Early Ed Watch

When Michelle Rhee was chancellor of DCPS, one of her chief accomplishments was negotiating a new contract with the teachers union that included a new teacher evaluation system. The system, called IMPACT, was designed to keep good teachers in the classroom through incentives like merit pay and weed out the bad by giving the district the power to fire teachers who were repeatedly ranked at the bottom.

IMPACT rates teachers on a variety of metrics, from their students' test scores to classroom observations. It has been both controversial and held up by education reformers as a model for how other districts could begin evaluating teachers in a holistic way. In some ways, the methods for observing teachers are similar to those of the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS), the Danielson Framework for Teaching and other evaluation systems that are catching on in the early childhood world in that it both evaluates teachers and gives them opportunities for feedback and mentoring. 

DC has been using this system since 2009, so two school years have passed since it began. This month, The New Teacher Project released a report that addresses important questions about how the new teacher evaluation system is playing out. In this podcast, Dan Weisberg of The New Teacher Project and Anne Hyslop of the New America Foundation discuss the new report and what it says about the future of the teaching workforce. Maggie Severns hosts.

Click here to listen to the podcast. You can also subscribe to our podcasts in iTunes, and download previous podcasts from our online archive.

What might President Barack Obama’s second term mean for education? In short: four more years. Education Secretary Arne Duncan—a member of Obama’s Chicago circle, with whom the president played basketball on Election Day—has indicated he would like to stay in his job, and Obama’s campaign trumpeting of education policies such as Race to the Top show the administration’s aggressive approach to competitive grant programs, meant to cajole states and districts into embracing favored reform strategies, will likely continue.

Early learning advocates will be pleased programs such as Head Start are less likely to be severely cut with a Democratic Senate and White House to help safeguard them. And the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Education now have the chance to continue to forge needed links between their agencies. But those who thought Obama’s early education policies were “too little too late” might remain disappointed. The president made almost no effort to outline a plan for early learning during this campaign, especially compared to the promises of 2008, and has not specifically indicated what he proposes to do for the youngest learners. That said, there are murmurs from Obama insiders that a broad-spectrum approach to early childhood education, including the often-forgotten early grades (K-3) of elementary school, could emerge as a theme in the second term. A Tuesday night press release from the nation’s largest teachers’ union, the National Education Association, hinted at a desire to hold the president accountable for making headway on early childhood investments. “Throughout the campaign,” the statement said, “the president pledged to invest in education—especially in early childhood education—and to make higher education more affordable.” 

Last week the National Journal Education Experts blog asked about Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s first term legacy.

In my response, I highlight Duncan’s work to set the stage for improving early learning from birth through 3rd grade. I also suggest priorities for Duncan should he get the opportunity for a second term:

“While we [Americans] celebrate equality of opportunity, we live in a society in which birth is becoming fate,” writes Nobel-prize winning economist James Heckman as part of a stimulating debate in this month’s Boston Review forum, “Promoting Social Mobility” a discussion about using early intervention to reduce inequality.