Melissa Bailey Photo
Principal Karen Lott evaluates a teacher at Brennan/Rogers.
ConnCAN’s new leader wants the state to replicate New Haven’s way of grading teachers — and take it to the next level.
That’s one goal Patrick Riccards announced as he takes over New Haven-based education watchdog group as CEO. He outlined the organization’s legislative goals in a recent conversation at his Willow Street office.
His remarks come as momentum builds around a statewide effort to create a new way of grading teachers based on student performance.
“We need to look at what New Haven has done,” as the state moves forward with that effort, Riccards said. “That becomes the model of what can happen at the state.”
The announcement comes at a key moment for education policy: With New Haven’s own Stefan Pryor at the helm of the state education department, Gov. Dannel Malloy has dubbed 2012 “the year for education reform,” promising to overhaul the way schools are funded and incentivize reforms.
Malloy recently unveiled a set of principles around which education reform will take shape and plans to overhaul the education department. Riccards commended Malloy for “bold ideas” and offered more specific proposals for what ConnCAN would like to see.
Melissa Bailey Photo
Riccards (pictured) outlined two main foci for the legislative session that runs Feb. 8 to May 9: educator quality and “fair funding.” (Click here to read ConnCAN’s priorities for 2012.)
T‑Vals
On the first point, he called for the state to establish a new way of grading teachers and other educators based on student performance. The state, he said, should look to New Haven as a model in this regard.
He was referring to New Haven’s new evaluation systems, which debuted in the 2010-11 school year. Teachers and principals are graded on a scale of 1 (“needs improvement”) to 5 (“exemplary”). Teachers’ scores come from classroom observations and goals they set for their kids, based largely on growth on student test scores. The program, made possible by a landmark 2009 teachers contract that welcomed reforms, makes it easier for the district to fire low-performing teachers if they don’t improve throughout the year, given extra supports.
After Washington D.C., New Haven was one of the first districts nationwide to design a teacher evaluation system based on student performance. Since then President Obama has spurred states to follow suit through his Race To The Top initiative. So far, New Haven is the only district state-wide with a rigorous evaluation system based on student performance, Riccards said.
Connecticut vowed to adopt a new system if it won a competitive Race to the Top grant; however it lost the contest and never followed through with the reforms.
Connecticut now has no option but to follow New Haven’s footsteps, Riccards said, because of more pressure from the federal government. According to the No Child Left Behind Act, all states are required to administer state standardized tests and achieve math and reading proficiency on those tests by 2014 — or face penalties. Connecticut, like many other states, is far from reaching that goal, Riccards noted. To qualify for a waiver of that requirement, states have to establish an educator evaluation system based on student performance.
New Haven has a “promising” teacher evaluation system that is “starting to demonstrate the signs of success,” Riccards observed. At the end of the first year of the program, 34 low-performing teachers left the district.
Riccards called for the state to establish an annual evaluation system that — like New Haven’s — would allow teachers to be fired based on poor evaluations regardless of whether they have tenure, and would reward high-performing teachers with more responsibility.
He commended the work of the Performance Evaluation Advisory Council, a group representing teachers, school administrators and school boards, which came forward Wednesday with a “breakthrough” agreement on how to grade teachers. PEAC recommends grading teachers based partly on test scores, as well as other measures of student performance.
Riccards called the agreement “an important first step.” Now it needs to be approved by the state Board of Education. Legislators may choose to take some leadership in creating the system. If that happens, Riccards said, the challenge will be to put that new system into action. He said New Haven may offer some leadership in that regard.
“New Haven has really charted the course in not just how to develop the policy, but how to successfully implement it,” Riccards said. “We still see the possibility and the opportunity for New Haven to show the way in terms of how a school district and the teachers union can come together to implement a meaningful teacher evaluation system.”
PEAC did not address creating principal evaluations to follow suit with new teacher evaluations, Riccards added — another area New Haven has led the state.
Beyond following New Haven, Riccards also called for the state to take the evaluations to the next level. They should be part of “all staffing decisions,” including layoffs, he argued. That would avoid the situation in Hartford last year, where less-senior teachers who were doing well at specialized schools were bumped out of their jobs by teachers with more seniority, he said. He also called for a teacher’s tenure status to be reviewed every five years, and for teachers to remained tenured only if they have satisfactory evaluations. All districts would be required to report how many teachers were scored in each performance category.
And Riccards argued that evaluations should play a role in state-governed certification process for teachers and administrators.
Certification should be “based on demonstrated effectiveness on the job, not on seat time or course credits,” he argued.
The premise underpinning these reforms, Riccard said, is that strong educators are the “most important building block” of every classroom and school.
Gov. Malloy has made overhauling educator evaluations one of six top priorities for the year ahead. He called for “a fair system that values skill and effectiveness over seniority and tenure.” A spokesman for the education department declined comment on ConnCAN’s specific proposals.
Malloy spokesman Andrew Doba said only this in response: “The ideas being put forward by many different stakeholders have contributed to the dialogue around education reform. The governor has been clear that we should not and will not accept half-measures and repackaged versions of the status quo, and looks forward to working with all stakeholders on a reform agenda that will get our kids ready to compete in the 21st Century economy.”
“Fair Funding”
The second major push ConnCAN plans to make is in the area of funding.
“The way we fund public schools in Connecticut is broken,” declared Riccards.
He called for a “weighted student funding system” based not on the number of people living in a town, but on the number of students in the district. Funding should be based on the number of students, with extra money allotted for poverty and “students with greater learning needs.”
One aspect of “fairness” concerns how charter schools are funded. Charter schools like Amistad Academy in New Haven get paid through a line-item that allots them $9,400 per student. That’s about $3,000 less than New Haven Public Schools gets per student, Riccards said.
ConnCAN has long fought to end this disparity through a proposal called “money follow the child” — click here to read about a battle at the state last year between charter proponents like ConnCAN and labor advocates. That quest, so far, has been unsuccessful.
A state task force is looking at ways to change the Education Cost Sharing grant that funds school districts. Riccards said instead of tackling fundamental inequities of ECS, the group “continues to put off the toughest decisions” around school funding. The group “missed an opportunity” in the interim recommendations it issued this week, Riccards said. “The clock is ticking on the core issues that need to be addressed.”
Riccards said the funding models he’s calling for would not — as many fear — cut away at the money sent to New Haven Public Schools.
“New Haven would be one district that needs more resources,” not less, he said.
However, he cautioned that there’s no evidence that just throwing more money at a district will fix the problems of urban education. He supports the state’s quest to create new funding streams designed to incentivize reforms. For example, he supports the state creating an “innovation fund” that districts could apply to to fund specific reforms in their schools.
As the state reorganizes its education department, special focus will fall on so-called “turnaround” or low-performing schools. Education Chief Pryor has said he’ll create a position just for someone to think about new solutions to help turnarounds.
New Haven has a growing number of these “turnarounds,” some sanctioned by the federal government and some by the city’s local reform effort. Some are funded through President Obama’s $3.5 billion School Improvement Grant program aimed at revamping the country’s lowest performing schools.
New Haven got $7.38 million in 2010 for this purpose: $2.1 million each for Wilbur Cross and James Hillhouse High and $1.59 million each for Hill Central Music Academy and Brennan/Rogers, which are both K‑8 schools. More money followed the subsequent year for Roberto Clemente Leadership Academy to pay for an outside company to take over the school.
Nationally, turnaround work has been “mixed at best,” Riccards remarked. “Hundreds of millions of dollars has gone through SIG with little to show for it.” He called on the state’s turnaround schools to form a stronger network together to tackle the problems facing their schools.
He also called on schools to create a “common chart of accounts,” so that their budgets can be compared from district to district. For example, he said, a reading coach might be considered a “teacher” in one budget but “central office staff” in another, which makes it impossible to compare how districts are spending their money.
New Face At The Capitol
Riccards, who’s new to Connecticut, plans to pitch these ideas at the Capitol for the next four months and beyond. A New Jersey native, he spent most of his career in Washington D.C. He said he got his start as a press secretary on Capitol Hill, working for former U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley of New Jersey and U.S. Rep. Robert Byrd of West Virginia. He went on to work in communications and political campaigns before moving into consulting.
He entered the education field in 1999, as chief of staff to the National Reading Panel, the research foundation for No Child Left Behind. He went on to consult with the American Federation of Teachers, the Broad Foundation and New Leaders for New Schools. In 2008, he started his own communications firm, which consulted to groups like the National Governor’s Association.
Riccards, who’s 38, took over on Oct. 17 from former CEO Alex Johnston, who remains active on the city school board. He took over on Oct. 17. He said his wife and two small children plan to move up to Connecticut next month to join him. They plan to live in Branford and send their kids to public school there.
At the Capitol, he’ll be joined by a ConnCAN staff lobbyist and another lobbyist hired on contract. They’ll comprise one of the strongest statewide voices for school reform outside of organized labor.
On many issues, ConnCAN finds itself on the same page as the governor this year: For example, Malloy’s pledge to “unleash innovation by removing red tape and other barriers to success, especially in high-performing schools and districts.”
As he looks forward at 2012, Riccards said he’s “particularly heartened” by the governor’s stated commitment to education reform.
“The sense of urgency has never been as it is now,” Riccards said.
The governor’s “rallying cry” will only be successful, he said, if everyone “comes together to take advantage of this once-in-a-generation opportunity.”
I'd suggest the documentary 'Waiting for Superman' for anyone who cares about this subject. It does a great job of showing how the system has been failing our children (which of course becomes us) for the past two generations. The grip of national teachers unions, who care more about adults than children, must be broken.