News Archives

Looking for the latest articles and updates from the field? Check out the news page.

Creating R.I. jobs will require serious action on education, Providence Journal

Jim Kadamus, CTAC Board of Directors member and former deputy commissioner at the New York State Department of Education, responds to Rhode Island’s education and work-force agenda in a Providence Journal commentary.

CTAC’s new blog: the stories behind the headlines

CTAC’s blog conveys our thoughts and observations about the realities of practice and policy and the conditions that hobble or help improvements in teaching and learning. Read it now.

Making the most of teacher evaluations [Editorial], Baltimore Sun

Maryland is, indeed, far ahead of most if not all states both in building support for the [teacher and principal] evaluations and in using them to support the instructional process. But many challenges remain.

Real Progress in Maryland report examines educators, WBAL-TV

A state report just out tracks the progress of how Maryland teachers and principals are adjusting to a new set of evaluations. “It actually gives us our areas of strengths in which we can capitalize, but it also points out our areas of needed improvement,” said state schools Superintendent Lillian Lowery.

Study Shows Progress In Maryland On Teacher And Principal Evaluations, WYPR

A new independent report reveals that Maryland teachers and principals are feeling more comfortable with new evaluation methods that seek to incorporate student achievement.

ABC News and ITN Productions (UK) videos on CTAC’s work in Maryland and Delhi released nationally.

Real Progress in Maryland

A new study shows the Maryland State Department of Education (MSDE) is making significant strides in guiding and supporting the implementation of Student Learning Objectives as well as a teacher and principal evaluation system statewide.

Image: US Dept of Education, Original: https://flic.kr/p/nrSH9a https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

Any impact from professional development?

One of the greatest challenges for school districts of all sizes is to determine the impact of professional development on student achievement and teacher effectiveness. Given the increased emphasis on educator effectiveness and efficient use of resources, addressing this challenge has never been more important.

Landmark Partnership in Maryland

Leaders of eight Maryland education organizations are joining together to support the implementation of Student Learning Objectives (SLOs), a key component of the new teacher and principal evaluation system. This level of collaboration is unprecedented at the statewide level.

Md. groups to collaborate on evaluation process for teachers, principals, The Washington Post

Maryland education officials, teachers unions and other education organizations signed a written agreement to collaborate on methods for assessing classroom effectiveness, a central element of the state’s evaluation system for teachers and principals.

Maryland Officials, Unions Reach Accord on Teacher-Evaluation Components, Education Week

Leaders from eight education organizations agree to improve supports for teachers and principals as they develop goals for student academic growth. The goals, known as student learning objectives, foster a spirit of collaboration and provide actionable data for improvement, rather than punishment.

Teacher Pay: Reform or Stagnation?

Compensation can be a key lever in attracting and retaining high-quality teachers. Yet, increases in average teacher pay have remained stagnant or have increased only minimally in states and districts across the U.S. Read about the challenges states and districts face when creating teacher compensation systems.

The Common Core and the Unknown Knowns

So much attention has been focused on the Common Core and its implications for states and school districts across the nation. At this juncture, what is most important is identifying what is needed to support front-line educators and ensure high quality implementation.

primary school educator helping a student in class

The Common Core and the Unknown Knowns, The Huffington Post

“Teaching this way is an art. As such, it requires learning from the masters.” Read more about the Common Core and its implications for states and school districts across the nation in this blog post by CTAC Senior Associate Joan McRobbie.

Celebrating 35 years of innovation, quality and integrity

Our first 35 years are just the start. In partnership with states, districts, communities and responsive philanthropy, we continue to be at the forefront of innovation in supporting significant growth in student learning and addressing root causes of poverty.

Sustaining Turnaround: Moving from Last to First

The Murkland School in the Lowell Public Schools (Massachusetts) is now being recognized for sustaining its significant improvements in student academic growth over a three year period.

Retool State-to-District Intervention for Better Outcomes, Phi Delta Kappan

Moves by state education departments to improve struggling districts are hampered by a focus on tactics rather than strategy, insufficient capacity building, and community input.

A New Approach to Professional Development

Customized professional development and support are critical to educators’ success in improving their practice and increasing student achievement. But what approaches to customizing professional development appear to be most effective?

Major Community Victory

As a result of many hours, days and months of organizing by Direct Action for Rights and Equality members, staff and the community at large, Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chaffee signed the Ban the Box legislation into law, making Rhode Island the 10th state to ban criminal-history questions on job applications.

Study: R.I. Teacher Evaluations Seen as Punitive, Providence Journal

The new teacher evaluations should not be tied to teacher certification. There needs to be a new dialogue in Rhode Island.

SLO report available as eBook

CTAC’s study, It’s More Than Money, examines SLOs as a key means of measuring and improving teacher effectiveness and student academic growth.

Helping teachers be more effective with more students

Findings from CTAC’s 14 years of field-tested practice and research on SLOs underscore the strengths that SLOs bring to teacher evaluation and compensation systems. They also shed light on how to craft federal, state and district policies that support successful implementation.

Students Show Progress Under Teacher-Bonus System, Education Week

A performance-bonus system that made use of “student learning objectives”—academic growth goals set by teachers in consultation with their principals—helped improve student achievement in schools using the measure, concludes a new study.

STEM and Student Learning Objectives

The Washoe County School District, the second largest district in Nevada, and CTAC are partnering on a new five-year $25.5 million Teacher Incentive Fund grant to improve student achievement by increasing the number of highly effective teachers and principals, with a special focus on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).

Groundbreaking Statewide Campaign

Through community organizing, the many victories of Ex-prisoners and Prisoners Organizing for Community Advancement (EPOCA) include helping lead and win a groundbreaking 6-year statewide campaign to reform the Criminal Offender Record Information System in Massachusetts.

Landmark Union-Management Collaboration and SLOs

A partnership of California’s Delhi Unified School District and CTAC has been awarded $8.1 million from the federal Teacher Incentive Fund to improve student achievement by attracting, developing and retaining effective educators in the district’s high need schools. The Delhi TIF proposal was the 7th highest ranked.

Student-centered Teacher Evaluations Focus on Learning Goals, EdSource

By now the consensus is clear: California needs a better, more systematic way of supporting and ensuring teacher effectiveness.

Breaking New Ground in Evaluation and Compensation Reform

The Educational Service Center of Central Ohio and partner LEAs are demonstrating that a collaborative developmental process, with the leadership of teachers and administrators, can result in a fair and transparent method of using Student Learning Objectives to measure student growth in new evaluation and compensation systems.

Meet Our New Grantees

Seven member-led non-profit organizations that engage in crucial community organizing in low-income communities have been selected from a strong pool of applicants to participate in the Small Grants and Technical Assistance Program.

Race to the Top – District Competition

Focused squarely on personalizing student learning, the Race to the Top – District Competition has explicit goals of closing the achievement gap and ensuring that each student is college and career ready.

SLO Q&A

SLOs that identify targets but do not require that teachers think through the content and instructional strategies to reach those targets are missing a key ingredient for success—the analysis of practice.

Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) – Round 4 Coming Attractions

The proposed TIF 4 regulations place emphasis on the core elements of both performance-based compensation and human capital management systems. Measures of student and teacher success under both TIF and new teacher and principal evaluation systems need to include measures of student academic growth.

Using SLOs in Teacher Evaluation Systems

Besides providing accountability, Student Learning Objectives provide instructional support. Driven by teachers themselves, they help strengthen teaching and improve learning.

Student Learning Objectives and Teacher Evaluation

Increased awareness of how much good teaching matters has led to a national momentum to find new ways to evaluate teaching. But how do you provide equity to teachers when not all subjects or grades are tested?

CTAC Partners Make Headlines

CTAC congratulates two of its partners whose successes in reform and student achievement gains made them headliners.

Evaluation of TIF Projects

Serious efforts to improve teacher compensation systems and student achievement must be guided, both in practice and in policy, by evidence and analysis of what is working and what changes need to be made to continually improve the district.

Financial Sustainability and TIF

When preparing for financial sustainability in performance-based systems, it’s essential to use human resource and financial modeling to anticipate what the changed teaching force will look like over a period of years and what these changes will cost.

More on Student Learning Objectives and TIF

Student learning objectives help teachers bring more science to their art, strengthen instructional support to the classrooms, and improve the quality of the outcome.

Student Learning Objectives and TIF

Why do teacher-developed student learning objectives work? They connect directly to student learning, put the frontline educator in the driver’s seat, and enable teachers and principals to become more systematic and strategic in their instructional decisions.

Evaluation of TIF Projects and Compensation Reform

When the high stakes universes of money and performance dovetail, the district and union/association need an evaluation that is credible, has a basis in science, and provides causal evidence to guide the compensation reform.

The Six Cornerstones of Effective Teacher Incentive Reform

The six cornerstones provide the framework for successfully implementing a compensation reform that contributes to and rewards effective teaching.

The Buck Stops Here: Tying What Students Learn to What Educators Earn, Phi Delta Kappan

Performance-based compensation presents enormous potential as a catalyst for districtwide change. But that will happen only if we manage to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.

Data Rich But Information Poor, Education Week

Data just don’t leap off the page and convert themselves to high-quality, useful information. It takes time and skill to organize, analyze, and interpret data properly, and these assets are in short supply in today’s educational landscape.

The Power of Community Organizing

The victories of the Latin American Workers Project include establishing a landmark strategic alliance with Local 10 of the Labor International Union of North America to unionize day laborers and provide access to health care, workers compensation and job training.

It’s More Than Money

It’s More Than Money, commissioned by the Center for American Progress, describes the six cornerstones of performance-based compensation and provides the basis for developing district and state capacity to implement and sustain innovative practices, and to be accountable for improving student achievement.