PEER ASSISTANCE AND REVIEW FOR NEW TEACHERS: TAKING CHARGE OF OUR PROFESSION

WHEREAS, the quality of education our students receive depends on many factors, including curriculum quality, students’ readiness to learn, and the quality of teaching they experience. As an organization that represents teachers, we have a particular commitment to quality teaching. Plus, our own experience and volumes of research demonstrate that such teaching is critical to student achievement; and

WHEREAS, since its founding, the American Federation of Teachers has passed legislation, bargained contracts, lobbied legislatures and argued in policy forums for a wide variety of reforms to ensure teaching quality. We have advocated for strong preparation for new teachers, a rigorous entry exam and effective induction programs. We have called for an end to out-of-field teaching, helped create and support the National Board certification, and insisted on quality, sustained professional development. We remain committed to each of these reforms; and

WHEREAS, that said, we note that with a new teacher turnover rate of up to 50 percent, depending on the data set reviewed, the most sensible, cost-effective way to strengthen teaching quality is to focus on the “front end”: to assure (1) that new teachers get the professional development and support they need and (2) that only capable, well-prepared teachers who meet high entry standards are offered permanent positions. If our school systems can do these two things right, we will have moved a long way toward assuring the quality of teaching in the future; and

WHEREAS, experienced, expert teachers are the people who are positioned to offer the best assistance to probationary teachers and to make the most credible judgments about their capabilities, through a process of peer assistance and review designed and established through collective bargaining. Where there is no collective bargaining, a peer assistance and review process can be established by an agreement reached after extensive teacher input, through a collegial labor-management process, and with approval by the local union; and

WHEREAS, teaching expertise, like all professional expertise, develops on a continuum. Thus the probationary period of a teacher’s career should be regarded as an induction into the profession. The induction should be a coherent, ongoing process that encompasses hiring and orientation, intensive professional development, support and mentoring, and a final review that determines whether each aspiring novice meets high standards of practice; and

WHEREAS, right now, neither the support nor review aspect of induction is done well in many schools. While evidence suggests that many ineffective teachers leave anonymously through attrition, an ineffective early evaluation system can permit unqualified teachers to receive continuing contracts. Other teachers with great potential remain, but may not become as effective as they could, because they never received the upfront, ongoing support that would have started them off right. At the same time, many promising teachers leave their districts and the profession in their first few years of teaching, driven out by poor conditions, disrespect, and lack of comprehensive and consistent support; and

WHEREAS, a high-quality peer assistance and review program for new teachers can profoundly improve hiring decisions, teaching quality and teacher retention—and thereby raise student achievement. Peer assistance and review for new teachers should play a major role in our continuing drive to strengthen the teaching profession, and the American Federation of Teachers resolves to make it a priority to support affiliates seeking to establish such programs. In order to reflect local realities and needs, as well as the best thinking of a district and its teachers, these programs must be devised collaboratively by the district and the union (through collective bargaining where it exists or, as noted above, through an appropriate collaborative process). The program should include the following characteristics:

• Expert teachers, jointly selected by the union and administration through a fair and quality-conscious process, are responsible for mentoring and assisting new teachers.
• These expert teachers are provided sufficient training, time and resources, and responsibility for working with new teachers through their probationary period.
• Those expert teachers are provided ample release time to do this work either on a full-time or part-time basis.
• These expert teachers, according to a fair process agreed to by union and district representatives, take responsibility for making wise, tough, evidence-based recommendations to decision-makers about whether a new teacher merits continuing employment.
• These judgments are to be made based on agreed-upon, transparent, evidence-based professional standards.
• The program must be guaranteed adequate and sustained support through the regular district budget; and

WHEREAS, when peer assistance and review programs were first established by American Federation of Teachers affiliates, they were controversial. Questions were raised: Did peer review violate a basic union principle by designating some teachers as “expert” and giving them the right to evaluate other teachers? Could the union establish such a program without violating its duty of fair representation? Did it diminish the due-process rights of new teachers? Would it weaken the union? Would members accept the notion that this was an appropriate union role? And, would it actually lead to better hiring decisions and better teaching?; and

WHEREAS, for more than 20 years, a number of local American Federation of Teachers affiliates have used the collective bargaining process to establish these kinds of programs. We can now, based on their experience, confidently say: Where quality peer assistance and review programs exist, they are overwhelmingly popular with union members. Not one peer assistance and review program has been held by a court to violate a union’s duty of fair representation. Through the collective bargaining process, the union has found fair, quality-conscious, member-supported ways to select mentor teachers. It has found ways to raise entry standards that also cultivate good teaching.

WHEREAS, in making this resolution, we recognize four realities:

1. The traditional process for supporting and evaluating new teachers is outdated and inconsistently implemented in schools. Though credible data is difficult to come by, a new report says that teacher evaluation typically consists of “a single, fleeting classroom visit by a principal or other building administrator untrained in evaluation, the evaluation rarely leads to assistance for teachers who need it, and evaluation standards often vary across buildings.”
2. Establishing peer assistance and review programs for new teachers will advance the teaching profession. Professionals have a compact with the public: The profession defines, according to the best available evidence, the standards of good practice—and agrees to impart them and enforce them. In return, the public grants professionals substantial autonomy. In taking on responsibility for peer assistance and review, we move ourselves toward such a compact with the public.
3. Credible, thoughtful support and evaluation relies on knowledgeable, sustained and engaged human judgment—which is our response to the growing appetite for quick, cheap, mechanical fixes to evaluation. The failure of traditional evaluation by administrators has produced an appetite for an even worse evaluation system, one based on student test score gains and barely fettered by human judgment. In fact, rigorous decisions about who should enter teaching—decisions that will profoundly influence student learning in the long run—will require greater reliance, not less, on expert, knowledgeable human judgment.
4. Teachers want peer assistance and review because it recognizes our role and interest in maintaining the quality of our profession. In polls of American Federation of Teachers teacher members, 72 percent of teachers say their reaction is “very positive” or “somewhat positive” to a peer assistance and review program for new teachers. And where the program already exists, surveys show member support for the program, both for the way it supports new teachers, and for the way it takes responsibility for good teaching so that only teachers who meet high standards remain in the profession; and

WHEREAS, the American Federation of Teachers finds that peer assistance and review for new teachers is one of the most effective ways to strengthen teaching quality and to further establish teaching as a genuine profession. The American Federation of Teachers’ support for peer assistance and review programs for new teachers should go beyond the few district-union programs currently operating. Establishing these types of programs is an urgent priority for our union:

RESOLVED, that:

• the American Federation of Teachers urge all locals to consider engaging in peer assistance and review programs.
• the American Federation of Teachers increase awareness and understanding of these programs among our members and leadership, by devoting attention to peer assistance and review programs in publications and at a wide variety of leadership meetings.
• the American Federation of Teachers work actively to support an increasing number of affiliates interested in negotiating such peer assistance and review programs.
• the American Federation of Teachers identify and pursue various ways of providing policy and financial support to these programs through foundation assistance and legislation.
• the American Federation of Teachers project a national voice on this issue, establishing in the public mind the desire of teachers around the country to take on greater responsibility for ensuring high standards of professional practice, and to lay the basis for exercising greater leadership in their schools, districts and profession through peer assistance and review programs; and

RESOLVED, now is the time for action. With this resolution, we are further placing ourselves on a well-established path toward greater professionalization. We look forward to welcoming into our profession the new teachers who meet rigorous professional standards.