[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 14 (Wednesday, January 28, 2015)]
[Senate]
[Pages S585-S586]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
SUPPORTING TEACHERS AND SCHOOL LEADERS
Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a copy of
my remarks at the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions
Committee hearing yesterday be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
Supporting Teachers and School Leaders
Today's hearing is all about better teaching--how we can
create an environment so teachers, principals, and other
leaders can succeed.
Governors around the country are focused on one issue:
better jobs for the citizens in their states. And it doesn't
take very long for a governor, which I once was, to come to
the conclusion that better schools mean better jobs and a
better life.
Since no one has figured out how to pass a better parents
law, it doesn't take long to realize how important a great
teacher is.
I certainly came to that conclusion quickly in 1984, when I
was governor of Tennessee and I considered the holy grail of
K-12 education to be finding a fair way to encourage and
reward outstanding teaching.
I spent a year and a half, devoting 70 percent of my time,
persuading the legislature to establish a career ladder--a
master teacher program that 10,000 teachers voluntarily
climbed. They were paid more and had the opportunity for 10-
and 11-month contracts.
Tennessee became the first state in the nation to pay
teachers more for teaching well. Rarely a week goes by that a
teacher doesn't stop me and say, ``Thank you for the master
teacher program.''
It was not easy. A year before I'd been in a meeting of
southern governors and one of them said, ``Who's gonna be
brave enough to take on the teachers union?''
I had a year and a half brawl with the National Education
Association before I could pass our teacher evaluation
program.
Since then, there's been an explosion of efforts to answer
these questions a great number of states and school districts
are tackling: How do we determine who is an effective
teacher? How do we relate student achievement to teacher
effectiveness? And, having decided that, how do we reward and
support outstanding teaching so we don't lose our best
teachers?
In 1987, the National Board for Professional Teaching
Standards began to strengthen standards in teaching and
professionalize the teaching workforce. To date, more than
110,000 teachers in all 50 states and DC have achieved
National Board Certification.
In 2006, the Teacher Incentive Fund was created to help
states and districts create performance-based compensation
system for teachers based on evaluation results.
According to the National Center on Teacher Quality, in
2014:
27 states required annual evaluations for all teachers
44 states required annual evaluations for new teachers
35 states required student achievement and/or student
growth to be a significant or the most significant measure of
teacher performance.
So when I came to Washington as a United States Senator in
2003, everyone expected--since I thought rewarding
outstanding teaching was the Holy Grail--that I would make
[[Page S586]]
everyone do it. To the surprise of some, my answer was no--
you can't do it from Washington. Nevertheless, over the last
10 years, Washington has tried.
Here is how: No Child Left Behind told states that all
teachers of core academic subjects needed to be ``Highly
Qualified'' by 2006, and it prescribed that definition in a
very bureaucratic manner. That hasn't worked. I don't know of
many people who really want to keep that outdated
definition--even Secretary Duncan waived the requirements
related to highly qualified teachers when he granted waivers
to 43 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico.
Unfortunately, the Secretary replaced those requirements
with a new mandate requiring teacher evaluation systems--
first in Race to the Top, which gave nearly $4.4 billion to
states, and second, in the waivers.
To get a waiver from No Child Left Behind, a state and each
local school district must develop a teacher and principal
evaluation system with seven required elements--such as that
it will use at least three performance levels; and will use
multiple measures, including student growth; and will include
guidelines and supports for implementation--and each element
must be approved by the U.S. Department of Education.
The problem is that, after 30 years, we are still figuring
out how to do this.
Our research work on measuring growth in student
achievement and relating it fairly to teacher effectiveness
was started in 1984, but former Institute of Education
Science Director Russ Whitehurst told the New York Times in
2012 that states ``are racing ahead based on promises made to
Washington or local political imperatives that prioritize an
unwavering commitment to unproven approaches. There's a lot
we don't know about how to evaluate teachers reliably and how
to use that information to improve instruction and
learning.''
The second problem is that some states haven't been willing
or able to implement the systems the way the U.S. Department
of Education wants them to.
California, Iowa, and Washington state had their waiver
requests denied or revoked over the issue of teacher
evaluations.
In Iowa's case, it was because the state legislature
wouldn't pass a law that satisfied the requirement that
allowed for teachers and principals to be placed into at
least three performance levels--not effective, effective, and
highly effective.
California simply ignored the Administration's conditions
when they applied for a waiver, particularly the requirement
that teacher evaluation systems be based significantly on the
results of state standardized tests.
In April, Washington state's waiver was revoked by
Secretary Duncan because their state legislature would not
pass legislation requiring standardized test results to be
used in teacher and principal evaluation systems--instead the
law in Washington allows local school districts to decide
which tests they use.
Whether or not this federal interference with state
education law offends your sense of federalism, like it does
mine, it has proved impractical.
The federal government in its well-intentioned way, trying
to say, ``We want better teachers, and we're going to tell
you exactly how to do it, and you must do it now'' has
created an enormous backlash. It's made even harder something
that was already hard.
Even in Tennessee, despite 30 years of experience and
nearly $500 million in Race to the Top funding, the
implementation of a new teacher evaluation system has been
described in an article in my hometown newspaper as
``contentious.''
Given all of the great progress that states and local
school districts have made on standards, accountability,
tests, and teacher evaluation over the last 30 years--you'll
get a lot more progress with a lot less opposition if you
leave those decisions there.
I think we should return to states and local school
districts decisions for measuring the progress of our schools
and for evaluating and measuring the effectiveness of
teachers.
I know it is tempting to try to improve teachers from
Washington. I also hear from governors and school
superintendents who say that if ``Washington doesn't make us
do it, the teachers unions and opponents from the right will
make it impossible to have good evaluation systems and better
teachers.''
And I understand what they're saying. After I left office,
the NEA watered down Tennessee's Master Teacher program.
Nevertheless, the Chairman's Staff Discussion draft
eliminates the Highly Qualified Teacher requirements and
definition, and allows states to decide the licenses and
credentials that they are going to require their teachers to
have.
And despite my personal support for teacher evaluation, the
draft doesn't mandate teacher and principal evaluations.
Rather, it enables States to use the more than $2.5 billion
under Title II to develop, implement, or improve these
evaluation systems.
In a state like Tennessee, that would mean $39 million
potentially available for continuing the work Tennessee has
well underway for evaluating teachers, including linking
performance and student achievement.
In addition, it would expand one of the provisions in No
Child Left behind--the Teacher Incentive Fund that Secretary
Spellings recommended putting into law and that Secretary
Duncan said, in testimony before the HELP Committee in
January 2009, was ``One of the best things I think Secretary
Spellings has done . . . the more we can reward excellence,
the more we can incentivize excellence, the more we can get
our best teachers to work in those hard-to-staff schools and
communities, the better our students are going to do.''
And third, it would emphasize the idea of a Secretary's
report card--calling considerable attention to the bully
pulpit a secretary or president has to call attention to
states that are succeeding or failing.
For example, I remember President Reagan visited Farragut
High School in Knoxville in 1984 to call attention to our
Master Teacher program. It caused the Democratic speaker of
our House of Representatives to say, ``This is the American
way,'' and come up with an amendment to my proposal that was
critical to its passage. President Reagan didn't order every
other state to do what Tennessee was doing, but the
president's bully pulpit made a real difference.
Thomas Friedman recently told a group of senators that one
of his two rules of life is that he's never met anyone who
washed a rented car.
In other words, people take care of what they own.
My experience is that finding a way to fairly reward better
teaching is the holy grail of K-12 education--but Washington
will get the best long-term result by creating an environment
in which states and communities are encouraged, not ordered,
to evaluate teachers.
Let's not mandate it from Washington if we want them to own
it and make it work.
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