Teaching the teachers

The classroom for instructional coaching at Chase Middle School looks more like a lounge, with a comfy floral couch and table lamps spilling soft light. There are no student desks or math books.

It’s a teachers-only sanctuary where the school’s educators come to learn and seek advice from two of the district’s 130 academic coaches.

“Often times as a teacher, you don’t have time to grade papers, teach, and then look at all this stuff and align the curriculum as well,” said Donna Huck, an instructional math coach. “You are just keeping it together day to day.”

The instructional coaches assist the teachers by poring over test scores, studying, and sharing new methods for teaching and critical thinking.

“We are not evaluators, we have no say in how they (teachers) do their jobs,” Huck said. “A lot of it is just conversation; learning-focused conversations.”

Previously known as facilitators, the coaches were created from the federal Title I program in the early 1990s to help low-performing students at high poverty schools. The training model for teachers has since expanded to nearly all schools in Spokane.

“More and more schools were saying teachers needed help,” said Nancy Stowell, associate superintendent for teaching and learning. “Schools that didn’t have title money wanted the coaching.”

But in recent months the instructional coaching program in Spokane has become somewhat controversial as the district looks for ways to trim more than $10 million from its budget. Teachers and community members have asked at budget hearings whether the teacher trainers are a good use of district resources.

This year, Spokane provides funding for about 93 full-time equivalent coaching positions – or 130 people because some positions are only part time. Of those 93 full-time positions, about 47 are paid for with federal Title I funds provided to schools with high poverty. Nearly 22 coaching positions are paid for with state Learning Assistance funds, and about 10 are paid for with money from I-728, a voter-approved initiative.

There are also some positions funded through other programs, such as the National Science Foundation, Read First, and Career and Technical Education funds.

About nine of the coaching jobs come out of the district’s general fund, likely paid for with levy dollars.

“It’s a dilemma because these are really good people doing really good work,” said Maureen Ramos, the president of the Spokane teachers union. “But it’s the balance of the work that seems to the teachers in the classroom to be unequal.”

Ramos said the coaches get every other Friday off for professional development, something teachers would like but rarely receive because of the costs of hiring substitutes. The coaches bring what they learn back to the schools.

As the Spokane Education Association prepared to negotiate teachers’ contracts with the district last May, one of the issues teachers raised was the number of instructional coaches employed, Ramos said.

Teachers felt it would be better to use the funds to put more teachers in the classroom, she said.

“The teachers thought that would make an incredible difference in student learning,” Ramos said.

Teachers also complained of instructional coaches with only two or three years of teaching experience coaching educators with 15 or more years of experience.

Kent Richardson, the president of the Central Valley Education Association, said the same was true in CV schools.

“I think there may be some resentment. Somebody comes in new and tells them ‘I know you’ve got a degree and everything, but now I’m going to teach you how to teach,’ ” Richardson said. “But generally people are pretty open to them.”

Central Valley has 45 full-time instructors assigned as facilitators or coaches in elementary, middle and high schools.

Although they primarily support employees’ work with students, some also coach teachers, said Melanie Rose, district spokeswoman.

Spokane officials said if there is any question about the effectiveness of the instructional coaches in its schools, the answer is in the test scores.

Recently, several Spokane schools received national recognition for scores on the WASL test. Cooper, Arlington and Whitman elementary schools and Shaw Middle School – all Title I Distinguished Schools – were awarded by the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction for improving student learning. The honor is given to those Title I schools in Washington that met adequate yearly progress for the most recent three consecutive years in mathematics or reading, or both.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation named Spokane as one of eight school districts in the state making significant progress in a 2005 study, and cited the district’s coaching method as one of its strengths.

“We’ve been very intentional about changing what goes on in classrooms,” Stowell said. “We really believe the model is working.”