NCTQ on LAUSD: Teacher Quality Roadmap 06-07-2011

8/6/2019 NCTQ on LAUSD: Teacher Quality Roadmap 06-07-2011

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TeacherQuality

RoadmapImprovingPolicies and

Practices inLAUSD


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About this study

This study was undertaken on behal o the672,000 children who attend school in theLos Angeles Unifed School District.

About NCTQThe National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) is a non-partisan research and policy

organization committed to restructuring the teaching proession, led by our vision that

every child deserves eective teachers.

Partner and Funders

This study is done in partnership with the United Way o Greater Los Angeles and a

coalition o groups including, Parent Organization Network, Families in Schools, Alliance

or a Better Community, Asian Pacic American Legal Center, Los Angeles Urban League

and the Mexican American Legal Deense and Education Fund. Additional unding or this

study was provided by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The NCTQ team or this project

Emily Cohen, Project Director

Priya Varghese, Policy Analyst


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Table o Contents

Introduction 3

Standard 1: Teacher Assignment 7

Standard 2: Evaluations 19

Standard 3: Tenure 34

Standard 4: Compensation 39

Standard 5: Work Schedule 48


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Introduction

IntroductionAt the request o the United Way o Greater Los Angeles, the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ)

undertook this analysis o the teacher policies in the Los Angeles Unied School District (LAUSD). A

coalition o civil rights groups were also involved in this project, including Parent Organization Network,

Families in Schools, Alliance or a Better Community, Asian Pacic American Legal Center, Los Angeles

Urban League and the Mexican American Legal Deense and Educational Fund.

Not unlike students in other urban districts in this country, ar too many LAUSD students are under-

perorming academically. LAUSDs graduation rate hovers just below 60 percent and only 11 percent o

4th grade students scored procient in reading on the nations report card, the National Assessment o

Educational Progress (NAEP).

In the ace o these challenges, recently appointed Superintendent John Deasy has mapped out an

aggressive series o goals or improving graduation rates, student perormance, attendance and school

saety. The district plans to drive these changes through a targeted human capital initiative ocused

on perormance-based management and accountability.

Snapshot o LAUSD

n 2nd largest district in the county

n 27 cities, in addition to Los Angeles,

included in the school district

n ~800 schools

n 2,000 administrators

n ~29,000 teachers

n ~672,000 K-12 students

- 79 percent receive ree or reduced lunch

- 30 percent are English language learners

The backdrop to these reorm eorts is a $408 million budget shortall or the 2012 scal year which likely

guarantees signicant teacher layos and urloughs or the third consecutive year. Teacher perormance,

student perormance and solutions to the districts nancial crisis are interconnected to an unprecedented

degree. These changes have dramatically changed the make-up o the teacher workorce; the number o

teachers in the beginning o their careers has allen by nearly 15 percent, due to seniority driven layo policies.

Race/ethnicityStudents(percent)

Teachers(percent)

Black or Arican American 9 11

American Indian 0 0.6

Asian 4 9

Filipino 2 3

Hispanic or Latino 75 33

White 9 44


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Improving Policies and Practices in the LAUSD

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Figure 1. Changing workorce in LAUSD

Source: LAUSD Human Resources

Also shaping the local context are the varying school models within LAUSD that provide students a

choice o where they attend school. These various school models (whether Partnership, pilot, magnet

or school-based management) also give the adults in the building increased autonomy (most notably in

stang and work schedules) in exchange or greater accountability.

What this report seeks to accomplishThis report seeks to shed light on the policies that can improve the quality o the teaching orce in

LAUSD. We explore these policies both as they are written on paper and as they play out in practice.

NCTQ rames this analysis around ve standards supported by research and best practices rom theeld or improving teaching quality:

1. Teacher Assignment. District policies acilitate schools access to top teacher talent.

2. Evaluations. The evaluation o teacher perormance plays a critical role in advancing teacher

eectiveness.

3. Tenure. Tenure is a meaningul milestone in a teachers career and advances the districts

goal o building a corps o eective teachers.

4. Compensation. Compensation is strategically targeted to attract and reward high quality

teachers, especially in hard-to-sta positions.

5. Work Schedule. Work schedule and attendance policies maximize instruction.


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Introduction

Under each standard we provide several recommendations, some or LAUSD and some or the state

o Caliornia.

This symbol denotes recommendations that the LAUSD central oce can initiate without

changes to the teacher contract.This symbol denotes recommendations whose implementation requires negotiation in the

collective bargaining agreement between the school district and the teachers union.

This symbol denotes recommendations that require a change in state policy to implement.

MethodologyTo undertake this study, NCTQ rst reviewed the districts current collective bargaining agreement

with its teachers union, the United Teachers o Los Angeles (UTLA), along with any relevant school

board policies. We also looked or state laws aecting local policy. We compared the laws and policies

in LAUSD and Caliornia with the 100-plus school districts ound in our TR3 database (www.nctq.org/

tr3). This exercise allowed us to determine where LAUSD alls along the spectrum o teacher quality

policies and identiy practices that LAUSD might emulate.

NCTQ then held ocus groups with community leaders and parents to hear about their experiences in

LAUSD. We also spoke with teachers, principals, district administrators and union leaders to deepen

our understanding o how policies play out in practice.

We surveyed teachers and principals to gain a broader sense o sta attitudes and experiences;

1,317 teachers (4.5 percent) and 247 principals (31 percent) completed the surveys. Quotations in this

report come rom these surveys and ocus groups. These quotations are not necessarily statements o act,

but rather teacher and principal perceptions about LAUSD policies and practices.

Finally, we looked at a range o teacher personnel data to give us a better understanding o the outcomes

o teacher hiring, transer, evaluation, attendance and compensation policies.

A drat o our analysis was shared with LAUSD, UTLA and the Associated Administrators o Los Angeles

(AALA) to veriy its accuracy. Both LAUSD and UTLA provided eedback that was incorporated in the

nal report.


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Standard 1.

Teacher AssignmentDistrict policies acilitate schools access to top teacher talent.

Indicators on which this standard was assessed:1.1 Teachers apply directly to vacancies at schools; principals and/or school committees select

applicants they wish to interview and have nal say over teacher assignment.

1.2 When positions must be cut, teacher perormance is a key actor in deciding who stays or goes.

1.3 The districts stang timeline ensures that the majority o vacancies are lled by June o

each school year; accordingly teachers who are retiring and resigning provide notice beore

transers occur.

1.4 The district recruits an ample supply o candidates who have the personal and proessional

characteristics ound to correlate with teacher eectiveness.

1.1 Teachers apply directly to vacancies at schools; principals and/or school

committees select applicants they wish to interview and have nal say over teacher

assignment.

FINDING: LAUSD practices some elements o mutual consent stang, but restrictive

state laws and contractual rules prevent ull implementation.

When teachers in LAUSD seek a new position in the district they apply directly to individual schools

which have advertised vacancies. This rather progressive policy is a departure rom the standard

practice o most large American school districts, in which teachers must rst go through the districtsHR department to nd a new assignment, oten having to rank their preerences and securing a new

position according to seniority.

Although seniority is not a actor in deciding where teachers are placed when they transer schools, it is a

actor in deciding who teaches which classes within each school. Article IX-A o the UTLA contract permits


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6 www.nctq.org/tr3

teachers to rank their preerence or the classes they want to teach, with

seniority being the deciding actor. This provision is unusual; ew contracts

in our TR3 database ormally grant teachers seniority preerences in

determining which class they will teach.

Seniority is also a actor in deciding which positions will be cut when

school populations shit or when layos must be made.1 In the past

two years, as LAUSD has signicantly downsized (the result o state

budget cuts and declining student enrollment), thousands o teachers

have been either laid o or displaced. LAUSD principals are oten

pressured to hire teachers who lost their position at one school who

then land on the priority placement list, commonly known as the

must-place list, beore they are allowed to consider other applicants.

Principals also report that this priority placement pool delays other

stang decisions.

Not unlike most districts, in LAUSD, teachers who have lost their posi-

tion in one school in the district are guaranteed a position at another

school in the district. It is this guarantee that proves problematic and

is the motivation or the policy changes being made elsewhere in the

country.2

Districts are relatively powerless to change this dynamic. Caliornia

state law does not allow a district to release a tenured teacher on the

basis o not being able to nd another position in the district. LAUSD

and other Caliornia districts are let with little choice: they can either

orce principals to accept teachers who have been displaced or nd

unds to keep teachers on the payroll without a school assignment.

The latter practice is costly but some districts are still taking on the

expense: New York City estimates it spends $100 million to pay 1,000

displaced teachers not to teach.

1 With the introduction o school-based budgeting, principals have some say over whichprograms will be cut and thereore some indirect infuence on which teachers will bedisplaced.

2 Colorado, or example, passed a law in 2010 that allows teachers who are without aclassroom assignment ater one year to be placed on unpaid leave.

I dont think itmakes sense tocut people byseniority. I usedto be a managerof a restaurant. IfI have to get rid ofservers, Im goingto keep the oneswho are mosteffective.

- LAUSD teacher


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Standard 1. Teacher Assignment

Figure 2. How oten are teachers hired rom the

priority placement list a good t or your school?

Source: NCTQ Survey o LAUSD Principals, Feb/Mar 2011. n=201

While teachers are displaced on the basis o seniority and not

perormance, there is nonetheless a stigma associate with being onthe priority placement list. Principals and teachers both commented in

ocus groups that the excellent teachers who do end up on the list are

snatched up quickly. LAUSD principals are rustrated with eectively

being orced to hire teachers rom this pool. Three-quarters o principals

surveyed by NCTQ said that they were unable to hire their teacher o

choice because they needed to hire rom the priority placement list.

Three-quarters o principals surveyed also said that teachers on the

must-place list are rarely i ever a good t or their school.

FINDING: Both Caliornia law and the LAUSD teacherscontract provide principals some latitude over stang, but

principals are either unaware o or reticent to take advantage

o special provisions that allow them to reuse orced place-

ment o teachers.

State law allows principals at Caliornias academically struggling

schools the right to reuse placement o voluntarilytranserring teachers.3

At the local level, the UTLA teacher contract also permits principals to

make exceptions to the provision requiring teachers to be displaced

by seniority when such an approach to not be in the best interest othe school.4 It is unclear what burden o evidence rests on principals to

3 Schools aorded the right to reuse teachers by Caliornia Education Code 35036 arethose with an academic perormance index o 1, 2 or 3, on a scale o 1 to 10.

4 Principals have discretion over excessing i the teacher has a unique set o skills or areaso expertise or hardship or medical issues.

Ive gotten aR.I.F. notice 3out of the 4 yearsthat I have been a

teacher. What kindof appreciation orsupport is that? Itis demoralizing.

- LAUSD teacher


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argue or these exceptions. Principal ocus groups as well as survey responses suggest that principals

do not eel they have the authority to use the exceptions.

Pilot, charter and school-based management schools have signicantly greater autonomy in stang

than traditional schools. Pilot schools (schools whose teachers have an amended work agreementrom the UTLA contract) are not required to hire teachers rom the priority placement list, except

when the district is engaged in a Reduction in Force (RIF), which it has been now or three years.5

1.2 When positions must be cut, teacher perormance is a key actor in deciding

who stays or goes.

FINDING: LAUSDs recent settlement with the ACLU and Public Counsel spares the neediest

schools rom layos by requiring layos to be distributed more evenly across the district,

but it alls short o a more permanent solution to the stang problems created by seniority-

based policies.6

Caliornia law requires that districts use seniority as the determining actor in layos. Caliornia is

one o only 12 states mandatingthat layos be conducted according to reverse seniority, with most

states deciding not to weigh in on the subject. In the last 18 months, a handul o states have changed

laws to now prohibit seniority as the primary determinant in layo decisions (Arizona, Florida and Idaho).

Other states now require a teachers perormance to be the top criterion or determining who will be

laid o (Colorado, Indiana and Oklahoma).

While Caliornia law requires that layos be conducted according to reverse seniority, it does provide

some fexibility. Districts may lay o teachers out o seniority order or either pedagogical reasons

or to ensure students rights to a quality education. LAUSD has interpreted the fexibility granted by thelaw narrowly. In the 2008-2009 school year, LAUSD laid o 590 teachers out o seniority order whose

credentials did not meet No Child Let Behinds Highly Qualied Teacher requirement. It has not used

the provision to protect a newer, eective teacher, while laying o an older, ineective teacher.

Worth noting is that LAUSD negotiated a provision into its current contract that gives even greater

weight to seniority than the state law. The contract provision requires that seniority determinations be

made district-wide, as opposed to within each school. This approach results in more disruption to the

highest needs schools that oten employ the least senior teachers.

5 Teachers who work in a pilot school must sign an elect to work agreement that is an addendum to the UTLA contract. The workagreement or pilot schools is designed and ratied at each school site. Teachers are reviewed annually against this document, whichalso contains an expedited arbitration process should it be determined that a teacher is not t or the school. Teachers dismissed rompilot schools are still guaranteed a position elsewhere in the district. The agreement is requently short (oten only ve pages), andteachers maintain nearly all o the rights and protections o UTLA membership, including accruing seniority, salary and benets.

6 The premise o the case was that the impact o teacher layos at certain schools was so severe and destabilizing that it compromisedthe constitutional rights o students at those schools.


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The 2011 settlement with the ACLU and Public Counsel protects up to 45 o the highest-poverty

schools rom layos entirely, but those schools comprise only about 6 percent o the 792 schools in

the district. LAUSD anticipates that this year nearly three times as many teachers will lose their jobs

as last year. Consequently, virtually all schools in LAUSD will be aected to an unprecedented degree by

budget cuts. Even though the districts very poorest schools will be spared, 153 o schools in the rstpoverty quartile (with an average poverty rate o 94 percent) will still be aected.

As it turns out, the highest numbers o inexperienced teachers (those in their rst and second years)

are now notworking in the poorest schools, rather, they are employed in somewhat more afuent

schools. This shit is not surprising because the districts poorest schools have already elt the brunt

o layos in the previous two years.

Figure 3. Inexperienced teachers by poverty

quartile, 2009-2010


1.3 The district hiring timeline ensures that the majority o vacancies are lled by June

o each school year; accordingly, retiring and resigning teacher provide notice

beore transers occur.

FINDING: Teaching vacancies in LAUSD are still being created well into the summer,compromising the districts ability to recruit top candidates and schools opportunities to

work with their teams over the summer.

In surveys, principals report lling vacancies in the summer months more than any other timeand

oten near the start o the new school year.

Figure 4. LAUSD teacher layos



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Figure 5. Month principals report lling the most vacancies

Source: NCTQ survey, February/March 2011. Respondents: 247 principals

LAUSD does not require that retiring and resigning teachers have to notiy the district o their intention

to leave until June 30 o each year.7 While this late deadline is common among many large urban schooldistricts, it hinders schools abilities to hire the best teachers. LAUSD HR data show that the number o

vacancies is highest in July, but the number o job applications received (and positions lled) is highest

in August. This timeline places a high burden on HR and principals to ll positions close to the rst

day o school, with the district having to hire hundreds o teachers in the month beore the new school

year begins.

Figure 6. Timing o teacher hiring in LAUSD

Source: LAUSD Human Resources, 2010

7 LAUSD Personnel Policy Guide, E-14


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For two years LAUSD tried implementing an early declaration incentive to

encourage departing teachers to give early notice o their plans to leave.

The program began in the 2008-2009 school year, paying teachers $300

i they gave notice in April and was increased in 2009-2010 to $1,000.8

LAUSD reports that neither amount increased the rate o early notices.

1.4 The district makes principals jobs easier by recruiting

teacher candidates who have the personal and proessional

characteristics ound to correlate with teacher eectiveness.

FINDING: Principals had mixed reviews about the quality o the

applicants screened by HR.

Figure 7. Principal satisaction with teacher applicant sources

Source: NCTQ survey, Feb/Mar 2011. Respondents: 247 principals

O the various sources o teacher candidates, principals are most satised with new hires.

FINDING: LAUSD limits schools access to teacher

candidates by permitting them to interview only teachers

who have been teaching in the same local district.

FINDING: The interview process at the school level lacks rigor.

Although LAUSD provide principals guidance on how to conduct interviews,

such guidance does not include asking a candidate to teach a sample

8 In the 2008-2009 school year, 429 teachers notied early, and in the 2009-2010 schoolyear, 623 teachers notied early.

I think in thepast 4 to 5 years,HR has done

an incredible jobof preliminaryscreening,questioningand calling aboutnew candidates!Their process hasimproved greatlyand it shows in thecaliber of personsthat we interview!

- LAUSD prinicpal


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12 www.nctq.org/tr3

lesson. Consequently most candidates are not assessed on the skill or

which teachers are presumably hired: their ability to teach. According to

surveyed teachers hired since the 2006-2007 school year, the majority

(89 percent) were interviewed by their principal as part o their application

process or their current position, but only 13 percent had to teach asample lesson as part o their interview.

FINDING: Less than hal o LAUSDs teachers graduated rom

more selective academic institutions.

One important indicator o teacher promise is a teachers academic

background. There have been many studies over the years showing

that teachers with higher scores on tests o verbal ability, such as the SAT

or ACT, or teachers who have graduated rom more selective colleges,

are more likely to be eective.9 It is by no means a guarantee that theywill be more eective, but a teachers own academic perormance is

an attribute that districts are well-advised to consider when reviewing

applications.10

To explore this measure o a teachers academic capital, NCTQ reviewed

the undergraduate institutions o teachers working in LAUSD or the

2009-2010 school year. Based on selectivity rankings set by U.S.

News & World Report, only a third o teachers graduated rom a school

ranked as either most or more selective, the top 25 percent o

institutions (352 colleges and universities).

LAUSD is recruiting most o its teachers rom schools with relatively low

admissions standards, even though, with ewer vacancies, it can aord

to be more selective about whom it hires. Baltimore, or example, has

signicantly improved the academic caliber o its newly hired teachers,

as it too has aced similar declines in enrollment and unding to LAUSD.

9 Boyd, D., Lankord, H., Loeb, S., Rocko, J., & Wycko, J. (2007). The narrowing gap in

New York City teacher qualifcations and its implications or student achievement in highpoverty schools. Washington, DC: Urban Institute.

10 For example, a study by the Illinois Education Research Council ound the ollowingmeasures to be linked to a teachers ability to produce academic gains among students:the selectivity o a teachers undergraduate institution, a teachers own SAT or ACTscores (not just the average or the institution) and a teachers pass rate on statelicensure exams. There was a particularly strong correlation between eectiveness andteachers who only had to take their licensing test once. In sum, teachers who werethemselves good students tended to be good teachers.

Human resourcesneeds to do a betterjob of screeningapplications. Werecently interviewednine candidatesand asked, Howdid seven of these

get past HR?- LAUSD principal


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Figure 8. Changing undergraduate selectivity

o teaching corps (2009)

Source: LAUSD and Baltimore City Human Resources

New teachers hired in LAUSD come rom less selective institutions than the workorce as awhole. Given that LAUSD is hiring ewer new teachers, now is a good time to improve the quality

o new recruits.

Figure 9. Five largest producers o LAUSD teachers (2009)

College/ University

U.S. News andWorld Reportranking*

% o LAUSDteacher corps**

1. Caliornia State University,Northridge

Less selective 16%

2. Caliornia State University,Los Angeles

Less selective 12%

3. University o Caliornia,

Los Angeles

Most selective 10%

4. Caliornia State University,Dominguez Hills

Less selective 7%

5. Caliornia State University,Long Beach

Selective 5%

* US News and World Reportrankings are: Least selective (25), Less selective (282), Selective(704), More selective (287) and Most selective (70).

** LAUSD was missing data on the undergraduate institution o 25 percent o its teachers.District ocials report that they are currently in the process o obtaining this inormation.

There will always be a certain percentage o candidates who are strong

but who lack a solid academic record, particularly older career-switchers.Strong recruiters o teachers such as Teach For America and The New

Teacher Project consider a candidates academic caliber early on in

the process o selecting their initial pool o candidates, but then turn

to more complex, personal characteristics best judged in the interview

process when making nal decisions. The average GPA o a Teach For

The process [ofapplying to charterschools] is gruelinginterviewsby staff, deans,principals, evenparents andstudents, plus

youre requiredto teach twosample lessons.Compare that tothe cake walk ofLAUSD.

- LAUSD teacher


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America corps member is 3.6. The average GPA o a teaching ellow in The New Teacher Project is

3.3, but both groups will report that they do hire some candidates who were not academically strong

and that they rule out many candidates who were very strong students.

LAUSD divides its schools into eight local districts, each managed by its own regional superintendent.Teachers transer rst within local districts and not across local districts. Principals rightly eel their

options to hire teachers that are a good t or their building are limited by this smaller applicant pool.

Principals in the poorest local district (District 5) report that they receive ew high-quality applicants

in high-need subject areas like mathematics and science.11

Figure 10. Percentage o principals

reporting they received enough

qualied applicants or high-need

subject areas, by LAUSD subdistrict

Source: NCTQ survey, February/March 2011 n=247

11 The poverty rate or LAUSD as a whole is 76 percent. To weigh the poverty rates o schools in each local district, NCTQ used thecount o teachers as a proxy or school size instead o the student count, which was unavailable.

Figure 11. Percentage o principals

reporting hiring the most teachers

in August and September, by

LAUSD subdistrict

Source: NCTQ survey, February/March 2011 n=247


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Recommendations or LAUSD

1. Eliminate the priority placement list. The priority placement list orces LAUSD to

compromise on its commitment to mutual consent stang. While districts bear the nancial

burden o keeping teachers without a permanent assignment on the payroll, it is preerableto orcing a principal to hire a teacher who is not a good t. As other districts have done

in the ace o restrictive state laws and nancial challenges, LAUSD should more actively

identiy and counsel low perorming teachers rom the proession who cannot nd a new

placement.

2. Educate principals in high-poverty schools on their right to reuse placement o

teachers in the priority placement pool. Too ew principals are aware o their right

to reuse a transer. LAUSD should take a page rom the UTLA, which does a good job o

inorming teachers o their rights, such as how to le a grievance (see evaluation goal or

more detail). The district administration need to provide similar guidance to principals on

how to utilize the fexibility and tools available to them.

3. Establish an earlier resignation notication date to help principals anticipate

vacancies earlier in the year. With nancial incentives proving ineective, LAUSD simply

needs to move up the notication deadline or all teachers in order to ll vacancies sooner.

4. Improve applicant recruitment and screening in HR to ensure that high caliber

candidates are sent to schools.

5. Remove contract language that grants teachers seniority preerence in selecting

which classes they will teach. The most eective teachers should be given the assignments

where they can have the greatest impact on student learning, and perhaps should becompensated to do so.

6. Take advantage o the state fexibility in layos. State law permits districts to lay o

teachers or pedagogical reasons. Although LAUSD interpreted this to mean when teachers

are not ully certied, it presumably could take a broader interpretation that would include

poor perormance.

Recommendations or Caliornia

1. Permit districts to dismiss teachers who are without an assignment ater one

year (two hiring cycles). Currently, Caliornia law does not allow school boards to terminate

a teachers contract or a ailure to nd a position. Several other states, however, do aord

districts this authority. This so-called exit strategy is critical i districts are to ully implement

mutual consent hiring.


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In the absence o such an exit strategy, districts are let to pay the salaries o unassigned

teachers who remain on the district payroll until they are hired by a principalan expense

that no district can justiy over the long term.

2. Allow perormance to be used as a actor in determining which teachers will belaid o. Not only is experience a poor predictor o teacher eectiveness ater the rst ew

years, it results in more teachers being laid o.12 I Caliornia is unable to make perormance

a determining actor in layos across the board, here are several compromises that remove

at least some o the preerence or seniority:

n Lay o rst-year teachers rst. Research shows that teachers who have been

teaching only or a year are not likely to match other teachers eectiveness. Targeting

rst-year teachers is preerable to treating all nontenured teachers as the same.

n Lay o nontenured teachers on the basis o perormance, so that at least

some o the lowest perormers go rst. The point is that protections or tenured

and nontenured teachers can be treated dierently.

n Lay o teachers on the basis o a weighted system that gives more points to

perormance and ewer to seniority.

I Caliornia does change its layo policy it would also need to reconsider the rights it

grants to laid-o teachers to be reinstated to their jobs. Currently teachers have rights to

a position or up to 39 months ater they were laid o i the district later resumes hiring.

3. Expand Caliornias Education Code 55036 (the lemon law) to give principals

the right o reusal, regardless o whether a teacher is transerring voluntarily

or involuntarily. Caliornias current policy is a good rst step in giving schools more

autonomy over stang, but it does not go ar enough because it does not apply when

teachers are involuntarilytranserring schools, which occurs most oten when positions

are cut due to a change in student enrollment. No school should be required to accept a

teacher who is not a good t.

12 Goldhaber, D., & Hansen , M. (2009). Assessing the potential o using value-added estimates o teacher job perormance or makingtenure. Seattle, WA: Center on Reinventing Public Education.


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Standard 2.

EvaluationTeacher evaluations serve to enhance the quality o the teaching orce.

Indicators on which this standard is assessed:2.1 All teachers receive an annual evaluation rating.

2.2 Objective evidence o student learning is the preponderant criterion

on which teachers are evaluated.

2.3 Classroom observations ocus on a set o observable standards

that gauge student learning.

2.4 Evaluations actor in multiple observations by multiple parties,

such as school administrators, department heads, trained

exemplary teachers, central oce evaluators and content

experts. These observers provide regular eedback to teacherson their classroom instruction.

2.5 Evaluations oer multiple ratings to distinguish dierences in

perormance among teachers.

2.6 Observations occur early enough in the school year to provide

sucient time or struggling teachers to improve and or

administrators to make a nal decision about a teachers

continued employment by years end.

2.7 Decisions to terminate a poorly perorming teacher occur switly

and are made by educational leadership, not a court o law.During the 2010-2011 school year, LAUSD convened a task orce to

examine district practices and policies on teacher eectiveness, with

the goal o revising its teacher evaluation policies. The districts core

strategy is to develop multiple-measure perormance reviews. In large

part, LAUSD is moving in a direction that mirrors many o the evaluation

goals articulated here.

Two-thirds o surveyed

principals said that the

number one change theywould make to improve

teacher evaluations would

be to actor in a teachers

impact on student

achievement;


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Figure 12. What change would you most recommend to improve teacher evaluations?

Source: NCTQ survey, February/March 2011 principals n=254; teachers n=1317

2.1 All teachers receive an annual evaluation rating.

FINDING: In LAUSD, not all teachers receive an annual evaluation. In the 2009-2010

school year, LAUSD evaluated only 40 percent o its tenured teachers and 70 percent o

nontenured teachers.

Hal o all states require that teachers be evaluated annually. Annual evaluations help both the district

and principals understand the perormance distribution o their sta. They also ensure that all teachers,

both strong and weak, receive eedback on their instruction. However, Caliornia law requires that only

nontenured teachers and tenured teachers who previously received a low rating are evaluated annually.

Tenured teachers with a previous satisactory evaluation only have to be evaluated every other year.

The state also permits principals to reduce the requency o evaluations to once every ve years or

teachers with more than 10 years o experience.13

Unortunately, the districts current evaluation proposal to the LAUSD Board o Education makes no

recommendation or increasing the requency o evaluations or tenured instructors. As is common in

many districts, state minimum requirements become the local de acto policy, although no state laws

preclude a school district and a union rom negotiating more requent evaluations. This practice is thecase o LAUSD; the teacher contract mirrors state law.

13 Caliornia Education Code 44664


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Standard 2. Evaluation

2.2 Objective evidence o student learning is the preponderant criterion on which

teachers are evaluated.

FINDING: Although LAUSD intends to incorporate objective evidence o student learning

into teacher evaluations, its current tool, the Stull evaluation, ails to so.

In the current system, principals and teachers set teachers proessional goals at the beginning o the

school year, a process which could potentially include student outcomes. There is little guidance rom

the district, however, on what would constitute rigorous and measurable goals.

Incorporating student growth into the evaluation system is an important objective or the district, but

is much easier said than done, as Los Angeles teachers know better than most. The use o value-

added data in assessing teacher eectiveness has played a prominent role in the national discussion

about how to best account or student achievement in teacher evaluations. This method o statistical

analysis is a particularly sensitive issue in Los Angeles, where the Los Angeles Times commissioned

its own value-added analysis o about 11,500 elementary teachers working in the district between2004 and 2010.14 They have controversially published individual teacher ratings on the newspapers

website or two consecutive years. Among their ndings rom the 2011 analysis were the ollowing:

n More than 8,000 students were assigned the poorest rated teachers two years in a row.

n The quality o instruction varied more within schools than across the district. In other words,

there are very good teachers and very weak teachers in nearly every school. The strongest

teachers were not necessarily in the most afuent schools.

The analysis has, unortunately, created an emotionally charged atmosphere in LAUSD. While intending

to show the merits o value-added data, the public release o teachers value-added scores demoralized

many teachers, as indicated in NCTQ ocus groups. Although this experience has let some less willing

to consider the constructive role value-added data can play in teacher evaluations, it at least initiated a

public conversation about using data on student learning to evaluate teacher perormance.

At the end o the 2010-2011 school year, LAUSD is privately sharing with teachers their value-added

scores, also reerred to as academic growth over time. For at least this year, the district has

pledged not to actor in teachers value-added scores in their rating; whether they are ultimately used

is subject to uture negotiations with the UTLA.

14 The analysis evaluated teachers based on student growth in math and English Language Arts.


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20 www.nctq.org/tr3

2.3 Classroom observations ocus on a set o observable

standards that gauge student learning.

Although value-added assessments have dominated national debates,

classroom observations oer another valuable component throughwhich evidence o a teachers impact on student learning can be assessed.

FINDING: LAUSDs current evaluation instrument ocuses on

teacher behaviors, not on the impact those behaviors have on

student learning.

The Stull component that rates a teachers classroom perormance has

little to do with well-executed instruction and more to do with whether

teachers utilize specic materials when planning instruction. Delivery

o academic content is not evaluated.

The ollowing comparison demonstrates the dierences between three

evaluation rubrics that assess a teachers ability to develop students

critical thinking abilities through eective questioning and discussion.

D.C. Public Schools IMPACT rubric explicitly describes good instruction

or observers and teachers, and requires the observer to cite detailed

evidence describing the teachers perormance. LAUSDs currentStull

assessment is too vague; it provides insignicant guidance or evaluators.

LAUSDs new rubric, currently under development, is less vague; it

includes two standards that address observable classroom instruction, yethow the components will be weighted has yet to be decided. Ultimately,

the revision still alls short in providing the level o specicity and detailed

examples ound in D.C.s IMPACT rubric.

A principalsfeedback isntbased on whatsgoing on in theclassroomitswhether you aresigned up for

committees orother things. I hada principal wholoved me andwho praised meup and downand I had maybehad two or threeconversationswith her ever.

- LAUSD teacher


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22 www.nctq.org/tr3

2.4 Evaluations actor in multiple observations by multiple

parties, including school administrators, department heads,

trained exemplary teachers central oce evaluators and

content experts. These observers provide regular eedbackto teachers on their classroom instruction.

FINDING: Currently, LAUSD bases a teachers evaluation on a

single observation by the school principal. LAUSD does not en-

courage principals to incorporate others expertise. Both the UTLA

contract and state law prohibit teachers rom evaluating peers.

Among other recommendations, teachers surveyed by NCTQ most

requently suggested having an additional classroom observer with

content-area expertise. Moving to more requent evaluations also requires

broadening the pool o observers so as to not unairly burden principals.

Unortunately, the current UTLA contract prohibits members o the same

bargaining unit rom evaluating each other. Furthermore, Caliornia state

law requires that anyone perorming an evaluation o a teacher hold an

administrators license. These kinds o requirements greatly limit the pool

o potential evaluators. These same rules apply to nontenured teachers,

even though they are eligible to receive two observations during the year.

In its new evaluation system, LAUSD seeks to involve other trained

observers, including teacher leaders and peers, along with surveys o

parents, students and employees. In order or these changes to occur,both the UTLA contract and state law must be changed.

FINDING: Teachers receive little eedback on their instruction, but

want more.

LAUSDs contract states that observations should be ollowed with

conerences to discuss perormance, but in our surveys teachers report

that these conerences oten do not happen.

One quarter o teachers surveyed reported that they never receive any

eedback rom their principal, but o those that do, over 60 percent o

teacher respondents reported that this eedback is at least somewhat

helpul.15

15 Principals, on the other hand, claimed to give teachers eedback at least monthly.

I teach high schoolbut my principaltaught elementaryschool, so shedidnt have anyidea about my

work or subjectareas.

- LAUSD teacher


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Figure 14. Frequency at which teachers report

receiving eedback rom their principal

Source: NCTQ survey, February/March 2011 n=1,317

Commendably, the LAUSD contract does not require that observations be

scheduled in advance. This practice allows principals or their designees to

assess a typical lesson, instead o a rehearsed one, and is likely one o

the reasons many teachers nd administrator eedback helpul.

Some LAUSD schools have implemented schoolwide student evaluations

o their teachers. While these evaluations do not ormally contribute to

teachers ratings, teachers interviewed or this study reported receiving

rich eedback rom the results o almost 2,000 student surveys conducted

at their school. Teachers said that the student eedback was not onlyhelpul or their own instruction, but also that it conrmed colleagues

own estimation about who was struggling.

The experience o these teachers is consistent with research on the

validity o student eedback that nds a correlation between student

eedback on teacher instruction and value-added scores.16

16 Learning about Teaching: Initial Findings rom the Measures o Eective Teaching Study,The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, December 2010

I have rarely beenevaluated properly

or been givenconstructivecomments sincemy student teaching15 years ago.

- LAUSD teacher


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24

2.5 Evaluations oer multiple ratings to clearly distinguish dierences in perormance

among teachers.

FINDING: Teachers are assigned one o two ratings on the nal evaluation: meeting

standard perormance and below standard perormance. Teachers are rated on individualindicators using three ratings: Meets, Needs Improvement and, oddly, No.

This reductionist approach does not dierentiate between teachers whose weaknesses could be remedied

with more proessional support and those who are undamentally ill-suited or the proession. Furthermore,

it ails to dierentiate truly outstandingteachers rom those who are merely competent.

Figure 15. LAUSD teacher evaluation

ratings, 2009-2010


O the 11,000 LAUSD teachers evaluated in the 2009-2010 school year, 79 percent met the standard

in all27 indicators, signaling that they did not need anyimprovement. Contrast teachers apparent

extraordinary level o perormance with student perormance: only 41 percent o students scored

procient on the state language arts exam and only 39 percent scored procient in mathematics.17

17 Average prociency o grades 3-11. September 2010 LAUSD District Goals Data Update

Figure 16. Number o evaluation ratings

in the largest 25 U.S. districts

Source: NCTQs TR3 database, www.nctq.org/tr3


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Figure 17. LAUSD student and teacher perormance, 2009-2010


Principals are reluctant to rate teachers below standards or a number o reasons. First, the evaluation

instrument is prone to grievance. Any evaluation where an educator received a below standard rating

is subject to a grievance.18 An evaluation refecting a signicant disparity between the overall rating

and the eedback on the evaluation orm is also subject to grievance. O the 540 UTLA grievances

led against LAUSD last year, nearly 40 percent were related to teacher evaluations.

A quarter o districts in NCTQs TR3 database do not allow a teacher to grieve an evaluation rating.

Figure 18. UTLA grievances led during 20092010 school year


18 The UTLAs 11-page handbook to the Stull evaluation contains a three-page checklist o constraints [that] keep teachers andstudents rom achieving their potential. This document is essentially a guide or teachers in how to respond toand grieve overa negative evaluation. The handbook has a 43-item checklist o potential problems in teachers work environment. Examples includeclosed stock rooms to insucient number o telephones.


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26

Perverse incentives may dissuade school leaders rom executing their management responsibilities. For

example, the online evaluation system, includes a pop-up warning telling principals who have selected

needs improvement or 3 or more o the 27 indicators to contact Sta Relations and present

documentation to reinorce the ratings. This step likely gives administrators pause; i they have not

diligently collected evidence, or eel that pursuing a negative rating will take too much time, they maydecide it is not worth the eort. In this case a principal may likely limit hersel to highlighting only

two needs to improve areas. There should be a high burden o evidence and eedback or every

ratingboth negative and armative.

Other problems with the current instrument include the ollowing:

n The instrument does not indicate how many o the 27 indicators a teacher must meet in

order to be rated as meets standards.

n All 27 indicators appear equally weighted despite diering importance.

n There is nothing to prevent two teachers rom receiving

the same rating on each indicator, but a dierent Overall

Evaluation ratings.

2.6 Observations occur early enough in the school year to provide sucient time

or struggling teachers to improve and or administrators to make a nal decision

about a teachers continued employment by years end.

FINDING: LAUSD allows observations to occur late in the year, leaving struggling teachers

foundering or months.

Even highly eective teachers stand to benet rom early eedback that gives them time in the school

year to adjust their practice. Although the contract requires that teachers and principals meet soon

ater commencement o the academic year to agree upon teachers perormance goals, there is no

deadline or these conerences. It is unclear whether these goal-setting conerences actually happen,

as the district does not require any documentation rom these meetings.

Observations can occur at any point in the school year provided the principal submits the nal evaluation

report at least 30 days beore the last school day. The lack o a timely observation requirement means

that many teachers may not be observed until the school year is almost over.

A teacher receiving an overall rating o Below Standard Perormance must receive a written description

o deciencies, recommendations or improvement and assistance to be given. According to state law,

tenured teachers receiving this rating must participate in Peer Assistance and Review (PAR), through

which they receive support rom trained, consulting teachers who oer personalized assistance but

who do not evaluate. One year ater the initial below standards rating, teachers are reevaluated by their

principal. This timeline is signicantly more protracted compared to other districts where teachers are


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reevaluated one or two times ater an initial unsatisactory rating and

all within the same school year.

2.7 Decisions to terminate a poorly perorming teacher

occur switly and are made by educational

leadership, not a court o law.

FINDING: In 2009-2010, less than 2.5 percent o the LAUSD

teacher workorce received a low rating, though the district

now appears to be taking evaluations more seriously.

As gure 19 shows, ew LAUSD teachers historically have been dismissed

or poor perormance, largely because it was not a priority in prior LAUSD

administrations. In the past 18 months, the number o poorly perorming

tenured teachers given notice o their dismissal has greatly increased, butit is still only a tiny raction o the nearly 29,000 teachers in the LAUSD

workorce.

Figure 19. LAUSD workorce dismissal

School year

Dismissalso tenuredteachers

Resignationsto avoid

dismissals

Dismissalso nontenured

teachers

Total

2005-2006 6 10 81 97

2006-2007 3 15 44 62

2007-2008 6 55 25 86

2008-2009 7 62 52 121

2009-2010 10 182 89 281

2010-2011 94(as o April

25)

36(as o January

19)

150(as o April

25)

280


68 percent o surveyed

teachers said that there

were tenured teachers

currently working in

their schools who should

be dismissed or poorperormance.

34 percent o principals

surveyed said that they

did not even try to dismiss

a poor perorming teacher

because the processwas unlikely to result

in dismissal.


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28 www.nctq.org/tr3

According to Caliornia state education code, the ollowing steps must

occur in order to dismiss a poorly perorming tenured teacher. Principals

must:19

1. Document a teacher as below standards in an evaluation;

2. Include detailed recommendations as to areas o improvement

in the perormance o the employee;

3. Notiy the employee in writing and describe the unsatisactory

perormance; and,

4. Meet with the employee to recommend improvements in the

employees perormance and assist the employee making those

improvements.

Although none o the states requirements appears overly onerous,

principals asserted that they have only enough time to dismiss one ortwo teachers a year. More requently, principals will counsel an under-

perorming teacher to voluntarily transer rom their school (66 percent

o surveyed principals admitted to using this strategy). Teachers them-

selves may oer to transer as well. It is a lot less cumbersome to have

a low-perorming teacher transer to another school than to have to

evaluate the teacher out o the district via the ormal dismissal process.

19 Caliornia Education Code 44664

I began thedismissal process,but then teacheroffered to bedisplaced.

- LAUSD principal

I was in processof dismissing ateacher, but theteacher requested avoluntary transferand I was advised

to accept it.- LAUSD principal


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Perhaps more than any policy change, LAUSDs central administration needs to send a strong signal

to principals about the importance o evaluations or improving teacher perormance and or holding

teachers accountable.

1. Make student perormance the preponderant criterion on which teachers are

evaluated. The impact o LAUSDs proposed redesign will be determined by how each

domain is ultimately weighted, and whether the most weight is given to a teachers observable

perormance in the classroom along with student outcomes.

Standardized test results provide one source o evidence that students are learning, but

there are others sources districts can and must use since standardized testing does not

occur in all grades and subjects. Alternatives are oten more dicult to implement consis-

tently and are less technologically advanced. Their application also requires more human

judgment, which is not necessarily a negative, given many teachers expressed discomort overthe interpretation o value-added scores absent important context.

One option is or LAUSD to develop a set o standards or how much learning should occur

in a given year or each subject or grade. That process o standard setting is best done

by teams o exemplary teachers or each grade level or subject area. For example, LAUSD

might assemble the citys best Spanish teachers to arrive at a metric that describes superlative,

acceptable or unacceptable progress or students to make in any given year o Spanish. The

metric would be applied during the evaluation process as a tool that provides the evaluator

with a yardstick by which to measure growth or mastery.

The evaluator would need to weigh a teachers perormance on the metric with other actorssuch as the level o progress students made in the previous year under a dierent Spanish

teacher. For example, the evaluator notes that a teacher only covered three-quarters o

the material she should have gotten through or a Spanish II class, but also that students

clearly had mastered the material that was covered. Putting these results in context, the

evaluator also knows that the Spanish I teacher was extremely weak and that the Spanish

II teacher had to spend a good deal o time on catch-up. The Spanish II teacher earns an

adequate rating or covering about a years worth o material. This display o judgement is

exactly the sort o process that good principals have engaged in or years, even though it

was not part o the ocial district policy.

Skirting the hard work o developing these alternatives, course by course, grade by grade,

is only likely to make the system too dependent on standardized test scores.


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Where its been done:

Washington, D.C., provides one o the strongest examples o a district requiring that

student achievement be the preponderant criterion o evaluations. For teachers in viable

grades and subject areas, 50 percent o their rating is determined by value-added data.Those teaching in other grade levels and subjects set goals to capture students growth

or mastery o academic content. It is important to note that the teacher evaluation policies

in the District o Columbia are not subject to negotiation with the local union, but are a

management right.

In consultation with its teachers union, the New Haven public school system recently

revamped its evaluation instrument. Almost hal o a teachers rating is determined by

student growth goals. Measures o progress include standardized tests, district assessments

and student work. The remainder o a teachers rating is largely determined by classroom

observation, which ocuses on evidence o student learning rather than on teacher behaviors.

Also, when the teachers rating rom the observation does not match the teachers student

growth rating, the mismatch generates an automatic review by the central oce, an important

check and balance to the system. Teachers who receive either the highest or lowest evaluation

rating rom their principal are also automatically reviewed by another evaluator.

2. Develop a team o independent evaluators to validate principal evaluations and

provide content-specic eedback on teacher instruction. Evaluations that regularly

incorporate the views o multiple, trainedobservers allow the district to gauge the robustness

o individual principal ratings. When a principals observations closely match those o

an outside evaluator, teachers can be more condent that the principal is unbiased and

skilled at evaluation. I the ratings confict, the school district needs to investigate reasons

or the variance. Even i only one teacher in a building is checked by a third-party evaluator,

principals will take this task more seriously.

Where its been done:

Hillsborough County Schools employs a team o 75 content experts, usually ormer teachers

in the system, to evaluate teachers. These observations happen in addition to those done

by school administrators. Observations by both master teachers and administrators actor

into the teachers evaluation rating.

3. Adjust the observation schedule so that educators receive eedback on theirinstruction no later than the end o the rst semester, increasing their opportunities

to demonstrate improvement.


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4. Collect and examine student eedback on teacher instruction. Feedback rom students

can help teachers improve and can give evaluators a better sense o teacher instructional

practices. A questionnaire or student eedback might look like the ollowing.

Figure 20. How much do you agree or disagree with the ollowing statements?Check one box ater each question.

Strongly agree

Agree

Disagree

Stronglydisagree

1. When I work hard in this class, animportant reason is that the teacherdemands it.

2. I dont like asking the teacher in thisclass or help, even i I need it.

3. The teacher in this class calls on me,even i I dont raise my hand.

4. I have pushed mysel hard to completelyunderstand my lessons in this class.

5. I I were conused in this class, I wouldhandle it by mysel, not ask or help.

6. One o my goals in this class is to keepothers rom thinking Im not smart.

Source: The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Recommendations or Caliornia1. Make the evaluation tool and process a management right not subject to negotiation

with the union. Changing the scope o bargaining to explicitly declare evaluations as

a management right would remove many hurdles and local political battles that impede

evaluations.

2. Require annual evaluations or all teachers. State policy, intended only to establish

the minimum requency o evaluations, too oten becomes the de acto maximum in most,

districts. It is critical that the state establish stronger guidance to ensure that all teachers,

even good ones, are evaluated annually.

3. Revise requirements or evaluator eligibility so that observers are not requiredto hold an administrators license. Currently, peer evaluations can be used to inorm

principals and help struggling teachers, but are not incorporated into the evaluation. For

LAUSD to establish a cohort o trained peer evaluators, Caliornia must remove its current

requirement that all evaluators hold an administrators license. This change will greatly

expand the pool o applicants who can observe.


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Standard 3.

TenureTenure is a meaningul milestone in a teachers career and advances

the districts goal o building a corps o eective teachers.Indicators on which this standard was assessed:3.1 Teachers are eligible or tenure ater no ewer than our years in order to actor in multiple

years o meaningul data into tenure decisions.

3.2 Evidence o eectiveness is the preponderant criterion in tenure decisions.

3.3 Tenure decisions are decided by a panel o reviewers in a process that looks at a teachers

record and impact on student perormance.

3.1 Teachers are eligible or tenure ater no ewer than our years in order to actor

in three years o meaningul data into tenure decisions.

FINDING: Caliornia state law impedes LAUSDs ability to incorporate important evidence

into tenure decisions.

Tenure or public school teachers is, in theory, a guarantee o due process; in practice however, it is

a $2 million decision by a school district actoring in combined salary, benets and pension over the

course o a teachers career. Tenure should be considered a signicant milestone or teachers who

have consistently demonstrated eectiveness and commitment. Unortunately, in most states, including

Caliornia, tenure is oten awarded automatically, ater a teacher has been in the classroom or two or

three years. No other proession, including higher education, oers practitioners this benet ater only a

ew years o working in the eld. Ideally, districts would examine three years o data on a teachers

perormance beore awarding tenure.

Districts decide whether to award teachers tenure, but state law sets the terms. Caliornia mandates

that teachers must be considered or tenure ater only two years o teaching. Even with such a short

probationary period or tenure, Caliornia has no provision allowing districts to extend the probationary

period an additional year, as do 12 other states.


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Standard 3. Tenure

Figure 21. Time period or earning tenure

Source: NCTQ TR3 database, www.nctq.org/TR3

Not surprisingly principals surveyed by NCTQ suggested that two years is not enough time to make

inormed decisions on teacher tenure, with the majority o principals saying they need at least three

years. As research on the impact o teacher experience shows, teachers greatly improve their crat

in the rst three years o their career.20 A longer probationary period gives new teachers the benet

o the doubt and more time to show their improvement.

3.2 Evidence o eectiveness is the preponderant criterion in tenure decisions.

FINDING: A teachers eectiveness only matters nominally in LAUSD tenure decisions.

According to state law, an LAUSD teacher is eligible or tenure provided his or her most recent evaluation

resulted in a satisactory rating. This single criterion does not appear to serve as an eective screen,

as historically in LAUSD virtually all teachers have received a satisactory evaluation.

Figure 22. Length o experience

Length o experience in LAUSD

Teachers belowstandard perormance

Teachers meetingstandard perormance

Fewer than 2 years 3% 97%

More than 2 years 2.5% 97.5%

20 Goldhaber, D., & Hansen , M. (2009). Assessing the potential o using value-added estimates o teacher job perormance or makingtenure. Seattle, WA: Center on Reinventing Public Education.

Caliornia


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34

Only 3 percent o nontenured teachers in LAUSD were rated below standard, virtually the same percentage

as tenured teachers. I tenure were a meaningul designation, teacher evaluation ratings between less

experienced teachers and those who have earned tenure would presumably look quite dierent.

3.3 Tenure decisions are decided by a panel o reviewers in a process that looks

at a teachers impact on student perormance.

FINDING: In recent years, LAUSD has made tenure a more meaningul designation by

requiring principals to actively approve a teacher or tenure.

In 2009 LAUSD began an armative tenure process, whereby principals actively approve a teacher or

tenure. In the 2009-2010 school year, LAUSD reports that 89 teachers were denied tenure, approximately

10 percent o those eligible and a 60 percent increase over the prior year. This year LAUSD ocials

estimate that approximately 120 teachers in their rst year and 30 teachers in their second year will

not be invited back or perormance reasons.

Teachers interviewed and surveyed by NCTQ overwhelmingly expressed the sentiment that the teaching

proession is not given due respect, requently contrasting teaching with more prestigious careers

such as academia, medicine and law. The relative selectivity or entry into these elds contributes to

public esteem. The lack o selectivity at every stage o the teaching career, including the automatic

nature o tenure decisions, only serves to eed a public perception o teaching as low status.

Figure 23. Academic caliber o teacher recruits

Finland top 10 percent

South Korea top 5 percent

Hong Kong top 30 percent

Singapore top 30 percent

United States bottom third

Source: Barber, M., & Mourshed, M. (2007). How the worlds best perormingschool systems come out on top. McKinsey & Company.

Without teacher preparations programs and state licensure policies raising the bar or entry into the

eld, the onus rests on districts to not just do a better job recruiting and hiring top teachers, but also

in deciding who gets tenure.


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Standard 3. Tenure


1. Hold a tenure review to decide whether to award tenure. Tenure should be a signicant

milestone in a teachers career and awarded only ater deliberate and thoughtul consideration

o a teachers perormance. LAUSD should develop a review process in which both theprincipal and teacher must present the cumulative evidence o teachers proessional success

and potential.

2. Make perormance the primary actor on which teacher tenure is decided. Sound

tenure decisions should be directly dependent on a robust and inormative evaluation

instrument. The ability to know the areas in which a teacher excels and struggles and

how her perormance compares to others in the teacher corps should be the crux o any

decision. To adopt this strategy requires more time to collect data on individual teacher

perormance than 20 months permits.

3. Reward teachers who earn tenure with a signicant pay increase. A meaningultenure process should be accompanied by a salary structure that recognizes the teachers

accomplishments. See Standard 4 or more ideas on how LAUSDs salary schedule can

work toward attracting, retaining and rewarding eective teachers.

Food or thought:

Economists recommend that districts should routinely dismiss at least the bottom-

perorming 25 percent o teachers eligible or tenure in order to build a high-quality teaching

corps that is capable o making signicant gains in student achievement. Denying tenure

to the least eective teachers would have an eect comparable to reducing class size by

ve students per class.*

* Goldhaber, D., & Hansen, M. (2009). Assessing the potential o using value-added estimates o teacher jobperormance or making tenure decisions. Seattle, WA: Center on Reinventing Public Education.

4. Provide teachers with intensive development during their probationary years. A more

deliberate process leading up to tenure could include intensive investments in probationary

teachers, including instructional coach support, requent classroom observations by content

experts, videotaping lessons or refection and critique, release time to observe master

teachers and other specialized proessional development. Many o these and similar supports

are included in the districts own Teacher Eectiveness Task Force recommendations. Tenure

panel should have multiple years worth o a teachers perormance when deliberating theteachers tenure decision.


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Recommendations or Caliornia

1. Extend the probationary period or teachers to earn tenure rom two years to at

least our years. A compromise to extending the tenure decision to our years statewide

would be to permit principals to extend the probationary period. A quarter o states grantlocal administrators this right.

2. Move the March 15 deadline or tenure decisions to the end o the school year.

Caliornia policy results in districts using ewer than two years o inormationand possibly

only one ormal evaluationto assess a teachers candidacy or tenure. The March deadline is

also problematic or districts that lack a ormal deliberation process because it may easily

be missedthe result is automatic tenure or new teachers. Furthermore, as districts

move to incorporate value-added data into teacher evaluations, this March 15 deadline

or notiying nontenured teachers will become even more problematic. State test results

are not available until ater the school year ends. A principal could technically non-renew

a nontenured teachers contract without a second evaluation on le, but such practice is

unair to teachers and should be discouraged by LAUSD.


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Standard 4.

CompensationCompensation is strategically targeted to attract and retain

high-quality teachers, especially in hard-to-sta positions.Indicators on which this standard was assessed:4.1 Raises are tied to a teachers impact on student learning and not indiscriminately to

advanced degrees or solely to years in the classroom.

4.2 The districts salaries are competitive with other school districts in the area.

4.3 The district oers dierentiated pay to employ and retain eective teachers in high-need

schools and critical shortage content areas.

4.4 Teachers receive a signicant pay increase ater earning tenure.

Any discussion o teacher salaries at this juncture must acknowledge LAUSDs unprecedented nancial

crisis. This analysis explores the structure o LAUSDs pay system and attempts to oer alternative

models to strategically compensate teachers, absent additional unding.

4.1 Raises are tied to a teachers impact on student learning and not indiscriminately

to advanced degrees or solely to years in the classroom.

FINDING: LAUSD teachers have one option or earning higher pay: accumulating an

extraordinary number o graduate course credits.

LAUSD spends 25 percent o its teacher payroll ($519 million a year) to compensate teachers or

completing graduate coursework.21 While virtually all districts boost teacher pay or completing additional

21 The district degree expenditure is calculated by determining what the districts payroll could be i all teachers (regardless o educa-tional attainment) were paid according to the base salary lane--with dierentials only awarded or experienceand not coursework.The percentage is reported as the dierence between the current and possible payroll as a portion o the total current payroll. Thisgure is intended or illustrative purposes only.


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38 www.nctq.org/tr3

coursework and advanced degrees, LAUSDs pay structure is unusual. It

encourages teachers to take anycoursework, regardless o its connection

to a degree. For instance, advancing one lane on the salary schedule,

which requires the coursework equivalent to hal a masters degree, earns

a teacher ve times as much as holding a masters degree (advancing onelane on the salary schedule equals a raise o $2,613; the stipend or

having a masters degree is $584 a year).

In LAUSD, completing additional coursework is virtually the only way to

qualiy or raises (other than cost-o-living increases) once a teacher has

been working or nine years or more. It is no surprise, then, that LAUSD

teachers take a lot o coursework, with 60 percent o LAUSD teachers

currently having earned at least 98 graduate course credits. In act, this

number o credits is roughly equivalent to three masters degrees.

Ater completing 98 credits o coursework teachers also qualiy oradditional raises or experience that teachers who have not completed

such coursework do not.

Figure 24. LAUSD teachers qualiying or each salary tier

Source: LAUSD payroll data 2009-2010 school year

The degree to which LAUSDs pay structure is tied to coursework

completion is problematic on a number o ronts.

1. Research concludes that graduate coursework does notmake teachers more eective. We provide a meta analysis

here that summarizes all o the research on the impact o masters

degrees on teacher eectiveness, as measured by student learning.

I think LAUSDshould renegotiatehow raises aredetermined. Takingclasses to get

salary points doesnot make anyone abetter teacher.

- LAUSD teacher

Moving up asalary ladder for

completing course-work should bediscontinued. Toomany people gamethe system to reachtop pay way beforethey are worth it.

- LAUSD teacher


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3

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Figure 25. The impact o teachers advanced degrees on student learning

Out o 102 statistical tests examined, approximately 90 percent showed that advanced degrees had either no impact at all or,in some cases, a negative impact on student achievement. O the 10 percent that had a positive impact, none reached a levelo statistical signifcance. In act, a good number o the studies ound a signifcant negative correlation between teachers degreestatus and student achievement. The ew studies that have shown a positive correlation between a teachers degree statusand student achievement are when teachers complete a degree in the subject they teach; the fnding is particularly strikingor mathematics degrees.


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40 www.nctq.org/tr3

2. LAUSDpolicy requires that courseworktaken by teachers

mustbe directly related to the subjects commonly taught

in the District (pre-K through grade 12), but there is no

policy requiring that the coursework relate to a teachers

own content area. Approval or such courses should be consideredonlyin relation to the subjects a teacher actually teaches.

There are two schools o thought on how to better align any

continuing education with district goals, given that districts are

getting poor return on their investments and teachers are burdened

with pressure to take more coursework. Some argue that

districts should restrict additional compensation to those masters

degrees that are in the subject area taught or a specialist degree,

such as in reading or special education. Others argue that teachers

should never be compensated or coursework per se, that any

increase in compensation should be linked to evidence o studentlearning gains in the classroom. In other words, only increased

eectiveness should be awarded.

3. Teachers are given salary credit or repeating courses

they have already taken as long as they are spaced more

than ve years apart.

Figure 26. Percent o teacher payroll spent on

coursework-based compensation

Source: NCTQ district policy analyses

O the fve districts where

NCTQ has completed a

similar policy analysis,

only Seattle spends

a larger percentage o

its payroll on raises

associated with additional

coursework.


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4

Standard 4. Compensation

FINDING: LAUSDs salary schedule penalizes teachers who have not completed the

maximum coursework by capping their annual raises ater nine years. To reach the top o

the pay scale, teachers must take excessive amounts o coursework and even then it takes

roughly 30 years to reach the top o the scale.22

Most school districts have a salary schedule that requires teachers to work 20 to 25 years beore

earning their peak salary. A shorter salary schedule works to teachers advantage as it means higher

lietime earnings. Furthermore, it is a pay structure more comparable to other proessions.

Figure 27. Year maximum salary is reached

4.2 The districts salaries are competitive with other school districts in the area.

FINDING: Teacher salaries in LAUSD start o relatively competitive with surrounding

school districts, but quickly lose ground as teachers gain more experience.23

New LAUSD teachers with a bachelors degree and no prior work experience earn $44,071 a year,

comparable to nearby districts. As LAUSD teachers progress through their careers their salaries donot keep pace. Consequently lietime earnings (based on an estimated 25-year career) are lower in

LAUSD than in most o the surrounding school districts.

22 It takes 29 years or teachers on lane 27 to achieve the maximum salary. Teachers on lane 27 move to the 1st Career Increment(CI) ater completing step 14 (CI 1 is essentially step 15); teachers on lane 27 move to the 2nd CI ater ve years on CI 1 (essentiallyater 19 years o experience); teachers on lane 27 move to the 3rd CI ater ve years on CI 2 (essentially ater 24 years o experience);teachers on lane 27 move to the 4th CI ater ve years on CI 3 (essentially ater 29 years o experience).

23 One component o the compensation package not included in this analysis is health and other ringe benets. LAUSD pays approximately$14,000 a year per employee or these benets. LAUSD pays the entire premium. LAUSD is one o only seven districts in the largest 25school districts nationally where teachers receive health insurance at no cost. (Source: NCTQ TR3 database, www.nctq.org/tr3).

Figure 28. Teacher relative earnings compared

to doctor and lawyer

Source: Vigdor, Jacob. Scrap the Sacrosanct SalarySchedule, Education Next. Fall 2008, Vol. 8, No. 4


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42 www.nctq.org/tr3

Figure 29. Lietime earnings in LAUSD and surrounding districts

(based on a 30-year career)

Source: LAUSD and surrounding district salary schedules (2010-2011)

4.3 The district oers nancial incentives to employ

and retain eective teachers in high-needs schools and

critical shortage areas.

FINDING: LAUSD has experimented with salary dierentials or

teachers working in high-demand areas, dierentials are small

and are not targeted to the most eective teachers.24

These bonuses represent typical pay dierentials in many districts, but

none o the bonuses are targeted at recruiting teachers in the subjects

that principals requently cite as hard-to-sta (e.g., mathematics and

science) or in schools that are deemed more challenging. Additionally,

these bonuses are primarily awarded to teachers based on their positions

and certications, instead o their eectiveness in those areas.

24 Caliornia state law encourages local districts to award incentives to teachers in areas ohighest need and to recognize actors in lieu o traditional educational units/degrees andyears o experience in determining teacher salaries; Caliornia Education Code: 45028(e).

I think that LAUSDdoes little to

recognize teacherexcellence. Ive setup three computerlabs and the districtdid nothing torecognize it. Ivewon numerousawards from outsideorganizations, even a

commendation fromthe city, but neverhas the district doneanything to applaudor recognize thecontributions thatI have made.

- LAUSD teacher


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4

Standard 4. Compensation

Figure 30. Types o additional pay available to teachers

Stipend Who qualies Amount o award

Master Plan Teachers o English as a secondlanguage and teachers with

some level o bilingual certica-tion serving in predominatelyminority schools

$1,020-$5,100 per year,depending on the level o

bilingual certication achievedand the school demographics

Advanced Placement Teachers o AdvancedPlacement courses

Hourly rate o pay or extrahours worked ($43 - $75per hour)

National Board Teachers with National BoardCertication: according to theNational Board For ProessionalTeaching Standards, 1,546LAUSD teachers have completed

National Board Certication.

7.5 percent bonus on topo base pay; an additional7.5 percent raise is availableto National Board-certiedteachers who provide 92 hours

o service, beyond their regularhours (minimum o $3,194 to$5,523, gure does not includeadditional pay or 92 hours oservice)

Consulting teachers with thePeer Assistance and

NCTQ on LAUSD: Teacher Quality Roadmap 06-07-2011

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