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TEACHER EQUITY: EFFECTIVE 

TEACHERS FOR ALL CHILDREN 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON 

EDUCATION AND LABOR 

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

HEARING HELD IN WASHINGTON, DC, SEPTEMBER 30, 2009 

Serial No. 111–33 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Education and Labor 

( 

Available on the Internet: 

http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/house/education/index.html 
(II) 

COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND LABOR 

GEORGE MILLER, California, Chairman 

Dale E. Kildee, Michigan, Vice Chairman 

Donald M. Payne, New Jersey 

Robert E. Andrews, New Jersey 

Robert C. ‘‘Bobby’’ Scott, Virginia 

Lynn C. Woolsey, California 

Rube ́n Hinojosa, Texas 

Carolyn McCarthy, New York 

John F. Tierney, Massachusetts 

Dennis J. Kucinich, Ohio 

David Wu, Oregon 

Rush D. Holt, New Jersey 

Susan A. Davis, California 

Rau ́l M. Grijalva, Arizona 

Timothy H. Bishop, New York 

Joe Sestak, Pennsylvania 

David Loebsack, Iowa 

Mazie Hirono, Hawaii 

Jason Altmire, Pennsylvania 

Phil Hare, Illinois 

Yvette D. Clarke, New York 

Joe Courtney, Connecticut 

Carol Shea-Porter, New Hampshire 

Marcia L. Fudge, Ohio 

Jared Polis, Colorado 

Paul Tonko, New York 

Pedro R. Pierluisi, Puerto Rico 

Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan, 

Northern Mariana Islands 

Dina Titus, Nevada 

Judy Chu, California 

John Kline, Minnesota, 

Senior Republican Member 

Thomas E. Petri, Wisconsin 

Howard P. ‘‘Buck’’ McKeon, California 

Peter Hoekstra, Michigan 

Michael N. Castle, Delaware 

Mark E. Souder, Indiana 

Vernon J. Ehlers, Michigan 

Judy Biggert, Illinois 

Todd Russell Platts, Pennsylvania 

Joe Wilson, South Carolina 

Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Washington 

Tom Price, Georgia 

Rob Bishop, Utah 

Brett Guthrie, Kentucky 

Bill Cassidy, Louisiana 

Tom McClintock, California 

Duncan Hunter, California 

David P. Roe, Tennessee 

Glenn Thompson, Pennsylvania 

Mark Zuckerman, Staff Director 

Barrett Karr, Minority Staff Director 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Page 

Hearing held on September 30, 2009 ..................................................................... 1 

Statement of Members: 

Kline, Hon. John, Senior Republican Member, Committee on Education 

and Labor ...................................................................................................... 4 

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 6 

Miller, Hon. George, Chairman, Committee on Education and Labor ......... 1 

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 3 

Questions submitted to witnesses on behalf of Mrs. McMorris Rodgers .......................................................................................................... 75 

Statement of Witnesses: 

Avila, Layla, vice president, the New Teacher Project .................................. 17 

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 18 

Responses to questions submitted for the record ................................... 76 

Daniels, Latanya, assistant principal, Edison High School .......................... 37 

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 39 

Responses to questions submitted for the record ................................... 79 

Fattah, Hon. Chaka, a Representative in Congress from the State of 

Pennsylvania ................................................................................................. 7 

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 9 

Hess, Frederick M., director of education policy studies, American Enterprise Institute ................................................................................................ 42 

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 44 

Murray, Linda, executive director, Education Trust–West ........................... 20 

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 22 

Price, Hon. Tom, a Representative in Congress from the State of Georgia . 11 

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 12 

Roza, Marguerite, Center on Reinventing Public Education, College of 

Education, the University of Washington ................................................... 29 

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 31 

Van Roekel, Dennis, president, National Education Association ................. 24 

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 26 

Responses to questions submitted for the record ................................... 86 

(1) 

TEACHER EQUITY: EFFECTIVE 

TEACHERS FOR ALL CHILDREN 

Wednesday, September 30, 2009 

U.S. House of Representatives 

Committee on Education and Labor 

Washington, DC 

The committee met, pursuant to call, at 11:02 a.m., in room 

2175, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. George Miller [chairman of the committee] presiding. 

Present: Representatives Miller, Kildee, Payne, Scott, Woolsey, 

Hinojosa, McCarthy, Tierney, Kucinich, Wu, Davis, Bishop of New 

York, Hirono, Altmire, Hare, Shea-Porter, Fudge, Polis, Tonko, 

Pierluisi, Titus, Chu, Kline, Petri, Castle, Ehlers, Biggert, Platts, 

and Price. 

Staff present: Tylease Alli, Hearing Clerk; Alice Cain, Senior 

Education Policy Advisor (K-12); Denise Forte, Director of Education Policy; David Hartzler, Systems Administrator; Liz Hollis, 

Special Assistant to Staff Director/Deputy Staff Director; Broderick 

Johnson, Staff Assistant; Fred Jones, Staff Assistant, Education; 

Jessica Kahanek, Press Assistant; Sharon Lewis, Senior Disability 

Policy Advisor; Celine McNicholas, Labor Policy Advisor; Stephanie 

Moore, General Counsel; Alex Nock, Deputy Staff Director; Joe 

Novotny, Chief Clerk; Lillian Pace, Policy Advisor, Subcommittee 

on Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education; 

Kristina Peterson, Legislative Fellow, Education; Rachel Racusen, 

Communications Director; Meredith Regine, Junior Legislative Associate, Labor; Melissa Salmanowitz, Press Secretary; Dray Thorne, 

Senior Systems Administrator; Margaret Young, Junior Legislative 

Associate, Education; Mark Zuckerman, Staff Director; Stephanie 

Arras, Minority Legislative Assistant; James Bergeron, Minority 

Deputy Director of Education and Human Services Policy; Kirk 

Boyle, Minority General Counsel; Casey Buboltz, Minority Coalitions and Member Services Coordinator; Cameron Coursen, Minority Assistant Communications Director; Amy Raaf Jones, Minority 

Professional Staff Member; Barrett Karr, Minority Staff Director; 

Alexa Marrero, Minority Communications Director; Susan Ross, 

Minority Director of Education and Human Services Policy; Mandy 

Schaumburg, Minority Education Counsel; and Linda Stevens, Minority Chief Clerk/Assistant to the General Counsel. 

Chairman MILLER [presiding]. The Committee on Education and 

Labor will come to order for the purpose of conducting a hearing 

on teacher equity and the effective teachers for all children. 
2 

Before we begin the hearing, I want to recognize in the audience. 

I believe we have five or six members of the parliament from Macedonia, if they would like to stand. They bring a wealth of information. They represent the Committee on Labor and Social Policy, the 

Committee on Education and Science—— 

[Applause.] 

On constitutional issues, on the European community, the Committee on Transport, Communications and the Environment, and 

Committee on Local Self-Government. 

Welcome to our committee meeting this morning. We are honored 

to have you. Thank you for participating in the inter-parliamentary 

organization, along with Congressman Price and others. 

Today we are here to look at a critically important issue, how to 

fulfill the promise of providing every child in this country with an 

excellent teacher. Teachers play a pivotal role in shaping the next 

generation of innovators, engineers, entrepreneurs and scientists 

and citizens. 

We can all think of a teacher who made a difference in our lives 

and we are all grateful to all teachers for their dedication and their 

hard work. In a major speech last week, Secretary Duncan called 

education the civil rights issue of our generation. I believe he is absolutely right. 

At their core, our nation’s education laws are civil rights laws. 

They are based upon the belief that we must give every child in 

the United States regardless of their background or their family income an equal shot at a world-class education. 

It is unacceptable that poor and minority students in schools that 

are struggling academically are twice as likely to be taught by an 

inexperienced teacher as their peers in an affluent school. The very 

students who could benefit the most from the best teachers are the 

least likely to get them. 

That is why No Child Left Behind requires states and school districts to address inequities in the distribution of teachers and to 

ensure that low income and minority children are not taught at 

higher rates than other children by inexperienced, unqualified or, 

perhaps more importantly, out-of-field teachers. 

But under the Bush administration, this requirement was not 

adequately enforced. In 2006, a report by the Citizens’ Commission 

on Civil Rights showed that 41 states did not comply with the 

teacher equity provisions. 

While we wait for equity there are devastating consequences for 

far too many children. Take, for example, what happens in many 

math classes in schools with high concentrations of poor and minority students. 

Nearly half of the math classes in high-poverty high schools are 

taught by teachers who did not major in math or a math related 

field. In high-poverty middle schools, only three out of every 10 

math classes are taught by a teacher who has a college major or 

minor in math. 

We have to do more to address the problems and we have to do 

it now. That is why, as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, we challenged states and school districts to do more 

in two ways. 
3 

First, in order to receive their share of the $40 billion of state 

fiscalization stabilization fund, states are required to report how 

they are making progress on four key areas of reform, including 

improving teacher effectiveness and ensuring that excellent teachers are getting placed in classrooms that need them the most. 

Second, the race to the top will reward states that make progress 

in this area. This sends an important signal that no—it is no 

longer acceptable for poor and minority students not to get their 

fair share of outstanding teachers. 

It is in the best interest of our students, our schools and our economic future to start treating teachers like the professionals that 

they are, with the respect that they deserve. This means treating 

them the same way we treat other professions. 

We have to expect the best from them and give them the resources and the professional development opportunities they need 

to grow. We have to do a better job of recruiting and retaining and 

rewarding excellent teachers. We have to ensure that states are 

distributing their effective teachers into the classrooms that need 

them most. 

Now, all of this is going to require a seismic shift in the way we 

think about teachers, the way we talk about teachers and the way 

we treat teachers. We have to include teachers as part of the discussion. We have to acknowledge that when we fail to distinguish 

a good teacher from an okay teacher or a great teacher from an ineffective teacher, we ultimately fail our students. 

This is why we are here today, for the first of several hearings 

we plan to hold on this issue. I look forward to hearing from our 

witnesses about how we can address the inequalities of teacher talent in this country, and I am pleased to know that so many of our 

witnesses have first-hand teaching experience, and I want to thank 

all of them in advance for being here. 

Now, I would like to recognize the senior Republican on the committee, Mr. Kline from Minnesota. 

[The statement of Mr. Miller follows:] 

Prepared Statement of Hon. George Miller, Chairman, Committee on 

Education and Labor 

We’re here today to take a look at a critically important issue: how to fulfill the 

promise of providing every child in this country with an excellent teacher. 

Teachers play a pivotal role in shaping the next generation of innovators and engineers, entrepreneurs and scientists. 

We can all think of a teacher who made a difference in our lives. 

And we are grateful to all teachers for their dedication and hard work. 

In a major speech last week, Secretary Duncan called education the civil rights 

issue of our generation. 

He’s absolutely right. At their core, our nation’s education laws are civil rights 

laws. They are based on the belief that we must give every child in the U.S., regardless of their background or family income, an equal shot at a world class education. 

It is unacceptable that poor and minority students in schools that are struggling 

academically are twice as likely to be taught by inexperienced teachers as their 

peers in more affluent schools. 

The very students who could benefit the most from the very best teachers are the 

least likely to get them. 

This is why No Child Left Behind requires states and school districts to address 

inequities in the distribution of teachers and to ensure that low-income and minority children are not taught at higher rates than other children by inexperienced, unqualified, or—perhaps most importantly—out-of-field teachers. 

But under the Bush administration, this requirement was not adequately enforced. 
4 

In 2006, a report by the Citizens Commission on Civil Rights showed that 41 

states did not comply with the teacher equity provisions. 

While we wait for equity, there are devastating consequences for far too many 

children. Take, for example, what happens in many math classes in schools with 

high concentrations of poor and minority students. 

Nearly half of the math classes in high-poverty high schools are taught by teachers who did not major in math or a math-related field. 

In high-poverty middle schools, only three out of every ten math classes are 

taught by a teacher who had a college major or minor in math. 

We have to do more to address this problem now. 

That’s why, as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, we challenged states and school districts to do more in two ways. First, in order to receive their share of the $40 billion State Fiscal Stabilization 

Fund, states are required to report how they’re making progress on four key areas 

of reform, including improving teacher effectiveness and ensuring that excellent 

teachers are getting placed in classrooms that need them most. 

Second, the Race to the Top Fund will reward states that make progress in this 

area. This sends an important signal that it is no longer acceptable for poor and 

minority students not to get their fair share of outstanding teachers. 

It is in the best interests of our students, schools and our economic future to start 

treating teachers like the professionals that they are, with the respect they deserve. 

This means treating them the same way we treat other professions. 

We have to expect the best from them, and give them the resources and professional development opportunities they need to grow. 

We have to do a better job at recruiting, retaining and rewarding excellent teach- ers. We have to ensure states are distributing these effective teachers into the classrooms that need them the most. 

Now all of this is going to require a seismic shift in the way we think about teachers, they way we talk about teachers, and the way we treat teachers. 

We have to include teachers as part of the discussion and we have to acknowledge 

when we fail to distinguish a good teacher from an okay teacher, or a great teacher 

from an ineffective teacher, we ultimately fail our students. 

This is why we are here today, for the first of several hearings we plan to hold 

on this issue. 

I look forward to hearing from our witnesses about how we can address the inequities in teacher talent in this country. And I’m pleased to know so many of our 

witnesses have first-hand teaching experience. 

Thank you for being here. 

Mr. KLINE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and good morning to you 

all. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this hearing. It is indeed 

not only important but a critical subject for us to address. I want 

to welcome our colleagues who make up the first panel. Good morning, good morning to you. 

We are here today to explore how to ensure all children are 

taught by effective teachers. Study after study has shown that effective, knowledgeable teachers are among the most important factors, when it comes to improving student academic achievement. 

High quality teachers are more important than state-of-the-art facilities or factors such as the student to teacher ratio. 

Unfortunately, the question of what makes an effective teacher 

is not easily quantifiable. There is no formula for the years of classroom experience or the number of degrees handing on the wall that 

can guarantee a teacher’s effectiveness. 

Some of the most dynamic, engaging teachers are new to the profession, bringing with them the enthusiasm of a Teach for America 

participant or the unique perspective of an engineer or scientist offering his or her real-world experience to eager young minds. 

Chairman Miller convened this hearing not just to talk about 

what makes an effective teacher but to explore whether it is pos-
5 

sible to put the very best teachers where they are needed most, in 

the classrooms of our students with the greatest needs. 

To answer that question I believe we must look first at the barriers that exist today. For instance, are collective bargaining agreements making it difficult for school districts to transfer teachers 

among schools? Are state and local laws and policies inhibiting 

school leaders from placing the best teachers where they are needed most? 

I will look forward to hearing the answers to these questions 

from our witnesses. One of the most promising strategies to promote excellence in the classroom is the concept of performance pay. 

Congressman Price will be testifying this morning about his legislation to foster these innovative pay systems that reward teachers 

for their success and the achievement of their students. 

Of course, if we want to ensure high quality teachers are in our 

neediest classrooms, we should work to improve the quality of all 

teachers. That means strengthening teacher colleges and professional development opportunities for current teachers. 

It means embracing alternative certification and training programs that can bring professionals from other fields into our classrooms. It means exploring innovative programs already being implemented at the local level, such as the Teacher Advancement 

Program, which we will discuss today and it means discarding rigid 

rules and practices that put adults ahead of students. 

The No Child Left Behind Act recognized the value of high quality teachers by calling for all students to be taught by a ‘‘highlyqualified teacher.’’ It was right concept, but in the years since the 

enactment of NCLB, we have seen confusion and uncertainty as 

states try to fit their individual teachers into a federal definition 

of what makes a teacher highly qualified. 

For instance, teachers in rural communities are often responsible 

for teaching multiple subjects. Early interpretations of the federal 

requirements would have required these individuals to have multiple bachelor’s degrees in each of the subject areas they taught, 

clearly not practical in the small towns in Minnesota. 

The lesson to be learned is that the federal government ought to 

proceed with caution as we attempt to improve the quality of our 

teaching workforce. We are right to shine a spotlight on this issue 

and I am glad to be having this hearing today, but we should be 

wary of a federal solution that attempts to dictate where teachers 

should teach, limits perspective teachers to a single path towards 

certification or define what makes a good teacher. 

As with most of the challenges in our education system, federal 

intervention carries with it the possibility of significant unintended 

consequences that could undermine the very policies we are trying 

to promote. 

With that, again, I want to thank the Chairman for holding this 

hearing. I want to thank our witnesses today for their testimony. 

I am looking forward to hearing that and engaging in the discussion, and I yield back. 

[The statement of Mr. Kline follows:] 
6 

Prepared Statement of Hon. John Kline, Senior Republican Member, 

Committee on Education and Labor 

Thank you Chairman Miller, and good morning. We’re here today to explore how 

to ensure all children are taught by effective teachers. 

Study after study has shown that effective, knowledgeable teachers are among the 

most important factors when it comes to improving student academic achievement. 

High-quality teachers are more important than state-of-the-art facilities or factors 

such as the student-to-teacher ratio. 

Unfortunately, the question of what makes an effective teacher is not easily quantifiable. There is no formula for the years of classroom experience or the number 

of degrees hanging on the wall that can guarantee a teacher’s effectiveness. 

Some of the most dynamic, engaging teachers are new to the profession, bringing 

with them the enthusiasm of a Teach for America participant or the unique perspective of an engineer or scientist offering his or her real world experience to eager 

young minds. 

Chairman Miller convened this hearing not just to talk about what makes an effective teacher, but to explore whether it’s possible to put the very best teachers 

where they are needed most—in the classrooms of our students with the greatest 

needs. 

To answer that question, I believe we must look first at the barriers that exist 

today. For instance, are collective bargaining agreements making it difficult for 

school districts to transfer teachers among schools? Are state and local laws and 

policies inhibiting school leaders from placing the best teachers where they are 

needed most? I look forward to hearing the answers to these questions from our witnesses. 

One of the most promising strategies to promote excellence in the classroom is the 

concept of performance pay. Congressman Price will be testifying this morning on 

his legislation to foster these innovative pay systems that reward teachers for their 

success and the achievement of their students. 

Of course, if we want to ensure high-quality teachers are in our neediest classrooms, we should work to improve the quality of all teachers. That means strengthening teacher colleges and professional development opportunities for current teachers. It means embracing alternative certification and training programs that can 

bring professionals from other fields into our classrooms. It means exploring innovative programs already being implemented at the local level such as the Teacher Advancement Program, which we will discuss today. And it means discarding rigid 

rules and practices that put adults ahead of students. 

The No Child Left Behind Act recognized the value of high-quality teachers by 

calling for all students to be taught by a—quote—‘‘highly qualified teacher.’’ It was 

the right concept, but in the years since the enactment of NCLB, we’ve seen confusion and uncertainty as states try to fit their individual teachers into a federal definition of what makes a teacher highly qualified. 

For instance, teachers in rural communities are often responsible for teaching 

multiple subjects. Early interpretations of the federal requirements would have required these individuals to have multiple bachelor’s degrees in each of the subject 

areas they taught. 

The lesson to be learned is that the federal government ought to proceed with 

caution as we attempt to improve the quality of our teaching workforce. We are 

right to shine a spotlight on this issue, and I’m glad to be having this hearing today. 

But we should be wary of a federal solution that attempts to dictate where teachers 

should teach, limit prospective teachers to a single path toward certification, or define what makes a good teacher. 

As with most of the challenges in our education system, federal intervention carries with it the possibility of significant unintended consequences that could undermine the very policies we’re trying to promote. 

With that, I want to thank our distinguished panel of witnesses—including the 

Members who’ve taken time from their busy schedules to be here this morning— 

and I yield back. 

Chairman MILLER. Thank you very much. If there is further 

opening statements of the members, they will be included in the 

record in their entirety without objection. 

Our first panel is made up of two of our colleagues, the Honorable Chaka Fattah, who is the representative from Pennsylvania, 
7 

who is currently serving his eighth term representing the 2nd Congressional District in Pennsylvania. 

Congressman Fattah has long been an advocate for education 

and is an architect of the GEAR UP program, which has become 

the largest pre-college awareness program in the nation’s history 

and has contributed over $2 billion toward educational advancement, college readiness and retention for low-income students. 

Prior to joining Congress, he served 12 years in the Pennsylvania 

legislature. 

The Honorable Tom Price is the Representative from Georgia, 

who is currently serving his third term in the House, representing 

the 6th Congressional District of Georgia. He serves on the Education and Labor Committee and is the ranking member on our 

Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions Subcommittee and prior 

to joining the Congress, Congressman Price served four terms in 

the Georgia state senate. 

Welcome to the committee. You have all testified before committees before. You know the time constraints, but we look forward to 

your testimony and thank you for participating this morning. 

Congressman Fattah, we will begin with you. 

STATEMENT OF HON. CHAKA FATTAH, A REPRESENTATIVE IN 

CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA 

Mr. FATTAH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and to the ranking member. It is a pleasure to be back before my old committee and see 

the great work that you are doing. I have a testimony that I am 

going to submit for the record and I just want to comment and 

elaborate on it. 

On yesterday, I had the opportunity to host former Speaker 

Gingrich and Secretary of Education Duncan and others, Reverend 

Sharpton at my alma mater in Philadelphia, a school that a few 

years ago was in the 20th percentile and now is ranking up in the 

90th percentile in all the state assessment tests. 

And the difference is is that getting teachers in that are competent, that understand their field. It is run through a mastery, a 

Chartered School Program that the committee is well aware of and 

Scott Gordon has appeared before the committee. 

So we have proved—these are the same kids in the same buildings, but when provided with teachers who know their subject that 

have high expectations for these kids, literally, they have moved 

from the very bottom to the very top of the state assessment process. 

Everywhere we look the data is clear. The Arkansas school finance case. Roy King filed an affidavit and he says, ‘‘Look, I am 

the entire math faculty for 200 kids in this rural high school. I 

teach calculus, Algebra 1, Algebra 2.’’ 

He wanted the court to know one thing. His degree was in physical education, he hadn’t taken a math course since high school. He 

had 20 textbooks for 200 kids, that he had to literally do a lottery 

to see who could take the textbook home, and he said they had 4 

calculators, of which the majority didn’t work. 

This is the situation around the country. You are going to hear 

about a report done by the University of Penn professor later on 

in the testimony showing that out-of-field teachers across the 
8 

board, when we get to high-poverty schools, across all of our states 

are aggregated in high-poverty schools. 

Yes, in areas where we have shortages, math and science, but 

also in areas where we don’t have teacher shortages, we still have 

out-of-field teachers aggregating in these schools. 

In your home state of California, Ed Trust showed just a few 

years ago, 45,000 out-of-field teachers or unqualified teachers, 

teachers teaching subjects that they didn’t major or minor in in college. 

In Chicago, the Chicago Sun Times went around school-by-school 

and literally found that teachers did better. If you were an African 

American child in the City of Chicago, you were 23 times more 

likely to have a teacher who failed all six of the basic skill tests 

on the Illinois teacher exam. 

I mean, so the reality is that wherever we look, the school board 

in Pennsylvania, 50 percent of what the state says are unqualified 

teachers are in one of our 501 school districts. It just happens to 

be in Philadelphia. 

Now, when we say unqualified teachers, it sounds like a derogatory term. It really means teachers who are not qualified to teach 

the subjects that they have been assigned to and, in all cases, this 

is not the teacher’s fault. 

This is—as my alma mater at Overbrook High School, teacher 

shows up, degree in art history, ready to teach, excited. The principal says, ‘‘I need an algebra teacher, go in that room and teach 

algebra.’’ 

At the end of the school year that teacher, featured on the front 

page of the ‘‘Philadelphia Inquirer’’ was, she was disturbed. She 

was frustrated. She quit teaching. The kids hadn’t learned anything because she wasn’t in a position to teach algebra. It wasn’t 

her field. 

And this is the problem that we face across the country and 

which because of the nature of the way poor school districts, both 

rural and urban are funded, they are not in a position to really 

compete for teachers with their wealthy suburban counterparts, especially in areas where there are shortages, math and science and 

the like because you can make, in the Philadelphia instance, almost twice as much in a suburban classroom than you can in 

Philadelphia and teach half as many kids. 

So if you have a math degree, you can figure that out pretty 

quickly about where you might be interested in teaching, so we 

have these challenges. The committee has done some important 

work in the Recovery Act moving in this direction. 

What was in No Child Left Behind was great in terms of what 

it required but, as the chairman has mentioned almost no states 

really complied with the responsibility there. 

So it is a pleasure to be here. And now is the time, given our 

new administration, given the secretary’s commitment and given 

this committee is determined leadership on this matter for us to 

make effective teaching available to all children. 

And we have to use both what we know now, which is do they 

have content knowledge? Do they have experience and do they have 

a desire to teach and what we are now putting together are new 
9 

measurements of effectiveness in the considerations as we go forward. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

[The statement of Mr. Fattah follows:] 

Prepared Statement of Hon. Chaka Fattah, a Representative in Congress 

From the State of Pennsylvania 

Mr. Chairman and members of the House Education and Labor Committee, thank 

you for inviting me here to testify today on the issue of teacher quality and the equitable distribution of teacher talent. As research has repeatedly demonstrated, high 

quality teachers are the most reliable and powerful contributors to student academic 

achievement. This same research also shows that low-income students and students 

of color are consistently and disproportionately taught by teachers with the lowest 

pre-service predictors of teacher success. I would like to focus my remarks today on 

two issues central to this discussion. First, I would like to talk about measures of 

effectiveness and the role of pre-service indicators of quality, including subject mastery and experience. Then, I will address the pernicious challenge of attracting and 

retaining the most desirable teachers in high-poverty schools. 

I would like to applaud the efforts made by this Committee and our Senate colleagues in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to promote measures of 

teacher effectiveness, which are tied directly to student progress. Surely the objective of all teachers is to see that their students master the content they teach and 

to ensure they are prepared to progress to the next grade. Unfortunately, we have 

relied for years on informal and anecdotal assessments of teachers and their classroom performance. Parents have discussed amongst themselves which 3rd grade 

teacher was best at teaching fractions, and which 6th grade students would be best 

prepared for 7th grade. Likewise, 11th grade teachers compare the quality of the 

10th grade teachers based on what incoming students knew and were able to do. 

As the Department of Education and schools nationwide undertake the daunting 

task of measuring what was ‘‘value-added’’ during the school year, I wish them luck. 

This mission will require balancing the accuracy of assessments, fairness to teachers, and a system to support teacher improvement in identified weaknesses. Any 

system of measuring effectiveness must include teacher participation in development, student achievement data, and a means for correcting inevitable flaws in any 

first attempt. The objective of such a system must be to support teachers at improving their practice and to build long-term gains in student achievement, rather than 

simply to weed out bad apples. 

As these systems are being developed, however, we must not abandon current 

proxy measures of teacher quality. While teacher content expertise, preparation and 

experience do not correlate in all cases with student learning, they are the best indicators available to predict classroom success. Rigorous evaluations of Teach For 

America have shown that those teachers, overwhelmingly inexperienced and without 

school of education credentials, have dramatic effects on student achievement. Students of these teachers learn at least as much as students of better credentialed and 

more experienced peers. This said, Teach For America teachers are the exception 

rather than the rule when considering teacher experience and effectiveness. Experts 

agree almost universally that the quality of instruction improves over time, and that 

it takes at least three years before teachers begin to master the art and science of 

teaching. Teacher experience is also a broader indicator of school stability and management. Schools with more experienced teachers are better able to support longterm growth and to tackle long-standing challenges. While experience should not replace effectiveness as the measure of teacher quality, it is a worthwhile proxy until 

effectiveness measures have been put in place and tested. 

In addition to experience, we must consider teacher content mastery. We cannot 

expect students to reach high levels of subject understanding if the instructor him/ 

herself lacks that very understanding. Naturally, this issue arises more frequently 

in secondary education. In order to prepare students for college-level science, technology, engineering and math, we must provide educators who have demonstrated 

mastery of these subjects. Too often, high-poverty schools are staffed by teachers 

who attended the least selective and rigorous post-secondary institutions, who 

achieved the lowest scores on certification exams and who failed to major or minor 

in the subject they are assigned to teach. There are certainly teachers for whom any 

of these indicators of content mastery (college selectivity, exam scores, major/minor) 

bears no relation to their effectiveness as instructors in the subject. Once again, a 

fair and reliable system for measuring teacher effectiveness will replace the need 

for these proxy measures. 
10 

Establishing and reporting pre-service proxy measures of teacher quality and reliable measures of teacher effectiveness will only get us halfway to our goal of providing every child a high-quality, effective teacher. For many (if not most) schools, 

this reporting will demonstrate what we already know. Most teachers in most 

schools are doing an excellent job of teaching their students and preparing them for 

the next grade. Nevertheless, we are also confident that this widespread and consistent reporting will also show (as previous research has done) that low-income students and students of color are disproportionately taught by lower-quality teachers. 

This is the case in both the remedial tracks of lower-poverty schools, and across the 

board in higher-poverty schools. 

One of the more admirable provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act was a requirement in Sec. 1111(b)(8)(C) that state plans include, ‘‘steps that the State educational agency will take to ensure that poor and minority children are not taught 

at higher rates than other children by inexperienced, unqualified, or out-of-field 

teachers, and the measures that the State educational agency will use to evaluate 

and publicly report the progress of the State educational agency with respect to such 

steps.’’ Though this provision has been virtually unenforced since its inception, I 

was pleased that this Committee sought to remedy that problem in the American 

Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The Department clearly has the authority it needs 

to address the challenge of inequitable distribution of teacher talent. 

Addressing this problem will require the engagement of schools, districts, collective bargaining units, teachers and state and federal policymakers. If we are to provide low-income students the best teachers, we must make their schools and classrooms desirable places to be. While we could simply mandate the redistribution of 

teachers from the federal Department of Education, this would be absurd and ineffective. Merely assigning a teacher to teach in a dysfunctional school with ineffective 

leadership, community support and resources will not solve the problem. We must 

develop better ways of recruiting and retaining good school leadership, providing 

support to struggling teachers, and offering compensation and working conditions 

commensurate with the importance of the task we have asked these teachers to undertake. 

If we are to build and develop a strong 21st century teaching workforce, we must 

make greater efforts to attract people of color, especially men, into education. Simply relying on the status quo ignores the increasing diversity of our classrooms and 

fails to capitalize on the talent and dedication of diverse young college graduates. 

In order to build a pipeline of effective educators with diverse roots, we must instill 

in young children, through example, the sense that teaching is a possible career 

path for everyone. We must recruit students early in their college careers by providing assistance to those who face disproportionate challenges in funding their education. As one example, the ‘‘Call Me Mister’’ Program, a successful model for bringing more African American men into teaching, has recently been expanded to Philadelphia in a partnership with Cheyney University. In addition, we must provide the 

compensation, working conditions and professional recognition and development 

necessary to attract and retain professionals who would otherwise pursue different 

paths. As racial barriers to entry fall in many fields, it is important that the field 

of education become more competitive and proactive in ensuring that children are 

educated by teachers who are as diverse as their classmates. 

As I have consistently argued before this Committee and elsewhere, we must 

make better strides in ensuring that all schools have resources adequate to teach 

students to high standards. High-performing teachers consistently flock to high-poverty schools with good leadership, motivated students and adequate support. While 

students in high-poverty schools often present teachers the greatest professional 

challenges, they also offer the greatest rewards. As we begin to measure teacher effectiveness, I believe that contrary to the assumptions of many, we will see teachers 

can be more effective at moving students ahead years at a time when they start 

with such serious deficits. It is likely that teachers of the highest achieving students 

will face the greatest challenges increasing student achievement as significantly as 

is expected. 

Ultimately, we must invest in teachers, administrators and school systems the 

idea that low-income students and students of color hold the same potential as their 

higher-income and White peers and that they are worthy of the resources we know 

they need to be successful. Now is the time to recognize those amazing educators 

who are moving their students ahead at a stunning pace and to support more teachers to take up this challenge. Our students should expect and certainly deserve 

nothing less. I appreciate the attention of this Committee and look forward to working with you to advance this critical goal. 
11 

Chairman MILLER. Congressman Price. 

STATEMENT OF HON. TOM PRICE, A REPRESENTATIVE IN 

CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF GEORGIA 

Mr. PRICE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman MILLER. Welcome back. 

Mr. PRICE. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Kline and all 

my colleagues on the committee. What a great privilege and honor 

it is to testify before the committee today. I want to thank each of 

you all for your wonderfully diligent work as well on the committee. 

I sincerely believe that this is one of the areas where there is 

real opportunity for bipartisan work. We all have the same goal as 

Representative Fattah mentioned and it is an area that I think we 

can embrace a positive solution that will get the job done. 

The month of September marks the beginning of the school year 

for many communities across our land and for the next year the 

one person that will have more influence and input, other than a 

set of parents, into a child’s development will be a teacher. 

For those with a young child, who is entering school for the very 

first time, you know that these are the most crucial years for learning and for growth and it goes without saying that teacher quality 

has proven to be one of the most important school-related factors 

influencing student achievement. 

Now, the goal of this particular hearing is to examine the 

progress states and localities have made toward ensuring every 

child is taught by an effective teacher. In order to accomplish this, 

some have mistakenly believed that we can only realize a type of 

equal distribution through governmental mandates. 

In fact, to the contrary, mandates combined with tenure rules 

and collective bargaining agreements make this more difficult. 

Such a framework creates rigidity in labor markets and puts up 

more hurdles and barricades. It is why Republicans in the House 

of Representatives have rejected this approach and embraced a 

much different path, a more positive path. 

For the third Congress in a row Republicans, on this committee, 

are introducing the Teacher Incentive Fund Act, a measure that is 

designed to place more high-quality teachers in the most hard-tostaff localities through implementation of performance-based compensation systems. 

The Teacher Incentive Fund permits states and local school districts to apply for federal grants, in order to develop, implement or 

improve performance-based compensation systems for teachers and 

principals. These systems primarily differentiate compensation on 

the basis of increases in student achievement. 

Educators may be paid bonuses and increased salaries and they 

may also be rewarded of staffing high-need subject areas, fulfilling 

additional job functions or demonstrating superior teaching skills. 

The Teacher Incentive Fund does not operate through a series of 

mandates, but rather it relies on granting as much flexibility as 

possible to local school districts to create their own, unique systems. 

It rejects a one-size-fits-all approach from Washington and places 

local schools and districts in a position to succeed without perma-
12 

nent interference from Congress and it is why a local school district 

may only receive a grant one time, with a decreasing federal 

match, because we want localities to own and administer these systems over the long-term. 

Of course, none of the success would be possible without local 

buy-in. And the success of the Teacher Incentive Fund, a currently 

unauthorized program which has received support from two presidents, is already well-documented. 

The testimony before this committee, just last Congress, from Dr. 

Joseph Burke the Superintendent of Schools in Springfield, Massachusetts said, ‘‘The Teacher Incentive Fund creates the opportunity 

for highly motivated and courageous school reformers to change 

tightly held traditions in education. 

‘‘In fact, the Teacher Incentive Fund has served as a catalyst for 

reform in the Springfield Public Schools. Working in collaboration 

with our local teachers’ union, we have created a way to measure 

teacher performance based on a teacher’s ability to improve student 

achievement.’’ 

So creating opportunities and incentives and rewards via traditional market forces, not mandates, will lower teacher attrition 

rates and make teaching jobs in hard-to-staff schools much more 

attractive. If we want every child to be taught by a highly-effective 

teacher, let us create the mechanisms to do so through the Teacher 

Incentive Fund. 

I thank the Chairman and members of the committee and yield 

back. 

[The statement of Mr. Price follows:] 

Prepared Statement of Hon. Tom Price, a Representative in Congress From 

the State of Georgia 

Good morning and thank you, Chairman Miller and Ranking Member Kline. 

The month of September marks the beginning of the school year for many localities across the country. And for the next year, the one person who will have more 

influence and input other than a set of parents into a child’s development will be 

a teacher. 

For those with a young one who is entering school for the very first time, you 

know these are the most crucial years for learning and growth. And it goes without 

saying that teacher quality has proven to be one of the most important school-related factors influencing student achievement. 

Now, the goal of this particular hearing is to examine the progress states and localities have made toward ensuring every child is taught by an effective teacher. 

In order to accomplish this, some have mistakenly believed that we can only realize 

a type of equal distribution through government mandates. In fact to the contrary, 

mandates, combined with tenure rules and collective bargaining agreements, make 

this more difficult. Such a framework creates rigidity in labor markets and puts up 

more hurdles and barricades. 

It is why Republicans in the House of Representatives have rejected this approach 

and embraced a much different path. For the third Congress in a row, Republicans 

on this Committee are introducing the Teacher Incentive Fund Act, a measure designed to place more high quality teachers in the most hard to staff localities 

through the implementation of performance-based compensation systems. 

The Teacher Incentive Fund permits states and local school districts to apply for 

federal grants in order to develop, implement or improve performance-based compensation systems for teachers and principals. These systems primarily differentiate 

compensation on the basis of increases in student achievement. Educators may be 

paid bonuses and increased salaries, and they may also be rewarded for staffing 

high-need subject areas, fulfilling additional job functions, or demonstrating superior teaching skills. 

The Teacher Incentive Fund does not operate through a series of mandates, but 

rather it relies on granting as much flexibility as possible to local school districts 
13 

to create their own unique systems. It rejects a one-size-fits-all approach from 

Washington and places localities in a position to succeed without permanent interference from Congress. And it is why a local school district may only receive a grant 

one time with a decreasing federal match—we want localities to own and administer 

these systems over the long-term! 

Of course, none of the success would be possible without local buy in. And, the 

success of the Teacher Incentive Fund, a currently unauthorized program which has 

received support from two Presidents, is already well-documented. Just take the testimony before this Committee last Congress from Dr. Joseph Burke, the Superintendent of Schools in Springfield, Massachusetts: 

The Teacher Incentive Fund creates the opportunity for highly motivated and courageous school reformers to change tightly held traditions in education. In fact, the 

Teacher Incentive Fund has served as a catalyst for reform in the Springfield Public 

Schools. Working in collaboration with our local teachers union, we have created a 

way to measure teacher performance based on a teacher’s ability to improve student 

achievement. 

Creating opportunities, incentives and rewards via traditional market forces—not 

mandates—will lower teacher attrition rates and make teaching jobs in hard to staff 

schools more attractive. If we want every child taught by a highly effective teacher, 

let’s create the mechanisms to do so through the Teacher Incentive Fund. 

Thank you. 

Chairman MILLER. Well, thank you very much to both of you and 

thank you again for your history of involvement on this issue. I just 

sort of have two quick questions. I know you have other committees 

to go to. 

But Chaka, I think you make—Congressman Fattah, you make 

an important point that, you know, we tend to look at this as an 

issue of sort of disservice, if you will, to the student, but it is also 

to the teacher. You know, I have personal friends who have been 

put in this situation, that were informed over the summer because 

of circumstances, in some cases beyond the school district’s control. 

But what they also do, in many instances, is pick the best teacher who may be out-of-field and tell that person you have got to get 

ready because in 6 weeks you are going to be teaching geometry 

or something out of your field. 

And that person, if you know them personally and you listen to 

them throughout the school year, they are doing the very best they 

can but they are not happy campers because they know the pressure that they are operating under to try to deliver that course and 

the content of the course the best they can, but that is not what 

they do, if you will, for a living. 

But they were drafted, they had little or no choice, in many instances. I mean they do have choices, but they step up, but it also 

rebounds back onto that teacher, those working conditions and the 

stress that we put on them in that situation. 

And I think that is an important point that this is a two-way 

street and both ends can end up sort of losing out on that decision. 

Congressman Price, I appreciate your support for the Teacher Incentive Fund and you are pushing it as hard as you have. I think, 

you know, what we have seen in the value there is that in most 

instances, teachers and school districts and in many instances the 

unions come together and the first step is to say we need some 

money to figure out how to make this work for us, not for the people down the road, but for us. 

And I think that is starting to demonstrate that part of the success is that a lot of the acrimony is taken out of that. That hasn’t 

happened in every instance, but I think we are seeing it more often 
14 

than not, so I think as this has evolved, as we have struggled to 

keep it on the books, we are seeing that the attitudes are changing 

and people believe that they can construct a more effective workplace for themselves and clearly for the students. 

So I just want to thank you both for your leadership. 

Congressman Fattah? 

Mr. FATTAH. Mr. Chairman, the thing I want to emphasize the 

most is that what we know in the research, without contradiction, 

is that if a kid gets a highly qualified teacher that there is no other 

circumstances that are going to have a, you know, whether we talk 

about socioeconomic circumstances, all of that held to the side, they 

will achieve at grade level, so what we need to do is be focused on 

that. 

And you know, we look at our international competitors. China 

just announced on yesterday, they have cut the number of unqualified teachers by more than half. It is a national imperative that 

they want to get qualified teachers in their classrooms. 

Sweden has just decided what we allow under all of our state 

laws is well if you can’t produce a teacher who can teach science, 

so you apply for a waiver and then you get this waiver and then 

you get this waiver and then it is—you know, sort of you allow the 

teacher who doesn’t have the qualifications to go into that classroom. They are going to disallow this whole process. 

So we are in a competition economically that requires us to get 

these children an education and I just want to re-emphasize, you 

know, I had a—Speaker Gingrich out yesterday in a school where 

the kids, the same kids, who were scoring in the 20th percentile 

are now 85 plus percentile, almost 90 percent in Philadelphia. 

And it is a matter of whether we are determined to get this done 

or not and, if we are, then we can—you know, we don’t have to 

have this disparate impact throughout our country. And this happens in rural and urban school districts where these children are 

being confronted everyday with teachers who may care about them. 

I mean Roy King’s affidavit, he said he loved these kids, he just 

was in no position to teach them math, you know, at all. And the 

fact that we didn’t want to have those children, you know, compete 

for all of the prizes in life, college and jobs and everything, based 

on an education in which not that they were inadequate, but that 

we provided inadequate instruction. 

And so, you know, I heard my colleagues say, you know, we want 

to have this local flexibility and so on. That is wonderful, except 

that is the system in which we have arrived at, at this moment, 

which provides this disservice throughout our country. 

So we have to be cautious as we go forward, especially as we 

compete internationally that we don’t continue to do the same 

thing expecting to have a different result. 

Chairman MILLER. Thank you. 

Mr. Kline? 

Mr. PRICE. If I may respond for a moment—— 

Chairman MILLER. Oh, excuse me, excuse me. 

Mr. PRICE. And I want to we were almost about to have a love 

fest, but the goal is the same without a doubt. It is obviously to 

have a highly-qualified teacher in every subject in every classroom. 
15 

The question is how do you get there and the fact of the matter 

is that it isn’t local flexibility that has caused the problem. 

It is that we either have mandated things from on high that requires teachers to do certain things that don’t necessarily result in 

higher outcomes and performance by the student. Or we haven’t 

provided appropriate incentives for teachers to go into either the 

schools that are most challenging or the courses that are the most 

challenging. 

So that is why we would suggest that a different way, a positive 

way, a way that would result in higher performance by students 

and greater reward to the teachers and the administrators who are 

gaining that greater performance is through a system of incentives 

that we could certainly open up here through the Teacher Incentive 

Fund and other programs. 

Mr. KLINE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I want to thank both of 

the witnesses for being here and for not only your interest but your 

passion. I think that this is one of those times when every one of 

us absolutely agree on the outcome that we are trying to get to. 

We really do want highly qualified, effective teachers teaching 

our children. And we have been focusing on the children with 

greatest need. We are going to have some differences on how we 

get there, but I am actually fairly optimistic that we can work together in a pretty bipartisan way. 

Clearly there are differences between school districts in the Twin 

Cities in Minnesota or in Chicago than in Le Center, Minnesota, 

where they are—it is a very small town, just very difficult to get 

a teacher with a degree in every subject to show up. 

So I think we have to recognize that there are differences and 

we have to allow, I believe, for some flexibility and so it will be interesting how we come together to try to reach this common goal. 

Again, I want to thank you for being here and the chairman for 

holding this hearing and I am really looking forward to the rest of 

the hearing. I yield back. 

Chairman MILLER. Thank you. Are there other members that 

have questions for our panel, burning question, can’t wait until you 

see them on the floor? No questions. 

Thank you very much. Thank you for your participation, and 

thank you for your history of involvement here. 

If our second panel would come forward now? Our second panel 

will be made up of Layla Avila, who is a vice president of the 

Teaching Fellows Program at The New Teacher Project, a national 

nonprofit that works to place outstanding teachers in high-need 

schools, where she helps school districts hire approximately 3,000 

high quality teachers a year. 

Prior to joining The New Teacher Project, Ms. Avila taught the 

bilingual and ESL elementary school students and served on a 

leadership team at August A. Mayo Elementary School in Compton, California. She also worked as an analyst to the White House 

initiative on educational excellence for Hispanic Americans. 

Dr. Linda Murray is the interim executive director, Superintendent Residence Education—for Education Trust West. Ms. 

Murray serves on the California’s P-16 Commission, where it recently appointed the American Diploma Project Alignment Team 

for the state of California. 
16 

Prior to joining Ed Trust, Ms. Murray was a superintendent at 

San Jose public schools where she led school districts’ effort to become the first urban school district in the state of California to 

raise graduation requirements to meet entrance requirements to 

post secondary institutions in the state. 

Mr. Dennis Van Roekel is the president of the National Education Association and is a 23-year veteran of teaching. During his 

tenure at president of the NEA, he helped produce the very recent 

report entitled ‘‘Children of Poverty Deserve Great Teachers,’’ and 

announced the launch of a brand new campaign by NEA to increase teacher effectiveness in high-needs schools. 

Mr. Van Roekel has also served as many capacities at the NEA 

including vice president and secretary treasury prior to taking the 

leadership roles at NEA. Mr. Van Roekel taught in math in Phoenix, Arizona. 

Dr. Marguerite Roza is a research associate professor of the University of Washington’s College of Education where her research focuses on education finance including the inequities and inefficiencies in education spending at all levels. 

Dr. Roza has written extensively on teacher equity problems, 

comparability and most recently a report on how seniority-based 

layoffs will exacerbate the job loss in public education. Dr. Roza 

previously served as a lieutenant in the United States Navy and 

taught thermodynamics at the Nuclear Power School. 

Latanya Daniels is the associate principal of Edison High School 

in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Ms. Edison participated, excuse me, 

Edison High School participates in a teacher and student advancement program, which aims to attract, retain and develop talented 

people in teaching profession. 

Ms. Daniels has previously taught middle school math for 6 

years and served as Math Department Chair. While teaching, Ms. 

Daniels completed her education specialist degree with a license in 

administration. Ms. Daniels is featured in ‘‘Who’s Who Among 

America’s Teachers’’ and ‘‘The Women’s Press.’’ 

Dr. Frederick Hess is the resident scholar and director of Education Policy Studies and the American Enterprise Institute for 

Public Policy Research. Dr. Hess is author of several books including ‘‘Common Sense School Reform and Revolution at the Margins.’’ 

And prior to joining the American Enterprise Institute, Dr. Hess 

taught high school social studies and served as a professor of Education Policy at Georgetown, Harvard, Rice and University of Virginia and the University of Pennsylvania. Wow, glad you found 

time to drop by here. [Laughter.] 

Thank you, we look forward to all of your testimony. As you 

know, when you begin testifying, a green light will go on. You will 

have 5 minutes to summarize your written testimony. Your written 

testimony will be placed in the record of this hearing in its entirety. 

Please testify in the manner in which you are most comfortable. 

An orange light will go on, which suggests you have about a 

minute to summarize and to finish your testimony. And then a red 

light will go on, which your time has ended and then when the 

panel is done, we will come back to you with questions. 

Ms. Avila, welcome. 
17 

STATEMENT OF LAYLA AVILA, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE 

TEACHING FELLOWS PROGRAMS, THE NEW TEACHER 

PROJECT 

Ms. AVILA. Good morning, everyone. My name is Layla Avila and 

I am the Vice President of The New Teacher Project. We are a national nonprofit dedicated to ending the injustice of educational inequality by ensuring that poor and minority kids in this country 

get excellent teachers. 

The New Teacher Project was started in 1997 by teachers in 

order to help school districts and states solve their teacher quality 

challenges. Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to address the committee today. 

We all know from our own lives and we all know from the growing body of research that teachers have a greater impact on educational learning, on outcomes, much more so than a lot of other 

school factors. 

The New Teacher Project helps school districts with teacher effectiveness by developing scalable solutions that will allow them to 

recruit and certify teachers. But also to help them dismantle some 

of the policy barriers that currently prevent them from providing 

poor minority kids in this country the very best teachers. 

Today we work with some of the highest need school districts 

across this country, school districts like the Oakland Unified School 

District, like the Recovery School District in New Orleans, in Chicago and New York City. 

In the last 12 years, The New Teacher Project has recruited and 

trained more than 33,000 teachers across this country. These are 

teachers that have had an impact on an estimated 4.2 million students. But today I also want to bring my own personal experience 

in addition to my professional experience. 

I bring the experience of growing up in a poor family, from an 

immigrant family and being raised by a single mother who was 

also disabled. We lived in East Los Angeles, California. And growing up I remember hearing that not much was to be expected of 

me because I didn’t have a father and because I was a girl. 

And in an area where the neighborhood schools see educational 

outcomes where as many as one out of two kids drop out of high 

school, the odds were really stacked against me. But despite very 

challenging circumstances, I was able to attend both Columbia and 

Harvard Universities. 

And I have no doubt in my mind that I owe my success to a 

small group of highly-effective teachers like Michelle Simbers, who 

when I was in the sixth grade was already teaching me algebra. 

And like Mr. Mitchell, who when I was 13 years old said to me, 

I am going to send you to a prep school and by doing so, you are 

going to have your pick as to which college you want to attend. 

I am certain that these teachers put me on a different path in 

life. And the problem is that my story is really the exception. I was 

one of the lucky ones as I often hear people say. And in a system 

where we treat teachers like interchangeable parts, there are millions of kids across this country who don’t get teachers that are 

going to give them a fair shot at a brighter future. 

And we all know that teachers matter. We all know that they 

change lives every single day. We know that they have the power 
18 

to raise kids like me out of poverty. And so based on our recent 

report, the ‘‘Widget Effect,’’ we asked ourselves the following question. 

If teachers are so important than why don’t we act like it? In the 

‘‘Widget Effect’’ we found that the underlying reason is because we 

treat teachers like widgets, like one teacher is just as good as another, even though all the research tells us just the opposite. 

In this report, we used methodology that is slightly different 

than what might you see in another educational report. We actually assembled an advisory panel of more than 80 stakeholders 

across four different school districts—I am sorry, four different 

states. And we surveyed more than 12,000 teachers. 

We reviewed more than 40,000 educational evaluation reports 

and we did this in 12 school districts. Now the results were absolutely astounding. The results were the following, number one, all 

teachers were either rated as good or great. Less than 1 percent 

of teachers across these 12 school districts received an unsatisfactory rating. Even though year after year, there were students who 

were not meeting even basic academic standards. 

Number two, excellence is going unrecognized in our schools. 

When you have a system where you are rating everyone either 

good or great, you are failing to identify your truly outstanding 

teachers. In fact, we treat our outstanding teachers just like we 

treat our ineffective teachers. 

Number three, the professional development that we currently 

offer is not very useful. Three out of four teachers said that they 

weren’t given any meaningful feedback to really improve their performance. Number four, novice teachers are ignored. 

Number five, poor performance is being unaddressed right now. 

In half of the districts that we studied, not a single district had dismissed a tenured teacher in the last five years. And this is even 

though the majority of teachers said that there was a poor performing tenured teacher in their school right now. 

Now, we know what it takes to change child’s lives. We know 

that we need to number one, create evaluations where we are truly 

differentiating our great teachers from our good, our good from our 

fair and our fair from our poor. 

We need to create fair, accurate and evaluations that really are 

rigorous. We need to ensure that teacher effectiveness actually 

matters by making sure that the data that we collect is actually 

informing practice, like how we train, who we retain and how we 

pay teachers. And we need to address poor performance because 

the stakes are too high not to. 

So in closing, we cannot provide effective teachers to each student if we don’t know who our most effective teachers are. I urge 

you to implement our recommendations as swiftly and to the greatest extent possible. Thank you. 

[The statement of Ms. Avila follows:] 

Prepared Statement of Layla Avila, Vice President, 

the New Teacher Project 

Good morning. My name is Layla Avila. I am Vice President of The New Teacher 

Project, a national nonprofit dedicated to ending the injustice of educational inequality by ensuring that poor and minority students get outstanding teachers. The New 
19 

Teacher Project was founded by teachers in 1997 to help school districts and states 

solve their teacher quality challenges. 

Thank you for the opportunity to address the committee about how to ensure ALL 

children have highly effective teachers. As we all know from our own lives as well 

as a growing body of research, teachers have a greater impact on student learning 

than any other school factor. 

The New Teacher Project helps school districts with issues of teacher effectiveness 

by developing scalable solutions: we recruit and certify teachers and we design reforms for policies that prevent school districts from giving poor and minority children access to great teachers. 

Today, we work with some of the highest need districts across the country. We 

find and train great teachers for schools in Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn; West 

Oakland, California; Englewood in Chicago; the Ninth Ward of New Orleans, and 

many other struggling communities. 

In the last 12 years, we have recruited or trained more than 33,000 teachers, who 

have touched the lives of an estimated 4.2 million students. 

But I also bring my own experience today: my experience as a daughter of immigrants who grew up poor and was raised by a single, disabled mother in East Los 

Angeles. 

Growing up, I remember hearing that not much should be expected of me as I 

didn’t have a father, and I was a girl. 

And if you look at outcomes in the local schools, the odds were stacked against 

me; in my neighborhood anywhere from 1 in 3 to 1 in 2 students dropped out of 

high school 

Despite very challenging circumstances, I was able to attend both Columbia and 

Harvard. And I have absolutely no doubt that I owe my success to a succession of 

highly-effective teachers. They include Ms. Simmers, who taught me Algebra in the 

6th grade and to Mr. Mitchell, who told me at age 13 that I would attend a prep 

school and have my pick of colleges. 

My teachers put me on a different path in life. They inspired me to become a 

teacher myself, in Compton, CA, and then to dedicate my career to education. 

The problem is that my story is an exception. I was one of the lucky ones. 

In a system where we treat teachers like interchangeable parts, millions of kids 

do not get teachers who can give them a fair shot at a better future. And it 

shouldn’t be that way. There should be tens of thousands of students like me. 

We all know how much teachers matter. They lift kids like me out of poverty. 

They change lives every day. They are the subject of tributes and speeches, and testimony like this. 

But as our recent report, The Widget Effect, showed, our actions do not match 

our words. In school systems across the country, we are largely indifferent to teacher effectiveness. 

With The Widget Effect, we asked this question: If we believe teachers are so important, why don’t we act like it? 

The underlying reason is because teachers are treated like widgets, as though one 

teacher is just as good as another—even though all the research tells us just the 

opposite. 

The methodology for this project was unlike almost any other educational report. 

We created an advisory panel of almost 80 stakeholders across four states, including 

25 union leaders. We surveyed over 15,000 teachers and looked at 40,000 evaluation 

records in 12 school districts. 

The results were astounding: 

• All teachers were rated as good or great: less than 1% of teachers were rated 

as unsatisfactory even when, year after year, students failed to meet basic academic 

standards and schools entered into program improvement. 

• Excellence goes unrecognized: By rating all teachers ‘‘good’’ or ‘‘great,’’ we fail 

to recognize our truly outstanding teachers; in fact, we treat them no differently 

than we treat the most ineffective teachers. 

• Professional development is inadequate: Almost 3 out of 4 teachers didn’t receive any meaningful feedback to improve their performance. 

• Novice teachers are neglected, and tenure becomes a meaningless achievement. 

• Poor performance goes unaddressed: Half of the districts studied did not dismiss 

a single tenured teacher for poor performance in FIVE years, even though a majority of teachers say there is a poorly performing tenured teacher in their school 

RIGHT NOW. 

When our report was released, it was praised by an extraordinary range of voices, 

from the Secretary of Education to the National Education Association to the New 

York Times Editorial board to a number of sitting governors. We believe that for 

such groups to agree, the report must be saying something relevant. 
20 

I owe my success to a small group of excellent teachers. I’m proof of how much 

teachers matter. So I find it shameful that we treat them like they don’t matter, 

like widgets. If we care about the success of our students, we have to start caring 

about the success of their teachers. And that means acknowledging the real differences between teachers in their effectiveness, and taking action to ensure that 

all children get the same kinds of teachers that I did. 

We know what it takes to change a child’s chances. Let’s: 

• Create evaluations that differentiate great teaching from good, good from fair, 

and fair from poor. And use student growth as a critical component. 

• Ensure evaluations are done fairly and with accuracy and rigor 

• Make teacher effectiveness matter; the data should drive decisions that affect 

the quality of the teacher workforce, from how teachers are trained to how they are 

developed, paid and retained. 

• Address poor performance, because the stakes are too high to allow ineffective 

teaching to hold back class after class of students. 

In closing, we cannot provide effective teachers to each student if we cannot determine who our most effective teachers are. As long as the widget effect persists, poor 

and minority children will continue to get the short end of the stick in terms of access to excellent instruction, and kids like me will be celebrated as rare exceptions, 

not the norm. It doesn’t have to be that way. I urge the committee to move aggressively to ensure that the recommendations in our report are implemented as widely 

as possible in the shortest timeframe possible. 

Chairman MILLER. Dr. Murray? 

STATEMENT OF LINDA MURRAY, INTERIM EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR AND SUPERINTENDENT IN RESIDENCE, EDUCATION 

TRUST–WEST 

Ms. MURRAY. Chairman Miller, members of the committee, thank 

you very much for providing me with the opportunity to talk with 

you this morning about the importance of strong teaching to the efforts to boost achievement and close achievement gaps. 

My name is Linda Murray, and I currently serve as the Executive Director of the Education Trust West in Oakland, California. 

Prior to joining the Trust, I was for 11 years, superintendent of 

schools in San Jose, California and before that, an associate superintendent in Broward County, Florida. And it is my experience as 

a district leader that convinced me years ago that there is nothing 

more important to our students than strong teachers. 

The San Jose Unified School District is an urban district of 

32,000 students, 51 percent Latino, 45 percent come from low income families, and there are approximately 1,800 teachers in that 

district. 

When I first got there in 1993, there was a long history of distrust and even outright hostility between the central office and the 

teachers’ union. I saw quickly that any real progress on improving 

student achievement and closing gaps depended on reversing the 

destructive relationship that paralyzed us and hurt our students. 

Over time and with lots of effort from all parties, we became 

partners in improving student learning and our students reaped 

the benefits. Together we raised expectations and substantially 

narrowed gaps. 

San Jose Unified became the first district in California to set the 

goal of college readiness for all students and to require all students, even the poorest, to take the toughest high school classes, 

and our teachers were with us every step along the way. 

So I can tell you from firsthand experience that it is possible to 

work with teachers’ unions to improve outcomes for students. But 
21 

I can also tell you that getting strong teachers to the teachers who 

desperately need them is so important that we have got to do it regardless of whether union leaders, or for that matter district leaders, drag their feet. 

This is where you come in because done right federal law can 

provide the excuse that education leaders need to question the 

longstanding practice of assigning our weakest teachers to our 

poorest children and the leverage that we need to act on patterns 

of unfairness. 

Nothing is more important to closing gaps than getting more of 

our most effective teachers teaching our most vulnerable students. 

Doing this right will require replacing outmoded methods of teacher evaluation with evaluation methods that draw upon longitudinal 

data systems that provide linkages between teachers and the 

growth they get from the students they teach. 

And now thanks to the push from Washington, we are building 

those systems state by state; not fast enough but we are building 

them. And yet many states can’t yet or simply won’t include teacher-student longitudinal data to evaluate much less assign, compensate, tenure or remove teachers. 

And my state, California is certainly no example of vigilance 

around this matter. Teacher evaluation systems are weak and have 

nothing to do with the effectiveness in producing student learning. 

In fact, I fear we may be a poster child for irresponsibility in this 

regard. 

With a legislated firewall between the student and teacher data 

systems, Secretary Duncan has seen our firewall for what it is, an 

intentional barrier to better serving our students, and he has put 

tremendous pressure on the state to tear the wall down. That pressure needs to continue. 

So even as we continue this pressure to build good, longitudinal 

data systems and begin to evaluate teachers based on student 

learning, we cannot abandon research-based measures of teacher 

quality, especially experience and content knowledge when determining whether schools enrolling our most vulnerable students are 

getting the teachers they most need. 

You knew this when you crafted the requirement contained in 

both NCLB and ARRA that low income students and students of 

color must not be taught at higher rates than other students by 

out-of-field, inexperienced, uncertified teachers. 

The measures you chose show a strong connection to outcomes 

for students. Value added research consistently finds that teacher 

effectiveness improves with the first few years of experience and 

experience enhances teacher productivity across grades. And not 

surprisingly studies also consistently suggest that content knowledge matters, particularly in math. 

So while not perfect, these research based proxies provide strong 

basis for public policy. But despite this clear evidence and despite 

federal law, most school systems continually assign disproportionate number of rookies along with disproportionate number of 

out-of-field teachers to the very children who are most dependent 

on their teachers for learning. And the result is instead of catching 

them up, students fall further and further behind. 
22 

In short, right now and in fact for years, we have much information about inequities in teacher assignments. We can’t wait a year, 

a month, a week, a moment longer to use what information we 

have to begin to right the wrong that we have done for so many 

years to our students. 

And to do that we don’t need new laws or new investments. We 

need this administration to enforce the laws you already passed so 

state and local educational leaders have the leverage they need to 

move in the right direction right now. Thank you. 

[The statement of Ms. Murray follows:] 

Prepared Statement of Linda Murray, Executive Director, 

Education Trust–West 

Chairman Miller, members of the committee: Thank you very much for providing 

me with the opportunity to talk with you this morning about the importance of 

strong teaching to our effort to boost student achievement and close achievement 

gaps. 

My name is Linda Murray. Currently, I am serving as Executive Director of the 

Education Trust—West in Oakland, California. Prior to joining the Trust, I was— 

for eleven years—superintendent of schools in San Jose, California (and, before that, 

assistant superintendent in Broward County, Florida). It’s my experience as a district leader that convinced me years ago that there is nothing more important to 

our students than strong teachers. 

The San Jose Unified School District is an urban district of 32,000 students. Fifty 

one percent are Latino and 45 percent come from low-income families. There are approximately 1,800 teachers in the district. 

When I began my tenure as superintendent in 1993, there was a long history of 

distrust—even outright hostility—between the central office and the teacher’s union. 

I saw quickly that any real progress on improving student achievement and closing 

achievement gaps depended on reversing the destructive relationship that paralyzed 

us and hurt our students. 

Over time and with lots of effort from all parties, we became partners in improving student learning and our students reaped the benefits. Together, we raised expectations and substantially narrowed achievement gaps. 

San Jose Unified became the first district in California to set the goal of college 

readiness for all students and to require all students—even the poorest—to take the 

toughest high school classes. 

Our teachers were with us every step of the way. 

So I can say to you from first-hand experience that it is possible to work with 

teachers’ unions to improve outcomes for students. 

But I can also tell you that getting strong teachers to the children who desperately need them is so important that we’ve got to do it even when local union 

leaders (or, for that matter, local administrators) drag their feet. 

This is where you come in. Because, done right, federal law can provide the excuse that education leaders need to question the longstanding practice of assigning 

our weakest teachers to the poorest children—and the leverage that we need to 

change a pattern of unfairness that, frankly, common decency and American devotion to the ideal of a level playing field should have prompted us to act on a long 

time ago. 

Nothing is more important to closing longstanding achievement gaps than getting 

more of our most effective teachers teaching our most vulnerable students. Doing 

this right will require replacing outmoded methods of teacher evaluation with evaluation systems that draw on longitudinal data that link teachers and the growth 

of the students they teach. And now—thanks in part to a push from Washington— 

we are building those systems, state by state. 

But many states either can’t yet—or simply won’t—include teacher/student longitudinal data to evaluate—much less to assign, compensate, tenure, or remove teachers. 

My state, California, is certainly no example of vigilance on this matter. Teacher 

evaluation systems are weak and have nothing to do with effectiveness in producing 

student learning. Our lowest-performing schools up and down the state have more 

than their fair share of the weakest teachers. In fact, I fear we may be a poster 

child for irresponsibility in this regard, with a legislated firewall between the student and teacher data systems. Secretary Duncan has seen our firewall for what it 

is—an intentional barrier to better serving our students—and has put tremendous 
23 

1 Charles T. Clotfelter, Helen F. Ladd, and Jacob L. Vigdor, ‘‘Teacher Credentials and Student 

Achievement in High School: A Cross-Subject Analysis With Student Fixed Effects’’ (Washington, D.C.: The Urban Institute, 2007), www.urban.org/url.cfm?ID=1001104. 2Douglas H. Harris and Tim R. Sass, ‘‘Teacher Training, Teacher Quality, and Student 

Achievement’’ (Washington, D.C.: The Urban Institute, 2007), http://www.caldercenter.org/ 

PDF/1001059—Teacher—Training.pdf. 3Dan Goldhaber and Dominic Brewer, ‘‘Evaluating the Effect of Teacher Degree Level on Educational Performance,’’ in William J. Fowler Jr., ed., Developments in School Finance, 1996 

(Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 

1997), (ED 409 634), p. 197-210. http://nces.ed.gov/pubs97/97535l.pdf. 4The Education Trust, ‘‘Core Problems: Out-of-Field Teaching Persists in Key Academic 

Courses and High-Poverty Schools,’’ (Washington, D.C., 2008), http://www2.edtrust.org/NR/ 

rdonlyres/0D6EB5F1-2A49-4A4D-A01B-881CD2134357/0/SASSreportCoreProblems.pdf. 

pressure on the state to tear the wall down. His insistence that states with firewalls 

be excluded from Race to the Top got the attention of our legislature. A special legislative session is underway to deal with this and other barriers to our eligibility. The 

pressure needs to continue so that State policy leaders have the leverage they need 

to overcome politics as usual and do the right thing. 

As Secretary Duncan said last week, our students have been waiting for far too 

long for our education policies to live up to our national promise. Neither our kids 

nor our nation can afford further delay. 

This means that, even as we continue to pressure states to build and use better 

data systems, we cannot abandon research-based measures of teacher quality—especially, experience and content knowledge—when determining whether the schools 

enrolling our most vulnerable students are getting the teachers they need. 

You knew this when you crafted the requirement contained in both NCLB and 

the ARRA that low-income students and students of color not be taught at higher 

rates than other students by out-of-field, inexperienced, or uncertified teachers. 

So far, however, that requirement has not been getting much attention. Some say 

that’s because the proxy measures are imperfect. They are not all wrong: We all 

know of first-year teachers who are spectacular and veterans who should not be in 

the classroom at all. We also know of teachers with deep content-area knowledge 

who simply cannot teach. 

On the whole, however, the measures you chose show a strong connection to outcomes for students: • Value-added research consistently finds that ‘‘teachers’ effectiveness improves 

with the first few years of experience’’ 1 and ‘‘experience enhances teacher productivity at all grade levels in reading and in both elementary and middle-school 

math.’’ 2

• And, not surprisingly, studies also consistently suggest that, especially in math, 

content knowledge matters: Secondary mathematics teachers with bachelor’s or 

master’s degrees in mathematics are more likely to produce high student achievement than their colleagues who lack such a degree.3

So, while not perfect, these research based proxies provide a strong base for solid 

public policy. 

But despite this clear evidence and despite federal law, most school systems continue to assign disproportionate numbers of rookies—along with disproportionate 

numbers of out-of-field teachers—to the very children who are most dependent upon 

their teachers for academic learning. 

Nationally, core academic classes in our high-poverty secondary schools are twice 

as likely as classes in low-poverty schools to be taught by a teacher with neither 

a major nor certification in their assigned subject. Students at high-minority-schools 

are assigned to inexperienced teachers at a higher rate than students at schools 

serving mostly white.4

The result is that, instead of catching up with their more advantaged peers, students who enter behind fall further and further behind over time. Not because they 

couldn’t learn. But because, all too often, we didn’t bother to teach them. 

Interestingly, this practice also has the effect of diverting state and federal dollars 

intended for poor children from the very schools with concentrations of such children. Why? Because teachers with more degrees and more experience are paid more. 

As they gain experience, teachers typically transfer to schools with fewer poor and 

minority children, taking their higher salaries with them. 

The Education Trust—West did a groundbreaking study of this practice several 

years ago. Called ‘‘Hidden Gaps,’’ our work exposed glaring differences in average 

teacher salaries between high- poverty and low- poverty schools in the same school 

district! Perhaps this might be acceptable if the schools with the most inexperienced 

teachers got lots of extra teachers or extra funding to provide teacher coaches. But 

they don’t. Both kids and teachers suffer. 
24 

Yes, better data systems that measured teacher effectiveness would certainly provide more precise information about the strengths and weaknesses of individual 

teachers. Such systems would allow us to identify and celebrate fabulous teaching, 

get struggling teachers the support they require, and better match teacher ability 

with student need. 

However, as much as we may want and students may need suchinformation, 

many states and districts are still years away from having their data systems up 

and running. Moreover, while such data systems will certainly provide a finer 

grained analysis of who is teaching whom, they will only paint a richer picture of 

the inequities in access to strong teaching that have been documented time and 

again using other metrics. 

In short, lacking value-added data we may not have the best information possible, 

but we have right now, and in fact for years, have had too much information about 

inequities in teacher assignments to wait a year, a month, a week, a moment longer 

to begin righting the wrong that has been done to so many of our students. 

And to do that, we don’t need new legislation or new investments. We need this 

administration to enforce the laws you already passed—so state and local education 

leaders have the leverage they need to move in the right direction now 

Thank you. 

Chairman MILLER. Thank you. 

Mr. Van Roekel? 

STATEMENT OF DENNIS VAN ROEKEL, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL 

EDUCATION ASSOCIATION 

Mr. VAN ROEKEL. Thank you, Chairman Miller and members of 

the committee, it is a pleasure and honor to be here as President 

of NEA 3.2 million people who work in public schools all across this 

country from pre-K to graduate. And I come to you as a high school 

math teacher for 23 years. That is my real job for many, many 

years. 

One of the things that is very exciting to me is to listen to all 

of the people speak and how we really do have agreement on what 

it is we need to do, that the status quo is not acceptable, that highneeds schools must become priority schools and that we must have 

change. 

We just recently did a report at NEA and the title of that report 

was, ‘‘Children of Poverty Deserve Great Teachers, One Union’s 

Commitment to Changing the Status Quo.’’ But when we talk 

about change, I want to point out two very important things. 

Number one, in systems change, it says it is not enough to do 

one little piece. You can’t change one part of the whole system and 

expect the whole system to change. The other thing about system 

change that always really just drives me each and every day is 

when they say that in any system, the results it produces are the 

exact results it was designed to do, which says to us in America 

that we have designed a system for high poverty students that year 

after year after year are treated in a way they should not be treated. So the question then is how do we change that system? 

The second thing about change is people’s reaction. Some say it 

causes stress, some say that resisting change causes stress. Gilbert 

says, ‘‘Change is good. You go first.’’ Which is kind of everyone’s expectation that if someone else would change then I wouldn’t have 

to. 

But the truth is we all must change. My own personal philosophy 

is that it has a lot to do with satisfaction. For those who are satis-
25 

fied with the current system, there is no demand for change or call 

for change. 

And so I would hope that you are not only dissatisfied but you 

are gloriously dissatisfied, that you will not tolerate a system in 

America that for too many of our youth, 1.2 million a year are 

exiting the system without a high school diploma. 

The other thing about reaction to change is the reaction is very 

different if it is done to you or with you. The other thing that is 

such in agreement here today is the effect of teachers on students 

and learning. It is absolutely the key. 

And from my point of view there is not enough attention paid to 

the practice of teaching. It is a profession. I do not believe that 

anyone with a degree in math can do what I do in a classroom. I 

would hope no one would walk into the classroom without that 

knowledge. 

But you know in some of the toughest classes I teach, my master’s degree in math really isn’t at issue, I know how to do all the 

problems in the book. The issue is how do you translate that to a 

group of students who have challenges way beyond the problems in 

the book? 

It is about practice in law, in medicine and in Congress. We don’t 

devaluate the effectiveness in any of those professions by a single 

measure. We take into account multiple things that define effectiveness. The good part about this problem is it is within our power 

to change it. 

For NEA a couple of years ago, we started talking to a nationally 

board certified teachers to say—and they held summits in six different states, talked to more than 2,000 of them saying what it is 

that we would have to do differently to entice you to come to these 

schools of high need, priority schools. 

What they said is they need to have good principals who know 

how to lead and support teacher leaderships. There must be a commitment to creative teaching and learning inquiry, not handing a 

teacher a script to read in front of first graders. 

There must be the opportunity to participate in a team of qualified people who collectively take the responsibility for student 

learning. And there must be sufficient resources, whether it be 

technology, libraries, supplies, connection to health and public services. 

But the number one overall thing, more than money, more than 

anything is that the working and learning conditions matter most. 

When you look at this system we are trying to change, it has an 

oversupply of teachers who are inexperienced, unlicensed and assigned out-of-field. 

Forty percent of all core subject teachers are out-of-field. Two to 

three times the turnover rate of other schools in the same district, 

it is a revolving door where there is a new group of people there 

almost every 2 years. 

The teacher evaluation system is either nonexistent or not used. 

And many administrators are ill-trained and have inadequate tools 

and skills in order to do it. They have no ability to distinguish between an excellent, an average or a poor teacher. 

Teacher evaluation, I remember from my first involvement, state 

statute in Arizona said ‘‘teacher evaluation is for the improvement 
26 

of instruction.’’ If that is its purpose, how dare you design a system 

where someone came into my room for 15 minutes once during the 

year? 

How in the world does that impact the improvement of instruction? We need to design new systems. And that teacher evaluation 

system, you need to know what its purpose is. It is not to find a 

few inadequate teachers. It is to improve the practice of all teachers, which means it must be directly tied to a professional development system. 

When we find weaknesses, if the person can’t or won’t improve 

they shouldn’t be there but it must be a system to get them to be 

effective teachers, focus on practice. So with that I would say to 

you the good news is this is something we can change and the NEA 

is committed to make that change happen. 

Thank you, sir. 

[The statement of Mr. Van Roekel follows:] 

Prepared Statement of Dennis Van Roekel, President, 

National Education Association 

Chairman Miller and members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity 

to speak with you today about ensuring effective teachers for all children. I commend the committee for convening a hearing on this very important issue. 

The vision of the National Education Association (NEA) is ‘‘a great public school 

for every student.’’ Unfortunately, despite the intense commitment of NEA members, too many students in high poverty communities do not enjoy the benefits of 

a great public school because their schools are often chronically under-funded, 

under-staffed, and unsupported. This is simply unacceptable. 

Each day, countless dedicated, talented teachers and support professionals report 

to work in these challenging and low-resourced schools, knowing they will face students with a sobering array of social and economic disadvantages, working conditions that impede the highest possible levels of teaching and learning, and a revolving door of administrators and teachers. These heroes and heroines perform amazing tasks, often with the least amount of support and resources. 

Nevertheless, we cannot cover up the fact that too often schools with the greatest 

needs are filled with the most inexperienced and least skilled teachers. As a result, 

talented teachers in high-needs schools work alongside colleagues who lack training, 

are unprepared for the challenges they encounter, and who, due to revolving-door 

staffing patterns, are banished to high-needs schools without any support. 

NEA is here today to say ‘‘No more.’’ We will not participate in or turn away from 

this shame. We will be active partners with this Administration and this Congress 

to assure every student in America does indeed attend a great public school. 

Everyone is talking about supporting students in their ‘‘race to the top.’’ The key 

to turning out great students is great teachers. Great teachers, with the right policy 

supports, are the ideal agents of meaningful and sustainable change in our most 

challenged schools. NEA believes that solutions are at hand if policymakers, parents, and teachers themselves promote thoughtful and comprehensive strategies to 

address working conditions, school leadership, and teacher quality. 

This month, NEA and the Center for Teaching Quality released Children of Poverty Deserve Great Teachers, a groundbreaking report presenting solid, proven 

strategies and policy recommendations that can make a difference. It also offers solutions to recruiting, preparing, supporting, and compensating teachers for highneeds schools and highlights NEA’s commitments to ensure great teachers are in 

every classroom. 

I would like to take you through some of the highlights of this report as well as 

the actions NEA and our state affiliates are taking to implement the report recommendations. 

The Reality in High-Poverty Schools 

From the White House to local communities, our nation is recognizing teacher 

quality as a key factor for strengthening U.S. public schools for all children. Many 

influences, including home and community life, play a role in student achievement, 

but no school-based issue may be as critical and within our power to fix as the inequitable distribution of qualified and effective teachers. 
27 

Many highly skilled and dedicated teachers struggle daily to keep the ship of 

learning afloat in our most challenging schools. Nonetheless, children of poverty and 

those of color are far less likely to be taught by qualified, effective teachers than 

are students from more affluent families. This daunting reality hovers like an albatross over those who work daily, against the odds, to improve student achievement 

in our low-income communities. 

The research is sobering: 

• High-poverty schools are much more likely to have special education and math 

teaching vacancies and are forced to staff classrooms with out-of-field and inexperienced teachers, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. 

• In New York City’s high-poverty schools, 20 percent of teachers have less than 

three years of experience, compared to only 11 percent in more affluent schools, according to a recent study. Furthermore, qualified teachers in high-poverty schools 

(credentialed, experienced teachers who are teaching in their field and who score 

well on tests of academic and teaching ability) are more likely to leave teaching 

than their less qualified peers in those schools. 

• Study after study has shown that teachers associated with high ‘‘value-added’’ 

student achievement gains and teachers who are National Board Certified are relatively unlikely to be teaching economically disadvantaged and minority students. 

• Asking high-needs schools to rely on relatively inexperienced, poorly prepared 

teachers—or better qualified teachers who quickly exit their classrooms—creates a 

chronic condition that undermines long-term, school-based strategies to improve 

teaching and learning. 

What do Teachers Need to Be Effective? 

Teachers cannot do it alone. Every member of the community has a role and is 

responsible for the conditions of our schools and for providing a safe and secure 

learning environment for our children. Teachers want to be successful, and we 

should do what we can so that they are not set up to fail. 

It’s not about the money. Nobody enters teaching for financial security. They 

enter the profession because they care passionately about educating children and 

preparing them to succeed. 

NEA has worked with more than 2,000 of the nation’s best teachers who told us 

what will attract and keep our most effective teachers in our most challenging 

schools: 

• Good principals who both know how to lead and support teacher leadership; 

• A commitment to creative teaching and inquiry-based learning, not scripted instruction; 

• The opportunity to team with a critical mass of highly-skilled teachers who 

share responsibility for every student’s success; 

• Improved working conditions; and 

• Additional pay to recognize the difficult work in turning around a struggling 

school. 

Working conditions are of paramount concern when it comes to decisions about 

working in high-needs schools. Teachers, like surgeons, require a well equipped environment in which to do their best work. We cannot expect them to be successful 

if we do not provide the tools and resources needed to do the job. The data are clear: 

a child’s learning environment is a critical factor in his or her long-term success. 

We cannot hold teachers accountable for substandard conditions beyond their control and must acknowledge that conditions of teaching and learning are essential 

to achieving high levels of student learning. 

We need to support teachers in their early years and throughout their careers. 

It is important that we not only recruit new teachers to work in high-needs schools, 

but that we foster an environment that encourages professional development and 

continual learning opportunities for teachers within our schools and districts to help 

meet the needs of students. We also must ‘‘grow our own’’ accomplished teachers 

and not rely solely on new recruits for our staffing needs. 

Too often, school district recruitment and hiring practices rest on outdated mid20th century organizational assumptions about teaching, learning, gender roles, and 

the career mobility patterns of young adults. Few systems are developing new teachers from within their own high-needs communities. Additionally, few are partnering 

with universities and nonprofits to make strategic investments in new teacher residency programs that can both drive improved working conditions and assure a 

steady supply of well-prepared, ‘‘culturally competent’’ teachers for high-needs 

schools. 
28 

NEA’s Strategies and Commitments 

NEA’s Children in Poverty report describes four strategies that will move us past 

the usual ‘‘either/or’’ thinking about the future of teaching toward research-driven 

policies that can transform every high-poverty school in America into a high-performing school, fully staffed by effective teachers. 

• Recruit and prepare teachers for work in high-needs schools. 

• Take a comprehensive approach to teacher incentives. Lessons from the private 

sector and voices of teachers indicate that performance pay makes the most difference when it focuses on ‘‘building a collaborative workplace culture’’ to improve 

practices and outcomes. 

• Identify working conditions that serve students. We need to fully identify the 

school conditions most likely to serve students by attracting, developing, retaining, 

and inspiring effective and accomplished teachers. 

• Define teacher effectiveness broadly, in terms of student learning. We need new 

evaluation tools and processes to measure how teachers think about their practice, 

as well as help students learn. For example, in the Performance Assessment for 

California Teaching (PACT), new teachers are expected to demonstrate their knowledge of content and how to teach it in real life circumstances and context. PACT 

is now spreading to other states. Seen as a valid measure of individual teacher competence, it is useful for teacher licensure and as a powerful tool for teacher learning 

and program improvement. Such performance assessments have the potential of focusing teacher evaluation on student learning without the distortions caused by the 

singular use of standardized test scores. 

NEA, as part of an initiative it will launch called The Priority Schools Campaign, 

has committed significant resources to ensuring a great public school for every student. Those commitments include investing $1 million per year over six years to 

pursue comprehensive strategies and policies that will increase teacher effectiveness 

in high-needs schools. NEA takes its union leadership role seriously and is committed to raising the bar and requiring our members to meet a standard of excellence that will help us achieve great public schools for every student by 2020. 

Through the Priority Schools Campaign, NEA commits to: 

• Address barriers in collective bargaining agreements by requesting that every 

local NEA affiliate enter into a compact or memorandum of understanding (MOU) 

with its local school district to waive any contract language that prohibits staffing 

high-needs schools with great teachers. These compacts should also add commitments that would enhance this goal. Similarly, NEA would promote compacts or 

MOUs for its non-collective bargaining local affiliates that have high-needs schools 

in their districts. 

Several NEA affiliates have addressed, in collaboration with school districts, collective bargaining barriers to addressing staffing needs in high-needs schools. The 

MOUs that have resulted from these collaborations are producing positive results. 

• Launch a major member outreach effort using its union advocacy and leadership position to encourage the most accomplished teacher-members to start their 

teaching careers in high-needs schools, remain teaching there, or transfer to highneeds schools. 

• Support the establishment of locally based recruitment and support programs 

that encourage teachers to devote at least five years of service to strengthening 

teaching in high-needs schools. 

• Establish a national recognition program to support and publicize the efforts of 

teachers, schools, and districts to strengthen quality teaching in high-needs schools. 

• Work with the philanthropic community and with local, state, and national policymakers to expand the depth and breadth of NEA’s initial investments. 

• Support mentoring programs for new teachers in high-needs schools that offer 

a wide array of support and resources needed to teach effectively in high-needs 

schools. 

• Work in partnership with local and state affiliates to implement programs in 

high-needs schools to grow teacher quality and effectiveness through National Board 

Certification. 

NEA also continues to support and promote incentives for National Board Certification as an essential tool for improving teacher quality and for staffing high-needs 

schools. 

Where and when possible, NEA will support local and state association development of appropriate incentives through collective bargaining and other state/local 

policy avenues. We will also support our state and local affiliates who partner in 

pursuit of innovative incentive and compensation programs (through funding 

streams such as the TIF grant program). 
29 

And NEA will develop resources and strategies to help its affiliates expand the 

scope of collective bargaining to pursue collaboratively at the bargaining table multiple measures of student learning and teacher quality. 

Conclusion 

History has shown that a one-size-fits-all regulatory regime for teacher recruitment and preparation is unreasonable. As Stanford University Professor Linda Darling-Hammond has noted, staffing and supporting high-needs schools with truly 

highly qualified and effective teachers will require the equivalent of a Marshall Plan 

for teaching. It is time to listen to our teacher leaders, learn from them, and go beyond current ‘‘either/or’’ policy thinking in favor of multiple approaches to teaching 

quality. 

Our nation has the capacity to make sure every child in every high-needs school 

has great teachers. President Obama has called for the nation to ‘‘treat teachers like 

the professionals they are while also holding them more accountable.’’ Doing so 

means not only looking carefully at the research evidence, but also listening to our 

most accomplished teachers and acting on their advice. As the President has suggested, they are ready to ‘‘lift up their schools.’’ They are ready to maintain the 

promise of great public schools for our nation. It is time to hear their voices and 

embrace their ideas for recruiting, preparing, rewarding, and supporting great 

teachers—the teachers that all students deserve. 

I have included with this testimony a complete copy of our Children of Poverty 

report. Thank you again for the opportunity to contribute to this important discussion. 

Chairman MILLER. Dr. Roza, welcome. 

STATEMENT OF MARGUERITE ROZA, RESEARCH ASSOCIATE 

PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON’S COLLEGE OF 

EDUCATION 

Ms. ROZA. Thank you for having me, and as many of you may 

know, I have been at the University of Washington studying resource allocation among schools in districts for over a decade. I 

have looked at dozens of states, hundreds of districts in too many 

thousands of schools now to really add them up for you. 

But I want to go back to the beginning of this trek and just tell 

you for a moment how it started off. I have been looking at money 

from the beginning and when I looked at district budgets, I thought 

what is missing in here are the actual salaries of the teachers at 

schools. 

And so on a whim I picked up the phone and called about 12 different districts around the country, including Baltimore and Atlanta and Cincinnati and Seattle, where I live, and Los Angeles 

and a bunch more. 

And said hey, you know I am kind of wondering do the salaries 

match across all these schools or are you finding that you have 

very senior teachers at some schools and junior teachers in another 

one? And without fail, every single person that answered the phone 

said in slightly different regional accents, we don’t have that problem here. 

Our teachers—we actually have people who want to teach in 

inner city schools. We have people who want to teach in poor 

schools and our distribution is really good. And while being confident that they believe what they were answering, I went ahead 

and dug up the data and did Freedom of Information requests. 

And certainly found that in all of those 12 districts and in every 

other district that I have come across, with the exception of a very 

small few, that they were wrong, that we do have a mal-distribution of teacher salaries across schools. 
30 

And so I want to share six major findings that I have had with 

you in that trek over the last 12 years. So the first is that teachers 

in schools with more poor and minority students are paid less than 

teachers in schools with predominantly white and wealthier students in the same districts, off the salary schedule. 

So this has nothing to do with property taxes or access to resources or how much revenues were obtained. This is about money 

that came to the school district and then was deployed and paid 

out to teachers across schools. And we are paying these teachers 

over here to teach these white kids a lot more money than we are 

to teach these poor minority kids, off the same salary schedule. 

So here is how it works. You know, teachers come in to poor 

schools and that might be the only spot they get an opening, and 

they work there for a year or two. And they transfer across the district to a school with a more stable teacher population and then 

they stay there for the rest of their career. 

And so this revolving door process, what it does is it brings one 

set of teachers in through the opening in poor and minority schools. 

They transfer over to another school and end up staying. Some of 

them leave the district or leave teaching along the way. 

The poor and minority schools have a harder time recruiting 

teachers and that is one of the things we will find out more, but 

I want to show you the financial impact of this and so I brought 

some slides. And this is a first slide, will come up now, which is 

how this gets buried into district budgets. 

On the panel on the left, what you see are two schools, 

Wedgewood and Martin Luther King—these are in my school district in Seattle, and this is some old data so Martin Luther King 

doesn’t even exist anymore, but Wedgewood is a school with just— 

in a neighborhood with great views of Lake Washington. I don’t 

know if you are from Seattle. 

But anyway the district reports that it spends $3,700 per pupil 

in Wedgewood. And if you drive south to higher poverty and higher 

minority areas across the ship canal, you would find Martin Luther 

King where the district reported it spent more, about $3,900. 

But in reality, those budgets are built off something we call an 

average district salary. We will just assume that every teacher 

makes $50,000 and we will plug in that $50,000 number. And it 

is off now, but on the right panel you will see that it actually reverses when you put in the real salaries of those teachers, where 

it turns out that we are spending a lot less in Martin Luther King, 

the school where the kids have much higher needs than in 

Wedgewood. 

So this happens all the time and it is hidden. We can’t find it. 

You have really got to do some forensic accounting to find it. And 

while salaries are not the most important thing, they are indicative 

of other differences that do matter. 

First of all, schools with lower salaries have fewer applicants per 

opening. We find that sometimes they will have a handful, maybe 

two or three. And across the district, you will find another school 

in the same district where they will have 30 or 40 or 100 or 300 

applicants per opening. 

So the salary differences are indicative of the labor market differences. In the next slide that I brought, we also know that cer-
31 

tain schools, those with high minority and high poverty populations 

have very high turnover, and high turnover is something that affects kids. 

So when the teachers are leaving all the time, the kids have a 

different experience, the families have a different experience, and 

the teachers there have fewer mentors. So in this one study where 

they looked at schools where 70 percent of the teachers stayed after 

5 years, you can look at the demographics of that school. It is very 

low minority and low poverty and the opposite is true where you 

find schools where 30 percent or fewer of the teachers are retained. 

So moving on then, another variable that differs is the increased 

turnover that these schools are having with seniority-based layoffs, 

which is something that hit hard this last year in especially schools 

in California but in other states as well. 

Where are all the junior teachers that got laid off? They are in 

these high-minority, high-poverty schools. So those schools again 

had more turnover. 

So the fourth point I want to talk about is another slide that we 

have brought which shows that it is not just across schools but also 

within schools. And this is really a new finding that I found looking 

at the schools in staffing surveys which is, if you look at the average salary of teachers teaching remedial classes, it is about $6,000 

less than the average teacher salary teaching AP or honors classes. 

And we know who is taking each of those classes. Again, you are 

separating—the students are being separated out across classes 

and we are paying people more to teach the ones who are further 

along academically; the absolute opposite of what we say we are 

about to do, that we are all about. 

So obviously there is several district policies that are contributing to this. There are salary schedules and seniority rights and 

seniority preferences and district allocation practices, but the last 

slide I wanted to bring to you shows you something that comes 

back to the federal level which is that the Title I policy, intended 

to demand equity in spending, doesn’t work. 

As you see on the left, this is in one district, the lower-poverty 

schools have a certain amount of money that they get from state 

to state and local resources and the higher poverty schools on the 

right get Title I also. But the Title I works to fill in that hole that 

is created by the inequitable allocation of the state and local resources created by these patterns. 

And that is what I have to show you. Thanks very much. 

[The statement of Ms. Roza follows:] 

Prepared Statement of Marguerite Roza, Center on Reinventing Public 

Education, College of Education, the University of Washington 

The mal-distribution of teachers across schools and courses hurts poor and minority students. 

Thank you for the opportunity to testify. In my university researcher role, I have 

studied school district expenditures across hundreds of districts in dozens of states 

for over a decade. In tracing funds from different governmental units all the way 

down to schools and classrooms, my colleagues and I have unearthed a pervasive 

mal-distribution in teachers across schools and classrooms. Here are the highlights 

of our findings: 

Teachers who teach in schools with more poor and minority students are paid less 

than teachers who teach in schools with more wealthy, white students, in the same 

districts. 
32 

While they are both paid off the same salary schedules, very often teachers in 

high poverty, high minority schools have lower salaries because they have fewer 

years of experience or fewer graduate credits. While high cost teachers congregate 

in the most affluent schools, the highest poverty schools have a more difficult time 

drawing in the best teacher candidates. Often, new teachers start their career at 

a high-poverty school and, as they gain experience and move up the pay scale, will 

transfer to a more affluent school. 

The result, school districts routinely spend a larger share of state and local funds 

intended to support basic instruction on schools with fewer poor students. Since in 

most districts the way resources are deployed to schools is via the staff allocations, 

the result is that schools with lowered salaried teachers receive fewer state and 

local public funds. 

Salary differences across schools are indicative of other differences that likely map 

to effectiveness. While experience and graduate credits are not by themselves good 

predictors of quality, there is reason for concern. Schools with lower salaried teachers also have: 

a. Fewer teacher applicants per opening. While more affluent schools have dozens 

or more applicants for each vacancy, the highest poverty schools typically have only 

a few. Schools with fewer applicants have a smaller talent pool from which to select 

teachers. 

b. Higher turnover. Teachers tend to leave higher poverty schools at higher rates, 

ensuring a steady stream of new teachers. Higher turnover means fewer relationships between teachers and families, fewer teacher mentors for new teachers, and 

greater induction implications for school leadership. 

c. Increased turnover during seniority based layoffs. When the highest poverty 

schools have more junior teachers, their teacher receive more pink slips creating 

more turnover as teachers are reassigned around the district. 

Some of these same patterns also play out among teachers across courses inside 

high schools. In research on a sample of high schools from different parts of the 

country, teachers teaching higher level honors or AP classes consistently earned 

more than those teaching remedial or regular courses. In our sample, remedial and 

regular classes served disproportionately higher percentages of poor and minority 

students, and thus the same mal-distribution patterns applied. 

Several district policies and practices contribute to the mal-distribution of teachers inside districts and schools: 

• Teacher salary schedules that do not reflect to workload, school or student 

needs, course topic, etc. 

• Seniority rights for transfer and layoffs. 

• Seniority preferences honored among courses inside high schools. 

• District budget and allocation practices that are driven by teachers, not students. By ignoring the effect of salary on expenditure differences across schools, current resource allocation and accounting practices allow for such inequities. 

• Comparability provision in Title I. While this provision demands that districts 

allocate state and local funds equally across schools before accepting federal funds, 

the provision permits the exclusion of inequities in teacher salaries. 

There are many remedies that districts could pursue (and some are in practice 

in a few districts), but local politics serve as a formidable barrier in most. 

Thank you. 
33 
34 
35 
36 
37 

Chairman MILLER. Ms. Daniels? 

STATEMENT OF LATANYA DANIELS, ASSISTANT PRINCIPAL, 

EDISON HIGH SCHOOL 

Ms. DANIELS. Good morning. Thank you for inviting me to testify 

today concerning the importance of highly-effective teachers in high 

schools, high-need schools, as the mechanism to increase student 

achievement. My name is Latonya Daniels, and I am the assistant 

principal at Thomas Edison High School in Minneapolis, Minnesota. 

Thomas Edison is a high-needs high school with approximately 

88 percent of the student body qualifying for free and reduced 

lunch. This year begins the 9th year of my educational career. I 
38 

spent the first 4 years of my educational career as a middle school 

math teacher and served in many leadership capacities. 

My school began implementing the TAP program or the Teacher 

Advancement Program, a comprehensive school reform program 

that provides opportunities for career advancement, professional 

growth, instructionally-focused accountability and performancebased compensation for educators. 

I served as a TAP coach, also known as a mentor, across the 

country for one semester and a TAP mentor, also known as a master teacher, across the country for 2 years. These experiences were 

very empowering for me, the teachers, and the students that I supported. 

I chose to be an assistant principal in a TAP high school because 

I see myself more so as an instructional leader rather than as a 

manager. With the academic impediments our students face within 

Thomas Edison, it is imperative that I know the best practices of 

instruction and the most current professional development to accelerate student learning. 

TAP provides me this opportunity, as well as the opportunity to 

develop and coach our TAP mentors and teachers to greatness. Finally, TAP teaches the main thing, the main thing, and that is academic achievement which is ultimately my mission. 

Thomas Edison is an urban high school within an urban district. 

It is a highly diverse school made up of primarily 90 percent minority students. It was also deemed a Fresh Start school because it 

was performing in the lower 25 percent of district high schools. 

In the past several years, Thomas Edison has received the lowest 

achieving ninth grade students entering all Minneapolis high 

schools with the challenges of ninth graders not being at grade 

level, the demanding needs of our ESL population and students’ 

lack of self efficacy and other challenges. 

Our staff continues to choose the TAP program because it provides a formidable professional development program to move novice teachers to effective teachers and experienced teachers to teachers of excellence, a structure to analyze data and to set measurable 

and attainable goals for the school and for each individual student, 

a standard space evaluation system that identifies areas of 

strength and development for our teachers, a career ladder that 

provides opportunity for advancement for teachers while concurrently supporting the professional development in the building, and 

finally, a performance-paid bonus system to reward student success, thus school success. 

For a school with high needs such as Thomas Edison High 

School, TAP is what is needed to shift from low student achievement and low expectations to a culture of academic excellence and 

high expectations amongst all students and staff. 

In Minnesota, 87 percent of the TAP schools met or exceeded 

growth projections for the 2007-2008 school year. Our school has 

had positive results as well. From 2006 to 2007, the graduation 

rate at Thomas Edison improved from 61 percent to 77 percent. 

And last year, our first Fresh Start year, 80 percent of our ninth 

and tenth grade students made 1 year’s growth or more in math 

and over 50 percent of our ninth and tenth grade students made 

1 year’s growth or more in reading. 
39 

Prior to Thomas Edison’s Fresh Start, the school experienced a 

70 percent teacher turnover over a 2-year period. With the Fresh 

Start, we retained 60 percent of our staff and have 40 percent new 

hires. 

We began the school year with all teachers in place which was 

a first and it felt great to staff, students, parents and the community. The support for the TAP program helped us retain the strongest talent we were able to recruit during the interview and select 

process. 

In interviews, we always share with candidates that Thomas 

Edison is a TAP high school and explain what that means and 

what that looks like. Overwhelmingly, teacher candidates choose 

Thomas Edison over other Minneapolis schools and over even suburban schools because of the embedded support. 

In our annual survey of teacher attitudes, we found that over 81 

percent of teachers in Thomas Edison report high levels of 

collegiality and satisfaction due to TAP. The Minneapolis School 

Board and the Minneapolis Teacher’s Union settled upon a memorandum of agreement that allow Fresh Start schools to move away 

from the seniority process to filling teacher vacancies to a more 

interview and select process. 

This process allowed us to recruit some of the best talent in the 

Twin Cities to Thomas Edison. Our most novice teachers accepted 

their teacher positions because of the layers of support they would 

receive in the classroom and professional development through 

TAP. Teachers value TAP’s professional support because although 

it is a national model, it is specifically structured to help improve 

the performance of our particular students. 

In conclusion, in a high-need high school, there is a tremendous 

need to create an ongoing support structure that enables teachers 

to continually improve the effectiveness of their instruction if students are going to continue to improve academically. 

And at Thomas Edison High School in Minneapolis, TAP has provided that structure, excuse me, for us to improve. Thank you for 

this opportunity and I will be happy to answer any questions. 

[The statement of Ms. Daniels follows:] 

Prepared Statement of Latanya Daniels, Assistant Principal, 

Edison High School 

Thank you for inviting me to testify today concerning the importance of teacher 

effectiveness to student achievement growth. 

My name is Latanya Daniels and I am the Assistant Principal at Thomas Edison 

High School in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Thomas Edison is a high needs school with 

approximately 88% of students eligible for free and reduced price lunch. I appreciate 

the opportunity to share with the Committee how we have used a comprehensive 

performance pay reform at Thomas Edison to increase student achievement and 

teacher effectiveness. 

My Career in Teaching 

This year begins the 9th year of my educational career. For the first four years 

of my career, I was a middle school math teacher and I served in many leadership 

capacities. My school began implementing the Teacher Advancement Program or 

‘‘TAP’’—a comprehensive school reform system that provides powerful opportunities 

for career adcancement, professional growth, instructionally focused accountability 

and competitive compensation for educators. I served as a TAP coach (which is 

called mentor elsewhere) for one semester and a TAP mentor (which is called master elsewhere) for two years. In a TAP school, there is approximately one mentor 

for every 15 career teachers and one coach for every 8 teachers. These experiences 
40 

were very empowering for me, the teachers, and the students I supported through 

mentoring, coaching, and providing professional development. 

I chose to be an assistant principal in a TAP high school because I see myself 

as an instructional leader in this role. With the academic impediments our students 

face within Thomas Edison, it’s imperative that I know the best practices of instruction and the most current professional development research to accelerate student 

learning. TAP provides me this opportunity as well as the opportunity to develop 

and coach our TAP mentors and career teachers to greatness. Finally, TAP keeps 

the main thing—student achievement—the main thing, and that’s my mission. 

Implementing a Performance Pay Program in a High Needs High School 

Thomas Edison is an urban high school within an urban district. It is a highly 

diverse school made up of approximately 40% African American, 19% East African 

immigrants, 20% Hispanic, 11% White, 9% Asian and 2% Native American students. 

Thomas Edison was deemed a Fresh Start school, meaning it was in the bottom 25% 

of district high schools in terms of student performance. 

In the past several years, Thomas Edison has received the lowest achieving 9th 

grade students entering all Minneapolis high schools. With the challenges of 9th 

graders not being at grade level, the demanding needs of our ESL population, students’ lack of self-efficacy, and other challenges, our staff continues to choose the 

TAP program because of its comprehensive approach of improving teacher quality 

and student achievement. TAP also provides: • A formidable professional development program that embeds professional development to move novice teachers to effective teachers and experienced teachers to exceptional teachers; • A structure to analyze data to set measurable and attainable goals for the 

school and each individual student; • A standards-based evaluation system that identifies areas of strength and development for all teachers; • A career ladder that provides opportunity for advancement for teachers while 

concurrently supporting staff in school-wide professional development; and • A performance pay bonus system to reward student, thus school success. 

For a school with high needs such as Thomas Edison, TAP is what is needed to 

shift from low student achievement and expectations to a culture of academic excellence and high expectations amongst all students and staff. 

Student Achievement Growth 

In Minnesota, 13 out of 15 or 87% of TAP schools met or exceeded their growth 

projections for the 07-08 school year. Our school had very positive results: • From 2006—2007, the graduation rate at Thomas Edison improved from 61% 

to 77%. • Thomas Edison was the only Minneapolis high school to give the MAP test in 

2008—2009 school year to our 9th and 10th grade students. The MAP test is a leveled test that measures student growth. 

• 80% of our 9th and 10th grade students made one year’s growth or more in 

math. 

• Over 50% of our 9th and 10th grade students made one year’s growth or more 

in reading. 

Increased Teacher Retention 

TAP the system for teacher and student advancement, with its strong support system of professional development led by master and mentor teachers in the school, 

has helped to reduce teacher turnover. Prior the Thomas Edison’s fresh start, the 

school experienced a 70% teacher turnover over a two-year period. With the fresh 

start, we retained 60% of our staff and had 40% new hires. Last year, we only lost 

one teacher due to layoffs. We began the 2009—2010 year with all teachers in place 

for the school year, and it felt great to staff, students, parents, and the community. 

The support from the TAP program helped us retain the greatest talent we were 

able to recruit during the interview and select process. 

Attracting Talented Teachers to High Poverty Schools 

TAP provides a strong recruitment incentive for encouraging outstanding educators to teach in high-need schools. In interviews, we always share with candidates 

that Thomas Edison is a TAP high school and explain what that means. Overwhelmingly, teacher candidates choose Thomas Edison over other Minneapolis high 

schools and even suburban high schools because of the embedded support. Our ability to offer annual performance based stipends to coaches and mentors also provides 

a strong recruitment and retention tool for highly effective educators to take on 

leadership work at our school. 
41 

Building Collegiality 

In our annual survey of teacher attitudes, we found that over 81% of teachers in 

Thomas Edison TAP report high levels of collegiality and satisfaction. We believe 

these results are a natural outgrowth of TAP’s ongoing applied professional growth. 

Whatever concerns teachers have over the shift in culture to performance based 

compensation and rigorous accountability is tempered by the weekly professional development ‘‘cluster groups’’ that naturally facilitate collegiality. 

Challenges in Building and Retaining a Talented Staff in a High Needs High School 

Teachers have a greater impact on student learning that anything else in schools. 

Yet current policies offer few incentives for strong teachers to take on tougher assignments. 

Thomas Edison is in it second year as a Fresh Start school. The Minneapolis 

school board and the Minneapolis teachers’ union settled upon a Memorandum of 

Agreement that allowed Fresh Start Schools to move away from the seniority process for filling teacher vacancies to an ‘‘interview and select’’ process. This process 

allowed us to recruit some of the best teacher and candidates to Thomas Edison. 

Our most novice teachers accepted their teaching positions because of the layers 

of support they would receive in the classroom and professional development 

through TAP. Also, the new teachers shared our values and beliefs. 

Summary 

Even though TAP is a national program, it is structured to allow each school and 

district to focus on their particular student needs. For example, teacher professional 

development provided weekly in group meetings, and individually in the classroom, 

is driven by the needs of Thomas Edison students that we see in the data. We also 

take into account the strengths and weaknesses of our teachers—as demonstrated 

through multiple classroom evaluations—in structuring our professional support. 

Teachers value this professional support because it is specifically structured to help 

them improve the performance of their students. 

I encourage the members of the Committee to support strategies and policies that 

have proven effective in addressing the need for effective educators in high need 

schools and districts. Performance pay programs that include opportunities for career advancement, standards based evaluation and professional support, such as 

TAP, have demonstrated their effectiveness in increasing student achievement, as 

well as increasing recruitment and retention of effective educators in high need 

schools. 

In a high need school, there is a tremendous need to create an ongoing support 

structure that enables teachers to continually improve the effectiveness of their instruction if students are going to continue improving academically. At Edison High 

School in Minneapolis, TAP has provided that structure for us to improve. I would 

be happy to answer any questions you may have. 

ATTACHMENT A 

Description of TAP TM

TAPTM: The System for Teacher and Student Advancement—is a performance 

pay and professional development system that is increasing student achievement, 

and improving teacher recruitment and retention in high need schools. 

TAP is a comprehensive, research-based reform designed to attract, retain, support, and develop effective teachers and principals. It combines comprehensive 

teacher support with performance pay incentives to create an instructional environment that is continually focused on advancing student learning. Attracting, developing, and supporting excellent teachers is crucial to our mission because our student achievement goals are simply not attainable without a high quality faculty. 

Unique Solutions Provided by the TAP 

TAP counters many of the traditional drawbacks that plague the teaching profession: ineffective professional development, lack of career advancement, lack of accuracy or differentiation in classroom evaluations, and low, undifferentiated compensation. TAP provides an integrated, comprehensive solution to these challenges— 

changing the structure of the teaching profession within schools while maintaining 

the essence of the profession. TAP is a whole school reform intended to recruit, motivate, develop and retain high quality teachers in order to increase student achievement. 

1. Building the Capacity of Teachers and Principals through Professional Development that is directly aligned to content standards and elements of effective instruction and takes place during the regular school day, so educators can constantly improve the quality of their instruction and increase their students’ academic achieve-
42 

ment. This allows teachers to learn new instructional strategies and have greater 

opportunity to collaborate, both of which will lead them to become more effective 

teachers. The TAP Leadership Team of master and mentor teachers, as well as 

school administrators guide the professional development which addresses the individual needs of teachers and their students. 

2. Additional Roles and Responsibilities allow teachers to progress from a Career, 

Mentor and Master teacher—depending upon their interests, abilities and accomplishments. This allows good teachers to advance without having to leave the classroom and provides the expert staff to deliver intensive, school-based professional development that supports more rigorous coursework and standards. 

3. A Fair, Rigorous and Objective Evaluation Process for evaluating teachers and 

principals. Teachers are held accountable for meeting standards that are based on 

effective instruction, as well as for the academic growth of their students, and principals are evaluated based on student achievement growth as well as other leadership factors. Classroom evaluations are conducted multiple times each year by 

trained and certified evaluators (administrators, Master and Mentor teachers) using 

clearly defined rubrics which reduces the possibility of bias or favoritism. 

4. Performance-based Compensation Based on Student Achievement Gains and 

Classroom Evaluations of Teachers throughout the Year. Student achievement is 

measured using ‘‘value-added’’ measures of student learning gains from year to year. 

These learning gains are determined using the same assessments that are used to 

calculate progress under NCLB. TAP changes the current system by compensating 

teachers according to their roles and responsibilities, their performance in the classroom, and the performance of their students. The new system also encourages districts to offer competitive salaries to those who teach in ‘‘hard-to-staff’’ subjects and 

schools. 

By combining these elements in an effective strategy for reform, TAP is working 

to turn teaching, especially in high need schools, into a highly rewarding career 

choice. 

Chairman MILLER. Thank you very much. 

Dr. Hess? 

STATEMENT OF FREDERICK M. HESS, RESIDENT SCHOLAR 

AND DIRECTOR OF EDUCATION POLICY STUDIES, AMERICAN 

ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC POLICY RESEARCH 

Mr. HESS. Mr. Chairman, ranking member Kline, and members 

of the committee, the committee has asked what it will take to provide every child with access to effective teachers. This question 

raises a number of interrelated issues, but this morning, I will address collective bargaining and the potentially adverse consequences of clumsy efforts to redistribute teachers. 

I provided more comprehensive testimony in written form to the 

committee. 

Collective bargaining agreements substantially hinder the ability 

of system leaders to make decisions that deliver teachers where 

they will be most effective or most needed. These agreements now 

regulate virtually all aspects of schooling including how teachers 

are paid and assigned to schools. 

I do not believe that union officials are malicious in any sense. 

However, while they claim to be advocates for children, the truth 

is that they are elected and obligated to protect the interests of 

union members. 

As Robert Barkley, former executive director of the Ohio Education Association has explained, the fundamental and legitimate 

purposes of unions are to protect the employment interests of their 

members. 

Moreover, contracts are geared to the industrial labor model that 

prevailed in mid-20th century America when employees were val-
43 

ued less for their knowledge or skills than for longevity. Today’s 

contracts promote security rather than excellence. 

Polling for Public Agenda has reported that 78 percent of teachers say their school has at least a few teachers who ‘‘fail to do a 

good job and are simply going through the motions.’’ In a 2008 

study, Jacob Loop and I examined collective bargaining agreements 

and associated school board policies in the nation’s 50 largest 

school districts. 

We reported that only 14 out of 50 district agreements provided 

that teachers could earn additional pay on the basis of performance. Similarly, just 14 out of 50 agreements provided for teachers 

to earn additional pay for working in schools classified as high 

needs. Just 13 out of 50 stipulated that student performance could 

be one factor employed in the evaluation of non-tenured teachers. 

At the same time, no agreement expressly prohibited the practice 

meaning districts could do far better than many currently do. 

These data suggest two things. First, contracts limit the ability of 

district officials to make smart personnel decisions. 

Second, schooling suffers from a culture of timid leadership. Even 

where boards and superintendents have the authority to act, professional norms and risk aversion make inertia the rule. 

Sensible federal action to promote transparency, reward reformminded state and local leaders and prod district and union officials 

to unwind problematic contract provisions, can play an important 

role in spurring progress on this count. 

That said, there are three cautions for Congress to keep in mind 

when contemplating action. First, redistributing effective teachers 

may shift teachers from schools and classrooms where they are effective to those where they are not. 

To take one example, there is reason to think that the skills 

which make a teacher effective with proficient affluent students 

will not necessarily translate to schools and classrooms serving disadvantaged populations. 

The evidence on this count is shaky, to say the least. But there 

is substantial reason to believe that teacher quality is contingent 

and depends in some substantial part on context. 

Second, ill-conceived efforts to move effective teachers to more 

disadvantaged schools may prompt them to leave the profession at 

higher rates. Teachers in high-poverty schools are almost twice as 

likely to leave teaching as those in medium-poverty schools. 

It would be self-defeating to systematically push out of profession 

exactly those teachers we most want to retain. To avoid such unintended consequences, strategies to direct teachers to new schools 

must be pursued with careful attention to incentives, retention and 

context. 

Third, while we know that good teachers have an enormous impact on student learning, we don’t have reliable ways to consistently identify effective teachers from state capitals much less from 

Washington. 

The highly qualified teacher provision of No Child Left Behind 

does not identify effective teachers but those with particular credentials, though there is compelling evidence that those credentials 

do not predict performance. 
44 

Using value-added gains or other metrics as a component of a 

smart system-specific strategy to identify effective teachers makes 

good sense. But prescribing the use of these metrics from Washington is another matter. 

Finally, securing effective teaching first and foremost requires increasing the total number of good teachers. This entails lowering 

the barriers represented by licensure, encouraging districts to tap 

the skills of those who are not full-time educators and using pay, 

professional opportunities and training to attract and cultivate talent. 

Efforts to more evenly distribute effective teachers are laudable 

but ought to be pursued in a fashion that will not compromise effective schools or bolder efforts to attract and retain more good 

teachers. Thank you. 

[The statement of Mr. Hess follows:] 

Prepared Statement of Frederick M. Hess, Director of Education Policy 

Studies, American Enterprise Institute 

The views expressed in this testimony are those of the author alone and do not necessarily represent those of the American Enterprise Institute. 

MR. CHAIRMAN, RANKING MEMBER KLINE, AND MEMBERS OF THE COMMITTEE: The 

Committee has asked the witness today to address a single question: What it will 

take to provide every child with access to effective teachers? 

Today, all children do not have access to effective teachers. Our critical task is 

to expand the supply of such teachers, but the scope of the challenge is breathtaking. There are approximately 3.4 million teachers in the U.S., representing about 

10% of the college-educated workforce. There are compelling reasons to think that 

our current arrangements unnecessarily limit the population of potentially effective 

teachers. But given the focus here on ‘‘comparability’’ and teacher assignment, I will 

not here address licensure and teacher education. 

Instead, I will briefly address three topics deserving attention: collective bargaining, the potentially adverse consequences of ill-conceived federal efforts to redistribute those teachers who seem to be effective, and our limited ability to systematically identify ‘‘effective’’ teachers for purposes of federal policy. 

Established rules and contract language governing staffing practices may have 

made sense when we lacked the ability to track actual expenditures or student 

learning, or when we worried less about the quality of schooling of schooling, but 

they no longer make sense today. Existing arrangements lead to thoughtless allocation of resources and violate Congressional intent. 

Collective bargaining agreements may be the greatest obstacle hampering efforts 

to boost the supply of quality teachers and enable system and school leaders to get 

teachers where they will be most effective or are most needed. Some four decades 

after the advent of collective bargaining in public education, these contracts now 

regulate virtually all aspects of schooling, from how teachers are paid and assigned 

to schools, to the conditions under which they can be disciplined or fired. 

Let me be clear. I do not believe that union officials are malicious. However, while 

they claim to be advocates ‘‘for children and public education,’’ the truth is that they 

are elected—and obligated—to protect the interests of union members. As Robert 

Barkley, the former executive director of the Ohio Education Association has succinctly explained, ‘‘The fundamental and legitimate purposes of unions [are] to protect the employment interests of their members.’’ He elaborated, ‘‘It is the primary 

function of management to represent the basic interests of the enterprise: teaching 

and learning.’’ 

Today’s contracts are geared to operating schools on the industrial model that prevailed in mid-20th century America, where assembly line workers and cadres of lowlevel managers were valued less for their knowledge or skills than for longevity and 

a willingness to follow orders. These arrangements prevent educators from making 

the changes necessary to transform schools into lean, nimble organizations focused 

on educating students. 

Managers seeking to assign or remove teachers on the basis of suitability or performance are hobbled by extensive contract language. Frequently, however, contract 

language does not flatly prohibit managers from making sensible decisions. Rather, 

the ambiguity of provisions, the time required to comply with required procedures, 
45 

the desire of administrators to avoid the grievance process, and managerial timidity 

add up to management by paralysis. 

In 2005, an Illinois reporter filed 1,500 Freedom of Information Act requests to 

obtain data on the removal of tenured teachers, after Illinois Education Association 

President Ken Swanson dismissed as an ‘‘urban legend’’ the notion that tenured 

teachers are rarely fired. The reporter obtained data showing that Illinois school 

districts, which collectively employ more than 95,000 tenured teachers, had dismissed an average of two teachers a year for poor performance between 1986 and 

2004. Just 38 of Illinois’s 876 school districts dismissed even one teacher for poor 

performance between 1986 and 2004. 

The polling firm Public Agenda has reported that 78 percent of teachers say that 

their school has at least a few teachers who ‘‘fail to do a good job and are simply 

going through the motions.’’ Public Agenda has quoted a New Jersey union representative confessing in a focus group, ‘‘I’ve gone in and defended teachers who 

shouldn’t even be pumping gas.’’ 

In a 2008 study, The Leadership Limbo, Jacob Loup and I examined twenty-six 

elements of collective bargaining agreements and associated board policies in the 

nation’s fifty largest districts. These data actually understate the extent to which 

collective bargaining agreements are binding because they include not only collective bargaining states, but also analogous policies produced through ‘‘meet-and-confer’’ processes in ‘‘right-to-work’’ states. We examined how restrictive these agreements are when it comes to teacher compensation, personnel policies, and work 

rules. Overall, more than a third of districts struggled with quite restrictive agreements and just one in ten had policies that could be deemed even moderately flexible. 

In 25 of the 50 districts, the contract specified that internal applicants were to 

be given priority over new hires for vacant positions—greatly restricting the ability 

of principals to select promising new faculty. In 17 of the 50 districts, if it is necessary to lay off teachers, district officials were required to select the most junior 

teacher in a certification area. Only 14 out of 50 district agreements provided that 

teachers could earn additional pay on the basis of performance. Similarly, just 14 

agreements provided for teachers to earn additional pay working in schools classified as ‘‘high-needs.’’ 

Just eight of the 50 agreements stipulated that the district could use students’ 

achievement test results as one component of evaluation for tenured teachers. Just 

13 of 50 stipulated that student performance, however measured, could be one factor 

employed in the evaluation of untenured teachers. At the same time, no agreements 

expressly prohibited the practice—meaning that reform-minded superintendents and 

school boards could do far better on that score than many do currently. 

These data suggest two things. One is that a substantial number of contracts formally limit the ability of district officials to make smart personnel decisions. The 

second is that district officials often have the ability to do substantially better in 

managing personnel. 

Collective bargaining agreements frequently prohibit leaders from acting. Equally 

troubling though is that agreements are murky and send mixed signals regarding 

the bounds of permissible action. The ambiguity has been made especially problematic by risk-averse principals, central office administrators, school boards, and superintendents who are applauded for ‘‘collegiality’’ and strongly encouraged to avoid 

unseemly conflict. In no small part, this timidity is the handiwork of local teacher 

associations, which exert enormous influence politically and in school district affairs 

and which can make life complicated for unpopular superintendents and principals. 

In short, even in those districts where boards and superintendents have the authority to act, professional norms and risk-aversion make timid and ineffectual leadership the rule. 

As an example of what disciplined reformers can accomplish, consider John 

Deasy, former superintendent in Prince George’s County, Maryland, who earned national notice for overseeing substantial achievement gains in his low-performing 

schools while shifting hundreds of teachers to new schools and initiating a voluntary 

pay-for-performance system. His response to the naysayers is that superintendents 

posses ‘‘extensive tools [available] that are generally unused.’’ He explains, ‘‘Why 

does it not happen? * * * [It’s because] most people see the contract as a steel box. 

It’s not * * * You’ve just got to push and push and push.’’ 

Mitch Price, of the University of Washington, reported in a 2009 study of districts 

in California, Ohio, and Washington, that, ‘‘Because so many administrators, union 

leaders, and others perceive contracts as inflexible, the perception overtakes the reality * * * lead[ing] to practices that may be more rigid than the actual language 

of the contracts require.’’ Simple tales of victimhood told by superintendents, school 
46 

boards, and principals may reflect more than a hint of blame shifting and exaggeration—or at least present an overly simplistic account of the forces at work. 

We should not expect John Deasy to be the norm. Rather, the question is what 

kinds of policies might help other superintendents be similarly proactive. 

Sensible federal action to promote transparency, reward reform-minded state and 

local leaders, and prod district and union officials to unwind problematic contract 

provisions can play an important role in spurring progress. 

That said, there are a few key cautions worth keeping in mind. In general, it is 

appropriate to be skeptical of the federal government’s ability to constructively and 

directly address the issue of teacher distribution: It would require gross definitions 

of ‘‘effectiveness’’ and implementing broad policy interventions in states and districts 

with profoundly different contexts. The remedy provisions of No Child Left Behind 

illustrate how good ideas can disappoint when pursued in this fashion. 

There are three particular concerns. One is the risk that ill-conceived policies will 

encourage districts to move teachers from schools and classrooms where they are 

effective to situations when they are less effective. The second is the risk that 

heavy-handed efforts to reallocate teachers will drive good teachers from the profession. Either course promises to ‘‘shrink the pie’’ of good teaching in the effort to redistribute it. And the third concern is that we are far less able to identify ‘‘effective’’ 

teachers in any cookie-cutter fashion than many who call for federal action might 

wish. 

First, efforts to redistribute effective teachers may shift teachers from schools and 

classrooms where they are effective to environments where they will be less effective. These are especially valid due to concerns that the skills and expertise that 

make a teacher effective in one school or with one population may not necessarily 

transfer to another. 

There is good reason to think, as Florida International University’s Lisa Delpit 

has noted, that the skills which make a teacher effective with proficient, affluent 

students will not necessarily translate to schools serving disadvantaged populations. 

More anecdotally, many have observed that the highly structured learning strategies employed successfully with low-income students by charter schoolproviders like 

KIPP or Achievement First would be far less welcome in more affluent environs. To 

date, there is no meaningful evidence to help us determine which teachers might 

prove more or less effective when moved. 

However, there is substantial evidence that teacher effectiveness may be contingent. Scholars including Swarthmore College’s Tom Dee and Stanford University’s 

Eric Hanushek have reported, for instance, that students appear to benefit from 

having a teacher of the same race, suggesting that the matching of teachers and 

students contributes to the pattern of overall achievement gains. The University of 

Washington’s Dan Goldhaber has observed that the ability of National Board certification to predict teacher quality varies dramatically by subject and grade. Three 

Duke University economists observed in 2004 that the effects of teacher experience 

in North Carolina varied with student race and family income. If efforts to redistribute teachers proceed without attention to context and constraints, they could 

readily reduce the overall quality of teaching. 

There is simply no meaningful evidence on this score to date. But there is good 

reason to believe that teacher effectiveness is partly a function of some teachers 

being better suited for some students, schools, and contexts. To the extent that this 

proves true, redistribution of teachers threatens to generate a lot of disruption for 

little gain. This does counsel against finding ways to steer teachers to disadvantaged schools; it does suggest that such efforts should be driven by carefully calibrated incentives and executed with an appreciation for local context, which means 

they should not be directed from Washington. 

A second concern is that ill-conceived efforts to move seemingly effective teachers 

from more comfortable schools to more disadvantaged ones may prompt them to 

leave the profession at higher rates. The consequence would be to push out exactly 

those teachers we most want to retain. 

The University of Pennsylvania’s Richard Ingersoll has used the federal School 

and Staffing Survey to calculate that teachers in high-poverty schools are almost 

twice as likely to leave teaching as teachers in medium-poverty schools. This is a 

well-documented finding. In the Review of Educational Research, scholars reported 

in 2006, ‘‘The research revealed fairly consistent evidence that schools with higher 

proportions of minority, low-income, and low-performing students tended to have 

higher attrition rates.’’ It would be a self-defeating, short-sighted strategy to systematically shift effective teachers to the schools where they are most likely to leave 

the profession. Again, to avoid unintended consequences, strategies to direct teachers to new schools must be pursued with careful attentions to incentives, retention, 

and context. 
47 

Third, in determining the allocation of ‘‘effective’’ teachers, we quickly encounter 

a substantial problem. We know that good teachers have an enormous impact on 

student learning, and we have justifiable confidence in our ability to identify good 

teachers observationally and through their work at the school level. The problem is 

that we don’t have any reliable way to consistently identify good teachers from state 

capitals, much less from Washington. 

The ‘‘highly qualified teacher’’ provision of NCLB does not, in fact, identify effective teachers. It identifies those with particular credentials, though there is much 

evidence that those credentials do not predict performance. Dan Goldhaber has observed that more than 95% of the variation in student gains from one teacher to 

the next cannot be explained by observable characteristics, including seniority, 

credentialing, and college attended. 

Why not just judge teachers using value-added scores? A small but growing number of states can perform ‘‘value-added’’ calculations based on grade three-to-eight 

reading and math assessments. However, such scores are only available for a minority of teachers, even in states with the requisite data systems. A more fundamental 

problem is that these measures are imprecise and of uncertain reliability when just 

a few years worth of data are being used to judge individual teachers. Finally, 

equating effectiveness boosting basic math and reading proficiency with broader 

teacher effectiveness presumes that these teachers will also predictably excelling 

their other charges. To date, there is no evidence supporting this notion and much 

cause for sensible caution. 

Enabling district and school officials to use value-added gains and other metrics 

as one component of a smart, system-specific strategy makes good sense, but prescribing the use of such crudely drawn metrics from Washington is an entirely different matter. 

Ultimately, we would do well to focus on empowering system leaders to make good 

hiring and placement decisions. The desire to more equitably distribute effective 

teachers is an admirable one. But let us take care not to undermine successful 

schools along the way. Let us avoid policies that will casually or reflexively stripmine effective teachers from some schools in order to push them into others, especially if this will hobble schools that have been working well. 

In places like New Orleans, New York City and Baltimore, superintendents are 

relying on programs like Teach for America and The New Teacher Project to provide 

new, effective teachers to help turnaround school and district performance. Congress 

would be well-advised to take care that federal law does not impede the ability of 

superintendents to pursue this strategy. If the real issue is attracting excellent 

teachers to high need schools, the focus ought to be on devising the right combination of incentives to get them there, rather than relying on equalization strategies 

that employ imperfect proxies. The federal government can help in this effort by 

promoting transparency, encouraging reform-minded local leaders, and rewarding 

states and districts that are devising smart solutions to securing and smartly deploying effective teachers. 

The challenge of securing effective teaching is first and foremost one of increasing 

the total number of good teachers. This entails supporting alternative licensure 

models, lowering the barriers presented by licensure requirements, encouraging districts to tap the expertise and skills of those who are not full-time educators, and 

using pay and professional opportunities to attract and cultivate talent. Even more 

ambitious strategies, such as rethinking the shape of the teacher’s job and the use 

of technology to deliver instruction, will require new strategies to funding and monitoring provision. In the meantime, efforts to ensure that effective teachers are evenly distributed are laudable, but ought to be pursued in a fashion that will not compromise bolder efforts to attract and retain more good teachers. 

Chairman MILLER. Thank you very much and thank you, all of 

you for your testimony. My position is pretty well-known on this 

subject so I don’t want to take a lot of time because we are going 

to have votes, and I would like to get to as many of my colleagues 

as we might. But let me just make a couple of comments. 

Dr. Hess, I agree with most of what you said. What you raise are 

cautions that we cannot let become excuses for non-action. But 

clearly the teacher has to fit. And I noticed Ms. Daniels was shaking her head when you raised the issue about whether or not some-
48 

body that is effective in one school would necessarily be effective 

in another school. 

And I think one of the things that TAP shows us is how you can 

create these environments. And maybe in fact that by creating that 

environment you can welcome a broader spectrum of teachers who 

might succeed in that school, but you also want to grow your own 

teachers in those situations. 

Dr. Roza, it is a conversation to be continued because your testimony is from a conversation a long time ago with Paul Hill. But 

in fact what you have, is it not, that districts are charging Title I 

for the average teacher or some scale of which they are not paying 

in those Title I schools. 

And so that is going to pay other teachers and other arrangements. We can argue about what the real impact is and, if you 

change that, what other resources would leave that Title I school, 

but there is something perverse going on here in terms of the kinds 

of incentives you would be able to offer if you really had that average salary available at that particular school. 

Certainly in schools where you have 14 out of 14 new teachers 

every year, you might be able to get some of them to stick for a 

while if you had that sum of money available in that school. 

Dennis, I want to thank you very much for being here today for 

your testimony. But I also want to draw attention to two things, 

one of which is in your testimony, which I can’t say how much I 

welcome this statement, but when you said that you are requesting, and I understand the request, I understand the dynamics of 

the institution, that every local NEA affiliate enter into a compact, 

a memorandum of understanding with its local district to waive 

any contract language which prohibits staffing high-needs schools 

with great teachers. 

I thank you very much for that. And I think it is very important 

that we acknowledge that NEA made that statement and put it 

into their testimony today. And I think it falls on the report. I am 

encouraged also because you affirm that districts should be using 

the American Recovery Act that the secretary has to address this 

problem along with the Teacher Incentive Fund. 

And I know Mr. Price. He is not here, unfortunately, but Mr. 

Price will appreciate that and it really opens avenues for us to 

work together that I deeply appreciate. Dr. Murray, I have followed 

you for many years. I think you bring a perspective to this issue 

because you have managed a large complex diverse school district 

where these needs compete with one another and I think having 

your input as we continue this conversation is very important. 

Ms. Avila, I have a question for you now. When you take these 

highly efficient effective teachers and you talk about trying to find 

them and sorting it out, when you said—what are they asking you 

about the workplace that they want to go to? How do they describe 

that workplace? 

Ms. AVILA. So in our recruitment, we look for predominantly career changers but also recent college graduates who didn’t major in 

education and want to make the transition. More often than not, 

what they talk to us about is they want to know what it is really 

like to teach in a high-needs school. 
49 

And I think this is one of the things that has really distinguished 

the New Teacher Project and our teaching fellows programs from 

the way school districts have traditionally approached teacher recruitment because we have very up front about the challenges in 

high-need schools. 

In the past, you will see that if you visit a district Web site in 

a high-needs community, you will find lots of pictures of smiling 

children with apples and school buses and pencils and it doesn’t 

really portray the reality of teaching in a high-need school. 

And so we are very honest about the fact that oftentimes our 

children are two, three, four, even five grade levels below where we 

need them to be, but that is why we need the best and the brightest to enter the teaching profession and join the ranks of teachers 

who are working every day to improve. 

More often than not, that is what they ask us. What is it really 

like to teach there, because there are people who are compelled by 

the idea of teaching specifically in a high-needs school. 

Mr. KLINE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I too want to thank all 

the witnesses. You were terrific. This is just a fantastic panel of 

real experts and I want to thank you for being here. I am very 

grateful for your testimony. 

Of course, I am going to get back to Ms. Daniels in just a minute 

because she is from Minnesota, and I am very proud of her and her 

school on things that they have been doing. I congratulate her on 

picking a good weather day to come to Washington, D.C. We didn’t 

hold this hearing in July and it is actually raining back in Minnesota, so welcome to you all. 

What, what is apparent in the earlier panel with our colleagues 

and with those of you here, experts have been looking at this for 

many years in some cases, is that there is a sort of universal recognition of the problem, that you really do need highly-effective 

teachers. 

You need them everywhere I would argue, but clearly in schools 

with the greatest need for them we are not getting them there, and 

great research Dr. Roza has put forward and all of you, we are not 

succeeding in getting them there. 

We all want that to happen and we need to figure out how to do 

that and you have different approaches in your testimony. And I 

am not going to go through and ask all of you questions except I 

think that we as a committee, we as a Congress, all of you, everybody in the room needs to really start looking at how do we break 

down barriers? 

And Dr. Hess talked about collective bargaining barriers. And 

Mr. Van Roekel I appreciate that you are being here, and I join the 

chairman in congratulating you for looking at ways at starting to 

break down some of those barriers that stop superintendents and 

principals and officials from being able to move those teachers 

around and reward them appropriately for their assignments. 

Ms. Daniels, I do want to come back to you now if I could because one of the problems in this whole business of getting highlyeffective teachers in the right places is how do you identify them 

and how do you identify those that aren’t performing well, and 

then how do you approach them? You know, are there things that 
50 

you can do to help them get to be better? And if not better, how 

are there ways to remove them? 

So Ms. Daniels, I wonder since you have got TAP in your, you 

know, it seems to be working very well, how do you identify those 

teachers? What metrics are you using? What methods are you 

using to identify those teachers who aren’t measuring up? And 

then what are you doing about it? 

Ms. DANIELS. Fortunately, I work in a district that is committed 

to teacher excellence, and that has been a shift that has been very 

overt and explicit the last few years. And they support what we are 

doing at the building level and they are holding us accountable as 

administrators to identify ineffective teachers and instead of shuffling around the district, moving them out of the district. 

With the TAP program, the funding has allowed the structure of 

our building to alleviate a lot of pressure from me of managing students, managing inappropriate behavior. That responsibility has 

become the responsibility of our dean of students. 

And as an instructional leader, I am at the table discussing professional development. I am able to get into classrooms and observe 

teachers myself for more than a 15-minute snapshot one time per 

year but I am constantly—I am the assistant principal of the 10th 

grade academy and also for 11th grade students, so I am constantly 

in my 10th and 11th grade classrooms observing teachers. 

And there is a collaborative effort with the TAP mentors who, 

with the Fresh Start, they had to reapply or apply for a job. We 

completely Fresh Started our TAP leadership team and put highly 

qualified teachers who had the specific content area needed in 

order to move the staff in the professional development in the direction we should be moving in. 

And there is a collaborative effort with the TAP leadership team 

and the administrators to be in classrooms collecting evidence of 

what is happening in the classrooms and having conversations 

about teachers that we need to take action upon to support or to 

possibly move to an action plan. 

So in our building, we have TAP mentors in classrooms, we 

have—in the classrooms we have the building mentor in the classroom, which is just a building mentor that is provided by the district, and then we also have administration in the classroom. 

And we get together every Tuesday after school and we meet and 

we talk about what we are seeing in classrooms and that is how 

we monitor and adjust the practice of our teachers and the achievement of our students. I hope I have answered your questions. 

Mr. KLINE. You have indeed, and thank you very much and 

again, thanks to all of you, and I will yield back, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman MILLER. Mr. Hinojosa? 

Mr. HINOJOSA. Thank you. I thank you for holding this important 

hearing. In a moment, I want to ask about how we are expanding 

our capacity for STEM and also on bilingual teachers across the 

country. 

Congressman Raul Grijala from Arizona and I spent the last 3 

days in my congressional district at the Hispanic Engineering 

Science Technology Eighth Annual Conference, and we were very 

pleased to see so many geared up students participating as they 

have in the past. 
51 

But the end result is that since its inception 8 years ago, we 

have made significant strides in graduating Hispanic students in 

the STEM fields and we saw and heard about the 1,000 Hispanic 

students in engineering that have graduated from UT Pan American in Edinburg. So I know we can do more to improve math and 

science literacy in our high school. 

So my first question is going to go to NEA president Van Roekel. 

I greatly admire our teachers who work tirelessly to make a difference in the lives of children, but I find it troubling that about 

70 percent of math classes are taught by a teacher who does not 

have a college major nor a minor in math or mathematic-related 

fields in our high-poverty, high-minority middle schools. 

What initiatives is NEA working on to increase those numbers 

and how soon do you think we are going to correct that? 

Mr. VAN ROEKEL. One of the initiatives that we are working on 

that deals with the whole issue of the quality of teaching in highpoverty or high-need schools and also addresses the fact, the conditions that you are talking about is that one of the strategies in our 

report is to recruit and prepare teachers for these high-need 

schools. 

We found great success in that some of these schools have started programs where they grow their own. You already have committed caring individuals who have chosen to live and to work in 

that area, why not build your own from within? 

So if your need is for greater math teachers, if that is the shortage area, then develop programs to encourage them to do that. Another program that has had a lot of success is where teachers collectively work on national board certification together. It is a great 

powerful professional development activity. And what it does is 

they collectively are working together focusing on all of the students in the school. 

So this focusing on building your and growing your own is a very 

important strategy. And the second thing is we just have to something about our recruitment. The compensation for teachers is not 

what it needs to be. We compete with other professions that require college. 

And if you happen to be a math major who has good grades, 

there are a lot of opportunities. And we have got to make it so that 

it is competitive to recruit those into the teaching professions. 

Mr. HINOJOSA. We have found that there is also a shortage in 

our IB and AP programs, International Baccalaureate and the Advanced Placement programs. Do you think that the answers that 

you gave me for the first question would apply towards getting 

those persons certified to teach those courses? 

Mr. VAN ROEKEL. I think it would assist in the first part, but another thing we need to do is—what we have found under the narrow testing under No Child Left Behind, the Elementary Secondary 

Education Act, as we go toward reauthorization I think we have to 

expand that so that we expect and assess in a much broader area 

so that the curriculum isn’t narrowed and that it makes sense for 

a school district to focus on STEM and other issues. 

Mr. HINOJOSA. Thank you. 

Mr. VAN ROEKEL. As long as the measurement is that narrow 

that is what they focus on. 
52 

Mr. HINOJOSA. Thank you. My last question I want to ask Ms. 

Layla Avila. I congratulate on your perseverance and very impressive accomplishments. I was very impressed with your presentation. I understand that the New Teacher Project has helped 

school districts recruit and certify teachers across the country. 

Can you tell us about the work you have done in school districts 

with disproportionate numbers of limited English proficient students, and also, what have you done on that same problem in 

Texas? 

Ms. AVILA. Actually in the state of Texas, we run a program 

called the Texas Teaching Fellows and we serve approximately 18 

school districts in the areas of El Paso, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio. 

And actually, in Texas, we have had a tremendous amount of 

success both recruiting and certifying our teachers there. We recruit a large number of bilingual teachers for the state of Texas, 

and we actually have had a lot of success in recruiting math and 

science teachers for those districts as well. 

I think this is connected to your previous question which is how 

do you expand the pool of math and science teachers and bilingual 

teachers as well? One of the things that we know is if you look at 

the supply out there, our schools of education, while they are doing 

a lot of work to prepare teachers, don’t actually prepare enough 

teachers in these fields, and so one of the ways that you can grow 

the pool is by recruiting career changers who have that strong content knowledge, in math, in science to join the teaching profession. 

And I wholeheartedly agree that this is not the path for everyone. We need people who are exceptional and who go through a 

very selective process, but we also train them over the course of the 

summer in the East Texas districts, and so they get a real world 

sense of what it is like to teach at in a high-needs school. 

Mr. HINOJOSA. Thank you, my time has run out. I wish we could 

talk longer. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman MILLER. Thank you. 

Mr. Platts? 

Mr. PLATTS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to add my thanks 

to all the witnesses, just a great wealth of knowledge that you 

share with us on a critically important topic here, and I certainly 

share the comments of several of you and the impact that teachers 

have had on your lives. 

I regularly say behind the upbringing of my mom and dad, my 

teachers in New York suburban school district, from Mrs. Willowby 

my kindergarten teacher to Mrs. Mirtz third grade teacher, who is 

now 97 and amazing. To as a math teacher, Miss Snell who was 

the Dean of Math at our school and taught me calculus, as best she 

could, meaning from my learning side on calculus. 

But they gave me a great foundation to build on. And so the 

focus here of making sure that every child has that same opportunity is so important, and I am very thankful to be able to say 

my children fifth and seventh grade sons are now in the same 

school district I grew up in and getting, I would contend, an even 

greater opportunity than I had because of the excellence of the 

teachers in that district. 
53 

I wanted to say up front that as we focus on the effectiveness of 

teachers, we have talked about salary, we have talked of a number 

of issues, but a couple that I just think we want to keep in our 

thoughts is the broader school environment and a couple of—specific example is class size. 

When I was in third grade with Mrs. Mirtz, we had, I think, 16 

children in our class. Today the school district doesn’t have 16, but 

my kids had, I think at most 20 in their class in that same school 

district. A half mile away, my cousins taught in the city school district and 32, 33 was probably typical class size for third and fourth 

grade. 

A great teacher has got half the time with each student if they 

have twice as many students, and that is certainly going to affect 

they ability to teach no matter how dedicated, how qualified they 

are. The issues that go beyond just the teacher qualifications, I 

think impact the effectiveness of the teacher. 

One in particular was mentioned was the issue of tenure. And 

when I was in the state house, I served on the education committee 

and we had a hearing on the specific issue of tenure. And I will 

always remember a testimony of a principal from Pennsylvania 

who, when he came before us, said, ‘‘The issue is not tenure. It is 

the enforcement of the rules of tenure and the administrators doing 

their job.’’ 

And his message was very clear. He said, ‘‘If you have a bad 

teacher in a classroom, it is because the supervisor, principal, is 

not doing his or her job and getting rid of that.’’ The rules allow 

for you to get rid of a bad teacher if the administrators want to. 

So I think we need to look at the effectiveness of teachers and 

include the effectiveness of administrators who are overseeing 

those teachers, and specifically, Ms. Avila, in your testimony, you 

talked about the 12 school districts and half of them in 5 years did 

not dismiss a single teacher. 

The other half apparently had at least one or more dismissals. 

Was there any follow on to look at the difference in the approach 

or the evaluation of teachers of why half was getting rid of those 

versus those that were not? 

Ms. AVILA. One of the things that we find, and I think that this 

is echoed in Dr. Hess’ testimony is that a lot of it has to do with 

the leadership and the culture that is built in that school. If there 

is a culture of feedback, if there is a culture also, not just of feedback, but is the principal going to be supported by the administration when they make those evaluations that are honest and rigorous? 

That is one of the things that really defines them, and in a lot 

of school districts where the evaluations don’t happen and the dismissals don’t happen, there really is this culture of evaluations just 

being another process that you have to sort of check off your list, 

where it really is not used as a tool to improved teacher performance. 

It is something that H.R. tells them they have to do, and so they 

go ahead and they do it. But then there are other schools where 

the principal will build a culture and will have the support of the 

administration to be able to give honest feedback. 
54 

Mr. PLATTS. And it kind of dovetails with, Mr. Van Roekel, with 

your statements where our teachers cannot do it alone is that you 

need tone set up at the top with the superintendent, administrators, principals, teachers and parents at home of what is expected 

in the classroom and what is going to be supported, that the teacher or principals know that they have the support of both the families and the school administrators so that we are all working together. 

If I can quickly squeeze in, Dennis, you talked about the California evaluation process, and—oh, I thought in your testimony you 

talked about the performance assessment for California teaching. 

Yes, and I was wondering if you could expand on because you— 

by the way I read that is as a valid approach to assessing a teacher’s qualifications and abilities versus a simple test score which I 

agree with because, as one who wasn’t very good on standardized 

tests versus essay tests, I wouldn’t have reflected well on my teachers perhaps. 

Mr. VAN ROEKEL. I think as you go across the country, you will 

find many examples of excellent teacher evaluation systems that 

have been done through the bargaining process with management 

and the teachers. 

In California, it was several years ago that they put that together and it does. It used multiple assessments to determine both 

the effectiveness of student learning and the effectiveness of the 

teacher. And when done in collaboration, it can be done. 

My point is that it is too few to compared to the number of school 

districts we have that have a good evaluation or appraisal system, 

and those that have bad ones, they don’t even use those. 

And it is an important part of the system. It is there is a recruitment—who are your recruiting into the classroom? The induction 

part of the system is very critical. We lose 30 to 50 percent of our 

teachers in the first 5 years. Much of that is due to their frustration of not being successful. 

And in that first 3 years, if you take the time to figure out what 

it is that is lacking, for some it may be classroom management, for 

some it is not good planning skills, and it could be a variety of 

things, but you build them into the professional development to 

build those particular skills so that by the end of the third or 

fourth year when they are granted tenure status or the right for 

due process, that they have met a very high standard. 

And that is what so important be that it continue then and that 

it is an ongoing process, part of a larger system. Thank you, sir. 

Mr. PLATTS. Okay, and I am out of time. 

Thank you Mr. Chairman, and thank you to all the witnesses 

again. 

Chairman MILLER. Thank you. 

Ms. Hirono? 

Ms. HIRONO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Something that you just 

said, Mr. Van Roekel, really caught my attention. You said that 

there are excellent teacher evaluation systems in different schools 

but that very schools have them. 

Is that a role for the federal government that we encourage if not 

force—I like to encourage—every school or systems to have an appropriate evaluative system in place because we are now focusing 
55 

very much, of course, on effectiveness which are more output evaluations as opposed to quality which are, you know, input. So what 

is the role for the federal government here? 

Mr. VAN ROEKEL. I don’t think it is to mandate to school districts 

what they ought to do, or rather, how. It is important that it could 

be from the federal government in your role that you say that is 

one of the things that needs to be there, but to tell them exactly 

how to do that—— 

Ms. HIRONO. Yes. 

Mr. VAN ROEKEL [continuing]. I don’t think that is a federal role. 

One of the other things that the federal government I think can 

play a very important role and that is doing the research that 

shows what makes a good system, the models. 

For example, on the National Board for Professional Teaching 

Standards, over 20 years, they spent about $200 million developing 

very good assessments for teachers in all areas from early childhood to high school in all of the different academic areas. 

That research is available and those processes are there. We 

don’t spend that much money on developing good assessments for 

students. So Secretary Duncan has about $350 million, as I recall 

to—hoping that a collaborative effort will be to develop good assessment. 

If the federal government spent $200 million a year for the next 

10 years, $80 million a year for the next 10 years, on developing 

really good, solid assessments to determine student learning, I 

think that would be a great assessment for every single state. 

Ms. HIRONO. It is just that I think that in other contexts the federal role should be more on the R&D side, you know, to enable our 

school districts to find out what the best practices are and what 

works, and then to be able to incentivize our systems to use those 

practices. 

Ms. Daniels you mentioned that the Minneapolis school board 

and the Minneapolis teachers union settled upon an MOU that got 

away from using seniority as a way to place teachers. Can you just 

talk a little bit about the dynamics of that? 

And then Mr. Van Roekel, I would like to ask you how many 

other school districts the NEA or your teachers’ unions have had 

these kind of MOUs? 

Ms. DANIELS. Well, like I said, fortunately I work in a district 

where the leadership has changed and it is a shift toward every— 

right now, the mantra is by 2012, every child college ready. So 

every child will have the opportunity whether they see themselves 

going to college or not, but being prepared for post-secondary opportunities. 

And in order to ensure that every child is college ready, the district has to put together a strategic plan, excuse me, and part of 

that plan was recruiting teachers, effective teachers and also training them, and also a part of that was training administrators to 

look for effective teachers. 

The Minneapolis Public School District has one of the stronger 

unions in the country, and so in order for, again, this collaborative 

effort to take place, there had to be a middle ground. And so since 

the school board was committed to student achievement and the 

teachers’ union also was committed to student achievement, they 
56 

came to agree that we move from seniority—which is important, 

which is valued—to more of an interview and select process. 

Where in that particular—in our district, you still have to interview the most senior people, the five most senior candidates for the 

job, but you also get a chance to interview five other candidates 

that are not tenured, that are outside of the district, and it is ultimately our choice of who is most qualified for that position. 

So that is what we have done. We began the recruitment outside 

of the building, of course, and through different mediums like 

newspapers and stuff like that, and we begin as Ms. Avila I think 

shared, that the recruitment and the understanding, the transparency begins at the interview. 

This is what you are getting into. This is what we are about. 

What are your core values and beliefs? This is the direction that 

we are moving in, and fortunately we have teachers to commit to 

where Edison is going where our district is going. And again, I see 

my role as an instructional leader, and I am not just hired from 

my school. 

I am hiring for the district, and I am hiring for some of the students who have overwhelming needs. So I am very happy that this 

district was able to afford the relationship—— 

Ms. HIRONO. How critical to this process was establishing that 

2012 goal to just pushing everybody along? 

Ms. DANIELS. How—could you please—— 

Ms. HIRONO. How critical was this setting 2012, a very specific 

goal, how critical was that agreement to pushing everything along? 

Ms. DANIELS. I think it was very critical because we know, as everyone has reiterated on this panel, that it is the teachers. If you 

look at in school, what impacts student achievement, it is teachers. 

And you know, we could talk about all that extraneous variables 

outside of the building, but in schools, it is the teachers. 

And we had to collaborate, we had to agree, that in order to meet 

such an aggressive goal, and it is aggressive, that we come to an 

agreement as a district school board of educators and as a teachers’ 

union who both have, hopefully, the student’s best interest in mind, 

that we have to agree that seniority may not be the best in all situations. 

And as I explained, with Edison having 90 percent minority students and 88 percent free and reduced lunch, we need the best 

teachers for our students. 

Ms. HIRONO. Thank you. My time is up. Perhaps I can talk with 

you later. 

Chairman MILLER. Thank you. 

Mrs. Biggert? 

Mrs. BIGGERT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and thank you for holding this hearing. I think that it kind of made me think back to my 

school board days and the things that we discussed and how we 

were going to have the best school. And I have to say that one of 

the reasons that I think a lot of people go on the school board is 

kind of a selfish reason and that is to make sure that our kids get 

the best teachers. 

I don’t know if that is—that should be proper, but it probably is 

something that we all, you know, we soon get to know who the best 

teachers are from being around there. 
57 

But—and I think that was that was the best job I ever had was 

being on the school board, and I think, you know, it is really being 

able to contribute to the education process in your community is 

worth everything. 

But a couple—and I really have been interested in all the things 

that you have had to say because so many things go back. And one 

of the things that always troubled me so much was that there was 

kind of this ‘‘we, they’’ atmosphere between the administration and 

the teachers. And that always bothered me because when that 

wasn’t apparent when it coalesced, I think, that, you know, the 

school made great schools and the district made great strides. 

And I think that is so important that—and we always talk about 

how the community needs to be involved and the business community, everybody, to make great schools. 

And I think that is one of the problems of trying to get the teachers into some of the, you know, the areas of highest poverty because there isn’t that coalescence of everybody working together, 

and particularly it may be the parents is always something that is 

a problem. 

But Ms. Avila, you talk about the new teachers, and I know that 

is how—when you are making an assessment and you have got 

somebody you are training to go into the classroom, how do you decide that that person is really going to be a good teacher and give 

them the—I know you can give them the tools, but so many times 

it—you know, we have young people that get into the profession— 

and I do call it a profession. 

And I think that is something that is most, most important that 

this is a very high, you know, valued profession. And we need to 

make sure that that is always gets across. But how do you know 

that somebody is going be a good teacher? 

Ms. AVILA. Well, we believe that actually the selection process 

begins at recruitment. So you have to make sure that you are very 

honest and forthright with your recruitment messages about where 

it is that people are going to be teaching. I think second of all, we 

do have a very rigorous selection process. We have seven competencies where we assess individuals. 

There are a few things that we have seen correlated with effectiveness in the classroom. There are things like whether they have 

a record of achievement, whether they are committed to teaching 

in a high-needs school, whether they have what we call personal 

responsibility. 

Do they understand that fundamentally they are a teacher? 

Their role as a teacher is to insure gains in student achievement. 

It is not to be their friend. It is not to have them like you. It is 

to ensure that students are making gains in student achievement. 

There are several others that we look at, and using that process 

we probably select out anywhere between 50 to 65 percent of people 

who actually apply. But the one thing to remember about selection 

models, and the research bears this out, is that no selection model 

is perfect. 

If you look at a lot of the teacher pipelines out there, including 

our own, the effectiveness of a teacher, as measured by value add 

and their impact on student learning, looks like a bell curve, which 

means that every pipeline, including teaching fellows, will bring 
58 

teacher who are not so effective, people who are very effective and 

then a lot of people in the middle. 

So what is important is that we are able to develop systems 

where we can eliminate the bad performers who are just not a good 

fit for the classroom, push up the middle to insure that we are supporting and providing development and retaining the very best 

teachers. 

Mrs. BIGGERT. Thank you. Thank you, and I do want to ask one 

question of Mr. Van Roekel. In the school system we have developed that I was in, we developed the master teachers and those 

that became mentors for the new teachers and to make sure that 

they would be in the classroom longer than 15 minutes. And actually one of the things was to always—to film a class, actually, with 

a teacher. 

And not just the new teachers, so that they were, you know, how 

they could help them to become better teachers. And sometimes it 

was just some annoyance, you know, that they didn’t realize that 

they were doing whether they were, you know, waiving their arm 

all the, you know, or something that really the kids took offense 

to. 

So do you think—have you been in schools where this has been 

used? Do you think this is a good idea to use? 

Mr. VAN ROEKEL. Yes, there are several districts around the 

country who have really gone to develop this career advancement 

as a teacher, and many of those who have show incredibly effective 

practice, they use them as mentors. As I mentioned before, the first 

few years that mentoring is really important. 

The idea of sending them to their classroom and saying, ‘‘Good 

luck,’’ is just not enough. We need to do more, and one of the reasons that we have seen more districts going to memorandum of understandings—of talking about that, it is a benefit in two ways. 

Number one, it brings everyone together, management, administration, and the employees and their unions. But there is another reason it is so critical. It becomes policy. 

And with the in and out of superintendents and building principals, what you can’t do is change directions every 2 to 3 years. 

You have to develop a comprehensive plan, and then go with it. 

And what memorandums of understanding do is allow you to keep 

that going so that one person can’t suddenly change the direction. 

Thank you. 

Mrs. BIGGERT. Thank you. I yield back. 

Chairman MILLER. Thank you. 

Mr. Hare? 

Mr. HARE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Van Roekel, congratulations on being president of the NEA. And on Sunday there was 

a story on CNN that they ran and I almost had to blink—I was 

blinking twice thinking if I had heard this correctly. It said that 

they were going to be importing teachers from overseas to fill 

shortages of qualified math and science teachers in the state of 

Alabama. 

And just I am sitting there wondering I must have heard this incorrectly. But it is clear that we are not doing enough to grow our 

own, and I would like to hear your thoughts on this issue. I mean 

has it become really necessary for schools to turn to international 
59 

teacher recruitment to fill hard-to-fill spots? I mean, I just found 

that to be absolutely amazing. 

Mr. VAN ROEKEL. One of the things that I think we can do to 

reverse that trend—I saw an article in the paper and it showed a 

chart and it had two columns. The first column were those students from low income. The second column were from high income 

families. 

And then they divided into the lowest one-third academic 

achievement, the middle one-third, and the highest one-third. If 

you took kids from low income family, in the top one-third of academic achievement they had the same probability of going to college as the lowest one-third of families with money. 

But I personally believe in the teaching profession there are 

many of us who are first generation college graduates in our families. What we see is that many teachers, new teachers are from 

teacher families. I think one of the things we should focus on is 

that top one-third of students who come from families where they 

just don’t have the resources to go to college and focus on them. 

Many of them are more first generation. They want to go back 

to their communities and do better, and if we did more things like 

for students like me, the National Defense Education Act, national 

defense loans, that if you went to teaching you could dismiss part 

of your loans. 

I think that is a way, in addition to what Congress has done in 

increasing the Pell Grants and so on, I think we should actively recruit in that group and get them into teaching. I don’t think they 

will just come. I think we have to actively recruit them into the 

teaching profession. 

Mr. HARE. The other problem that I—and just look at the numbers, the dropout rate of teachers is alarming. After 3 years a third 

of new teacher leave the field. After 5 years half of teachers have 

left. And you know, this even happened with my daughter. 

She is—her whole life, she wanted to be a music teacher, and you 

know, from grade school to high school to college got her teaching 

degree and was ready. Taught for 2 years, had 109 students in 

band. 

And I mean she would come over to our house and she would fall 

asleep. She was just, you know, she says, ‘‘I can’t keep doing this.’’ 

And she left after 2 years and she—it is something she wanted to 

do. And I think had she had a teacher mentor that first year, and 

I think this mentoring program is incredibly important to be able 

to give new teachers the opportunity. 

And in my district I just kind of—maybe for the panel, but for 

you, Mr. President, if you could comment on this but it seems to 

me that the school districts that I have talked to said when you 

use the mentoring program, and I realize it does cost some money, 

but if that teacher has somebody with them, that dropout rate 

drops to practically, you know, it is less than 5 percent. 

So I was just wondering what the panel thought of it and Ms. 

Daniels, in particular you and President Van Roekel, but it just 

seems to me if we are going to keep the teachers, it is hard enough 

to recruit them, to go into areas where we need to have them. 

And I think we have to give incentives and perhaps loan forgiveness and whatever it is that we need to do. But this mentoring pro-
60 

gram, I think, is tremendously important, and I just wanted to get 

your thoughts on that. 

Mr. VAN ROEKEL. If you asked many teachers who stayed in the 

system, like me, most of us could name you the person who was 

our mentor. Most of us could tell you it was so-and-so down the 

hall who gave us the support that helped us through. 

It has only been in the last few years the districts have really 

stepped up and said let us have a formalized process for this. You 

know, in other professions—in law you become an associate. They 

don’t just throw you out there. In medicine, you are an intern. 

And one of the things that you see happening that really recruit 

and train teachers for high poverty schools is that they go out and 

they provide internships for a whole year. So they learn cultural 

diversity, an understanding of the students that they are going to 

teach and they have a mentor there. The retention rate goes way 

up. 

So it is those of us, when they didn’t have those, we had to find 

our own. Now we are formalizing those, and you are absolutely 

right, the better we do that, the better the retention rate. And in 

any profession when you are recruiting, to lose 30 to 40 or 50 percent, that is ineffective. 

You don’t want to lose that many. You have already invested all 

the procedures and time and money to recruit and bring them in. 

You want them to stay and be successful. That is what you really 

want. So the better we can do that, and yes it does cost money, but 

I believe it is worth it in the long run. 

Mr. HARE. Ms. Daniels, I know my time is up, but I just wanted 

to get maybe a thought from you on that? 

Ms. DANIELS. Honestly, of the 40 percent of the new staff we 

hired I would say 80 percent were brand new staff. Brand new, 

they had only taught 1 to 3 years and it is the support of the teacher mentors that were with them along the way, as well as the administration, to support them. 

I will not fabricate a story and tell you that the road was not 

rough because it was. However, the mentors supporting, the administrators supporting, constantly checking in and it is a systematic approach to how we check in and we use rubrics and et cetera, 

we were able to retain, again, all of our new staff. 

And coming into this year we only laid off one new teacher and 

we were able to retain all the new staff that we had recruited. 

Mr. HARE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Ms. MURRAY. Yes, definitely early mentoring is critical to inducting teachers into their profession well. Teachers in their first few 

years of teaching are not very strong in their craft. They sometimes 

feel isolated in our schools, and if they don’t have support we lose 

far too many of them. 

And we know, particularly with the distribution of teachers being 

lopsided so that poor schools get more than their fair share of inexperienced teachers, if we can’t bring them along quickly then this 

cycle of turnover keeps happening over and over and over again, 

and we can’t tolerate that. 

And one thing that, you know, we already have federal law that 

says we are not going to tolerate this mal-distribution of teachers 

so that inexperienced teachers end up in our poorer schools. It is 
61 

not right and we need regulations to enforce that, I believe, so that 

it can’t continue. 

And that we do have good mentoring programs and that we do 

have the ability to see that the distribution is a fair one and make 

sure that our poorest kids get the best teachers we can give them. 

Mr. HARE. Thank you, Doctor. 

Chairman MILLER. Thank you. 

Mr. Kildee? 

Mr. KILDEE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. President Van Roekel, it 

was 55 years ago this month, I just figured it out, that I began 

teaching, and I can recall my mentor, Jack Howell at Flint Central 

High School. And he played an enormous role in my formation as 

a teacher. 

I can’t think of anyone even at the university I attended at 

played a role as important as his, so I really do believe that enhancing this role of a mentor at a school is extremely important, 

one that you are interested in, the school board is interested in and 

we are interested in, and I think we should see how we can enhance that role because that is where the real growth of teachers 

took place. That is where my growth took place at Flint Central 

High School. 

Can you—I was pleased that you emphasized the importance of 

building a collaborative workplace culture in our schools. I know 

from my own experience that teaching is a group effort, and we 

must continue to encourage that. Could you provide the committee 

with some guidance on how to preserve that collaborative culture 

as we focus on improving the effectiveness of each teacher? 

Mr. VAN ROEKEL. In the last 25 years, as I look at all the things 

I experienced and saw and read about, following ‘‘Nation at Risk’’ 

in April of 1983, which was another big push for ed reform, the one 

common thing that I believe is just always there, that the necessary component is that collaboration between management, the 

government entity and the employees in their union. 

If you don’t have that it just can’t happen and no two can bypass 

the third, and no one can do it by itself. So that is the necessary 

but not sufficient part. They have to reach out to parents in the 

community. So when that happens, you have an opportunity. 

Where it exemplifies itself in terms of the effectiveness of teachers 

is because it brings them all together to a common purpose. 

They don’t argue about activities and tactics because they have 

agreed upon a common purpose of what they want to achieve for 

every single student. It is exciting when you see that happen; Syracuse, New York, with the Say Yes Foundation. Say Yes Foundation 

had done four pilots, Philadelphia, Harlem, Hartford, Connecticut, 

one other one. 

Then they went to Syracuse, New York and they are doing it for 

an entire district, 22,000 students, and they are all working together. They developed memorandums of understanding, the budget of the mayor is involved, the county social services is involved. 

Everyone is involved in removing any obstacle that stops a student. 

And for the kids in the community they are saying if you qualify 

for college—this is no free ride—if you qualify we guarantee tuition, books and fees. Not room and board, but tuition, books and 
62 

fees. So that every single student in that entire community, if you 

work hard and you do well you have got an opportunity. 

And their goal isn’t to get them to college. It is to graduate from 

college. There is an example of a system-wide project. 

In Connecticut, through Compact, which is again, is a coalition 

of all the ones I mentioned plus the University of Connecticut, the 

NEA, college of education, they are all working together in eight 

of the lowest performing schools in Connecticut. 

So I think we need to watch very carefully the places where they 

are finding ways to collaborate, ensure the effectiveness of a teacher, remove obstacles from students, combine the resources of all 

these different entities and make it happen. 

In Syracuse they believe within 10 years it will be cost neutral, 

meaning that the additional resources from the foundation. 

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the government provided that for every 

school district to build this collaborative effort to turn it around for 

every student in America? 

Mr. KILDEE. Where I taught at Flint Central, we had a collaborative culture. It had been there for years and we shared ideas. We 

would have regular meetings but even in the faculty lounge share 

ideas, and this culture of collaboration was important. 

And what I worry about is that if we make teachers individually 

competitive within a building that perhaps that would be a lessening of that collaboration. Could you have any comment on that? 

Mr. VAN ROEKEL. I totally agree with you, Representative. It 

must be a collegial effort. They must care about every student in 

the building and work together. It is really hard to differentiate 

what the effect one person has, but if you do it collectively. You 

know, when they talk about effective teachers and not effective 

teachers I always wonder about myself. 

I think if you chose any one of my classrooms over all those years 

and over 3,000 students, any one group of students, I think you 

would find someone in there who said I was the best math teacher 

they ever had. And I think you would find someone who didn’t like 

me at all. So I don’t know whether I was good in that particular 

classroom. 

I would hope that the majority and by measures that I was an 

effective teacher, but I know not for every single one. And those 

that I didn’t have the way of reaching I know it was through cooperative work and collaboration with others that we found a way to 

reach the student. Not just Dennis reaching this math student, but 

us as a faculty reaching that student. So collaboration, I believe, 

is the key. 

Chairman MILLER. Ms. Titus? 

Mr. KILDEE. All right, Mr. President. Thank you very much. 

Ms. TITUS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wanted to address this 

question to President Van Roekel and Dr. Murray. I would like to 

go back to the topic of measuring teacher evaluation, but I want 

to focus specifically on the Race to the Top grants because of the 

problems that are created for a couple of states, several states, including Nevada, that they would be precluded from applying for 

Race to the Top grants because there is a state law in place that 

prohibits using test scores in teacher evaluations. 
63 

Now, in Nevada that law is not just an accident. It came after 

a lot of consideration and we know that from one of the big criticisms of No Child Left Behind is trying to measure teacher effectiveness based just on a snapshot. There is a lot more to teaching 

than just one test score and children come from a lot of different 

backgrounds with a lot of different resources. And so it is not a real 

fair or accurate reflection. 

Also, I think that there is a problem that if you use just standardized test scores to measure teacher effectiveness that is going 

to be a disincentive for teachers to teach, say, children who have 

special needs or children with English as a second language or children in these low income schools that you were talking about. 

So do you have some reservations about that and is there some 

way we can address that so Nevada and other states can get back 

in the mix because we have given this a lot of thought? 

Ms. MURRAY. Yes. You know, I think evaluating student growth 

based on teacher performance is at the essence of what value added 

means. It is not a single test score, but it is a recognition that 

growing student learning is what we are all about and effective 

teachers do that well. 

We have to figure out how to measure that better than we do 

now. It shouldn’t be a single test score. But the work is necessary. 

We can’t have barriers to that work written into state law. We 

have it in California right now and that is wrong. It is wrong because we will never get to understanding what really makes effective teachers in the classrooms and particularly in our lowest performing schools until we can have value added models. 

And until we can we need to look at what we know about effective teachers and build that into our evaluation systems. You 

know, if a student has three teachers in a row who are poor teachers, ineffective teachers, they can go from right on level to way behind, way behind. The research is clear about that. 

And for a student who has three effective teachers in a row, they 

soar in their educational attainment. So it is so important to tie 

student learning to teacher performance and we have to figure out 

as a nation and state by state how to do that and we have to tear 

down the barriers that prohibit that right now. 

Mr. VAN ROEKEL. I totally agree with you about the overemphasis and importance of a single test. But I think the challenge 

to us is, as Dr. Murray mentioned, over time building your effectiveness as a teacher, and part of that is getting feedback and 

doing the analysis of the data. 

Right now the way the system is it doesn’t make any sense in 

the world, so I test all of my students and then next year I get the 

results for those students but I have a totally different group in 

front of me now. 

In the first run of the guidelines for Race to the Top, they had 

what was called quick time that—and teachers ought to have the 

results within 72 hours. See, then you have the possibility of instructing your practice. 

My teacher-made tests and quizzes did that. If I gave a quiz on 

the first three sections and most of my class failed, I needed to figure out a way to do that differently. Obviously, the way I chose to 
64 

teach it didn’t work so what is a different way to make sure they 

understand it? 

So if we are moving to a larger scale testing it still has to have 

that its purpose ought to be to inform instruction to make me better, so that over time I build my practice. 

One of the reasons I talk about national board certification so 

much is because that is what they force you to do, to look at your 

practice. What was it you were trying to accomplish? How do you 

know whether the students learned it, and what will you do differently if they haven’t learned it? 

It is a focus on the practice of always being better at what you 

do. And I think that is why teachers believe it is such a powerful 

professional development exercise. It is focusing on data analysis 

and just one point on that. 

As a math teacher I always used to stress to my math students 

the difference between high correlation and cause and effect. Too 

often we confuse those. So for example, I could probably show you 

that over 90 percent of every person in a car accident for the last 

10 years had a cavity or a filling in their mouth, but did it cause 

the accident? 

So there is a high correlation, almost one to one, but it did not 

cause it. So in education we have to be very careful in our analysis 

to separate factors that have high correlation but are in no way 

connected in cause and effect. And over—ineffectiveness of a teacher that plays a very important role. 

Ms. TITUS. I agree and I appreciate that lecture on spurious nature of relationships, but still, how would you then encourage good 

teachers to go into the most needy classrooms if in places where 

they use simply a measure of test scores as a way of evaluating 

teachers? 

And that will often be the case because that is the easiest thing 

to do and what legislators tend to do. How are you going to argue 

that they should take that chance that their students won’t score 

well unless we are going to really revamp the No Child Left Behind? 

Chairman MILLER. You are going to have to argue it off the 

record. [Laughter.] 

Because we are going to move on to—we are running out of time, 

sorry. I would hope that you would answer the question of Ms. 

Titus for the record, but Ms. Woolsey is next. 

Ms. WOOLSEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you witnesses. This has been great. We are looking at the teaching profession today as a real profession and it feels wonderful. We are looking at educating the educators, both existing educators and future 

educators. 

We are looking at recruitment and selection, not of getting these 

teachers into the spot that fits them best, but also where they are 

needed the most and works the best for the hiring district or 

school. 

We are looking at what the support and assistance—what is 

needed for these new teachers or teachers that may be flailing at 

some point along the way, and possibly mentoring being a great 

way to do that. And then what I thought was going to be the center 
65 

of all of this, but it isn’t, and I am so relieved, we are looking at 

how we evaluate educators. 

And what is effective, what isn’t? And making these evaluation 

systems fair and objective is, of course, number—one of our number 

one priorities that can be trusted by the evaluee and the evaluator, 

and what you do with that evaluation. 

What new assistance is necessary if you find you have got a 

teacher that—with the right tools, with the right mentoring could 

come along and be the educator you want that person to be. 

This is so complete today that this it is really wonderful. Something that is missing for me today, though, is what about what are 

we doing—what do you think—— 

Chairman MILLER. Let the record show we are here to make your 

day, so let us know what it is. 

Ms. WOOLSEY. Thank you, George. You usually do that for me. 

I appreciate that very much. You are my chairman and you take 

care of me in that regard. 

What are we doing to help—well, Ms. Avila, you talk about 

teachers as widgets. I talk about students as widgets. What are we 

doing to prepare these students so that when they enter the classroom they are ready to learn? Are we doing enough so that teachers aren’t the first step in getting broken widgets back together? 

I will start with you, Ms. Avila. Yes. 

Ms. AVILA. I am—you are asking what are we doing to ensure 

that children are ready to enter school? 

Ms. WOOLSEY. They are ready to learn when they enter the classroom. 

Ms. AVILA. Yes. Well, I can tell you that we definitely are focused 

on entering and providing the right kind of training for our teachers because the reality is in the areas where our teachers teach a 

lot of our kids are not ready because they haven’t done preschool 

and they haven’t done all the things that a lot of parents who have 

had the opportunity to go to college often do with their kids, like 

reading to them at home for example. 

And so we ensure that, you know, it is important for teachers to 

understand what our kids come with and what they don’t, and that 

that understanding allows them to both figure out what it is that 

they have to do in the classroom, but also how to create partnerships with parents because I think I heard other people say this. 

You know, it is possible to teach kids at high levels if you have 

parents who are not involved. I didn’t have a very involved parent, 

but it is a lot harder to do so, and so they really are partners. They 

were partners to me when I was a teacher. 

Ms. WOOLSEY. Well, shouldn’t this be happening before they 

enter, I mean, what is there—should our society be doing something prior to their entering the classroom, Dr. Murray? 

Ms. MURRAY. Definitely we can do much more to prepare students before they get to kindergarten to be able learners, and certainly quality preschool, universal preschool is a goal that I think 

we should set. 

Kids need solid preschool experiences that relate to success in 

school so that the standards that we have in kindergarten back 

down and build readiness in children. 
66 

Having said that, though, what happens too often is that students come to our schools, particularly our highest poverty schools, 

a little bit behind, just a little bit behind. And we structure our 

schools so that over time they get way behind. 

They get less of everything that matters the most, quality teachers, the best teachers we can give them, the most resources that 

we can give them and the highest expectations we can hold for 

them. 

So the gap in achievement gets wider and wider and wider, so 

we have got to deal with that. Not just that they are a little behind 

because that is doable in kindergarten. It is doable in first grade. 

It is when we allow our systems to promulgate this practice that 

we give them less. We give them the least experienced teachers 

that it gets to be a problem beyond management. 

Chairman MILLER. Okay. 

Mr. Tierney? 

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Thank you members of the panel for your testimony and the enlightenment today, let me ask a question here. What should we do 

with respect to the student teacher situation that we have now? 

A lot of people say that 8 weeks full time isn’t really working the 

way it should and others are suggesting something like a longer period of time and maybe stipends to help those people that need to 

be working during that period of time. Is that something that anybody has a strong disagreement with on the panel? 

No. Ms. Avila? 

Ms. AVILA. I—— 

Mr. TIERNEY. Avila? 

Ms. AVILA [continuing]. While the New Teacher Project certainly 

focuses on one particular pipeline which is the career changers, 

people who are coming from nontraditional backgrounds, we are 

strong advocates in ensuring that every school district has multiple 

pipelines. 

So the student teachers are definitely one of them. I think that 

one of the things that one of our partner school districts has done 

with regard to student teachers is that they have had really open 

and honest communications with the local colleges and universities 

about what they expect from their student teachers. They want to 

get student teachers who actually are in their critical shortage 

areas. 

A lot of the student teacher programs produce a lot of elementary 

school teachers, a lot of high school teachers who teach history, 

which is great but that is actually not where the need is. So the 

school district is actually prioritizing the hiring of student teachers 

and they will say to the college or university we will hire your 

teachers but you need to give us more of what we actually need. 

In addition to that, they actually are, you know, the district has 

a very important asset, which is that they have these classrooms 

where these student teachers can actually get a good sense of what 

it is like to teach. 

But they often don’t use them, so they allow students teachers 

to come into their classroom, but they don’t actually track how 

many of those student teachers become teachers in the school system. 
67 

And that is one of the things that school districts on their own 

can do better, in addition to ensuring that colleges and universities 

are producing teachers that school districts actually need. 

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you. Do you—didn’t you want to make a 

comment as well? 

Ms. ROZA. I work at a college of education—— 

Mr. TIERNEY. Right. 

Ms. ROZA [continuing]. And colleges of education make a lot of 

money off of both teacher candidates and also teachers who come 

back and return and get a master’s degree, and quite often, and I 

have written about this, the data are not there to map toward the, 

you know, the people who graduate from these programs back into 

their success in the classrooms either on kind of the induction side 

or on when they return and get a master’s degree. 

So we obviously needed to figure out whether or not we are going 

to divert cash for these things in this particular way, and certainly 

if we are we have got to go get the data to check to make sure that 

this program is actually producing results in classrooms and this 

one is not, and make sure that the money follows those programs. 

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you. Okay, I am looking—nobody else seems 

to want to comment on that. The other point that I wanted to ask 

about was we were talking a lot about trying to give teachers incentives to go to areas that are difficult. We have seen a lot of research lately about the fact that poverty, or children in poverty do 

well if they go to a middle class school. 

So what ideas might there be out there for people who are thinking of giving incentives for middle class schools to invite in some 

of the children from areas that suffer a lot more poverty, whether 

it is magnet schools or whether it is giving them some subsidy to 

move in that direction? 

Sir? 

Mr. VAN ROEKEL. Representative, one of the strategies we have 

in our report is about improving the working and learning conditions, and one of the commitments we made is this coming year we 

are going to survey another 1,000 of these high-needs schools and 

the faculty. Say what is it about the conditions there that need to 

change? 

We believe that that is one of the focuses that has to be there. 

It is not just bringing in different people and it is going to change. 

What is going to happen is changing that whole environment of 

that school and what is it that needs to be done? And we are going 

to focus on that in this coming year. 

Mr. TIERNEY. Okay. There is already a whole body of work out 

there, I am sure you are aware of? 

Mr. VAN ROEKEL. Absolutely. 

Mr. TIERNEY. Okay. 

Ms. MURRAY. I—and—— 

Mr. TIERNEY. Oh, I am sorry. We can go either one. 

Ms. Murray, first if you want and then the doctor after that. 

Ms. MURRAY. Yes. In my experience the reason why poor kids do 

better in school that serve more middle and high income kids is because the expectations are higher and that that impacts learning. 

And what we need to do is not to think of that as a cause of their 

higher achievement is because they move to a middle class school, 
68 

but how do we create those same high expectations in schools and 

neighborhoods where you serve a lot of poor kids. Because I have 

been through desegregation orders in Florida and California, and 

just moving kids is not the ultimate solution to making America’s 

schools better. 

We have got to get high expectations in our schools in poor 

neighborhoods. We need to involve the parents and that is where 

you can involve them, right in their own neighborhoods. And we 

need to make sure that the children in those schools get the best 

teachers we can get them. 

Mr. TIERNEY. If you have examples of how you would raise that 

expectation level out there would you share them with the committee so—I am sure that we would like to see what they contain? 

Ms. MURRAY. Right. Part of it is, of course, professional development and giving teachers the tools. I really believe, frankly, that 

teachers have low expectations because in a way they are afraid 

they can’t do the job. They are not convinced that they have the 

tools to bring students way—advance them significantly in their 

learning. 

And the culture of the school tends to gravitate toward those 

lower expectations and we need to work on that, school by school, 

faculty by faculty, to help them see success with students that perhaps they believed couldn’t do much. 

We need to elevate the quality of work that we give to kids when 

we teach to a standard. What we find in our research is that—— 

Chairman MILLER. We are going to ask you to wrap up, please. 

Ms. MURRAY. Oh, okay. 

Chairman MILLER. I am worried that we are going to run out of 

time. 

Ms. MURRAY. High poverty, low poverty schools, kids get less expected of them. They are asked to do less. We have got to ask them 

to do as much in a poor school as we do in a more affluent school. 

Chairman MILLER. And I misspoke in our line up here. 

It is Ms. Chu and then Mrs. Davis. 

Yes? 

Ms. CHU. Well, Race to the Top thus far is predicating funding 

on a system whereby teacher evaluations would be based on student test scores, and this is a problem for California in that California has a law prohibiting such a thing. 

So Mr. Van Roekel, you are saying that teacher evaluations 

should be based on multiple criteria and you have talked about the 

national board certification as an essential tool for improving 

teacher quality. What I wanted to know was how this would work 

operationally in helping our high-needs schools? 

Mr. VAN ROEKEL. What we believe is that developing an effective 

evaluation system that is tied to professional development system 

is one of the most important ways of changing what is happening 

in high poverty schools. It has got to be a cultural collaboration 

where they are looking at those schools and changing the experience of students. 

And I believe that they have to do that together. Student testing 

can be part of assessing the effectiveness of the school, but it just 

can’t be the only measure. Where we have thought it was what we 
69 

stated that we were opposed to is that a single test be used as the 

only measure. 

But on the Race to the Top, we have really appreciated the access and the opportunity to comment on that. I think they got over 

1,200 comments on the proposed regulations and those will be out 

sometime in October. So what we are hopeful of is that as they listen to this input they find a way of creating a little more flexibility 

so that districts can determine how they believe best to do that. 

Some of the examples I cited earlier, those communities got together, administration, government entity, employees in the school 

district who said what do we need to do to change what is happening to students, and I believe that is part of the success. 

Ms. CHU. I am assuming that you would want more teachers 

with national board certification to be at the high-needs schools? 

Mr. VAN ROEKEL. Yes, that would be one of the things. The other 

thing we have to determine is what are the indicators of student 

learning? It is more than a test. Maybe it is showing examples of 

student work. Maybe it is building portfolios, but how do you measure the evidence of student learning? That has got to be part of the 

evaluation of any school district. 

Ms. CHU. And you are saying that thus far it is incomplete in 

terms of how that is measured? 

Mr. VAN ROEKEL. I think it can be done within those guidelines 

depending on how they are tweaked from the first version to the 

last. We will have to wait and see how much flexibility is given to 

school districts in order to create that circumstance. 

Ms. CHU. Dr. Roza, your research showed that once teachers 

gained seniority and experience they tend to transfer from the most 

challenging schools with high poverty and minority students to 

more affluent schools, and in addition you report that there are 

fewer applicants for open positions at these challenging schools. 

It is rather stark data. And I was intrigued by your last sentence 

in your report saying, ‘‘that there are many remedies that districts 

could pursue and some are practiced in a few districts but local politics serve as a formidable barrier in those.’’ Could you explain 

that? In particular, the things that are in practice in a few districts? 

Ms. ROZA. So it is districts because we have even heard today 

some of the different strategies at play in districts that are trying 

to build up teacher quality in the schools that need it the most. 

There are school districts that are offering incentives to go to the 

schools where they have traditionally had a hard time attracting 

students. 

There is some school districts where they have built that into 

their salary schedule, and there are school districts that have 

moved toward a student-based funding system so rather than fund 

a teacher and then the teacher takes that money with them to 

whatever school that they go to, then there are schools that are 

saying here you have this many kids with this many needs and you 

get this amount of money. Now go hire your teachers and use the 

leftover money that you have saved because you can’t hire anybody 

but really junior teachers for something else. 

So there are all those kind of strategies are out there at play, 

and I think that is the thing that we heard here today. We are at 
70 

the level of the federal government, 90 percent of the money for 

education or so comes from state and local revenue sources. So to 

think of all these remedies as things that the federal government 

can pay for it is hard to really get our hands around. 

But at the same time there is that 10 percent of the money or 

so that comes from the federal government which is a lot of leverage, and if that leverage could be used toward equalizing spending 

in districts with the local and state money, then some of these remedies would start to surface around, I think. 

Ms. CHU. Thank you. 

Chairman MILLER. Thank you. I just use the prerogative of the 

chair here. There is nothing in the Race to the Top that says that 

you have to agree that a test will be the sole factor? 

Mr. VAN ROEKEL. That is correct. 

Chairman MILLER [continuing]. Of determination. So let us clear 

the air on that because we keep throwing it out, and I appreciate 

the attractiveness of it. It is simply not the fact. There wasn’t anything in the discussion draft. There is nothing in the TEACH Act 

because when we negotiated all that we understood there had to 

be multiple factors. 

But if, you know, if you keep sending a lawyer to court if you 

never ask whether or not they win any cases the law firm might 

want to know. Now, there is a lot of ways to judge lawyers. Are 

they good negotiators? Are they talented? Are they good arguers on 

this? They may handle part of the case, the whole case, the rest 

of that, but at some point you want to know what is going on out 

there day in and day out. 

And I think that it is a real disservice to the administration because the Secretary obviously is taking that argument and trying 

to broaden that discussion. But the idea that you would never be 

able to connect student performance and teacher performance, 

there is no other system in the world that would do that with their 

employees. Just wouldn’t do it. We don’t do it in our offices. They 

don’t do it anywhere else. 

So I think we ought to clear the air. That is not the challenge 

that the California state legislature has. Quite—the challenge for 

the California is whether it will ever be able to be used because 

that is what the prohibition is. 

Mrs. Davis? 

Mrs. DAVIS. Thank you all for being here. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for bringing that up as well. I wanted to follow up a little bit 

more, but I just wanted to let you know, and especially to Mr. Van 

Roekel, I am really pleased to hear all that you said about national 

board certification, not because it is the panacea and it is going to 

change the world, but because I think that it does provide, just as 

you said, a rigorous assessment and a tool for teachers to identify 

their own teaching strategies. 

What do you—we also talked about evaluations a great deal and 

it was interesting to me. I think to see in this, Ms. Avila, I mean 

the word is perfunctory. Those of us in California know the STOL 

bill. I—when think the first legislation that I did when I went to 

the state legislature in 1994 was around evaluations. 

And it is a critical, critical area. I am a little concerned because 

you said, you know, I think our role and it was asked earlier, Ms. 
71 

Hirono asked about what is the federal role in this? And I would 

agree. I mean, we are not micromanaging this but on the other 

hand the research and development part of it, I don’t know if that 

is enough. 

I mean I am just trying to figure out, you know, I am going to 

think about pushing you a little bit more on that and the tie-in 

then to Race to the Top, and again, a lot of feelings about that out 

there. 

What is it about the reinvestment dollars right now that we can 

look at and build on and do something because there is this urgency right now? Is there something that you see that is really primary to be able to look at perhaps even it is using that in some 

way? 

Maybe we are going to change some attitudes because of some 

of the ways that some of these dollars are going to be really surfacing is—that would be helpful. 

My other question, just briefly, and I don’t expect a long answer 

on this, and I think it has been said a number of times—school 

leadership is so critical here, and I worry that we miss the boat a 

little bit on that. 

Again, what can we do in terms of federal legislation to bring 

any great program to scale in terms of school leadership, but clearly there are some things that we probably can do. So I want you 

to talk—whoever would like to take that, a little bit more on pushing the R&D piece in terms of federal, tying it to Race to the Top 

in any way that you see, and also what really can be done to address school leadership? 

Mr. VAN ROEKEL. I will take one small piece of your question 

about when you asked about what about Race to the Top could 

really change? I think the focus on these lowest performing schools 

and what do we do. We cannot tolerate what currently exists. What 

is the new model that we are going to create, 50 percent in urban, 

20 percent in suburban and 30 percent in rural? We have got to 

find that. 

And I think Race to the Top, I am so excited about the opportunity and the resources to really tackle that and I think that is 

a very positive impact of the legislation. 

Ms. ROZA. I would just add that I know Race to the Top is very 

present in everyone’s mind, but in No Child Left Behind and Title 

I there is a provision called comparability, which has been around 

for a long time which has asked that before you accept federal 

money you equalize your state and local funds, which if we did— 

if there wasn’t a loophole in it and it actually worked, then I think 

districts would have to go address some major changes. 

It would be kind of the levers they need to overcome the local 

politics to really go in and do something and hopefully with teacher 

effectiveness being on the forefront of everyone’s minds, that is how 

they would go about reallocating their money. But there is some leverage there as well. 

Ms. MURRAY. And to add to that I think, you know, as I said before, we need federal regulations with some teeth in them that say 

that we will honor what has already written into NCLB and ARRA, 

that there will not be a distribution of teachers that gives the poor-
72 

est kids the least effective teachers. We can—it is in law. We can 

enforce that through good federal regulation. 

Ms. AVILA. I would add that the work that the federal government is doing right now to provide cover to various states across 

this country, around insisting that any teacher evaluation has to 

include a component around student growth is absolutely right on 

target. We can’t talk about moving teachers from one school to another to increase effectiveness when we don’t even know who our 

effective teachers are. 

And you know, we talked a lot about retention. We don’t even 

know if we are retaining the best teachers. There is no way of 

knowing that and so this move around ensuring that any evaluation has to include student outcomes is right on target because if 

you look at the research out there there is a very small correlation 

between having a master’s degree, for example, and your impact on 

student growth. 

Very small correlation on how selective the program is that you 

came in through, but there is a huge correlation between how you 

have performed in the past and how you will perform in the future. 

And we can’t ignore that if we are looking at identifying our most 

effective teachers. 

And I think that I agree with a lot of what people said here 

today, is that we are not talking about one test because actually 

what we have found in our research is that principals are very 

good at identifying highly-effective from ineffective teachers, and so 

we think that it should include a formula of student growth, perhaps principal evaluations. 

Perhaps external evaluators, perhaps portfolio assessment, but 

you have to have student growth in there because it is the largest 

predictor of whether or not you actually will be effective in the future. 

Mr. POLIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

My first question is for Ms. Avila. I strongly agree with your 

statement that the widget effect reports that, ‘‘The core purpose of 

evaluation must be maximizing teacher growth and effectiveness, 

not just documenting poor performance as a prelude to this missile.’’ 

And yet your survey found that three out of four teachers didn’t 

find any meaningful feedback to improve their performance, and 

less than half the teachers who received feedback were provided 

with useful support to improve, similar to if you look, for instance, 

whether teachers find testing useful. 

One of the purposes of testing, certainly not the only purpose, 

should be to inform classroom practices and frequently thought— 

we find a lot might succeed in other areas, fall short in that area. 

Can you explain how a credible and rigorous evaluation system 

could be used better to help teachers improve their effectiveness as 

professionals, and how it can enable excellent teachers to also assist more novice teachers to grow? 

Ms. AVILA. In terms of how you use evaluations, you really need 

to make sure that whatever your evaluation tool, and we actually 

think that, you know, the tool is actually not as important as how 

faithfully it is implemented. There are some things that you abso-
73 

lutely do need a tool for. For example, you need a pretty large 

scale. 

In some of the districts that we studied you had either you are 

meeting expectations or not meeting expectations. That kind of system doesn’t work to identify where teachers really need help. You 

need to be able to ensure that whatever it is that you are including 

in your evaluation, and this should be definitely be around student 

outcomes in terms of what do you see in the classroom? 

What is happening in the classroom that students are doing and 

less so on teacher inputs, like, do you have a lesson plan for example? So you want to make sure that whatever it is the evaluation 

shows is actually tied to professional development. So you will find 

that unlike what we tell teachers where we say you have to differentiate your instruction because not every learner is the same, 

we actually don’t do that for our own teachers. 

We offer everyone the exact same professional development, so 

you have teachers who are really good at classroom management. 

That is not where they struggle, but they are required by a school 

district to go to a professional development session when you are 

learning about classroom management. 

Where you have teachers who are struggling particularly with 

how to educate English language learners, but they are required to 

go to a professional development session on something that is completely unrelated or that they are not struggling with. 

So that is one of the key things that you have to make sure that 

the data that you get from the evaluation is informing the professional development. And I have to say, our school districts spend 

millions and millions of dollars on development but it is not tied 

to the evaluation. 

Mr. POLIS. Have you seen this? Are there any instances where 

you can point to this being done well? 

Ms. AVILA. Not yet. 

Mr. POLIS. Thank you. 

Dr. Murray, clearly the system to improve classroom instruction 

is broken and I applaud the efforts to improve it. This year, Colorado was one of 21 states that adopted a teacher identifier approach, but as you pointed out, developing these longitudinal data 

systems that link teachers to student growth will take some time 

to design, some time to implement the correct strategies. 

And I certainly agree in the meantime we need to enforce the requirements, continue NCLB and ARRA that low income students 

not be taught by out-of-field and inexperienced or uncertified teachers, but my question is what else can be done in the short and medium term, both to shed light on the inequity, including increasing 

transparency or beginning to address it while we work to implement a fix that might take years to be fully implemented? 

Ms. MURRAY. Yes. That is one of the things that my organization 

focuses on dearly, is trying to make transparent the inequities and 

to shout as loud as we can that this is not tolerable in the short 

term. In our state work in California that is our primary focus is 

the gap, achievement gap and how do we close it and how do we 

get the best teachers that we have in front of the teachers who 

need them the most? 
74 

So in the short run, I think there we need to build the 

groundswell for doing this work, for making sure that the public 

understands. We do a lot of community building around these 

issues so that there are pressure points on districts to make the 

changes that are necessary. 

I think we need to continue to do that. We need to let people 

know that this is wrong, that we can’t tolerate this and every way 

we can expose the fact that district after district are allowing the 

least experienced, least credentialed teachers to teach in the 

schools where students need them the most. 

Mr. POLIS. Thank you. 

Does anybody else care to add to either of those questions? 

Thank you. I yield back, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman MILLER. Let me thank all the panelists. Do you have 

anything else? 

Mr. KLINE. Could I take 30 seconds? 

Chairman MILLER. Yes. Mr. Kline, excuse me. 

Mr. KLINE. Yes. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Again, I 

want to thank all the panelists that we have a lot of witnesses that 

come before this committee and other committees. This is truly one 

of the best. A tremendous level of experience and we are better for 

it, so I want to thank you for that. 

It is amazing how much agreement that there was here in 

amongst the witnesses that we need to identify these inequities, 

make sure we have a way of doing it, making sure that the pay 

is recorded appropriately. You know, make sure that we have some 

meaningful way of evaluating these teachers. 

It doesn’t do you any good to have a system of getting highly-effective teachers in the school if you don’t even know who they are, 

and then making sure we have a way of identifying and removing 

the barriers that is keeping that from happening. 

I think all of you did a fantastic job of helping us today, and I 

would just, again, I want to congratulate you and thank you. 

And I yield back. 

Chairman MILLER. I thank the gentleman, and I want to associate myself with his remarks. We have had a number of comments 

from members of the committee about this panel and thank you. 

I think we have developed a great cross section here. And I think 

all of us believe that the success in reauthorization, the success in 

Race to the Top on the other side is going to be about teachers, and 

I welcome that national focus and discussion. 

But there are critical decisions that have to be made here. I am 

working on the firm basis that a young person entering the teaching profession today wants a workplace that looks a lot like their 

friends’ workplace, where people are rewarded for their time, their 

talent, their expertise, their additional learning, the responsibilities 

that they take. 

And if they are they will take more responsibility. They will 

share their talents. They will spend more time on task, and I think 

that is what it is and that is not happening today in most settings. 

And I think that those are barriers and we have got to sort those 

out. We have got to sort them out. Mr. Van Roekel has made it 

very clear, and I think everybody on this subject matter has made 
75 

it very clear, you don’t do this to somebody. It has to be done with 

somebody. That is the watchword that is imposed here. 

But it is also quite stunning that we are still discussion this topic 

at this level of engagement in 2009 because this has not been a 

subject—we have surveyed the teachers why they leave, lack of— 

it is not pay. Lack of professional development, isolationism, unable 

to associate with their peers, I mean, it goes on and on and on, so 

that this is not a mystery. 

It may be a mystery how to fix it. I don’t think so but the fact 

that it exists and the fact that the children in poor and minority 

communities are being harmed in a disproportionate fashion also 

is well documented and it is our role if Title I is to speak to the 

needs of that community, it is our roles to sort this out prior to reauthorization. 

So thank you very much for your participation. The committee is 

going to commit some additional hearing days to this subject, and 

we look forward to continuing this discussion. Thank you very 

much. 

With that, the committee will stand adjourned. 

[Questions submitted for the record and their responses follow:] 

[VIA FACSIMILE], 

U.S. CONGRESS, 

Washington, DC, October 13, 2009. 

Ms. LAYLA AVILA, Vice President of the Teaching Fellows Programs, 

The New Teacher Project, 186 Joralemon Street, Suite 300, Brooklyn, NY 11201. 

DEAR MS. AVILA: Thank you for testifying at the Committee on Education and Labor’s hearing on, ‘‘Teacher Equity: Effective Teachers for All Children,’’ on September 30th, 2009. 

Representative Cathy McMorris-Rogers (R-WA) has asked that you respond in 

writing to the following questions: 

1. This hearing provides an excellent opportunity to talk about special education 

and the quality of classroom instruction for special needs children, particularly 

whether the witnesses believe the theories for improving the quality of education 

remain true for special needs students. 

Do special needs students excel under the supervision of teachers with years of 

experience or rather do they succeed under a program that can improve the quality 

of education, despite a lack of experience? What role do resources, both monetary 

and non-monetary, play in improving the quality of classroom instruction, particularly for special needs students? For example, to what extent have states and school 

districts utilized the Teacher Incentive Fund Act or Race to the Top established in 

the stimulus package for special needs students? Are they even able to access funds? 

What additional incentives are necessary to encourage teachers to enter teaching 

field for special needs students? 

2. Last session, Congress passed the Higher Education Opportunity Act. I worked 

with my colleagues to see that language was added that would allow school districts 

to recruit content specialists from among mid-career professionals with expertise in 

math, science, and critical foreign languages. This amendment is consistent with the 

idea that effective teaching does not necessarily come from years of teaching but 

from practical or real world experiences. With our students falling below many other 

nations, especially in the fields of math and science, I would like to know from our 

witnesses what is being done at the local level to recruit these specialists? Has the 

Department of Education offered guidance or promulgated regulations to school districts on how to recruit? 

Please send an electronic version of your written response to the questions to the 

Committee by close of business on 10/21/09. If you have any questions, please do 

not hesitate to contact the Committee. 

Sincerely, 

GEORGE MILLER, Chairman. 
76 

Ms. Avila’s Responses to Questions Submitted for the Record 

Thank you for the opportunity to respond to your questions regarding The New 

Teacher Project’s testimony at the Committee on Education and Labor’s September 

30th hearing on, ‘‘Teacher Equity: Effective Teachers for All Children.’’ Please contact us should you require any additional information. 

1. This hearing provides an excellent opportunity to talk about special education 

and the quality of classroom instruction for special needs children, particularly 

whether the witnesses believe the theories for improving the quality of education 

remain true for special needs students. 

Do special needs students excel under the supervision of teachers with years of 

experience or rather do they succeed under a program that can improve the quality 

of education, despite a lack of experience? What role do resources, both monetary 

and non-monetary, play in improving the quality of classroom instruction, particularly for special needs students? For example, to what extent have states and school 

districts utilized the Teacher Incentive Fund Act or Race to the Top established in 

the stimulus package for special needs students? Are they even able to access funds? 

What additional incentives are necessary to encourage teachers to enter teaching 

field for special needs students? 

Ensuring that special needs students receive a quality education is critically important and integral to the larger effort of closing the achievement gap. Special 

needs and learning disabled students are about twice as likely as other students to 

drop out of high school, and are less likely to be taught by qualified teachers. Urban 

and rural school districts, in particular, commonly struggle to attract and retain effective teachers for special education classrooms. 

We believe that if they are rigorously selected and trained, new teachers are fully 

capable of having a positive impact on special education students regardless of their 

prior experience in the classroom. While the research on teacher effectiveness in 

special education settings is limited, our experience recruiting and training new 

teachers for high-poverty schools nationwide suggests that many individuals share 

a desire to work with special needs students and can be effective despite a lack of 

experience or a traditional education background. Our work in New York City provides a good case study. 

Operated in partnership with the NYC Department of Education, our NYC Teaching Fellows program recruits, selects and trains accomplished career changers and 

talented recent graduates to teach in the city’s highest-need schools. In 2009, it accepted just 9 percent of all applicants. The program is the largest urban alternate 

route to teacher certification in the country, and has supplied over 9,000 teachers 

to 1,100 schools. It is the single largest supplier of new teachers for math, science 

and special education classrooms in New York City. 

There are approximately 3,400 NYC Teaching Fellows working in special education classrooms today. They make up almost a quarter (23%) of all active special 

education teachers in the city’s public schools, and more than a third (38%) of all 

bilingual special education teachers. 

Every year, we ask principals how effective Teaching Fellows in their schools were 

at helping students progress towards their Individual Education Plan (IEP) goals. 

In this year’s survey, 87 percent of principals somewhat agreed, agreed or strongly 

agreed that the Fellows in their schools were effective in this respect. 

New Fellows themselves also indicate that their training prepares them to be effective. In survey responses this year, Fellows preparing to enter classrooms for the 

first time expressed confidence in their ability to have an impact; 92 percent said 

they felt prepared to be effective as a first-year teacher despite the intensive nature 

of their pre-service training. 

It is also noteworthy that Teaching Fellows assigned to special education classrooms have higher retention rates than Fellows teaching other subject areas and exceed national estimates for new teacher retention in urban schools. On average, 69 

percent of all teachers in urban schools begin a third year teaching; in comparison, 

special education Teaching Fellows enter their third year at a rate of 81 percent. 

In sum, the NYC Teaching Fellows program is helping New York City public 

schools meet their needs for special education teachers with dedicated individuals 

who feel well-prepared, are effective according to their principals, and stay in the 

classroom—and doing this at a scale of hundreds of teachers per year. 

We believe that our experience in New York City and elsewhere shows that encouraging talented people to become special education teachers may have less to do 

with creating additional incentives and more to do with removing disincentives and 

policy barriers. In some states, for example, teachers must complete substantial additional coursework or costly tests in order to be certified to teach special education. 

While we strongly believe that all teachers need to be selected according to high 
77 

standards and rigorous training, these additional requirements are generally not 

correlated to increases in student achievement, and the cost and time associated 

with completing them may discourage strong candidates from entering the field. 

States should reduce such barriers where possible and focus their efforts on ensuring that all teachers, including special education teachers, are held to high standards of instructional effectiveness as measured by student growth and academic 

progress. 

2. Last session, Congress passed the Higher Education Opportunity Act. I worked 

with my colleagues to see that language was added that would allow school districts 

to recruit content specialists from among mid-career professionals with expertise in 

math, science, and critical foreign languages. This amendment is consistent with the 

idea that effective teaching does not necessarily come from years of teaching but 

from practical or real world experiences. With our students falling below many other 

nations, especially in the fields of math and science, I would like to know from our 

witnesses what is being done at the local level to recruit these specialists? Has the 

Department of Education offered guidance or promulgated regulations to school districts on how to recruit? 

One of the ways that the U.S. Department of Education has effectively supported 

state and school district efforts to attract mid-career professionals to teaching is 

through the Transition to Teaching grant program. This critical program focuses 

specifically on serving the highest-need schools and shortage subject areas such as 

math and science. It has funded the launch and development of high-quality teacher 

recruitment and training programs in urban and rural areas across the country, including many of our Teaching Fellows programs, which now operate in more than 

20 cities. 

Through these programs and others, The New Teacher Project has recruited or 

trained a total of more than 6,600 math, science and special education teachers 

since 2005. In 2008 alone, TNTP’s Teaching Fellows programs produced 770 math 

and science teachers, which amounts to more than the number of math and science 

teachers licensed annually by some states, including Washington. 

We employ a wide variety of recruitment strategies to attract candidates who are 

eligible to teach math and science. These strategies include the following: 

Data-Driven Goals and Targets 

Prior to the start of any recruitment campaign, TNTP staff members work backwards from the program’s overall hiring target to identify the number of applicants 

the program must attract and estimate conversion rates at particular junctures 

(e.g., out of the total pool of applicants, what percentage will be selected for an 

interview). We work closely with our district partners to establish recruitment targets in specific subject areas and grade levels to ensure that our efforts are meeting 

the most critical needs of the district. Throughout the campaign, we carefully track 

our progress toward these goals through our proprietary TeacherTrack(tm) software, 

which is capable of generating real-time reports and progress assessments as needed. 

Distinctive Program Branding 

Major corporations have relied upon brand recognition as a crucial marketing 

strategy for decades. With such success in mind, we build our recruitment campaigns around a unique branding effort that draws public attention to the program 

and promotes easy recall of key information. Each of our programs receives a unique 

name, logo, tagline and appearance throughout all marketing materials and on the 

program website. 

Multiple Marketing Strategies and Trained Recruiters 

To attract the most qualified individuals, we utilize a variety of proven recruitment strategies that take the process beyond mere advertising, relying on such 

methods as internet marketing, print advertising, grassroots outreach, and the activities of full- and part-time recruiters who cultivate relationships with community 

leaders and career service offices, make community and campus presentations, and 

utilize a host of other tools to reach out to potential applicants. A variety of coordinated recruitment materials (such as flyers, postcards, newspaper and radio advertisements, and other marketing collateral) support these strategies and encourage 

interested candidates to visit the program’s interactive website. 

High-Impact Messaging 

The New Teacher Project’s experience has shown that clear, compelling and honest messages are critical to a successful recruitment campaign. Thus, the recruitment messages used will appeal to an individual’s desire to be part of a significant 

effort to expand educational opportunity and excellence for all students. TNTP’s 
78 

prior experience has found that successful recruitment messages also place an emphasis on changing the lives of some of the nation’s most under-served students, not 

solely on addressing teacher shortages; create an aura of selectivity around the program; and convey that new teachers will have the opportunity to assume leadership 

roles within their schools and district. Finally, effective messages also begin to create a sense of identity and connectedness among applicants. Taken together, these 

messages appeal to each individual’s sense of personal mission, responsibility and 

challenge. 

Advanced Technology 

An interactive, high-quality website functions as the centerpiece of the recruitment campaign. Created by professional designers and updated regularly by program staff, our programs’ websites maintain a professional appearance with a direct 

and easy-to-use format. They are also integrated with TNTP’s TeacherTrack(tm) applicant tracking software, which improves the ability of program staff to monitor 

key data, conduct quality control and communicate with candidates. 

Meticulous Cost-Effectiveness Tracking 

The New Teacher Project constantly evaluates its recruitment strategies to ensure 

they are cost-effective. We monitor our results on a daily basis, determine a specific 

return on investment (ROI) for every strategy from internet advertising to on-campus recruiting, and reallocate recruitment funding to those strategies that demonstrate the greatest success. 

Targeted Outreach and Cultivation 

To recruit teachers for high-need subject areas, our programs rely on targeted 

campaigns that apply the strategies outlined above with even greater intensity. For 

example, the program may compile an extensive list of potential sources for teacher 

candidates, including local organizations such as professional associations, interest 

clubs and academic societies. Efforts focus especially on those sources that may generate leads in high-need areas, such as a Latino Society or a robotics club. Prospective applicants then receive personal attention from program staff or an invitation 

to attend a special recruiting event that generates excitement about the program 

and creates a sense of connectivity among the potential new teachers. 

[VIA FACSIMILE], 

U.S. CONGRESS, 

Washington, DC, October 13, 2009. 

Ms. LATANYA DANIELS, Assistant Principal, 

Edison High School, 700 22nd Avenue, NE, Minneapolis, MN 55418. 

DEAR MS. DANIELS: Thank you for testifying at the Committee on Education and 

Labor’s hearing on, ‘‘Teacher Equity: Effective Teachers for All Children,’’ on September 30th, 2009. 

Representative Cathy McMorris-Rogers (R-WA) has asked that you respond in 

writing to the following questions: 

1. This hearing provides an excellent opportunity to talk about special education 

and the quality of classroom instruction for special needs children, particularly 

whether the witnesses believe the theories for improving the quality of education 

remain true for special needs students. 

Do special needs students excel under the supervision of teachers with years of 

experience or rather do they succeed under a program that can improve the quality 

of education, despite a lack of experience? What role do resources, both monetary 

and non-monetary, play in improving the quality of classroom instruction, particularly for special needs students? For example, to what extent have states and school 

districts utilized the Teacher Incentive Fund Act or Race to the Top established in 

the stimulus package for special needs students? Are they even able to access funds? 

What additional incentives are necessary to encourage teachers to enter teaching 

field for special needs students? 

2. Last session, Congress passed the Higher Education Opportunity Act. I worked 

with my colleagues to see that language was added that would allow school districts 

to recruit content specialists from among mid-career professionals with expertise in 

math, science, and critical foreign languages. This amendment is consistent with the 

idea that effective teaching does not necessarily come from years of teaching but 

from practical or real world experiences. With our students falling below many other 

nations, especially in the fields of math and science, I would like to know from our 

witnesses what is being done at the local level to recruit these specialists? Has the 
79 

Department of Education offered guidance or promulgated regulations to school districts on how to recruit? 

Please send an electronic version of your written response to the questions to the 

Committee by close of business on 10/21/09. If you have any questions, please do 

not hesitate to contact the Committee. 

Sincerely, 

GEORGE MILLER, Chairman. 

Ms. Daniels’ Responses to Questions Submitted for the Record 

Representative Cathy McMorris-Rogers (R-WA) has asked that you respond in 

writing to the following questions: 

1. This hearing provides an excellent opportunity to talk about special education 

and the quality of classroom instruction for special needs children, particularly 

whether the witnesses believe the theories for improving the quality of education 

remain true for special needs students. 

One of the important tenets of the TAP system, and something we follow at 

Thomas Edison High School, is the inclusion of special education teachers in the 

professional development cluster groups attended by all teachers in the school. This 

provides special education teachers with opportunities to interact with peers, to 

compare strategies, and to share their unique perspective on adapting strategies for 

individual students with teachers of other students. We find that the same qualities 

of exceptional teaching hold true in special education classrooms as well as in other 

classrooms. And TAP’s focus on helping teachers to differentiate learning for individual students supports special education teachers who must meet this challenge 

every day. Attached is an article discussing how TAP supports special education 

teachers from the February 2007 edition of Special Ed Advisor. 

Do special needs students excel under the supervision of teachers with years of 

experience or rather do they succeed under a program that can improve the quality 

of education, despite a lack of experience? 

My experience is that special needs students in TAP schools excel under the supervision of both new and veteran teachers. TAP’s intensive professional development and support help newer teachers to improve their instruction more quickly, 

and the same support helps veteran teachers to continue to improve their craft. 

Considering the shortage of teachers being recruited and retained in this hard to 

staff field, it is important to focus resources on supporting both experienced and inexperienced teachers at all stages of their careers. TAP’s structure of support provides all special education teachers with access to school-based expert master and 

mentor teachers to provide coaching and feedback. It also provides outstanding special education teachers with the opportunity to serve as master and mentor teachers, thus providing powerful opportunities for growth and advancement. In fact, we 

currently have two master teachers at Thomas Edison High that are licensed special 

education teachers that are working with our setting 1 and DCD/autism teachers. 

What role do resources, both monetary and non-monetary, play in improving the 

quality of classroom instruction, particularly for special needs students? For example, to what extent have states and school districts utilized the Teacher Incentive 

Fund Act or Race to the Top established in the stimulus package for special needs 

students? Are they even able to access funds? 

As noted in the attached article from Special Ed Advisor, February 2007, TAP 

schools include special education teachers in performance pay, classroom evaluations and professional support. Many of these TAP schools are part of Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) projects, and we feel strongly that all teachers in a school should 

be eligible for support using these funds. Special education teachers in TAP schools 

are included in TIF grants in Illinois, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas, Pennsylvania 

and Colorado. 

What additional incentives are necessary to encourage teachers to enter teaching 

field for special needs students? 

The TAP system provides significant and meaningful opportunities for career 

growth, professional support, feedback on classroom teaching, help analyzing student data and developing formative assessments, collaboration with peers and additional compensation. We find that all teachers benefit from these opportunities. In 

addition, the TAP model allows for additional incentives to be provided for teachers 

in hard to staff subjects, and special education could be identified by a school as 

one of those subjects. However, we find that it is the support TAP provides that is 

the greatest incentive for special education teachers to begin and remain in that 

field. 
80 

2. Last session, Congress passed the Higher Education Opportunity Act. I worked 

with my colleagues to see that language was added that would allow school districts 

to recruit content specialists from among mid-career professionals with expertise in 

math, science, and critical foreign languages. This amendment is consistent with the 

idea that effective teaching does not necessarily come from years of teaching but 

from practical or real world experiences. With our students falling below many other 

nations, especially in the fields of math and science, I would like to know from our 

witnesses what is being done at the local level to recruit these specialists? Has the 

Department of Education offered guidance or promulgated regulations to school districts on how to recruit? 

I am not familiar with federal guidance or regulations on recruiting mid-career 

professionals. I am a strong believer in the importance of a system of support, accountability and coaching for new teachers who enter the field from other careers. 

These individuals offer tremendous promise as content specialists, and as professionals with life experiences to bring to students. In my experience, in order to keep 

these new entrants it is critical that they have a system of support within the 

school. TAP provides weekly collaborative sessions with fellow teachers, as well as 

daily support in the classroom from master and mentor teachers. This enables these 

new teachers to be successful more quickly, to receive timely and substantive feedback on their instruction, and more rapidly understand the use of student data and 

assessment for planning instruction. Without such support, I have seen mid-career 

entrants to teaching quickly become disillusioned and leave the classroom. 
81 
82 
83 

[VIA FACSIMILE], 

U.S. CONGRESS, 

Washington, DC, October 13, 2009. 

Mr. FREDERICK M. HESS, PH.D, Director, 

Education Policy Studies, 1150 Seventeenth Street, NW, Washington, DC 20036. 

DEAR DR. HESS: Thank you for testifying at the Committee on Education and Labor’s hearing on, ‘‘Teacher Equity: Effective Teachers for All Children,’’ on September 30th, 2009. 
84 

Representative Cathy McMorris-Rogers (R-WA) has asked that you respond in 

writing to the following questions: 

1. This hearing provides an excellent opportunity to talk about special education 

and the quality of classroom instruction for special needs children, particularly 

whether the witnesses believe the theories for improving the quality of education 

remain true for special needs students. 

Do special needs students excel under the supervision of teachers with years of 

experience or rather do they succeed under a program that can improve the quality 

of education, despite a lack of experience? What role do resources, both monetary 

and non-monetary, play in improving the quality of classroom instruction, particularly for special needs students? For example, to what extent have states and school 

districts utilized the Teacher Incentive Fund Act or Race to the Top established in 

the stimulus package for special needs students? Are they even able to access funds? 

What additional incentives are necessary to encourage teachers to enter teaching 

field for special needs students? 

2. Last session, Congress passed the Higher Education Opportunity Act. I worked 

with my colleagues to see that language was added that would allow school districts 

to recruit content specialists from among mid-career professionals with expertise in 

math, science, and critical foreign languages. This amendment is consistent with the 

idea that effective teaching does not necessarily come from years of teaching but 

from practical or real world experiences. With our students falling below many other 

nations, especially in the fields of math and science, I would like to know from our 

witnesses what is being done at the local level to recruit these specialists? Has the 

Department of Education offered guidance or promulgated regulations to school districts on how to recruit? 

Please send an electronic version of your written response to the questions to the 

Committee by close of business on 10/21/09. If you have any questions, please do 

not hesitate to contact the Committee. 

Sincerely, 

GEORGE MILLER, Chairman. 

[VIA FACSIMILE], 

U.S. CONGRESS, 

Washington, DC, October 13, 2009. 

Ms. LINDA MURRAY, Acting Executive Director, 

Education Trust–West, 1814 Franklin Street, Suite 220, Oakland, CA 94612. 

DEAR MS. MURRAY: Thank you for testifying at the Committee on Education and 

Labor’s hearing on, ‘‘Teacher Equity: Effective Teachers for All Children,’’ on September 30th, 2009. 

Representative Cathy McMorris-Rogers (R-WA) has asked that you respond in 

writing to the following questions: 

1. This hearing provides an excellent opportunity to talk about special education 

and the quality of classroom instruction for special needs children, particularly 

whether the witnesses believe the theories for improving the quality of education 

remain true for special needs students. 

Do special needs students excel under the supervision of teachers with years of 

experience or rather do they succeed under a program that can improve the quality 

of education, despite a lack of experience? What role do resources, both monetary 

and non-monetary, play in improving the quality of classroom instruction, particularly for special needs students? For example, to what extent have states and school 

districts utilized the Teacher Incentive Fund Act or Race to the Top established in 

the stimulus package for special needs students? Are they even able to access funds? 

What additional incentives are necessary to encourage teachers to enter teaching 

field for special needs students? 

2. Last session, Congress passed the Higher Education Opportunity Act. I worked 

with my colleagues to see that language was added that would allow school districts 

to recruit content specialists from among mid-career professionals with expertise in 

math, science, and critical foreign languages. This amendment is consistent with the 

idea that effective teaching does not necessarily come from years of teaching but 

from practical or real world experiences. With our students falling below many other 

nations, especially in the fields of math and science, I would like to know from our 

witnesses what is being done at the local level to recruit these specialists? Has the 

Department of Education offered guidance or promulgated regulations to school districts on how to recruit? 
85 

Please send an electronic version of your written response to the questions to the 

Committee by close of business on 10/21/09. If you have any questions, please do 

not hesitate to contact the Committee. 

Sincerely, 

GEORGE MILLER, Chairman. 

[VIA FACSIMILE], 

U.S. CONGRESS, 

Washington, DC, October 13, 2009. 

Ms. MARGUERITE ROZA, PH.D., Research Associate Professor, 

University of Washington Center on Reinventing Public Education, 2101 N 34th 

Street, Suite 195, Seattle, WA 98103. 

DEAR DR. ROZA: Thank you for testifying at the Committee on Education and Labor’s hearing on, ‘‘Teacher Equity: Effective Teachers for All Children,’’ on September 30th, 2009. 

Representative Cathy McMorris-Rogers (R-WA) has asked that you respond in 

writing to the following questions: 

1. This hearing provides an excellent opportunity to talk about special education 

and the quality of classroom instruction for special needs children, particularly 

whether the witnesses believe the theories for improving the quality of education 

remain true for special needs students. 

Do special needs students excel under the supervision of teachers with years of 

experience or rather do they succeed under a program that can improve the quality 

of education, despite a lack of experience? What role do resources, both monetary 

and non-monetary, play in improving the quality of classroom instruction, particularly for special needs students? For example, to what extent have states and school 

districts utilized the Teacher Incentive Fund Act or Race to the Top established in 

the stimulus package for special needs students? Are they even able to access funds? 

What additional incentives are necessary to encourage teachers to enter teaching 

field for special needs students? 

2. Last session, Congress passed the Higher Education Opportunity Act. I worked 

with my colleagues to see that language was added that would allow school districts 

to recruit content specialists from among mid-career professionals with expertise in 

math, science, and critical foreign languages. This amendment is consistent with the 

idea that effective teaching does not necessarily come from years of teaching but 

from practical or real world experiences. With our students falling below many other 

nations, especially in the fields of math and science, I would like to know from our 

witnesses what is being done at the local level to recruit these specialists? Has the 

Department of Education offered guidance or promulgated regulations to school districts on how to recruit? 

Please send an electronic version of your written response to the questions to the 

Committee by close of business on 10/21/09. If you have any questions, please do 

not hesitate to contact the Committee. 

Sincerely, 

GEORGE MILLER, Chairman. 

[VIA FACSIMILE], 

U.S. CONGRESS, 

Washington, DC, October 13, 2009. 

Mr. DENNIS VAN ROEKEL, President, 

National Education Association, 1201 16th Street, NW, Washington, DC 20036. 

DEAR MR. ROEKEL: Thank you for testifying at the Committee on Education and 

Labor’s hearing on, ‘‘Teacher Equity: Effective Teachers for All Children,’’ on September 30th, 2009 

Representative Cathy McMorris-Rogers (R-WA) has asked that you respond in 

writing to the following questions: 

1. This hearing provides an excellent opportunity to talk about special education 

and the quality of classroom instruction for special needs children, particularly 

whether the witnesses believe the theories for improving the quality of education 

remain true for special needs students. 

Do special needs students excel under the supervision of teachers with years of 

experience or rather do they succeed under a program that can improve the quality 

of education, despite a lack of experience? What role do resources, both monetary 

and non-monetary, play in improving the quality of classroom instruction, particularly for special needs students? For example, to what extent have states and school 
86 

districts utilized the Teacher Incentive Fund Act or Race to the Top established in 

the stimulus package for special needs students? Are they even able to access funds? 

What additional incentives are necessary to encourage teachers to enter teaching 

field for special needs students? 

2. Last session, Congress passed the Higher Education Opportunity Act. I worked 

with my colleagues to see that language was added that would allow school districts 

to recruit content specialists from among mid-career professionals with expertise in 

math, science, and critical foreign languages. This amendment is consistent with the 

idea that effective teaching does not necessarily come from years of teaching but 

from practical or real world experiences. With our students falling below many other 

nations, especially in the fields of math and science, I would like to know from our 

witnesses what is being done at the local level to recruit these specialists? Has the 

Department of Education offered guidance or promulgated regulations to school districts on how to recruit? 

Please send an electronic version of your written response to the questions to the 

Committee by close of business on 10/21/09. If you have any questions, please do 

not hesitate to contact the Committee. 

Sincerely, 

GEORGE MILLER, Chairman. 

Mr. Van Roekel’s Responses to Questions Submitted for the Record 

DEAR CHAIRMAN MILLER: Thank you again for the opportunity to testify before the 

Education and Labor Committee last month on the important issue of ensuring effective teachers for every student. I am pleased to provide the following responses 

to the follow-up questions submitted by Representative McMorris Rodgers. 

1. This hearing provides an excellent opportunity to talk about special education 

and the quality of classroom instruction for special needs children, particularly 

whether the witnesses believe the theories for improving the quality of education 

remain true for special needs students. 

Do special needs students excel under the supervision of teachers with years of 

experience or rather do they succeed under a program that can improve the quality 

of education, despite a lack of experience? What role do resources, both monetary 

and non-monetary, play in improving the quality of classroom instruction, particularly for special needs students? For example, to what extent have states and school 

districts utilized the Teacher Incentive Fund Act or Race to the Top established in 

the stimulus package for special needs students? Are they even able to access funds? 

What additional incentives are necessary to encourage teachers to enter teaching 

field for special needs students? 

RESPONSE: First, we believe it is premature to discuss how states and school 

districts have spent funds under the ‘‘Teacher Incentive Fund or Race to the Top 

established in the stimulus package,’’ as the U.S. Department of Education has not 

yet released final applications. The Department, however, may be able to provide 

Congress with more information about its timetable for release of those applications 

and the timing of availability of funds. 

In response to the remainder of the question, we offer the following information. 

To provide quality instruction for the highly diverse population of students with disabilities, educators—including general education teachers, special educators, 

paraeducators, and administrators—need specialized, comprehensive preparation to 

teach special-needs students and students in high-poverty, high-minority schools effectively. Educational researchers and practitioners agree that they also need continuing professional development that is intensive and tailored to their specific 

needs. 

NEA advocated for improvement of the quality of instruction through better professional development by clearly earmarking IDEA ‘‘Part D’’ funds for enhanced professional development and training. 

All students, including students with disabilities, need and deserve access to accomplished educators. Experience matters as well as the educators’ ability to impart 

their knowledge to all of their students, including their students with unique needs. 

The educational research and policy communities increasingly agree that quality 

teachers: 

• Know their subject matter; 

• Know how to teach that subject matter; and 

• Understand how students learn and what it takes to reach them. 

To ensure every student the opportunity to learn from a quality teacher, we must 

support teachers along every point in the Teacher Development Continuum: 
87 

Protect and promote high standards for entry into the profession 

• Recruit talented and committed professionals to the teaching profession and develop a teacher workforce that reflects the diversity of the student population and 

nation as a whole. • All teachers entering the profession must demonstrate subject matter competence, pedagogical skills, and teaching ability before entering the classroom as a 

teacher-of-record. Alternative route programs must maintain the same standards as 

other teacher preparation programs and must be equal in rigor and content. • Teachers of special-needs students and students in high-needs schools require 

specialized preparation that equips them for successful practice. 

Support and measure new teacher performance 

• Policies and funding should focus on comprehensive new teacher induction systems that treat new teachers as ‘‘residents’’ or ‘‘interns.’’ This would mean more support and training, less demanding classroom assignments, and significantly more focused performance assessments for all beginning teachers, regardless of their preparation and routes to licensure. 

Improve teaching and learning conditions 

• Teaching and learning conditions—time, teacher empowerment, school leadership, professional development, and facilities and resources—are critical to increasing student achievement and retaining teachers. • Teachers must be intimately involved in every phase of their ongoing training, 

with high-quality professional development programs focusing on pedagogy and 

helping teachers develop the deep understanding of how students learn. • Principals should also be provided with high-quality professional development 

so they can serve as instructional leaders in their schools and work collaboratively 

with teachers to improve student learning. 

Strengthen teacher evaluation systems 

• New policies and funding should create teacher evaluation systems that are specifically designed to enhance teacher effectiveness. Evaluation systems must be 

based on clear standards, and incorporate an array of measures to assess teacher 

practice and teacher contributions to student success. Information from evaluations 

should be used to modify induction practices and professional development in order 

to meet learning objectives for both students and teachers. 

Enhance and reward teacher skills and knowledge 

• Provide teachers with job-embedded professional learning opportunities and create systems for regular collaboration among educators within schools and districts 

to improve teaching practice. • Ensure a $40,000 minimum salary for all teachers in every school in the country. • Provide financial recognition to individual teachers who demonstrate accomplished teaching skills (such as National Board Certified Teachers), financial incentives for teaching in high-needs schools, additional compensation to those who take 

on additional responsibilities (such as mentor teachers), and school-wide bonuses for 

improved student learning. 

Ensure that students in high-poverty and other hard-to-staff schools have access to 

quality teachers 

• Provide an array of incentives to attract and retain qualified teachers to such 

schools. 

• Improve teaching and learning conditions, including by reducing class sizes and 

ensuring safe modern facilities, providing state-of-the-art teaching resources, investing in effective school leadership training, and assuring teachers the opportunities 

to work together to address student learning needs and challenges. 

2. Last session, Congress passed the Higher Education Opportunity Act. I worked 

with my colleagues to see that language was added that would allow school districts 

to recruit content specialists from among mid-career professionals with expertise in 

math, science, and critical foreign languages. This amendment is consistent with the 

idea that effective teaching does not necessarily come from years of teaching but 

from practical or real world experiences. With our students falling below many other 

nations, especially in the fields of math and science, I would like to know from our 

witnesses what is being done at the local level to recruit these specialists? Has the 

Department of Education offered guidance or promulgated regulations to school districts on how to recruit? 

RESPONSE: As an initial matter, we believe the premise of one of the statements 

in the inquiry presents a false dichotomy—educators may have deep content knowl-
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edge but that does not mean that they are necessarily effective at imparting that 

knowledge to students. As stated above, quality teachers: 

• Know their subject matter; 

• Know how to teach that subject matter; and 

• Understand how students learn and what it takes to reach them. 

NEA supports nontraditional routes to teacher licensure as long as these different 

‘‘pipelines’’ are equal in rigor and require that every teacher candidate meet identical standards and measures to receive a professional teaching license in a given 

state. While each pipeline utilizes different strategies in different sequential order, 

they all share the same core elements: 

• Adequate basic skills in reading, writing, and computation. 

• Preparation in and demonstration of subject matter knowledge in core teaching 

area, with an academic major in that same teaching area. 

• Preparation in and demonstration of professional and pedagogical skills, knowledge, and ability. 

• Supervised clinical practice via an internship, student teaching, and/or mentoring program. 

• Participation in a new teacher induction program that includes mentoring from 

a qualified teacher in addition to support and/or mentoring from university faculty, 

school administrators, and new teacher peers. 

• Full professional licensure only after demonstrating effective classroom practice 

as a teacher-of-record. 

The Department of Education has several initiatives that encourage interest in 

careers in mathematics and science and promote pursuing a career as a teacher of 

mathematics or science. 

For example, in 2006, two student grant programs—the Academic Competitiveness Grant (ACG) and National Science and Mathematics Access to Retain Talent 

(National SMART Grant) Programs—were enacted to meet the growing need for improved math and science instruction. These grants encourage students to take more 

challenging courses in high school—making success in college more likely, according 

to research—and to pursue college majors in high demand in the global economy, 

such as science, mathematics, technology, engineering and critical foreign languages. The final regulations can be accessed here: http://www.ed.gov/legislation/ 

FedRegister/finrule/2007-4/102907a.html. Additionally, more information can be 

accessed on the Department’s website here: http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ 

ope/ac-smart.html#. 

As an example of a program designed to recruit quality educators in mathematics 

and science, we would refer you to the Teacher Education Assistance for College and 

Higher Education (TEACH) Grant Program that provides grants of up to $4,000 per 

year to students who intend to teach in a high need field in a public or private elementary or secondary school that serves students from low-income families. High 

need fields include mathematics and science, as well as other fields such as special 

education. More information on that program can be accessed here: http:// 

studentaid.ed.gov/students/attachments/siteresources/TEACH%2009-10— 

tagged.pdf, with more information available here: http://studentaid.ed.gov/ 

PORTALSWebApp/students/english/TEACH.jsp. Regulations for this program were 

finalized in 2008. 

We would also like to highlight an additional barrier to recruitment of mid-career 

professionals into the teaching field—the Windfall Elimination Provision. This unfair offset reduces by as much as half Social Security benefits earned in the private 

sector if the worker takes a public sector job not covered by Social Security. Educators in 15 states do not pay into Social Security and receive a public pension upon 

retirement. However, any Social Security benefits they may have earned in private 

sector jobs will be subject to this offset and significantly cut. Many mid-career professionals knowingly take salary cuts when they move into teaching. However, they 

do not expect to jeopardize their retirement security in making this career move. 

As a result, the WEP discourages the very sort of recruitment the question seeks 

to encourage. This offset, along with the equally unfair Government Pension Offset, 

need to be repealed both to ensure retirement security for public servants and to 

help encourage recruitment of talented individuals into the teaching profession. 

We thank you for the opportunity to provide this additional information. We 

would be happy to respond to any additional questions from the Committee. 

[Whereupon, at 1:37 p.m., the committee was adjourned.] 

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