Daily Archives: August 4, 2012

Aug 04 2012
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Education Policy

A little RESPECT

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Super grainy photo of me at the Department of Ed (Photo Credit: a really nice security guard who said “Do you want to take another next to the Secretary’s picture?”)

Yesterday I spent the day with teacher leaders from around the country discussing the Department of Education’s initiative called the RESPECT project. The goal is to elevate the teaching profession by completely re-envisioning what it would look like to become, be and remain a teacher in the US. The project is still in its formative stages and today was about getting various groups (including the AFT, NEA, TFA, E4E, and the organization I represented the America Achieves fellowship) together to give feedback on the project’s draft vision statement. The draft is still under wraps  can be read here and the Department of Ed is planning more feedback sessions in the future. If you just want a quick overview, here are a few highlights:

  • reorganized classrooms that move away from a closed door and rows of desks to include open classrooms, integrated technology and schools defined by teacher collaboration
  • an extended school year and day that allows teachers greater flexibility for working with students, planning lessons and collaborating with peers (this also included ideas like moving away from age-based grade levels, hybrid teaching positions with lots of release time, and off-school-site learning)
  • distributed leadership (shared administrative responsibility between principals and lead teachers)
  • teaching career pathways that start out with a Residency (like doctor’s do) and end up with Master Teacher positions where teachers make up to $150,000

Sounds good right? But if you’re any thing like me distributed leadership, hybrid positions and $150,000 salaries seem like pie-in-the-sky. That being said I left the meeting feeling really hopeful that before I retire I might seem some of these changes become reality. There is no question teachers have a public perception problem in this country and unfortunately the effects of that are evident in the achievement gap and under-achieving classrooms. However, one of the biggest messages of the day was that if the teaching profession is going to be overhauled it is going to be done by teachers. As Secretary Duncan said, “The Federal government did not start the Civil Rights movement.”