Teach Your Children Well

By SHARON McCLOSKEY

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Andrew Rotherham has a word for the wise and wealthy: Teachers.

Better educators remain the key to better schools, said Rotherham in “Achieving Teacher and Principal Excellence: A Guidebook for Donors,” released in September 2008 by the Philanthropy Roundtable.

Bill Gates agrees. “If you want your child to get the best education possible, it is actually more important to get him assigned to a great teacher than to a great school,” said Gates in his first annual letter on behalf of the Gates Foundation.

If you find yourself in that rarest of situations today – with a few extra dollars in your pocket – Rotherham has some ideas for spreading your wealth.

Rotherham is the co-director of Education Sector, a national education policy think tank, and the writer behind Eduwonk.com.

Education entrepreneurship is on the rise, but teachers have been on the short end of the stick. This is true even for charter schools, recipients of the lion’s share of recent donations. Said Rotherham, “with a few exceptions, most of the innovations in charter schooling have been on the management and organizational side of schools, not in the classroom.”

Here, then, are Rotherham’s top 10 ideas worth getting dollars behind:

Focus on a Single, Proof-point Location. Pick a single city to focus solely on teacher improvement. “Nowhere to date have philanthropists collaborated in a concerted effort to simultaneously address every point in a teacher’s career trajectory. It’s an idea whose time has come,” said Rotherham. “The combined effort would work simultaneously to attract new talent into education, create new training routes for top-notch prospects, distribute resources where the challenge is greatest, and alter the compensation structures to reward excellence.”

One spot primed for this type of giving: Newark, N.J.

Create a New Model for Colleges of Education. Create a new college of education that trains practitioners, researchers and policy analysts, side by side.

Devise Good Alternative Teaching License Procedures in Every State.Most states have alternative licensing procedures that are cumbersome and ineffective. What is needed: “A manageable amount of coursework, a maximum program length of two years, a course-load relevant to the immediate needs of new teachers, a strong mentoring program for new teachers, and a diversity of providers located both inside and outside of traditional university-based programs.” Donors can help with fellowships and support for teachers in strong alternative licensing programs.

Redirect Teacher Incentives. Improve the quality of life for new teachers in the early years. “Donors could help young teachers cope with two of their biggest financial challenges—buying a first home and saving for retirement.”

Build Knowledge-management Tools. Use technology to improve teacher and management development. “Promising ideas include providing teachers with real-time feedback and coaching, constructing wiki-like platforms to build and organize knowledge, and instructing teachers on how best to gather, analyze, and apply data.”

Address the Rural Challenge. Rural communities confront a chronic shortage of quality teachers. Donors can address that core challenge directly by helping develop teacher preparation and licensing programs through rural community colleges and by supporting efforts to underscore the benefits of living and working in the country.

Swap Tomorrow’s Benefits for Today’s Compensation. Frontload teacher compensation so that new teachers aren’t inclined to leave the profession as they gain experience. “The idea isn’t to pay teachers less, but rather to distribute aggregate pay differently in order to make education more lucrative earlier in a teacher’s career.” Donors can help support the costs of transitioning to a new pay structure while honoring old contracts.

Leverage Charter Schools as the Leading Edge of Teacher and Leader Effectiveness. Charter schools are uniquely positioned to experiment with teacher innovation, yet many have missed this opportunity. Donors can tailor gifts to maximize this flexibility. Create

Incentive Prizes to Encourage Reform. Offer large purse incentive prizes for innovation in, for example, pay reform or peer evaluation.

Maximize Strategic Use of Technology in the Classroom. Move from trying to fit computers into pre-existing curricula to using them to deliver content directly to students.