Learning from the Experts

Celine Coggins is the founder and CEO of Teach Plus. Coggins is a former teacher with experience in research and policy making. She launched Teach Plus in 2007 to rebuild the teaching profession to value teacher leadership. Since that time, the organization has grown to have a presence in six cities, working with 12,000 teachers and over 500 teacher leaders. Coggins has been a labor-management consultant in Providence, Rhode Island, as well as in Worcester and Springfield, Massachusetts, and was formerly special assistant to the Massachusetts commissioner of education on teacher quality. She has been a Mind Trust Education Entrepreneur and Aspen Institute Fellow. She is the author of several dozen reports and journal articles and the editor of two other books. She earned her PhD in education policy analysis from Stanford University. Heather G. Peske is the associate commissioner for educator quality at the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, where she manages a portfolio that includes educator evaluation, preparation, and licensure. Previously she worked as the vice president of programs at Teach Plus. Peske has spent her career committed to transforming education in the United States, especially for low-income and minority students. She began as an elementary school teacher and Teach for America corps member in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Peske earned her master’s degree and doctorate in administration, planning and social policy from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. There, she was a founding member of the Project on the Next Generation of Teachers with Susan Moore Johnson. Peske has served as the director of teacher quality at The Education Trust, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to raising standards and closing achievement gaps in education. Peske is a coauthor of the award-winning book Finders and Keepers: Helping New Teachers Survive and Thrive in Our Schools, and has written reports and articles on teacher policy, alternative certification programs, new teachers’ experiences, and conceptions of career. She graduated from Kenyon College with magna cum laude honors. Kate McGovern leads the communications strategy for Teach Plus, with a focus on ensuring that the voices of solutions-oriented urban teachers are present in the mainstream media’s education dialogue. She has supported teachers to place more than 200 op-eds in major print and online publications and teaches writing and storytelling workshops to teachers nationwide. McGovern has worked in urban classrooms at home and abroad, most recently in London, and before that as a reading specialist and theater educator at the Harlem Children’s Zone, where she cofounded a popular Shakespeare performance program for middle school students. Also a writer, McGovern’s work has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Narrative Magazine, and onstage Off-Broadway, and in 2006 she was named one of Random House’s Best New Voices. McGovern earned her BA from Yale and her master’s degree as a Weidenfeld Scholar at the University of Oxford.

"What is most striking about these stories is their genuine call-to-action narrative: Having been identified as highly effective teachers, these men and women know exactly how much of a difference putting the right teacher in the right classroom can make. All education stakeholders would be wise to learn from these experts." — Singer Crawford, Fordham Institute

• Acknowledgments ix Introduction Who Are the Real Experts?--Why We Should Ask Teachers How to Fix Our Schools 1 Celine Coggins 1 Creating and Using Data in Schools Framing the Issue 5 Ross Wiener The Qualified Student: A "Bad Teacher" Rethinks Data Use 7 Sujata Bhatt Unacknowledged Truths: Testing Speaks--Are We Listening? 10 Michelle Morrissey The Right Conversations to Be Having: Why Student Growth Data Matters 13 Kyle Hunsberger Response 16 Ross Wiener 2 Ensuring Equitable Access to Great Teachers Framing the Issue 21 Kati Haycock and Sarah Almy Moving the Whole School District Forward: Talented Teachers for Turnaround Schools 24 Erin Dukeshire and Lisa Goncalves Lavin Response 36 Kati Haycock and Sarah Almy 3 Measuring Teacher Effectiveness Framing the Issue 39 Jason Kamras Satisfactory? Me?--Giving New Teachers the Support They Deserve 41 Stephanie Widmer High IMPACT: It's the Feedback That Adds Value 43 Dwight Davis Urgency Breeds Anxiety: The Challenge of Building Teacher Trust 46 Peter Tang Response 53 Jason Kamras 4 Building a Performance-Driven Profession Framing the Issue 55 Celine Coggins and Lindsay Sobel From the New Teacher to Teacher Activist: What I Learned from "Mr. Miller" 58 Tina C. Ahlgren Leaving Cherie: One Teacher's Experience of Last In, FIrst Out 62 Jeanette Marrone Response 66 Celine Coggins and Lindsay Sobel 5 Engaging Early Career Teachers in the Union Framing the Issue 69 Paul Toner From the Classroom to the Big Picture: Why I Changed My Mind About Teacher Unions 72 Karen L. McCarthy Caught in the Middle Versus Finding the Middle Ground: What's Best for the Children of Chicago? 79 Gina Caneva Response 83 Paul Toner 6 Building School Leadership That Facilitates Great Teaching Framing the Issue 87 Benjamin Fenton and Terrence Kneisel I Wasn't Ready to Stop Improving: Why Irreplaceable Teachers Need Irreplaceable Leaders 89 Allison Frieze Putting My Beliefs into Practice: Principal Leadership Makes the Difference 92 Audrey Herzig Jackson Honoring My Mother: The Evolution of an Unlikely Educator 94 Jeremy Robinson Response 99 Benjamin Fenton and Terrence Kneisel 7 Raising the Status of the Profession Framing the Issue 105 Edward Liu Reforming Teacher Entry and Training: Shouldn't We Hold Teachers (Like Me) to a Higher Standard? 108 Meaghan Petersack Not My Parents' Profession: Today's Teachers Need Career Ladders 111 Erin Dukeshire Too Smart to Be a Teacher?--Let's Prove My Grandmother Wrong 114 Jaime Siebrase Hudgins Response 120 Edward Liu Conclusion Where Do We Go from Here?--Turning Teacher Voice into Action 125 Notes 129 About the Editors 135 About the Contributors 137 Index 151