Bipartisan ESEA Bill Misses Key Lever for Improving Teaching Quality

Earlier this week, the Senate HELP Committee unveiled its long-awaited draft compromise bill to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), including updates to Title II, Part A (Title IIA), which funds a variety of state and district activities to improve teaching quality. For a great bill summary, see Lauren Camera’s roundup in Education Week.

As noted previously, the bipartisan process posed an opportunity for Senate HELP leaders Patty Murray (D-WA) and Lamar Alexander (R-TN) to strengthen the teacher evaluation and professional learning components of the bill. While Title IIA contains some promising new provisions from Alexander’s first draft, it fails to guarantee that the $2.5 billion spent annually under the program has a positive impact on teacher practice and student achievement. That is, Murray and Alexander’s draft misses a key lever for improving teaching quality: better data.

Here’s my follow-up take on the updated teacher evaluation and professional learning components of the bill.

Teacher evaluation

As expected, the draft bill does not require states and districts to develop teacher evaluation systems based partly on student growth. It does, however, make developing (or improving current) multiple measure evaluation systems an allowable use of funds. Also noteworthy, the bill adds monitoring evaluation system effectiveness as an allowable state and local activity. This might include training evaluators to ensure they rate teachers reliably, provide teachers with timely actionable feedback, and use the feedback to inform teachers’ ongoing professional learning. It might also include auditing their evaluation data and feedback.

But under the draft bill, states and districts are not required to report on whether their evaluation systems meaningfully differentiate teacher performance. In other words, they need not report on the measures used or the aggregate distribution of teacher ratings. And they need not include a description of how they will assess evaluation systems’ effectiveness or report results of any system monitoring. Without such provisions, it will be difficult to tell whether states and districts are working to ensure their evaluation systems are reliable, valid, and actually help to improve teaching.

States should be required to report aggregate evaluation data and how they will improve their systems’ effectiveness. Most systems are still falling short in meaningfully differentiating teacher performance and providing teachers with targeted feedback and aligned supports to help them improve. Differentiation is necessary to accurately inform related teacher policies like retention, compensation, and professional learning. Aggregate evaluation data are also important for meeting the U.S. Department of Education’s proposed regulations for teacher preparation programs, which, if approved, will hold programs accountable based partly on their graduates’ teacher evaluation ratings or student outcomes.

To be clear, requiring the collection and reporting of better data does not entail mandating a particular evaluation system or combination of measures—a concern of states’ rights advocates. States and districts would still have significant flexibility on design and implementation. It would, however, lead to stronger transparency that could in turn incentivize system improvements.

Professional learning (AKA professional development)

Of the $2.5 billion sent to states and districts annually under Title IIA, most is spent on teacher professional development. A majority of funds (95%) go directly to districts with only 2.5% of funds reserved for state activities.

Given that most Title IIA funds are spent on teacher PD, it is critical to know whether states’ and districts’ PD activities are actually having an impact on educator practice and student achievement. Notably, the draft bill requires states to report a description of how their PD activities improved educator performance using data from teacher evaluation systems. This is a big step forward since the current iteration of ESEA and Alexander’s previous version failed to include any such reporting measure. But it raises the question: since most funds are sent to districts for this purpose, not states, how does the bill drive local PD transparency and impact?

The draft bill only requires districts to include how their PD activities will be based on evidence or best practices in their initial application for funds. There is no explicit requirement for districts to assess impact of their PD activities unless this information is asked for by the state.

But as a new report from the American Institutes of Research (AIR) points out, very little information exists on whether federally funded PD activities are evidence-based and associated with improvements in teaching and learning. We do know, though, that teachers are highly unsatisfied with the PD they’re receiving. The report recommends re-focusing Title IIA on creating stronger professional learning systems for states and districts to share data and best practices, which would be a marked improvement upon the status quo.

Still, like the current draft bill, AIR’s report should go further in pushing for better data. There is a great need for districts to investigate whether their PD activities are actually improving teacher practice and student outcomes.

One way to do this would be to require all districts to evaluate their PD offerings using Thomas R. Guskey’s five levels of professional learning evaluation. This would include evaluating educators’ reactions to and their use of PD through surveys, application of new skills through evaluation data, and impact on students through student learning outcomes. A standardized district evaluation process would help ensure local PD funds meet the needs of educators and generate returns on teacher and student outcomes.

In order for ESEA Title IIA to deliver on its promise of improving teaching quality, Congress must call for evaluation system reporting and more rigorous assessment of both state and local PD funds. If signed into law (and that’s a big if as Lauren Camera has noted), this version of Title IIA is unlikely to move the needle in improving teaching quality and student learning.

Here at New America, we are examining how federal PD policies, particularly those around data collection and reporting, can be strengthened to improve the quality and impact of teacher professional learning. Look for our publication sometime this fall.”