Effective Teacher Collaboration: A Key to Achieving Governor Kitzhaber’s 40/40/20 Vision

For immediate release
contact Brian Reeder, 503-947-5670

August 10, 2012

Effective Teacher Collaboration: A Key to Achieving Governor Kitzhaber’s 40/40/20 Vision

(Salem, Ore.) – In order to realize the Governor and Legislature’s bold vision for Oregon’s children, we must identify and act on best practices, while also recommitting to an equally bold path of investment according to the 2012 Quality Education Model (QEM) report published today on the Oregon Department of Education’s website. Schools where teachers effectively work together to continuously improve teaching practices, collaborate around individual student progress and needs for sixty minutes or more per week, and communicate regularly with students and their parents or other caring adults, have substantially higher student growth and success than their lower-performing counterparts. Teacher collaboration programs that are teacher-owned and well-implemented show promise in improving teacher effectiveness, which in turn leads to higher than predicted student achievement outcomes. Poorly-implemented collaboration programs, by contrast, or those imposed without teacher involvement and ownership, can actually lead to lower than predicted student performance.

“For more than a decade, the Quality Education Commission has played an important role in the creation of an exemplary public education model along with the exploration of educational best practices in Oregon,” said Governor John Kitzhaber’s education advisor Ben Cannon. “As we move forward together with the Governor’s education strategies, it is clear from the Commission’s latest report that it has an important role to play in ensuring a quality education for all of Oregon’s children.”

The Quality Education Commission’s recommendations include:

Districts should invest in effective teacher collaboration time

Teachers and other school staff should spend at least 60 minutes per week analyzing assessment data with colleagues;
School districts and individual schools should encourage teacher collaboration that is driven by the teachers themselves and has a high degree of teacher ownership.

Districts should promote the use of high-quality formative assessments to improve instruction

Such assessments are most effective when teachers share results with students and parents frequently;
Using existing ODE resources, districts should improve the collection and use of data from assessments.

Districts should take a fresh look at how they allocate resources across schools and across grades within schools

Allocations need to be targeted so that they have the most positive impact on student achievement;
Traditional funding formulas based primarily on staff/student ratios are less effective than targeted allocations.

Oregon must establish a clear and bold timeline for phasing in the practices and funding levels recommended by the Quality Education Model

Adopt a long-term strategy for closing the funding gap;
Set specific funding targets over a five biennia timeframe.

“This is an exciting time to be a part of the Commission,” said Doug Wells, Quality Education Commission Chair. "It is clear that we must take bold steps forward, we must do so together as Oregonians, and we must do so outside of our traditional siloes, across the entire education continuum."

The Commission is charged with evaluating educational best practices and determining the level of funding needed for all Oregon students to reach those standards set by the State. Based on the Quality Education Model, the Commission has determined that Oregon needs state funding of approximately $8.76 billion to fully fund the state’s schools for 2013-15. That is an increase of more than $2.4 billion over current funding levels.

Click here for the full 2012 Quality Education Model Report

The Quality Education Commission is a non-partisan group comprised of individuals appointed by the Governor, confirmed by the legislature, and tasked with refining and validating the QEM and producing a biennial report. The QEM was developed in 1999 to establish an objective and research-based connection between the resources devoted to schools and levels of student achievement and to guide efforts to fund Oregon schools adequately. In 2001, the Legislative Assembly created the Quality Education Commission (QEC) to serve as a permanent body to regularly update and improve the original QEM. Click here to learn more about the Quality Education Commission and the Quality Education Model.

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Doug Wells, Quality Education Commission Chair
Brian Reeder, Assistant Superintendent of Analysis & Reporting, 503-947-5670

Oregon Department of Education News Releases contain information that was originally released to the press as an official release. Refer to each News Release for the details.