PARR Reader Overview

• About This Volume
• Background
• California's New Legislation
• Ensuring effective teaching: PAR’s fundamental purpose
• Labor relations
• Teacher professionalism
• The purpose of this reader
• About the Authors
• Purchase

Overview

About This Volume

Peer Assistance and Review (PAR) is a new concept for most educators. For California educators, the passage of AB 1X, which in essence mandated the establishment of PAR programs for veteran teachers, presents an unanticipated challenge and opportunity.

As a leading organization in the fields of teacher professional development, induction, and peer support, we at the New Teacher Center at University of California at Santa Cruz felt that we had the responsibility to step to the plate in helping California educators respond to this new legislative mandate.

The literature on PAR is thin and difficult to access. We have therefore attempted to assemble contributions from some of the most knowledgeable people in the field. We have done so mindful that even as we compiled this volume, districts and local unions were in the process of negotiating their PAR programs.

This is an anthology of writings about PAR, representing a variety of programs and perspectives. It is not meant to be a coherent text on the topic, but rather a collection of writings to inform and to encourage dialogue and debate. The articles here do not necessarily represent the point of view of the editors or of the NTC. What they do represent is the type of professional conversation that PAR, at its best, can stimulate.

In this overview, we present some of the historical context in which California’s PAR legislation was conceived, identify some of the issues with which educators must contend in designing and implementing PAR programs, and outline the contributions that constitute the balance of this volume.

Background

Peer assistance and review was born in Toledo, Ohio, in 1981. Dal Lawrence, President of the American Federation of Teachers-affiliated union in Toledo, proposed that the school district create an intern program for new teachers in collaboration with the union. Lawrence was frustrated with the caliber of new teachers, and when the state did not support his calls for a fifth-year teacher education program, he saw master teachers supporting and evaluating new teachers as a plausible alternative. Each year between 1973 and 1981 the district rejected his suggestion, viewing it as a union grab for power. In 1981, however, a new negotiator for the district saw an opportunity. He came back to Lawrence and the union with a challenge: the district offered to establish the new teacher intern program if the union would take responsibility for intervention with ineffective tenured teachers. The union accepted, and the "Toledo Plan"–still the most common blueprint for peer assistance and review–came to be (Kerchner and Koppich, 1993). In the years since, Cincinnati and Columbus Ohio; Rochester, New York; Poway and Lompoc, California; Dade County, Florida; and Seattle, Washington, are among school districts that have established teacher peer assistance and review programs.

Peer assistance and review programs vary, but typically teachers identified as outstanding practitioners are released from classroom duties for a specified amount of time so that they may provide mentorship to all new teachers in a district, intervention for veteran teachers experiencing difficulty, and voluntary support for veterans who request assistance for a variety of reasons. The primary goal of these programs is to support new or veteran teachers in meeting performance standards through intensive assistance delivered by a mentor. New teachers who fail to meet these standards are not renewed. Veteran teachers who fail to meet program expectations may be counseled out of teaching, or districts may initiate dismissal proceedings against them.

California’s New Legislation

When Gray Davis became governor of California in early 1999, he initiated four keystone pieces of education legislation. One of them, Assembly Bill 1X (AB 1X), called for statewide implementation of Peer Assistance and Review by setting up a California Assistance and Review Program for Teachers. While participation in PAR is technically optional, the financial disincentives for failure to participate, and the incentives for participation, lead us to believe that most California school districts will attempt to implement PAR, making the program essentially a mandate. A summary of California’s PAR legislation is included as Appendix #1.

AB 1X is groundbreaking legislation. For the first time in the United States, all school districts and union locals in a state are being strongly encouraged to negotiate PAR programs. The programs suggested by this bill are similar to those currently in existence in terms of their governance by joint teacher/administrator panel and their engagement of exemplary teachers in support and review roles. However, while existing PAR programs have as an essential piece the support and assessment of beginning teachers, AB 1X does not mandate inclusion of beginning teachers in PAR. Rather, it mandates that PAR be available on a voluntary basis to veteran teachers, and that veterans evaluated as unsatisfactory be required to participate.

The fact that California already has a well-funded and well-conceived teacher induction program (BTSA, the Beginning Teacher Support and Assessment Program) both complicates and enriches the possibilities presented by PAR. BTSA is currently expanding to provide all of California’s beginning teachers with support for two years in a program model that combines intensive coaching with confidential formative assessment. In typical BTSA programs, a firewall is built between the formative assessment conducted by the mentor and the summative assessment conducted by the administrator. PAR programs in other parts of the country remove that firewall, requiring that mentors participate in summative evaluation.

While AB 1X mandates that participating school districts implement PAR programs targeting unsatisfactory veteran teachers, it leaves a great deal of program detail to the discretion of individual school districts and bargaining agents. AB 1X therefore gives California school districts a great deal of flexibility. We anticipate that many districts will choose to maintain their BTSA programs as distinct from PAR programs, and will not add peer review to their induction processes. Others may reexamine their teacher induction, staff development, and teacher evaluation programs in the process of designing PAR, some ultimately choosing to include beginning teachers along with veterans in their PAR programs. Where this occurs, the body of knowledge, experience, and expertise accumulated by BTSA practitioners should serve as the foundation of these efforts.

New legislation also suggests that California school districts work to align their induction, staff development, PAR, and teacher evaluation programs with teaching standards such as the California Standards for the Teaching Profession (CSTP). BTSA programs, already aligned with the CSTP and built around staff development, can serve as key resources in this process.

Ensuring effective teaching: PAR’s fundamental purpose

PAR at its essence has two goals: to support teacher professional growth, and to assess whether teachers meet performance standards. The 1996 Report of the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future (NCTAF) includes recommendations in each of these areas:

1. Create and fund mentoring programs for beginning teachers that will provide support and assess teaching skills, and
2. Remove incompetent teachers through peer assistance and review programs that provide necessary support and due process (Darling-Hammond 1997: 4).

The impetus for the creation of the first PAR programs was recognition of the need for systematic support for new teachers and a desire to involve current teachers in the process of admitting novices to their profession. Many who could be excellent teachers leave the profession within the first few years of teaching. It is estimated that approximately 30% leave the profession within their first five years of teaching service, as high as 50% in some school districts (Darling-Hammond 1998; Haberman 1993). Yet we know that with quality induction programs, including PAR models, retention rates of as high as 95% can be achieved (Strong, Moir 1999). Existing PAR programs that serve beginning teachers, as documented in this volume, claim to provide effective support for new teachers (typically called interns) and serve as a screen to determine whether those interns are able to meet district standards for teaching.

PAR programs also address issues of teacher quality in veterans. When PAR is established as a voluntary program for veteran teachers, it enables those needing assistance (e.g., because of a change in assignment or other circumstances) to access individualized, clinically based support from a peer. Where PAR is a mandatory program for "intervention" cases, that peer is able to provide intensive assistance and, knowing the teachers’ work well, is able to assess their progress against standards.

Under intern, voluntary, and intervention models of PAR, teachers take responsibility for quality teaching and base their discussions of quality teaching on shared standards of performance. Under intern and intervention models, teachers assist new and veteran teachers to meet those standards, and are serve as gatekeepers, playing a key role in determining an intern's or veteran's ability to achieve satisfactory levels of performance.

Labor relations

PAR may represent much more than a mechanism for supporting teacher development and ensuring teacher quality; it may serve as a catalyst for the transformation of labor/management relations in education.

Historically, PAR has been created in districts with high levels of labor/management trust, where unions have stepped outside their traditional adversarial roles to exercise leadership in improving educational outcomes. At its best, PAR reflects a partnership between unions and districts based on a shared interest in teacher quality. Peer Assistance and review is thus a departure from the traditional scope of teacher organizing, from defending individual teachers to defending the profession of teaching. This has been termed "professional unionism;" labor relations that are distinct from historically confrontational industrial unionism (Kerchner and Koppich, 1993; Kerchner, Koppich et al., 1997). In professional unionism (often called "new unionism"), labor and management are viewed as cooperative forces working together toward the success of a joint enterprise. Both the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers have endorsed PAR as a legitimate strategy (see Appendix 3 & 4), a move consistent with professional unionism.

The California Teachers Association and California Federation of Teachers, California School Boards Association, and the Association of California School Administrators have issued a "Joint Statement in Relation to AB 1X," that encourages school districts and local unions to take risks and go "outside of the box" in negotiating and implementing PAR (Appendix 2). The New Teacher Center @ UCSC facilitated the discussions that led to the issuance of this Joint Statement. In our conversations with these four organizations, we found a strong shared interest in teacher quality, and a willingness to abandon traditional turf in order to move PAR forward in a productive manner. Where the players are ready and willing, PAR may serve as a vehicle for a new era in labor-management relations in education.

Teacher professionalism

The single most powerful outcome of PAR maybe its impact on teacher professionalism. As teachers and their unions begin to participate structurally, officially, in matters of teacher quality, they may alter the ways the teaching profession is conceived and regulated.

In the past, teachers have labored in isolation. Both the traditional structure of teachers’ work and the traditional methods of teacher evaluation define teaching as an "individual enterprise" (Little, 1988: 84). Judith Warren Little, a professor at UC Berkeley who specializes in issues of teacher leadership and professionalism, claims teachers have traditionally viewed professional obligations to one another as intrusive at worst and loosely invitational (i.e., "ask if you want") at best. Within this paradigm, the responsibility for maintaining teacher quality resides outside the teaching profession–with administration. In contrast, in a more autonomous vision of teaching, teachers themselves are responsible for developing and upholding professional standards. It becomes the obligation of teachers to closely examine their own and others' professional judgments (Little, 1988).

PAR assigns a significant portion of the responsibility for teacher quality to teachers. Teachers carry responsibility for supporting other teachers, and teachers ultimately contribute to the evaluation of colleagues. And not insignificantly, teachers who have demonstrated excellence in their field are given the opportunity to share their knowledge, try something new, and reflect on good practice full-time. There is ample evidence that as teachers collaborate with one another with a focus on student achievement, student achievement increases (Lieberman, 1995.) The transition from working in isolation to being part of an interdependent profession is not an easy one, however. Little reminds us that most teachers have not had prior experience to prepare them for such a shift. Some may therefore, quite understandably, resist the change.

Some school districts in California, particularly those with poor labor-management relations, will take the minimal steps required to ensure funding, and will fail to develop PAR to its full potential. However, in the districts and unions willing to work through a learning process together PAR can, we believe, produce a fundamental shift in perspective. It can change teachers’ professional relationships, work tasks and responsibilities, and their professional identity.

The purpose of this reader

As outlined above, peer assistance and review may have a positive impact on the teaching profession. However, there is very little research to back up the anecdotal evidence that PAR, well implemented, ultimately contributes to student achievement. There is a need for research that examines the complexities of PAR and compares the outcomes of various program models.

There is plenty of cause for concern as educators in California negotiate and implement PAR. Won’t teachers be easy on other teachers? Does PAR steal the role of instructional leader from the principal? Can an effective peer coach also be a reviewer? Will PAR undermine California’s successful Beginning Teacher Support and Assessment (BTSA) programs? How should we select and train consulting teachers? What happens when a consulting teacher and a principal disagree? How do we guarantee due process?

This reader addresses these and many other questions. It is not, however, meant to be a textbook, an instruction manual, or a guidebook. Nor does it attempt to present "pro" and "con" positions on PAR or any particular element of PAR. Given the fact that California educators are scrambling to design and implement PAR, we wanted to ask, instead: "What can be learned from what has already been done? How can PAR in California best be implemented?"

This volume is a collection of pieces that aim to:

1. Provide a description of or reflection on personal knowledge and experience working with a PAR program, and/or
2. Provide specific advice to California’s educators for PAR implementation.

The range of contributors is as broad as the audience who must now make sense of AB 1X–teachers, site and district administrators, union leaders, and academics. Some of the advice contained in this volume is contradictory, raising more questions rather than resolving them.

It is our hope that this reader will be used to support the type of dialogue at the heart of PAR’s potential. Don’t read this book by yourself. Bring together your PAR design committee or bargaining team, your PAR Governance Panel, or a mixed group of teachers and administrators to read and discuss a selection of articles. Talk about the implications of this book for your own educational community. Use PAR as a stimulus for teachers and administrators both to talk about issues of teacher quality, and use the contents of this book to feed that discussion.

The reader is divided into three sections. The first section, "The PAR Challenge," examines PAR through a wide-angle lens. Julia Koppich and Philip Kelly, both of whom have conducted research on a variety of PAR programs around the country, share their perspectives and recommendations. Sharon Feiman-Nemser, a leading expert on teacher growth through mentoring, discusses the staff development potential inherent in the type of one-on-one mentoring that is PAR’s key element. More broadly, she identifies some of the conceptual obstacles to transforming teachers roles. Bob Garmston and Art Costa, the originators of Cognitive Coaching, examine the unique challenges that PAR brings to the coaching relationship in their groundbreaking article. Dal Lawrence, the father of PAR, outlines the history of the idea and lays out concrete suggestions for those who may chose to design PAR programs. Finally, Sandra Stroot, who has trained hundreds of consulting teachers, outlines the type of training needed by consulting teachers and governance panel members.

Section Two is entitled "Programs and Perspectives." In this section, articles describe program specifics from the perspective of union leaders, academics, principals, and district administrators with experience in PAR programs in Cincinnati, Rochester, Poway, Toledo, and Lompoc.

Section Three, "PAR in Practice," allows us to hear the voices of individuals who have participated in PAR as intervention participants, intern participants, and consulting teachers. Ultimately, these are the individuals who will have the most significant effect on PAR implementation within each district.

Creating a vision and an organizational framework for PAR and implementing a quality program present a daunting challenge to educators. Judith Warren Little divides the obstacles inherent in the creation of leadership roles for teachers into two categories. "One challenge," she writes, "is to introduce capable people to a new role . . . a second challenge is to introduce a new role to an institution and an occupation" (1988: 103). We begin with the latter, and move to the former. We hope that this book will help educators to grapple with these challenges.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Gary Bloom is Associate Director of the New Teacher Center at UCSC and Adjunct Faculty at San Jose State University. He is the former Superintendent of the Aromas—San Juan Unified School District, which pioneered several peer review programs.

Jennifer Goldstein is a doctoral student in Administration and Policy Analysis at the Stanford University School of Education. She is doing research for a dissertation on Peer Assistance and Review in California. She has taught in Compton and Campbell–in California.

Darling-Hammond, L. (1997). Doing what matters most: Investing in quality teaching, National Commission on Teaching and America's Future.

Darling-Hammond, L. (1998). Teachers and teaching: Testing hypotheses from a national commission report. Educational Researcher, 27(1): 5-15.

Haberman, M. (1993). Predicting the success of urban teachers (the Milwaukee trials). Action in Teacher Education, XV(3): 1-5.

Kerchner, C. T., and J. E. Koppich. (1993). A union of professionals: Labor relations and education reform. New York; Teachers College Press.

Kerchner, C. T., J. E. Koppich, et al. (1997). United mind workers: Unions and teaching in the knowledge society. San Francisco; Jossey-Bass.

Lieberman, A. (1995). The work of restructuring schools: Building from the ground up. New York; Teachers College Press.

Little, J. W. (1988). Assessing the prospects for teacher leadership. In A. Lieberman, Building a professional culture in schools. New York; Teachers College Press, 78-106.

Strong, M., & Moir, E. (1999). Unpublished manuscript.

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