A Discussion on Telecommuting

I read an interesting article this week from the Phi Kappa Phi Forum. The article was titled “Working through Telecommuting” and discussed the rising interest among employees and employers to “telecommute” for work.

Over the last few years, I have conducted focus group meetings with randomly selected employees at the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE). Usually the focus group numbers five to six employees, and they are free to discuss working conditions at the department and what we can do to value our employees and improve the working conditions. One of the key topics that comes up at every focus group meeting is telecommuting. The article from Forum gave me some more information to use as we push for more telecommuting options in state government.

According to the Forum article, almost 3 million Americans telecommute for work. While this is a small number compared to the 140 million in the workforce, 85 of the 100 best companies to work for in the nation allow telecommuting as an option.

According to the article, some of concerns about telecommuting are the requirements of self-discipline when working from home. Temptations to get off-task are huge in the home environment. Also, the workplace requires lots of social interaction – meetings, face-to-face time with supervisor and individuals, impromptu meetings at lunch and more – that may not always be possible with telecommuting. Also, the isolation stemming from telecommuting has been documented as a concern.

However, there are many positives to telecommuting. Several studies have shown increases in productivity. Also, employees benefit due to reduction in commuting costs. Families benefit, since the cost of child care may be lowered, and employers benefit when an employee does not have to take a sick day to stay home with a sick child.

The technology will eventually drive the decisions on telecommuting. At KDE, we are poised to continue our migration to cloud-based technology. Employees will be able to have their home phones connected to their cell phones so they do not miss calls. Employees will be able to link through video conference capacity with fellow workers and school district staff. Employees can share documents and work products through our technology rather than shuffle e-mails with attachments.

There will be much discussion over the coming months about the pros and cons of telecommuting within state government; however, I do see unlimited possibilities for KDE employees. Certainly, if we can overcome the barriers for telecommuting for teachers and students, we can figure this out for state government.

Early Childhood Benefits/Teacher Evaluations

In these days of Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and other services that provide daily, hourly and even minute-by-minute updates, I get lots of information about reports, studies and education events. This week , on my Twitter and Facebook accounts, I highlighted two of the more interesting reports.

* a terrific new report on long-term benefits of early childhood education: http://obs.rc.fas.harvard.edu/chetty/STAR_slides.pdf
* an interesting report from the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences (IES), which reinforces Kentucky’s caution on using value-added criteria for high-stakes decisions: http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pubs/20104004/

Readers of these reports may find conflicting information. The early childhood report was mentioned in a New York Times article entitled “The Case for $320,000 Kindergarten Teachers.” The report came from Harvard economist Raj Chetty. Many critics of government spending on early childhood education allege that the early gains for children often wash out over the course of the school years. I really liked a quote attributed to Mr. Chetty – “We don’t really care about test scores. We care about adult outcomes.”

Mr. Chetty and his team reviewed the adult outcomes for students who were part of the Tennessee Star Project from the ‘80s. They found students who were in the most effective kindergarten classrooms were more likely as adults to go to college, less likely to be single parents, more likely to be saving for retirement and more likely to earn more than their peers in the same study who were in less effective classrooms. So, the article and study seem to support the big idea of teacher effectiveness having a major role in student learning and adult outcomes.

In a somewhat conflicting report from the National Center for Education and Evaluation, researchers raised many cautions about using teacher effectiveness data for high-stakes decisions like merit pay and tenure. The report, Error Rates in Measuring Teacher and School Performance Based on Test Score Gains, highlighted concerns about error rates when using this data. The report states that three years of teacher data that classifies teachers as low performing could be erroneous as much as one out of four times. The report shows that data classifying a teacher as high-performing also could be erroneous as much as one out of four times. With five years of data, the results become a little more stable, and if the data are used mainly for school classification, then the error rates decline. Regardless, this research does raise much concern about the use of one, two or even three years of data to make high-stakes decisions.

So, the question becomes, “how do we resolve the apparent conflict in these two reports with regard to outcomes and the impact of teachers on the learning outcomes?” The answer is in multiple measures. I have been clear with policy makers, superintendents, teachers and other stakeholders. Kentucky will not depend solely on test scores for high-stakes decisions for teachers and principals. Both of these studies point out concerns with just using test scores. In Kentucky, we will continue to work with teachers, principals and other stakeholders to develop evaluation systems that utilize multiple measures of effectiveness.