CA Teacher of the Year!
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LVEA Exec Board Nominations
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Please use this form to self nominate or to nominate another person for the LVEA Exec Board.
LVEA EX BOARD_NOMINATIONS_2012
Great video of one of our teachers
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Agoura High Teacher, Thomas Beaton, dancing his heart out!
Governor’s Budget Proposal for Edcuation
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Governor Brown’s Budget Proposal
Articles on Effective Principals
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Study: Principal Turnover Bodes Poorly for Schools
About 20 percent of principals new to a school leave that posting within one or two years, leaving behind a school that generally continues on a downward academic slide after their departure, according to a study released last week by the RAND Corp. on behalf of New York City-based New Leaders. “The underlying idea is that churn is not good,” said Gina Schuyler Ikemoto, an author of the report and the executive director of research and policy development for New Leaders, formerly known as New Leaders for New Schools. The nonprofit group recruits and trains principals to work in urban districts.
However, the answer is not as simple as just allowing or encouraging those principals to remain in place, she said. “In some cases, the solution is to give folks more time,” Ms. Ikemoto said, but policymakers should make sure they’re selecting the very best candidates for those positions from the start. RAND Education, a unit of the Santa Monica, Calif.-based RAND Corp., gathered its data from four sources: a web-based survey of 65 principals administered in 2008, a set of 20 case studies of schools led by first-year principals; district-level data on principal placements for 519 principals, and student-level achievement test scores. For the purposes of this research, first-year principals included professionals in their first school leadership position, as well as principals who were new to a school but may have been principals elsewhere.
Broad Mix
The mix of principals studied included those who came through New Leaders training, as well as those who attended other leadership programs. The data came from districts that partner with New Leaders: Memphis (Tenn.) Public Schools; Chicago Public Schools; New York City Public Schools; the District of Columbia Public Schools; Baltimore City Public Schools; and the Oakland Unified School District in California.
The study found that of the 519 principals studied, almost 12 percent left in the first year and nearly 11 percent left in the second year. Principals in schools that had met their adequate yearly progress achievement targets in the years prior to their placement were less likely to leave, as were principals placed in startup schools.
New principals were more likely to leave if test scores dipped in their first year. And when those schools hired a new principal, they usually continued to underperform in the following year, the report noted.
Richard A. Flanary, the senior director of the office of professional development for the Reston, Va.-based National Association of Secondary School Principals, said he was not surprised about the “churn” rate of new principals, nor that the turnover was correlated with low student test scores.
“It takes at least three years for a principal to really get the lay of the land, and feel comfortable enough to make progress,” Mr. Flanary said. But what happens more often, he said, is that weaker, inexperienced principals are brought into a school, prompting an exodus of experienced teachers, making the job of turning around a struggling school that much harder.
The survey also delved into how leaders allocated their time to see if there was a connection between how much time they spent on certain tasks and student achievement. All the principals said they focused most or all of their time on: promoting data use, observing classrooms, creating a healthy school culture, forming leadership teams, and promoting teacher professional development.
However, there seemed to be no link between how much time a principal spent on those areas and student success. But student test scores rose if principals were able to spend their time on those tasks effectively, the report says.
Effective Use of Time
For example, the case studies noted that principals whose schools ultimately experienced gains had “some success” or “a great deal of success” in implementing their key strategies. “It seems like principals know what to do, but we need to do a better job teaching them how to do it well,” Ms. Ikemoto said. The results also point to a common element among successful principals: high levels of staff cohesion. One way to promote that cohesion is to respect prior practices and culture, the study suggests.
“Rather than changing everything or making independent decisions, principals and teachers reported that principals were more successful in garnering teacher buy-in when they consulted with staff to gain information on perceived strengths and weaknesses at the school. Beyond the initial diagnosis, these principals honored school philosophies by incorporating them into their school-improvement strategies,” it notes.
Susan M. Gates, another co-author and a senior economist for RAND, said that principal training programs should focus on developing school leaders as “human capital managers.”
“The principal can have great ideas, be great at data-driven decisionmaking, great even at instruction,” she said. But helping the staff buy into major changes is a subtle skill, she said. “You have to be able to get people on board with your vision
Study: Good Principals Make a Difference in High-Poverty Schools
By Sarah D. Sparks on February 28, 2012 11:37 AM
From guest blogger Jaclyn Zubrzycki
How important is school leadership? Where are the most effective leaders, and how can we tell that they—and not circumstance—are responsible for their schools’ success?
“Estimating the Effect of Leaders on Public Sector Productivity: The Case of School Principals,” a new working paper from Gregory F. Branch of the University of Texas, Dallas, Eric A. Hanushek of Stanford University, and Steven G. Rivkin of Amherst College sets out to answer these and other questions about effective principals, using data on 7,429 principals from the University of Texas, Dallas’s Texas Schools Project. The report focuses in particular on principal transitions and on principals in schools with large numbers of disadvantaged students, to test the argument, echoed in public debate on education, that leadership is “especially important in revitalizing failing schools.”
Overall, the researchers find wide variation in principal quality. The variation is greater among schools with large concentrations of low-income students. The researchers found that high-quality principals—as determined by a value-added model that includes student achievement and school characteristics—had a large positive impact on their students’ achievement: “A principal in the top 16 percent of the quality distribution…will lead annually to student gains that are .05 standard deviations or more higher than average for all students in the school (emphasis is the authors’).”
They also tended to be associated with teacher turnover in the lowest-performing grades in their schools—indicating, perhaps, that these principals are trying to replace low-performing teachers with more-effective ones. The report finds that schools with a high number of low-income students are more likely to have first-year principals. First-year principals are also more likely to be present in schools with low achievement as measured by scores on the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS).
An interesting note is that “the operation of the labor market…does not appear to screen out the least effective principals. Instead they frequently just move to different schools.” The researchers call for a separate investigation into this issue, which brings to mind this recent Texas-to-D.C. principal transition.
Does this ring true? Where are the effective leaders in your district?
SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium
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Please take a few minutes to take this survey. The results will impact the future state tests in CA.
NEA letter to House of Representatives
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Letter sent to the House of Representatives by NEA
Governor’s Pension Reform
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Pension Reform-
Recently, the Governor released a twelve point plan to “fix” the pension system:
1) Requires that employees and employers pay the same amount into their pension fund (already happening in STRS for the most part, employees pay 8% and employers pay 8.25%);
2) Creates a “hybrid” plan for NEW employees- they will pay into their regular pension, plus a 401K type of plan, and Social Security. (How this will impact STRS isn’t known, we do not pay into SS);
3) Increase retirement age to 67. (For STRS it is currently 61.5)
4) Requires retirement to be based on average of last three years of salary- no more single year. (STRS does this for people who work less than 25 years now, this would change the rules for those working more than 25 years);
5) Bases retirement on base salary only, no longer can use bonuses, unplanned overtime, unused sick leave or vacation time, and “other perks” (STRS currently allows sick days to be used);
6) Limits post-retirement work in the PUBLIC sector to 960 hours or 120 days (This could end emeritus and limit much of the work our members do post-retirement);
7) Felons no longer can get retirement. (A bit of a “no duh”);
8 ) No retroactive increases to retirement (as far as I know, this doesn’t happen in STRS);
9) Disallows employers to take “pension holidays” where they stop paying into the system (STRS does not allow this);
10) No more “air time”, allowing a person to buy service credit for years he/she did not work (STRS allows a form of this, currently, a person can buy years of service for service done outside of the state or in private school- not sure if this would end this practice);
11) Adds two independent people to the pension boards (CalPERS is specifically mentioned in this portion, not sure if STRS will have the same thing happen);
12) State workers must work a minimum of 15 years to qualify for health benefits and must work 25 years to maximize the benefit (this is negotiated locally for us, it should not impact us).
Measure K Website
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Please take a look at the Measure K website.
Sign Up for NEA Opening Bell
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This is a great feature that NEA offers to keep you abreast of education in the country.
Hit the “Register” button on the right-hand side
