Introduction to the PAR Reader

By Ellen Moir

Welcome to the New Teacher Center’s PAR reader! With the passage of AB1X, Peer Assistance and Review, California is breaking new ground in its efforts to promote the development of a highly qualified teaching force. At the New Teacher Center at the University of California, Santa Cruz, we are committed to supporting the development of inspired, dedicated, and skilled teachers. After more than a dozen years of working with two thousand new teachers and one hundred experienced, skilled teacher advisors, we have come to understand that becoming an excellent teacher is a career-long developmental process. It is critical, therefore, that we seek to create the environments where this ongoing professional learning can take place. PAR offers this opportunity.

We believe that teachers need to be at the center of these improvement efforts, as designers and implementers, as well as participants. Only when teachers, both collectively and individually, take responsibility for their professional growth, will we be able to move to new levels of professionalism. Furthermore, we believe that these efforts can only be successful when educational organizations value teacher learning as central to the achievement of students and are willing to commit the time, energy, and resources needed to make this happen.

California is leading the nation with its focus on teacher development. In 1988, the California Department of Education and the Commission for Teacher Credentialing launched a pilot program to support beginning teachers. By next year, this statewide Beginning Teacher Support and Assessment Program (BTSA), funded with nearly $100 million dollars, will serve every first- and second-year teacher in the state of California. With the addition of AB1X Peer Assistance and Review, California is now uniquely prepared to move forward on the professional development continuum, assisting all teachers, from beginning to veteran, in the refinement of their teaching practice. With its long established cadre of BTSA programs, California has a large number of experienced support providers/mentor teachers and is thus, better equipped than probably any other state to implement PAR. AB1X offers districts and unions the flexibility to design individualized professional development programs for all veteran teachers, not only those who are in need of help.

Unfortunately, AB1X comes at a time when teachers and administrators alike have been bombarded with one new initiative after another. It is easy to become cynical about the flavor-of-the-month approach to professional and educational reform and to overlook the potential offered by some of these new initiatives. AB1X is exciting, because it opens the door for districts and teacher unions to focus their conversations on what matters most: high quality assistance for all teachers.

When we designed the Santa Cruz New Teacher Project in 1988, we brought together experienced teachers, union leaders, principals, curriculum directors, personnel administrators, beginning teachers, teacher educators, and district level administrators, and we asked them to describe the features of an ideal program. We wanted new teachers to learn and grow on the job — in their classrooms, with reference to their students, and from their outstanding veteran colleagues. We also wanted to develop opportunities for experienced teachers to take on new roles and responsibilities without adding to the already complex nature of classroom teaching. We decided, unanimously, that an ideal program would release exemplary teachers full-time, so they could each serve as many as fourteen beginning teachers. These mentors would meet weekly with each new teacher for two years, thus providing support throughout the most vulnerable period of a novice’s career. This has been our model for the past twelve years.

Our efforts to provide the very best model of support for beginning teachers are based on the conviction that student achievement is related to the quality of the teacher. Furthermore, we believe that teachers should learn and grow as they teach, both from their interactions with their students and from veteran teachers. These core values are consistent with PAR, which, properly implemented, implies that teachers are at the center of successful education, that high standards should be maintained, that teachers should experience life-long learning, and that they should enter into supportive and collaborative relationships with their peers.

California’s AB1X clearly takes us all down a new path, one that presents both opportunities and challenges. In keeping with the BTSA program standards, we have always kept summative evaluation separate from the mentoring process. As a result, we have tremendous expertise in assisting new teachers, using formative assessment, and training veteran teachers for their new roles as mentors. However, supporting veteran teachers and combining assistance with review presents us with a new and interesting challenge.

While new teachers are usually eager to receive support and advice, veterans are more likely to react negatively to the offer of peer assistance and to feel they are being singled out unfairly. Furthermore, it remains to be seen whether the addition of formative assessment adversely affects the mentoring process.

Many important questions that go to the very heart of what PAR can be remain to be answered. While we believe that our approach to mentoring has been highly successful, we are also open to the exciting possibilities of PAR as a successful model for supporting veteran teachers. At the New Teacher Center, we are committed to an extensive research and development program on a variety of aspects of teacher induction and support. We welcome the opportunities that the advent of PAR will give us to address the critical questions of combining the effects of support and evaluation.

The articles in this reader draw on the invaluable experience of existing peer assistance and review programs. These programs differ from the AB1X legislation, because they include and in some cases, focus on, beginning teachers, whereas California’s PAR centers on veteran teachers. However, each of the articles identifies important processes and issues stakeholders will face as they negotiate and implement California’s PAR. We hope this collection will assist you in designing a quality program that will become a valuable resource for all teachers in your district.

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