s most
challenging schools, as both Boston Public Schools and
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools have done.
ʶʶ Concentrate not just on recruiting new school leaders and
teachers to high-need schools, but on developing the skills
and instructional abilities of existing employees, as have
Fresno and Ascension Parish.
teaching environment, such as Charlotte-Mecklenburg
Schools’ working conditions survey, and then use data from
the tool to identify target schools and determine primary
issues that need to be addressed. For example, Pittsburgh
Public Schools works with the New Teacher Center to
implement a district-wide survey on working conditions.
The district requires all schools to use the data to identify
a plan of action and pays special attention to the plans of
schools with the poorest survey results to ensure that the
planned interventions align with the identified areas of need.
ʶʶ Once better evaluations are in place, districts should make
working conditions data part of school and district-leader
evaluations. North Carolina requires that survey data on
working conditions are factored into school-leader evaluations,
which encourages leaders to take the survey results seriously
and to act on areas identified as needing improvement.
CONCLUSION
To date, the conditions that shape teachers’ daily professional lives have not been given the attention they deserve. Too often, a lack of
attention to these factors in our highest poverty and lowest performing schools results in environments in which few educators would
choose to stay. For too long, the high levels of staff dissatisfaction and turnover that characterize these schools have been erroneously
attributed to their students. But research continues to demonstrate that students are not the problem. What matters most are the
conditions for teaching and learning. Districts and states have an obligation to examine and act on these conditions. Otherwise, we will
never make the progress that we must make to ensure all low-income students and students of color have access to great teachers.
©Copyright 2012 The Education Trust. All rights reserved. Written by Sarah Almy and Melissa Tooley. Excerpt republished with permission. To view the full report
and learn about all districts featured, visit http://www.edtrust.org/sites/edtrust.org/files/Building_and_Sustaining_Talent.pdf.
10
E
ducation
W
EEk
Education WEEk
VOL. 32 • OCTOBER 17, 2012
VOL. 32 • OCTOBER 17, 2012
edweek.org:
BREAKING NEWS DAILY
▲
AM E R ICAN E DUCATION’S N EWS PAPE R OF R ECOR D • © 2012 Editorial Projects in Education
▲
AM E R ICAN E DUCATION’S N EWS PAPE R OF R ECOR D • © 2012 Editorial Projects in Education
edweek.org:
BREAKING NEWS DAILY
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TAP master teacher Vicki
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Cabra,
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meeting”
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North DeSoto
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Middle School in Stonewall,
La., on Oct. 4.
Photographs by
Val Horvath Davidson
Photographs
for Education by
Week
Val Horvath Davidson
for Education Week
11
2
EDUCATION WEEK
n
www.edweek.org
scriptors of good teaching practices. The 19
elements on which educators are evaluated
fall into three categories—lesson planning,
the learning environment, and classroom
instruction—and have up to a dozen subelements.
The rubric can be overwhelming to new
TAP teachers, according to Vicki Cabra, one
of two master teachers at North DeSoto, but
becomes clearer and more manageable with
time. “At first, you see them all [i.e., rubric
elements] as separate things. Then you start
to see connections,” she said. “They’re all interdependent. It becomes a part of who you
are and what you do naturally.”
At North DeSoto, the rubric is the central
dogma of instruction. Teachers are all but
religiously devoted to understanding the
elements and incorporating them into their
teaching. As Nicole Bolen, a TAP executive
master teacher who supports teachers in
several Louisiana schools, explained, “The
rubric terminology becomes the common
language of the school.” Often, even students
can recite it.
All teachers at TAP schools receive four
evaluations per year, some at agreed-on
times and others unannounced. Master
teachers, who evaluate career and mentor
teachers (and are themselves evaluated by
executive master teachers), emphasize that
the goal is not to get a perfect score on an
evaluation. Instead, teachers should aim
for at least a proficient score, or a 3 on the
1 to 5 scale. “It’s important to communicate
to teachers what proficient means—it’s rock
solid,” Bolen explained.
“I’ve never scored perfect on a lesson,” said
Cabra. “It’s all about constantly improving.”
New teachers also need to understand that
TAP is not meant to be “a ‘gotcha’ system,”
said Bolen. “Master teachers play the role
of ‘servant-leaders,’” she explained. Their
aim is to help improve instruction, not catch
teachers doing something wrong. Cabra said
that master teachers try to develop trust
with mentor and career teachers by staying
visible in classrooms—and not just as evaluators. “You throw the clipboard down and go
in there and start helping them,” she said.
“I’m coaching you—how am I trying to ‘getcha’?”
A Model Lesson
One day last spring at North DeSoto, Bolen
and Cabra evaluated a lesson by Brandi Rivers, a 7th and 8th grade English teacher who
had been teaching in Louisiana schools for
eight years but was new to the TAP system.
During a pre-evaluation conference, Cabra
asked Rivers a series of scripted questions
about what the lesson would look like. Rivers, who comes across as gentle and a bit
shy, laid out a thorough lesson, replete with
interactive-whiteboard visuals, reading
material differentiated by paper color, and
multiple grouping techniques. She answered
Cabra’s questions with assurance, pointing
to examples in her plan. When Cabra asked
what she would model for students, Rivers
stumbled for a moment. “I don’t really know
what I would model,” she said.
Cabra recounted an instance in which she
herself had forgotten to model during a lesson, and how that had caused confusion. She
offered Rivers some suggestions—perhaps
she should model the jigsaw grouping or student conversations. “Make a note and think
about what you might need to model,” she
told Rivers.
Upon taking her place at the front of the
classroom, Rivers’ reticent manner disappeared. She taught a fast-paced and organized lesson with all the elements she’d explained in the conference—and the addition
of modeling how to annotate. The transitions
from whole-group instruction to group and
individual activities were seamless. Her students remained focused throughout.
At the end of the period, Bolen and Cabra
shared some private reflections on the multifaceted lesson. “I’ve never seen a teacher embrace and understand the rubric the way she
did,” said Cabra.
Even so, in scoring the lesson, the two
spent an hour and a half pouring over
each of the TAP rubric descriptors, flipping
through piles of student work and their own
notes to back up each score with evidence.
They dove into the minutiae of individual
students’ learning: Had Rivers accommodated one student’s specific learning needs?
Had she pushed another student to show
the higher level thinking he was capable of?
“When you move from proficient to exemplary [on the rubric], you’re looking to move
each student,” explained Bolen. A score sheet
of 4s and 5s illustrated that Rivers had done
just that.
After much discussion, Bolen and Cabra
TAP master teacher
Vicki Cabra, left,
leads a professional
development lesson
for her teacher
“cluster” as Nancy
Reinowski listens.
12
EDUCATION WEEK
Brandi Rivers teaches a
7th grade English/language
arts class at North DeSoto
Middle School.
teased out a weakness in the lesson that would become Rivers’
area of “refinement”: Students
had not asked questions about
the content. The evaluators then
came up with several simple,
concrete solutions: Rivers could
build in time for questions—
”Wow and Wonder” sharing, for
example—or she could have students write questions on their
exit slips. “It’s an easy fix,” said
Cabra. “We’re all about being
real. We’ll set up a follow-up
time, too.”
Targeted PD
In addition to receiving this
sort of precise feedback after an
evaluation, TAP teachers attend
regular in-house professional
development sessions. At North
DeSoto, those take the form of
twice-a-week “cluster,” or team,
meetings led by master teachers.
Cluster meetings are held during common prep time and run,
in essence, like a school within a
school. The master teachers have
a dedicated classroom—Cabra
and her partner’s is decorated
with a luau theme and has a
constant supply of snacks—
where they teach lessons on
research-based instructional
strategies.
The masters select the strategies meticulously based on the
clusters’ needs, as determined
by classroom observations and
data collection. They even “field
test” the strategies with students before teaching them to
the PD group. The intended
result is a sort of trickle-down,
real-time instructional effect:
Master teachers target and fill
in instructional gaps for teachers, who then head back to class
and fill in knowledge gaps for
students.
According to Laura Goe, a research scientist at Educational
Testing Service and a principal investigator for research
and dissemination for The National Comprehensive Center
for Teacher Quality, this direct
link between teacher evaluation
and professional growth is often
more important to TAP teachers and administrators than the
prospects for merit pay. “It’s all
about professional-growth opportunities and not about the
money for them,” she said.
A 2009 review of teacher evaluation systems commissioned by
the National Education Association echoed that sentiment, finding that TAP teachers were generally positive about the system
and the support they receive.
Performance pay, it turned out,
was the least popular element of
the TAP system.
Simmons, the North DeSoto
principal, echoed that it is the
“support piece,” not the accountability or performance pay, that
excites him about TAP. “Accountability without support is counterproductive,” he said.
The alignment between professional support and evaluation is
also the part of the system that
non-TAP schools and districts
can learn the most from, according to Goe, who has written extensively on teacher evaluation.
Schools should hire “trained observers who are required to have
conversations with teachers
about practice,” she said. From
there, schools should be “tying
that to PD goals and opportunities for teachers, and ensuring
teachers get access to those opportunities.
Goe is adamant that that kind
of alignment “can happen anywhere. You don’t need TAP to
do that.” Any school can point
teachers to online resources
and outside PD that correlate to
their instructional weaknesses.
What schools do need before
they can align PD to targeted
teacher needs, however, is a
research-based instructional
rubric, said Goe. For instance,
Charlotte Danielson’s Framework for Teaching, which the
TAP rubric is based on in part,
or the Classroom Assessment
Scoring System from the University of Virginia are both good
options, she said. The key is
that schools are “using evaluation results to improve professional growth. … That’s the sort
of thing TAP is very good about
and [other schools] can learn
about,” she said.
Promises and Pitfalls
Learning from TAP’s successes may be the best that some
schools can do, because like with
any overhaul, TAP will not work
everywhere. First and foremost,
the system requires buy-in from
staff. NIET recommends that
schools take a vote before adopting TAP, and only do so if 75 percent of teachers are in favor of
the move. Teachers also need to
accept the rubric as doctrine for
good teaching and devote themselves to understanding and
implementing it.
TAP, particularly because
of the built-in bonus pay and
extra staffers, is also quite expensive. Kathy Noel, director of
curriculum and instruction for
DeSoto Parish schools, said that
the average cost there is about
$445,000 per school. The district
has been able to fund the initiative through a combination
of money from federal Title 1,
Teacher Incentive Funds, School
Improvement Funds 1003G,
the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, Title II, and
local funds. But in many places,
drumming up that kind of cash
n
www.edweek.org
3
is simply not feasible.
TAP is not always as successful as it has been at North
DeSoto, either. In 2007, just two
years after implementing TAP in
26 schools, Louisiana’s Calcasieu
Parish gave up on the program.
Performance scores had improved at 58 percent of schools,
according to Kristan Van Hook,
senior vice president for public
policy and development at NIET,
but “it wasn’t the kind of success
we normally hoped to see.” Van
Hook said Hurricane Rita, which
closed schools for six weeks in
2005, made the first year with
TAP a challenging one.
But Jean Johnson, president
of the Calcasieu Federation
of Teachers, said that teachers were “very unhappy” with
the system, which the district
“jumped into full force.” The system “wound up costing millions
for the parish,” she said, and “we
didn’t feel like the results were
any better than what we were
already doing.”
But for Rivers, the English
teacher at North DeSoto, the
promise of professional growth
and improved practice have rung
true. “One of the reasons I left
my other schools is because I felt
like I wasn’t growing anymore,”
she said. Previous principals had
simply labeled her teaching “satisfactory,” leaving her at a loss
for how or where to improve. But
because the TAP mentor teachers offer specific feedback at the
debriefing sessions, she said, she
now knows her students better
and can address their needs.
“We’re constantly going over
data, I know their abilities and
weaknesses more, I know what
modifications I need to make,”
Rivers said. “I feel like I’ve
grown more this year than all
my other years of teaching.”
Copyright © 2012 by Editorial Projects in
Education Inc. All rights reserved.
13
The TAP System Training
Portal in Practice
How can career teachers become more involved?
S
ince its launch in 2010, the TAP System Training Portal
has been a trusted go-to source for a range of professional
development needs in TAP schools. With a few clicks
or touches of a screen, urban, suburban and rural schools can
access any number of training services at their convenience and
in the comfort of their own locations.
Currently the portal houses more than 190 hours of video footage
of classroom observations, 19 training modules covering each
indicator of effective practice from the TAP rubric with video
clips and supporting materials, and over 200 strategies organized
by grade and subject level with supporting documents. The tool’s
14
popularity has soared as fast as it has expanded. Nearly 6,000
educators used the portal during its first school year in 2010-2011.
Almost 20,000 are now subscribed.
While the portal is useful to TAP teachers at every level, the majority
of those who use the portal are master and mentor teachers.
As career teachers are full-time classroom teachers, devoting extra
time to the portal can be a challenge in the hustle-bustle of a school
day. How, then, could master and mentor teachers help career
teachers benefit from the portal? Dee Dee Horen, a TAP master
teacher at South Grove Intermediate School in Beech Grove, Indiana,
makes the tool an integral part of instruction and coaching.
When it comes to training, said Horen, “I start with the TAP portal. It gives
teachers a deeper understanding of the rubric to be able to show them a video
clip of a particular aspect of practice in action.”
Based on the results and feedback from their classroom observations, teachers
can go right to the training modules to better understand what effective
practice looks like in specific areas. For example, if their evaluation identified
Academic Feedback as an area for improvement, they can watch clips of other
teachers effectively applying this skill, hear the conversation between that
teacher and their coach relating to this skill, or read the notes backing up the
scoring of this indicator in that lesson.
In TAP professional development “cluster” meetings, Horen and her faculty
consult the portal for insights into the different rubric indicators. “The training
modules break down the descriptors really well,” she said. They include detailed
explanations of indicators and descriptors, supporting research and documents,
video clips, quizzes to practice scoring and evaluating, coaching questions,
application of the rubric indicators, and professional development connections.
The more intensive research has been particularly helpful in grasping the concepts
of the Thinking and Problem Solving indicator—one of the rubric’s most critical.
“If teachers ask questions or want to refine their understanding, I’ll encourage
them to watch a video.”
South Grove Intermediate’s use of the TAP portal has grown since the school
started implementation of the comprehensive reform in the 2011-12 school
year. During the first cluster cycle, master and mentor teachers introduced
the faculty to the portal and spent significant time learning TAP’s basics.
When they became more familiar with the TAP system, they explored the
online resource more fully. The video library quickly became a necessity for
“inter-rater reliability”—the process for ensuring that all educator evaluators
are on the same page when scoring observations.
“We couldn’t do it without the portal,” Horen said. “In our TLT [TAP Leadership
Team] meeting, we’ll ask, ‘What does a ‘3’ in [The Learning Environment
indicator] Managing Student Behavior look like to us?’ Then we’ll get into the
portal, see one of the lessons, and determine whether we interpreted the rating the
same as the national raters did.”
The observation scoring by national raters is one of the most valuable aspects
of the portal. To accompany every lesson—shot in “split-screen” format to
provide a 360-degree view of teachers and students—the raters compile scoring
and evidence sheets. In this way, educators can gain a full scope of the lesson,
examine the evidence and scores, and practice calibrating their own scoring to
that of the national raters.
Horen looks forward to more lessons in the next phase of the portal. The TAP
System Training Portal 2.0 will feature more content in the 2013–14 school
year—including new lessons by content and grade level—as well as a focus on
helping teachers move from proficient to exemplary on the rubric indicators.
In addition, users will enjoy a portal experience tailored to their needs;
suggested professional development activities will be offered to support
individual growth plans, taking teacher evaluation data into account.
“The TAP System Training Portal has evolved into a ‘teacher effectiveness
center’ for the entire school, providing everyone with relevant support tools
specific to their roles within TAP,” said Dr. Gary Stark, president and CEO
of NIET. “NIET will continue to learn from our educators and ensure that
our tools align to their needs.”
Dee Dee Horen’s
Tips for Getting
Career Teachers
Started
1
Devote staff development
time to the portal at the
beginning of the year.
2
Incorporate the portal
in cluster meetings
throughout the year.
3
Encourage career teachers
to view training videos as a
supplement to your feedback.
4
Be proactive and save time
by performing initial research
and asking career teachers
to refine it.
15
Increasing Educator Effectiveness:
Lessons Learned from Teacher Incentive Fund Sites
The following is an excerpt from Jonathan Eckert, February 2013.
The Teacher Incentive Fund’s (TIF) focus on high-need schools is
designed to reverse the flow of more effective teachers away from
these schools, and create an environment that attracts, develops,
and retains accomplished educators. Examining five sites that are
ending their TIF grants, (Algiers, LA; Ampitheater Unified #10, AZ;
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, NC; Guilford County Schools, NC;
and South Carolina TAP) and four sites that are beginning to implement
(Henrico County, VA; Indiana Department of Education; Knox County,
Tennessee TAP; and Louisiana TAP), we see commonalities in their
use of performance-based compensation systems (PBCS), and in how
they align compensation with other aspects of teacher accountability and
support. Based on the work of previous TIF sites and changes in the
program’s requirements, the four additional sites that received 2010 TIF
money have gone even farther with the integration of compensation,
professional development, career paths and evaluation. These sites seek
to ensure that effective educators are teaching students with the greatest
needs, and that these students are in schools led by effective principals.
By improving instruction in these high-need schools over time,
TIF supports sustained increases in student academic performance.
instructional improvement. Guilford County, North Carolina’s,
Mission Possible schools demonstrated increased composite scores on
state assessments from 2006-2010 at all levels, ranging from 10.6% at the
middle-school level to 18.7% at the elementary-school level and 23.4%
at the high-school level. Retention increased by 20% over the course of
five years, and teachers and principals are using the evidence provided
to improve practice with support at the school- and district-levels.
Amphitheater, Guilford County and Henrico are identifying areas for
growth in order to provide necessary instructional coaching for teachers.
Five themes emerge from the opportunities and challenges at these
TIF sites. The following themes include an illustrative example.
A number of sites could have represented each theme.
4. Leadership positions with substantial autonomy and
additional compensation attract effective educators to
high-need schools. Knox TAP is using teacher leaders to drive
impressive outcomes for students in high-need schools. Located in
Tennessee—which has that based the classroom observation portion
of its new statewide evaluation system on the TAP evaluation rubric—
Knox TAP is combining the resources of the National Institute for
Excellence in Teaching with job-embedded professional development,
career advancement, strategic compensation, and rigorous evaluation
focused on growth to recognize and spread teaching expertise. In 201112, the first full year of TAP implementation through the TIF 3 grant,
11 of 14 Knox TAP schools achieved more than two standard errors
above a year of value-added growth in reading and math.
1. Rigorous and accurate evaluation must take place in order
to provide educators with realistic and meaningful feedback
on their performance and a clear path toward improvement.
From 2007-2011, students in the Consortium of Algiers Charter
Schools in New Orleans, Louisiana, have demonstrated tremendous
growth in math and reading. Over those five years, the percentage
of students considered proficient on Louisiana state assessments
increased by approximately 25 percent. The educators who have
facilitated this growth attribute much of this success to transparent
analysis of both formative and summative assessment through weekly
job-embedded professional development aligned with extensive
support. Indiana is implementing a similar program that will align
rigorous evaluation with meaningful feedback, and preliminary
results are promising, as illustrated in a year-one report by Interactive,
Inc. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS) in Virginia attribute
much of its success to its decision to implement TIF through its
district’s curriculum and instruction instead of human resources.
CMS’ Curriculum and Instruction Department administered its
TIF resources. This emphasis on teaching and learning facilitated
significant improvement on the design and implementation of student
learning objectives that teachers and administrators developed.
2. Compensation is a key factor, but must be aligned with
other aspects of human capital management to support
improvements in instruction. Amphitheater Unified School
District Project Excell! schools in Tucson, Arizona, have demonstrated
statistically significant improvement in student growth from 2008-2011
in reading and mathematics on the Northwest Evaluation Association
Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) tests. The program provides
feedback through test scores, multiple evaluations, and weekly group
meetings where teachers examine student work to identify areas for
16
3. Supporting teachers as individuals as well as teams creates
a collaborative environment that emphasizes learning and
improvement. All nine sites have created systems where collaboration
is prioritized, supported and incentivized. Teams of teachers meet together
at all of these sites, sometimes led by master or mentor teachers, to examine
evidence and focus on student learning. Contrary to fears that performance
pay will decrease collaboration, several sites have demonstrated increased
collaboration. Interestingly, none of these sites has supported a fixedtournament in which teachers compete against each other for bonuses.
5. The experiences of schools and districts implementing
reforms can have a significant impact on policy at the state
and local level. South Carolina, Tennessee, Indiana and Louisiana
are representative of this impact. All four states have taken lessons
learned over the past six years at their local TAP sites to inform state
policies around evaluation and compensation. For example, in South
Carolina, the TAP evaluation system is one of the recommended
statewide evaluation systems. Indiana’s statewide teacher evaluation
law also references TAP as an example. In Tennessee, experience with
the TAP rubric in Knox provided a strong example as the state
considered multiple possible rubrics as the basis for the statewide
evaluation system TEAM: Tennessee Educator Acceleration Model.
These sites have sparked long-overdue experimentation around the
introduction of performance measures into educator compensation
systems. They illustrate how changes in pay structures and processes,
teacher and principal evaluation systems, professional development based
on evaluation results, and new data systems to support this work are
playing out on the ground in districts and states. Ultimately, these are
good investments that should be sustained as they are making a difference
in state and local policy, and most importantly, for teaching and learning.
TAP: The System for Teacher and Student Advancement
An initiative of the National Institute for Excellence in Teaching
1250 Fourth Street, Santa Monica, CA 90401
(310) 570-4860
www.tapsystem.org
www.tapsystemtraining.org
© 2013 National Institute for Excellence in Teaching. All rights reserved.
TAP is funded in part by multi-year Federal Teacher Incentive Fund grants
awarded to the National Institute for Excellence in Teaching.
Ver. 6/13
Teacher Excellence  Student Achievement  Opportunities for All