The following are answers to some commonly asked questions about TCRP. Below the FAQ you will find links to InfoBriefs addressing specific components of the initiatives.
What is the College Ready Promise?
The College Ready Promise is a commitment by five public charter management organizations to prepare students for success in college by helping their teachers become even more effective in the classroom.
Which schools are involved?
Leaders and educators from schools in four California public charter management organizations (CMOs) are fully immersed in this work, and are engaging students, parents and other stakeholders as well.
The four CMOs are Alliance College-Ready Public Schools, Aspire Public Schools, Green Dot Public Schools, and Partnerships to Uplift Communities (PUC).
What does “more effective” mean? What is the track record now?
Thanks to the committed and capable teachers we have now, students in these four CMOs are going on to college at rates that exceed most California high schools, with 70-90% of graduates attending four-year colleges and universities. However, like many high school graduates, they end up enrolling in remedial classes in English or math once they get to college. Since teachers are the single most important factor in increasing student achievement, we are focusing on improving teacher effectiveness as a lever to increase student success. Our promise is that students will be ready for college work without needing remedial classes, and will have the skills and dispositions to persist and graduate.
How many students are we talking about here? What’s the potential impact?
Based on an analysis of college admission tests, only 5-10% of our graduates qualify to enter college without taking one or more remedial classes.
Right now we serve over 30,000 students across 85 schools—and we’re growing. The potential impact of college completion for 30,000 students, most of whom come from low-income families, is enormous. We have the potential to change the cycle of poverty for the communities we serve.
How are you going to help teachers get even better?
We are part of a national effort funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to learn how to identify, develop, reward and keep highly effective teachers—teachers whose students gain more than a year’s growth in academic achievement.
Teachers who can get those results are truly exceptional, but we need those teachers since many of our students start school behind others at their grade level and need to catch up.
We’re going to work on identifying the teachers we have who are effective and placing students with the greatest needs with them. We will be developing and supporting all of our teachers with the intent that they become more effective. And we will reward teachers who are determined to be highly effective.
How many highly effective teachers do you have now?
Given different definitions of effectiveness and different methods of evaluation, any number we might use would be a best guess. Our grant dollars will be used to help support the development of a common understanding of what teacher effectiveness is and valid and reliable tools to measure effectiveness.
So is this all about paying teachers for performance – how the students perform?
The College-Ready Promise is about helping students achieve by developing the capabilities of our teachers. We will be rewarding teachers who can perform at high levels of effectiveness, and ensuring that students with the greatest needs have the most effective teachers. Student achievement will be one of several measures of effectiveness, including observations by principals and other teachers and feedback from parents and students.
There can be a lot of difference in students from one classroom to the next. Isn’t it a stretch to expect teachers to be able to do this?
With the additional resources we have to support this work—financial, support from experts, and collaboration with our grant partners—we think our goal is attainable. Some of our resources will be dedicated to developing data systems that will help teachers analyze where each student is and how he/she is progressing.
Teachers will not have to figure this out on their own—there will be intensive professional development for them as well as for their principals. We have teachers whose students have come from behind to catch up and keep up with their peers. Simply put, if these highly effective teachers can achieve results like that, we can learn from them so that more of our teachers achieve those results too.
How much financial support did you receive, and where will the money go?
Our grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is for $60 million over a seven-year period.
We project that 35% of the grant will be used to design and implement components of our plan such as the evaluation system, professional development, and a career path for teachers. The data system that supports both the evaluation and career path/compensation will require about 22%. Another 23% will be used to compensate teachers at higher rates of pay for effectiveness, with 11% for supports for principals’ professional development. Governance and operations accounts for about 9% of the grant.
Infobriefs
TCRP Infobrief – Prospective Teacher Overview
Alliance TCRP Updates and Information 