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What has me doubting my decision to finish my career in the classroom is that despite great successes, I've recognized that I am still "just a teacher" in the eyes of most people.

My day-to-day responsibilities haven't changed in 17 years, and are no different than the responsibilities of the first year teachers in my building. While I am currently working for an administrative team that believes in empowering teachers, I still find myself wanting more input in conversations related to education at all levels.

Teaching is truly a "flat profession."

So wrote Bill Ferriter last week on The Tempered Radical (a repost of a column he wrote several years ago on education's "glass ceiling"). And of course, he is not alone in this concern. Teachers across the country voice similar complaints. A possible solution to the problem he describes? Stratifying teaching, creating school-level leadership positions for teachers who want to stay in the classroom while taking on new challenges.

Policymakers are listening, to some degree - as Ferriter points out, there are successful stratification models being tried across the country. The ideas of career ladders, of ...

Since the midterm elections last Tuesday, we have being hearing a lot about the importance of collaboration, compromise and mutual respect as we move forward in setting policy in all fields.

But I wonder if education officials in New Jersey got the memo. Last week, the state’s acting education commissioner refused an invitation to attend the New Jersey Education Association’s annual convention, claiming the union is “interested in protecting the status quo that continues to fail students” and is not cooperating with the governor’s office on school reforms.

Personally, I am not sure how this stance will help the acting commissioner (who represents New Jersey Governor Christie's administration) help children. The opportunity to present her platform to 40,000 teachers seems like a way to give her ideas a wider audience and allow her to dispel some of the myths about some of them.

And regardless of the administration’s stance on the NJEA, it would be nice if instead of only focusing on the refusal of the commissioner to attend the NJEA meeting, the media would highlight ways in which NJEA proves the commissioner’s statement wrong--the efforts of the union to improve schools.

For example, NJEA founded the New Jersey Center for Teaching and Learning, a non-profit governed by an independent board made up of leaders in education, business and philanthropy. The Center works to empower teachers to be leaders in the transformation of ...

"When we make decisions we think we’re in control, making rational choices. But are we?"

In his best-selling book Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions, behavioral economist Dan Ariely challenges the basic assumptions of our economic system, exploring the powerful tricks that our minds play on us and showing that actually, we humans are far from rational.

Of course, irrationality is not always bad. His follow-up, The Upside of Irrationality, offers another look at the irrational decisions that influence our lives, as well as some of the positive effects that such irrationality can have.

Ariely recently spoke with us about his work and its implications for education reforms involving teacher compensation and school choice.

Public School Insights: You are a behavioral economist. What does that mean?

Ariely: My Ph.D.s are actually not in economics. I have a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology, and I have a Ph.D. in business administration. But what I do lies between psychology and economics.

I ask questions that economists would ask, but instead of assuming straightaway that people behave rationally, I just observe how people behave. So think of it as something that has no assumption; it's just observational in its nature. That's the basic story.

Public School Insights: You've written a couple of books, Predictably Irrational and The Upside of Irrationality. Could you briefly describe them?

Ariely: Yes. In Predictably Irrational, I talk about how people think, mostly about financial decisions. The things that we buy. One chapter asks the question, "How do we decide how much something is worth?" Economic theory has a very simple assumption about this. But I ask the question, "How do we really do it?"

Or I ask the question, "What happens when the price of something drops to zero?" People get overly excited about it, usually. But is it just because ...

No one would deny that having a high-quality teacher in every classroom is important. Research confirms that effective teaching improves student achievement. So it stands to reason that very few would deny that it’s important for all teachers to have access to high-quality professional learning. After all, research confirms it is a significant pathway to more effective teaching.

Yet as evidenced by a recent report from Learning Forward (formerly the National Staff Development Council), the National Education Association, American Federation of Teachers and Council of Chief State School Officers, far too few states and school districts ensure that their educators have access to effective professional learning activities.

Advancing High-Quality Professional Learning Through Collective Bargaining and State Policy takes an in-depth look at the professional learning policies of six states. The conclusion? Professional learning does not have a significant place in policy and collective bargaining language. But there is hope—the report offers recommendations and examples of collectively bargained language, legislation, regulations and administrative guidelines to inform the development of policy language that can strengthen the quality of professional development in the future.

To learn more about the report and its implications, we spoke to three individuals who each brought a unique perspective to this issue: Joellen Killion (Deputy Executive Director of Learning Forward), Linda Davin (Senior Policy Analyst at NEA) and Joyce Powell (now serving on the NEA Executive Committee after four years as the president of the New Jersey Education Association and decades in the classroom).

Public School Insights: Why is it important to do address professional development through collective bargaining and state policy?

Killion: At Learning Forward, we believe that if there are strong policies in place that set clear expectations, then there will be improved practice. So when collective bargaining language addresses with clarity the importance of the opportunity for teachers to engage in professional development, and when state policy simultaneously provides resources, guidelines and expectations for effective professional development, we believe that the practice of professional development will be improved.

Davin: I couldn’t agree more. Although we know that we can have high quality professional learning in districts where it is not included in collective bargaining language, we also know that ...