Strengthening Educator Evaluation and Professional Learning in a New ESEA

Over the next couple of weeks, Senators Lamar Alexander and Patty Murray will try to generate a bipartisan bill to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), including a possible rewrite to Title II, which focuses on educator quality. This announcement comes as a surprise since Senator Alexander began the push for reauthorization in strict partisanship and just last week indicated that he was more interested in a bipartisan process than a bipartisan bill. Assuming the two committee leaders will actually rewrite Alexander’s discussion draft and negotiate in good faith, how could they improve the evaluation and professional learning components of Title II to strengthen educator quality?

Evaluations

Alexander and Murray seem set (if to different degrees) on scaling back federal efforts to make states create more rigorous teacher evaluation systems based partly on student growth. Still, even without maintaining the teacher evaluation requirement, the two should be able to find some compromises that wouldn’t entirely abandon federal support for educator accountability and development. Such compromises would help ensure new teacher evaluation and development systems generate reliable data to guide personnel decisions and help all teachers improve.

At the very least, states should be required to have a teacher evaluation system and report on the measures used in it, including whether they have a strategy to look into the validity and reliability of each and of the system as a whole. Some states currently investigate the accuracy and consistency of data from new evaluation systems but that is not enough. In fact, only a handful of states have a comprehensive strategy for continuing to monitor their systems’ effectiveness. For instance, states should be required to report whether they ensure initial and ongoing evaluator training or certification and allow for multiple classroom observers per teacher to improve their systems. The use of multiple observers has several benefits, including making evaluation systems more reliable and providing educators with more nuanced feedback on their practice. But their use is uncommon, as few states require multiple evaluators.

In addition, states should be required to report whether the data from teacher evaluation systems are being used to support targeted, ongoing learning opportunities for all teachers. Fewer than half of states that have adopted more rigorous teacher evaluation systems based partly on student growth actually have a policy requiring that the data be used to inform teachers’ professional learning. In some states, teachers only receive supports if they are identified in one of the bottom performance categories—which very few teachers are. This is a big issue because many teachers who could benefit from targeted development opportunities aren’t always given the opportunity.

Professional Learning

Several federal policy programs support state and district spending on teacher professional development (often referred to now as professional learning). The largest of these is through ESEA Title II, Part A, which provides grants to state and local education agencies to spend funds on a variety of educator quality activities. According to annual federal survey data, in the 2013-2014 school year, districts used the majority of their Title II funds on teacher professional development (PD) rather than other activities like reducing class size.

While the recent uptick in spending on professional development is promising, such spending was not guaranteed under Alexander’s discussion draft. That bill would have allowed states to transfer 100 percent of funds between Title II and Title IV (Safe and Healthy Students) and redirect those intended for PD toward other initiatives.

This would be a mistake. While state flexibility has considerable value in some areas, states should not be allowed to take federal PD dollars and direct them toward things like drug prevention programs. Rather, these funds should be specifically targeted toward improving the quality of professional learning opportunities that teachers receive and ensuring the opportunities have a measurable impact on teacher and student learning.

Of course, this isn’t a simple matter of linking federal funds to PD sessions. Not all professional development is particularly effective. While research and even federal guidance affirm the attributes of high-quality PD (e.g., sustained, hands-on, relevant, job-embedded), current PD offerings fail to meet teachers’ needs and lack a specific evidence base. For instance, workshops, where teachers typically “sit and get” information, remain the most common PD type delivered to teachers. But workshops rarely match the attributes of high-quality PD and satisfy teachers. By contrast, both coaching and in-school structured collaboration show promise for impacting teacher professional learning and student achievement. Still, it remains to be seen which models of these PD types have the greatest impact and under what conditions.

One way to help improve the professional learning landscape for teachers and understand which opportunities have the greatest impact is through better data collection and reporting at the federal level. This would help increase transparency and guide states and districts on how best to use those particular federal dollars. But again, it’s not so simple. The federal government currently collects few useful data on how Title II PD dollars sent to states and districts are actually spent, whether they are high-quality, and whether they have an impact on teacher practice. For instance, the annual survey data includes indicators like PD session by topic (e.g., classroom management), type (e.g., half-day workshops), and the number of teachers participating in each. But it fails to include a comprehensive list of PD types along with any indication of quality or impact. And state monitoring reports only require states to provide a “plan” to help districts ensure annual increases in the percentage of teachers engaged in “high-quality” PD without including specific measures for quality.

While entailing a stronger federal role, states and districts should be required to collect and report on more meaningful data. For instance, they should report on more varied PD formats (e.g., coaching, professional learning communities) along with the provider, content, teacher time spent, and cost for each. Importantly, to gauge impact, they should also report on outcomes such as aggregate teacher and student growth to show the effects of their development opportunities. This would provide better information as to the return on states’ and districts’ professional learning investments.

In addition, ESEA should strengthen accountability around effective use of federal PD dollars. If offerings consistently fail to deliver on improving teaching and student learning, states and districts should devise new strategies to deliver effective professional learning opportunities over time or risk losing federal funds. But we can’t learn those lessons and improve our practice unless we collect those data—which is why Congress’ lost appetite for robust federal education reforms is so frustrating.

In sum, a new ESEA could improve educator quality through stronger data collection and reporting requirements on new teacher evaluation systems and professional learning activities. The federal government can and should play a stronger role in increasing transparency and guiding improvements in these areas at the state and local levels. While it remains to be seen whether Alexander and Murray will revise Title II, here’s hoping they ensure better quality control of educator evaluation and supports.”