“The Mirage” or The Dream? A discussion of what might be if we think boldly…
TNTP’s “The Mirage” sets out to identify bright spots of teacher growth to determine what type, frequency and delivery of teacher professional development yield the most improvement. Researchers identified “improvers,” as 19-30% of teachers in 95% of schools they surveyed and compared their experience to “non-improvers.”* Surprisingly, both groups had very similar levels of engagement and satisfaction with professional development activities. The key differences between “improvers” and “non-improvers” are openness to feedback and awareness of personal strengths and weaknesses. TNTP’s deeper investigation revealed an underlying lack of trust or confidence in evaluation practices, no clear standards for improvement, and disjointed support efforts prohibit meaningful teacher growth.
“The Mirage” illuminates the lack of understanding about what makes professional development effective, and more importantly, ignites a broader discussion about where we go from here.
We believe the best way forward is to set a bold vision for reimagining the teaching profession and defining mindsets, skills, and competencies needed to educate 21st century students.
At TrueSchool we have hypothesized several core mindsets and competencies for education innovation. This is just a start to how we might frame teacher mindsets of the 21st century:
- Demonstrate deep empathy with students and community
- Identify and seize opportunities from change
- Collaborate, create and problem solve as a team and community
- Actualize a vision by taking a big goal and breaking it down into specific actions
- Leverage existing resources and assets
- Take risks, fail forward fast
- Measure, track, and reflect on impact
- Continuously iterate and adapt based on findings
- Lead implementation, impact and sustainability at scale
As a nation, we have redefined what it means to be a student in the 21st century through the adoption of rigorous standards and a shifted focus to critical thinking and growth-oriented learning. Teachers need aligned standards that clearly define what mastery of teaching and instruction now require.
Schools can create the cultures to cultivate human potential and excellence, for both students and teachers. School leadership that promotes excellence, and encourages learning forward rather than attaining perfection, cultivates a growth mindset and creates safe space for people to test, challenge, and improve themselves. Schools can reorganize education by studying the current experience and needs of their students and crafting new roles for teachers that allow for specialization and diversification of responsibilities. For example, teachers could specialize in an area like data and evaluation, innovation, or curriculum and become the expert for their grade or school, assuming the responsibility to ensure all teachers are moving toward mastery of that competency and provide additional coaching or support.
Districts are key levers for transformational change at scale. As districts have a broad reach over access to resources and data for many schools, they can critically study all efforts that improve student and teacher growth, and facilitate cross-school collaboration to test and scale effective systems, tools, trainings, and innovations, to ensure that all schools deliver an excellent education to each student.
The findings of “The Mirage” undoubtedly ignite the need for a fresh look at how we evaluate and support teachers. If we reimagine the status quo and explore approaches that align the evaluation to what teachers need, just like we do with our students, we can create a more effective, rewarding, and just education system for students and teachers alike.
* TNTP identified teachers who improved significantly using multiple definitions of growth. They analyzed simple and detailed change in the district rating and grouped teachers into quartiles, assessing who was making the most and least growth over a two- to three-year period. TNTP tracked this type of movement across four different measures of growth: change in total observation scores, change in value-added scores, change in total evaluation scores and change in standardized overall evaluation scores. For a detailed explanation of TNTP’s methods for identifying “improvers” please see page 44 of “The Mirage.”