The planning time depends on how long the periods are in your school. My planning time is 45 minutes a day, but some schools are on four-period/90-minute block schedules. When I worked at a school like that, I usually had 45 minutes to plan and 45 minutes to maybe cover an absent teacher's class. One thing I know...ineffective teachers use the union as a shield from termination, and it hurts us and students.

I would concede that getting rid of ineffective teachers is something that needs to happen and should be easier. Isn't that why the state is raising the amount of time that it takes to get the tenure for the race to the top funds? And also to use the funds for mentoring and support of new personnel? What will we be stuck with when those funds dry up? We'll have the same system we have now! Are there other things wrong with the public school system?It should be as easy to get rid of ineffective leaders in the schools and there support staff back at central office too. It's not just the teacher's fault. Others share in the blame. Why do about 65% of the new city teachers leave in the first few years? Let's say you do get rid of ineffective teachers? Who is there to replace them? Many "new" teachers cannot afford to live given the wages being spent to repay the 4 years of college they have to still pay for. Where will we get the money to train and pay more effective teachers?

Thanks for following this story so closely, Liz. The report's points seem true and yet essentially irrelevant.

What does it matter how teachers are evaulated in the city? The report mistakenly assumes that it does. But it doesn't matter because the teacher retention rate is problematically low. This is another main point of the report.

In this way the report tears itself apart.

I have a friend who is certified in Maryland but can't get a job in the city. We all know that Teach for America is putting lots of uncertified teachers into classrooms. I'd like a report on why the city has made this choice. Because it's cheaper to pay someone with no experience? Because the government and the public are really that skeptical of teachers who are in it for the long haul? Or is it just plain easy to convince an uncertified teacher that everything going wrong in her students' lives is her fault? All of the above?

@Concerned--I totally agree that it should be equally easy to remove administration and support staff that are ineffective. One of the reasons that it is not is because the requirements for obtaining an administrative position have gotten stiffer and stiffer. Rather than relying on experience and practical concerns, one has to have coursework and tests and other things that people don't have the time or money to obtain. So the numbers of people who can become administrators is smaller and often did become certified because they were incompetent in the classroom. It is so much easier to get rid of teachers and replace them with "highly qualified" TFA or BCTR people who are less expensive. Who loses in all of this--the children. Sad, sad.

@a teacher -
@ veteran teacher -

I was going to let it pass when it was said once, but when both of you decided to pick on TFA and BCTR, I felt I had to step up and kindly ask that you not displace your anger in the wrong direction. The whole argument over whether TFA teachers are better than or just as good or inexperienced or whatever adjective you like, when compared to veteran teachers completely takes the debate in the wrong direction.

Each teacher should be judged on his or her own merits. There are excellent teachers in all groups. @veteran teacher, you make the argument that we have too many requirements for our leaders "rather than relying on experience and practical concers" and yet you then turn around and pick on an entire group of teachers, arguing they must be incapable since non-certificated. Which is it? Rather than unfairly target an entire group of teachers as you do above (and for full disclosure, yes I was a TFA teacher in BCPSS) let's stand together, as a powerful lobby of teachers, to demand that WE are the ones setting the discourse. We should be defining the standards and demanding better leaders. We should be refusing to accept contracts that place all the blame on teachers, while completely ignoring holistic solutions.

Should politicians be judged by the number of homeless people in the streets? Should principals be judged by how happy their teachers are? Should parents be judged on whether their children come to school with basic materials? Should traffic officers be judged by how many drivers cross red lights? In all the of these cases, one could argue it is unfair to judge the employee for things outside their control. The difference is that as teachers we do have control over the 90 minutes (or 7 hours or 45 minutes, etc) that the child is with us. We can ensure that we have an evaluation method that judges us on how effectively we teach in that small time, rather than on a single test at the end of the year.

Let me end with this: I get the sense from your comments that you feel as though TFA or BCTR teachers are "pushing out" more veteran teachers. We all know that is not the case in BCPSS. If anything, they are a stop gap for the hundreds of teachers who leave the system each year due to poor leadership, poor support, poor professional development, and even poor reimbursement.

The BCPSS union, God bless them, should really be working doubly hard to bring us all together and demand these improvements above. Let's stop throwing each other under the bus because it only weakens us and doesn't help the cause - which, for all of us, is an excellent education for our children.

I am a TFA "alum" and am committed to teaching for a long long time. This was my fifth year in the classroom. My TFA colleagues are some of the hardest-working folks I know. We are indeed certified, and must go from being on a "resident teacher" certification to "standard professional" or "advanced "professional" during our first two years.

I agree that a valid criticism of TFA is that many folks leave after 2 or 3 years; TFA is working hard to change this. But in order to recruit and retain talented teachers, we must pay teachers SIGNIFICANTLY more, and in exchange we teachers must give up some of our job security and raise expectations for ourselves (but not just with MSA scores!).

And re accountability, it is so foolish to rely on one data point, such as MSA scores, for student progress and teacher quality. And it is equally foolish that we don't hold families and communities accountable for promoting / supporting student learning (for example, during the summer).

Very major reform is needed. Will BTU comment?

This is a crucial report and a great writeup by Ms. Bowie and the Sun. Thanks to both.

In the comments to this post, there has once again been a lot of misinformation about TFA and BCTR teachers. Enough is enough. Here are the facts:

Certification. TFA and BCTR teachers have the same certification requirements as anyone else. All are on track to get certified, many on a Master's track, and they get tossed if they don't make it in time.

The real issue is that certification has nothing to do with student achievement, so comparing who is and who isn't certified - even if it were an accurate comparison - is a big distraction.

So what to do about it? First, scrap the certification system, along with recertification. We teachers all spend tons of money and effort on something that is mostly meaningless. Worse, we convince ourselves that certified teachers will do great.

Second, start with top-down leadership. Administrators and North Ave staff should have clear measures of job success and they should be rigorously evaluated. So far, it seems the only systems we have in place are 'raise the numbers or lose your job.' I think if administrators were held to a real evaluation process, it would be more reasonable to apply one to teachers.

And in the meantime, can we stop perpetuating this nonsense of pitting new teachers against veterans? As long as we fight over a false dichotomy, we ignore the real problems while we drag each other down.

I'm a little annoyed that Campbell and Mr. A think the anti-TFA and BCTR 'attacks' are personal. They are not. It is simply a fact that someone who has not taught before will not know what they are doing when they walk into a classroom. Period, end of story.

However, these teachers are classified as "Highly Qualified" from day one, giving them a certain protection that other non-trained teachers do not get. This is a good thing. Both programs give their participants a wonderful support system, regular hands-on feedback, and good useful resources to become great teachers.

At the same time, the 'Highly Qualified' classification gives the false impression that they are certified and experienced when this is not true. What is true is that while there was a hiring freeze this year, preventing schools from interviewing experienced professionals, the TFA cohort was expanded from 100 to 200 slots, meaning there are 100 new never-taught-before college grads coming in this fall while seasoned teachers nationwide go without jobs.

Baltimore City continues to be a training ground, wasting millions on training for teachers who will leave within 5 years. This year, it will retain a scarce 35% of the teachers who cut their teeth here, and actually turned experienced teachers away in favor of TFA newbies.

My students come to me with great gaps in their educations. This has nothing to do with the quality of the teachers who taught them, but with the fact that 2-3 years is not enough time to learn to be a good teacher.

"We all know that Teach for America is putting lots of uncertified teachers into classrooms. "

Certification and quality don't go hand and hand. It is much harder to graduate from Harvard than to get a certification. The Cravath System, is pretty clear: someone with 3 "Ed.D" degrees from mediocre schools probably has half the repository of knowledge, less intellectual curiosity, and ambition than someone from a target school.

@Ms. Bingham -

Don't be annoyed. With all due respect, you COMPLETELY missed the point of what I (and Campbell) were saying. I didn't take any of the attacks personally. My argument, as stated above pretty clearly, is that as educators, specifically frontline classroom teachers, it does us a huge disservice to start attacking each other. To chip away at our unity weakens our position - and as a result, in states and school districts through out the nation, laws and policies and contracts are being signed that make the job of teaching even more difficult. Worse yet, we as teachers are getting very little, if any, input in the process because we are not as united and strong as we should be. We have not demanded that we should be the ones setting the agenda and creating the necessary changes, on our terms, that will benefit our students best.

Again I would submit to you that TFA teachers are not the problem. If BCPSS is only retaining 35% of its teachers, then it is wholly unfair to only point the finger at "TFA newbies" as you state. It is a wholesale retention problem that will only be solved, as I stated above and Campbell stated above, when we approach the problem holistically.

So, just to be painfully clear: there is no personal offense taken by the arguments against TFA. Rather, I was hoping to steer the discussion away from useless and untrue arguments and toward ways we can unite and set the discourse for our children.

Mr. A, I think you make some excellent points in response to Ms. Bingham. I just wanted to add to your response that she slightly misrepresents what it means to be a "highly qualified" teacher (although I'm sure not maliciously). The term "highly qualified" is a No Child Left Behind term, not something created by the city or the state. It's not at all meant to be a reflection of teaching quality. In general, it means a teacher is certified (and that can be a resident certification) and has demonstrated a certain amount of content knowledge and/or course load in the area they are teaching. More details can be found here: http://www.marylandpublicschools.org/msde/programs/esea/docs/tq_regulations/general_definition.htm

Mr. A,
I don't think attacking the strategy of using TFA is attacking TFA teachers. That's unfair of you to imply. I completely agree with you when you say that we must stand together against this onslaught of anti-teacher media and the witch-hunting that education has become.

However, I don't think my previous comments are irrelevant. If retention is the problem, as 'a teacher' states, and whose comments I was hoping to bolster, then the way TFA is structured in Baltimore is a problem. This has nothing to do with the teachers from TFA, mind you, this has to do with the program itself and the way it is used.

Recruiting and training new teachers who are selected from a national and not a local pool, means automatically that a good number of these teachers are likely to return home to California or wherever, and ensures that we will not retain as many as Baltimore needs. There seems to be almost zero effort to train the corner boys who make up a portion of the 16% of unemployment in Baltimore. And don't tell me these kids are dumb.

Furthermore, to make a policy of favoring these inexperienced teachers over experienced ones who want to teach here, (and I would assume that a good principal is just as good at weeding out ineffective applicants as your average TFA recruiter) is even more problematic. By doubling its TFA cohort while maintaining a hiring freeze, this is essentially what Baltimore is doing this year.

While the emphasis on TFA and BCTR was a great thing when there was a teacher shortage, it is slightly less necessary in this year in particular when there is a surplus.

So much energy in training new teachers means less energy spent on keeping teachers once we've got them trained. Like you, I'd love to hear teacher voices in the decision making on how to do this and I do think the only way for this to happen is for us to stand together. But please don't think TFA should go without criticism in this debate, because it's being used in unintended ways.

TFA has become this sexy watchword that many believe is some sort of savior for schools. I'm not saying it's a bad thing. I'm saying that dollar signs cloud the issue. It IS cheaper in the short run to pay a bunch of 2nd and 3rd year teachers than it is to pay a bunch of 15th year teachers. Especially if those 3rd year teachers go back to Oregon and don't stick around become 15th year teachers, or for that matter to run for Union President. (or even vote) So that makes TFA very attractive when you are trying to cut budgets and union-bust, and the discussion of whether or not kids are better served is never really explored.

All the TFA teachers I've taught with have been hardworking, caring and strong. All of them. But I fervently believe that teaching is a craft that can't be learned in two years, or even four. If this is the case, retention should be a major part of Baltimore's strategy, and by extension, TFA's. If TFA really does it's job well, we could retain good teachers, and TFA would become irrelevant.

The fresh blood is nice to have around, but if it just goes home again, then what's the point?

Ms. Bingham -

I really do thank you for clarifying your position because I agree with almost every point you make now that I see your whole argument.

The latest research being heralded is that teacher quality is one of the best indicators of student success. As a former TFA teacher I readily concede that my second year teaching was LEAPS AND BOUNDS better than my first year teaching. But, I would ask you also Ms. Bingham to concede that years alone do not qualify one as a great teacher. Sadly, in my second year of teaching I was better than some very veteran teachers in terms of years.

If I may, and please correct me if I am wrong: I think we BOTH feel that there are several qualities of an excellent teacher. ONE of those is experience. But I'm sure on this forum we can collaboratively make an excellent list of what else makes a great teacher. We should be doing that and then demanding that such people be sought out and nurtured so they stick around.

On a different issue, I don't know that I agree with you about TFA being used as a way to union bust. All the news I hear is that very few teachers, regardless of TFA status, participate in the Union and, in turn, the Union doesn't really do much at all. Could you please elaborate on this point?

I think we agree more than we disagree...unless you don't agree with the concessions I believed you would make in this post :)

Mr. A,
Points taken and agreed with. As to the Union: I completely agree with your impression that “very few teachers, regardless of TFA status, participate in the Union and, in turn, the Union doesn't really do much at all.” And TFA has very little to do with the fact that just about the only time you see a union rep is when you run to them with some grievance. I think the union is corrupt, lazy, and missing the boat on the issues that are going to completely bulldoze education as we know it and with that the protections that we do have as teachers.

But the union is still pretty powerful, and how do you get rid of a union that seems to be made up of old-time Baltimoreans who all know each other and have been around long enough to get name recognition on voting day? You stack the voters with new people. New people who see no more of the union than the $27 per pay period coming out of their paycheck ($35 if they actually join). These nice logical new people are most likely to have the following response: “Who the hell are these goons? Why do I have to pay them? I’m going to have no part of the union at all.” So much for joining, much less voting or running for office.

TFA does a great job of defending its members from unjust treatment by administrators, and so TFAers are largely protected from the abuses other teachers experience all the time, and which the union is supposed to defend them against. If the new teachers only stay for 2 or 3 years, they will never experience the abuses that are the real reason to have a union. On top of this, by asking its members not to participate in any union activities under its moniker, and in other contexts telling its teachers that they represent TFA at all times, TFA implies to its members that they should not participate in union activities. This may not be an overt message from TFA, but it is an unspoken message that many TFA teachers take to heart.

An example of TFA teachers being used to union-bust: the flap over KIPP Ujima’s refusal to pay their teachers for extra hours last year. The 2/3 TFA staff voted to override the union’s demand that they be paid for the extra time. What teacher would ask to be paid LESS? A teacher who doesn’t have to support a family on what they make, and who is going to leave next year anyway. A teacher who’s plan is to use their work at a school as a resume stuffer, and doesn’t plan to make a career of teaching, or maybe plans to make that career happen in the wealthy suburb where they grew up. Why was the take-home message from that flap, “Oh that big bad union, getting in the way of good education again.” Why was it not—“oh, that big bad tax system—why doesn’t it fund our schools properly?—here we have success, and we can’t afford it because businesses keep lobbying the government to avoid property taxes!”

In the past, the Union has been extremely powerful. And I would agree that selfish and non-student-friendly use of this power has led us in part to the position we're now in, where teachers have tenure after two years and so bad ones are extremely difficult to get rid of.

The union ought to be actively involved in discussions about how to keep teachers—and this is not just money. In fact, since most of us didn’t become teachers for the money, I would say the payscale should be pretty far down on the list, and enough with that merit-pay B.S. already. How about things that benefit teachers AND students? Copiers that work. Unlimited paper supplies. (How many $29 boxes did you lug home from Staples last year?) How about heaters and air conditioners that work? Lunches in the lunchroom that teachers would eat? Evaluations by administrators that are more than a superficial check-list that includes a Word Wall you don’t know the purpose of? Support systems for new teachers that are more than in name only? Buses for teachers who want to take their kids on field trips? Enforcement of the 180 days of school law which would mean high schools couldn’t have 6 weeks of testing like they do now (if you add finals and all the various versions of the HSA together) making it damn near impossible to get any real teaching in? Books the kids can take home so you can actually teach a novel, rather than a series of illegally photocopied excerpts?

I think we should definitely come up with a list of what makes a good teacher, but let’s also come up with a list of what would make a good teacher want to stay. And it’s not merit pay.

@ Mr. A

I wasn't attacking my fellow teachers. Like you, I think we should all stick together. What I'm attacking is the millions of dollars that are getting spent on evaluating teachers when there are already so many teachers with tenure who are leaving the system. So I think your wish that every teacher be evaluated individually is perilously wrongheaded. I don't care if I'm evaluated individually or collectively. The job is too hard to want to fight for. I did my best, and now it's time for another recent college graduate to try out his poker face when deluded bourgeois experts come to say you should pretty much just start pretending you're in suburban classroom.

This is an interesting issue. Thanks for raising it. It is certainly true that teachers and adult relationships are important for development and figuring out the right incentives are important.