VITAMIN Education PROJECT
SHAPING THE TEACHING PROFESSION

QUESTIONS FROM THE OUTCOMES, PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND ACCOUNTABILITY TEAM:

Our group started with a review of the teaching profession as we’ve experienced it. We came to a few points of early agreement including:
• We do not have a “teacher problem” – we have a large corps of very effective, dedicated professionals committed to their students and to steadily improving their own skills.
• We do not have a “bad teacher problem” – our schools already do a good job of identifying the occasional weak teacher and, if necessary, moving them out of the profession.

That said, our group did identify a number of strategic issues. We invite responses from teachers and other education professionals including changes/additions to the questions themselves.

Special note: assume that any changes we propose will be ‘grandparented’ – that there will be a rational, fair transition to the new framework. Also, these are some initial thoughts; we still have work to do surrounding accountability and evaluations, but we welcome your input on our work so far.

A – NEW TEACHER QUALIFICATIONS
1. What core qualifications should beginning teachers have when they graduate?

2. What alternative or non-traditional sources of teachers ought we to consider? (I.e., should we try to recruit older individuals into teaching from other professions? )
B – LEVELS OF RECOGNIZED TEACHER EXPERTISE
3. Do you agree there ought to be three levels (as suggested by HB 2261) – a beginning/probationary level, a second more skilled level, and a teacher-leader “master” level?

4. How long do you think the beginning/probationary level ought to be? And what criteria would you set for completing this stage of career development?

5. How should Professional Certification and/or National Board Certification fit into the levels of recognized teacher expertise?

C – Principal/Administrator Qualifications
6. What core qualifications should beginning principals/administrators have?

7. Should there be a minimum number of years of classroom experience?

D – PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
8. How would you design the professional development regime in a building?

9. How would you design the professional development regime in a district?

10. What role would you like the principal to take?

11. There is a complicated welter of credentials and additional education requirements. How would you simplify and rationalize the credentials requirements and options?

E – COMPENSATION STRATEGY
12. What should distinguish differentiation in compensation at the three proposed levels of teacher expertise?

F – RETIREMENT ISSUES
13. After 30 years experience in the classroom, how can we find a way for those who want to retire to be able to do so?

14. What other work possibilities within the educational system, but outside the classroom, might you envision to carry you to retirement?

G – OTHER THOUGHTS?
15. What other concerns do you have or ideas you would like the Vitamin E teams to consider?

Update from Team Leaders

Budget and Finance Team Members:

On June 30th, three of the four team leaders met with Larry and Oriana to discuss how the four teams were operating in order to insure we weren’t duplicating efforts. At that meeting we discussed the need to provide additional background to members on all four teams so everyone could operate with the same information. Christie Perkins, Special Ed Coalition, suggested that an analysis done by WEA lobbyist, Randy Parr provided a section by section interpretation of the strengths and weaknesses of the bill (albeit from a WEA perspective.) I am attaching that analysis. If your organization has done similar work, please forward it so we can share all perspectives. Pages 4, 5 and 7 are of particular importance to our team as they relate to our second task below regarding prototype schools.

We’re still waiting on a date confirmation from Ben Rarick and Mary Kenfield, from the House staff. We have asked them to create a matrix for our next meeting of the prototype school funding model as it was originally proposed, as it was discussed by Washington Learns and the Basic Education Finance Task Force and as it was outlined in HB 2261 in order to see if there are differences from its original conception to its current form.

HB-2261 Analysis referred to above.

Budget and Finance Meeting Notes (June 22, 2009)

At our meeting on June 18th, the Budget and Finance Team developed a two part work plan:

REVENUE FOR EDUCATION:

MONITOR THE WORK OF TAX INITIATIVE COALITION: An ad hoc coalition of organizations and individuals informally called the Burbank/Gates Sr. group, have been meeting to discuss tax reform initiative possibilities. The group has reached some consensus on an income tax and will be conducting polling to determine if an initiative would be viable on the 2010 ballot. Earlier polling has indicated the public’s willingness to increase taxes for education and so the discussion of the group has, to date, suggested that public education might be the focus of any new revenue generated by the initiative. The group intends to make its decision by the end of 2009.

Rather than proposing new revenue packages ourselves, the Budget and Finance Team will be monitoring the work of the coalition who has the resources to fund polling and potentially the funding and campaign expertise necessary for such an initiative. The League of Education Voters and WEA are both part of the coalition and are also represented on the Budget and Finance Team and will report out at Team meetings.

FUNDING FOR EDUCATION:

CONDUCT WESTSOUND SCHOOL DISTRICT FOCUS GROUPS ON THE PROTOTYPE SCHOOLS FUNDING MODEL: HB 2261 outlines a prototype schools funding model that changes the traditional school funding formulas and bases the instead, on minimum staffing and non-staff costs to operate schools of a particular size and with particular types and grades of students. See pages 5-7 of House Bill Report at link below:

2261 HBR WAYS 09

The Budget and Finance Team wants to test out the practical realities of the prototype funding model by havin informal focus group teams from school districts consider the model and provide feedback that legislators/policymakers can use to make adjustments while the prototype model is still being fully developed. We propose three such meetings:

1. Larry Seaquist will request that Ben Rarick from the House Operating Budget Staff meet with our Budget and Finance Team. Ben is responsible for costing out the prototype funding model. The Team wants to hear how the components are being costed out and what the legislative process/timeline will be to implement the model. The Budget and Finance Team will comprise the first informal focus group.
2. August: Teams of administrators, school board members, union representation and building principals from 5-6 Westsound school districts will meet to review and provide feedback about the components of the prototype school funding model.
3. September: Crossroads will review and provide feedback about the components of the model.

The next meeting of the Budget and Finance Team will be scheduled once we have potential meeting dates with Ben Rarick.

Ann Randall,
WEA Olympic Council – Budget And Finance Team Leader

Hi – I guess I’ll be your Outcomes & Professional Development leader as we wind through this process. I may have some difficulty with some of the electronic aspects of this site and communicating through it to you, but I’ll give it my very best try!
As are many of us, I am completely swamped right now until the end of the school year (for us that’s June 23). After that I’ve got a few days before I have to be out of town at a convention. If you can give me some ideas as to days and/or times that might work best, I’ll try to quickly pull something together.
I’ve been somewhat confused by the requests to subscribe to listserves, so I’m hoping this will work for the moment. If I don’t hear from any of you, I’ll know it’s not working and will try something else!
I’ll be available days and most evenings and also on Saturday if that works best for others.
I’m pretty particular about start/stop times for meetings. If we say two hours, then that’s what it is. Personally, I’m inclined to think that our first meeting probably won’t take that long – we’ll need to identify some tasks, divvy them up, and get to work!
Hope to hear from you soon.
Karin Ashabraner

Hello

This is such a busy time of year as a teacher wrapping up the school year. Once school is out on June 23rd, I’ll have more time to devote to these issues. Looking forward to learning how I can help.

Welcome Team!

Hello Team!

This is the first message I am sending using our new account, so it really is a test of sorts. In a few days I will get back to everyone with a plan for a meeting schedule. I am hoping to coordinate our meetings with the other two teams so people can attend all meetings if they wish, so once I hear from the other team leaders I’ll be in touch.

HUGE thanks to Bob Sharp for setting this all up!

Linda Hanson Associates

425.923.4349  | lhanson@lindahanson.org |  www.lindahanson.org

http://www.linkedin.com/in/lindahanson

Developing Leaders  | Strengthening Partnerships | Empowering People

Consulting for Education, Health and Human Service Nonprofit Organizations

Why is it that the only posts that are showing up are those by RobertS?

This is the home page. No one else has posted. When someone else posts these will eventually go by the way side. You can get to them by clicking on the category, Guide.

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Uploading a file such as a text file, a pdf file or a word document.

I just sample word document. To do this, I had the file on my desktop. You can keep your files where ever you feel comfortable, such as your “My Documents” or “Documents” folder  clicked on the symbol to the far left (Insert Media) and then clicked upload. I would not normally do this if the paper is on the internet, I could just insert link to the document in my posting or as a link. However, my “classification on this blog” is as a “Contributor” so I would have to email the document to one of my team leaders who are Editors and who can upload documents and make links.

I had the administrator change me to an Author like everyone else and I was able to upload my Sample.doc so any of you can do.

I can link the document here or an editor/administrator can make a link to it.

You might ask how you can link to it when it is hiding somewhere mysterious. Once you upload the media, you will see it in your media library. If you move your mouse over the title of the document, you will see “Edit } Delete } View. Click on view and you will see a new page with the document name and a smaller name under the title which is a link.

Move up to the address box and copy the url which is the path to your document. Go back to your posting area and click on post. Write your post. Normally, you will see visual or html darker than the other. If html is not dark click on it. On the left side of the editor box above you will see several buttons. “b”, I, link, etc. Write something that explains the document then highlight a word and click on link. The paste the url into the window that opens up and close the window.

You might want to print this out if you are confused.

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A posting guide.

I am creating this post as an example and instructions of how you can use this blog.  First of all, there is a better guide in the upper right called help. As I look at it, it would probably do a much better job than I could.

I am going to explain how I posted the picture below.

The problem is that the selector is not letting me size the image so I will have to explore how to do that.

After you are through writing, you can either save as a draft article to return to or publish the article. Preview it so you can see what others will see then go back and log out.

P.S., Yes, this flower is in my garden and I took the picture.

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