For the 2nd time in three years, a social studies teacher from the Mountain View-Los Altos Loftier School District has been awarded a White House Teaching Ambassador Fellowship and volition spend a year-long sabbatical working with U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan'south senior staff.

Marciano Gutierrez teaching class at Alta Vista High School in Mountain View. Click to enlarge.

Marciano Gutierrez teaching form at Alta Vista High School in Mount View. (Click to enlarge.)

Marciano Gutierrez, 29, is i of five – and the only Californian – selected for the honor out of 625 teachers nationwide who practical. An additional one-half-dozen teachers will be part-fourth dimension ambassadors while in their abode districts.

Barry Groves, superintendent of the Bay Surface area high school commune, called Gutierrez a "fabulous teacher" and a "thoughtful passionate advocate for teacher quality, particularly when it comes to serving traditionally under-served students." Gutierrez would be in his seventh year at Alta Vista High School, a 160-educatee continuation loftier school serving primarily low-income Latino students who have struggled in a comprehensive high school in a wealthy district. These students are similar Gutierrez's neighbors in Fresno, where he escaped the trap, he says, of low expectations when he was assigned to a magnet school beyond town. The offset in his family to attend college, Gutierrez graduated summa cum laude from Cal State Academy, Fresno, and received a total scholarship to Stanford, where he earned a master's in Didactics. He at present mentors students in the Stanford plan.

Gutierrez started piece of work this calendar week in Washington, where he will work directly with Brad Jupp, Duncan'southward senior plan advisor on teacher initiatives. Gutierrez will focus on instructor retention and recruitment bug, particularly how to attract good teachers to high-needs schools like Alta Vista. He says he'll as well exist looking at innovative ways to evaluate teachers. On that issue, it may have the diplomatic skills of a teacher ambassador to bridge relations between the Obama administration and the California Republic. Duncan made statewide teacher evaluation reforms, using standardized tests to measure student progress, a prerequisite for states to seek a waiver from the No Kid Left Behind law. Gov. Jerry Brown opposed that provision every bit an illegal mandate, and there's been little traction in most districts to alter California'south current ineffectual evaluation process.

Gutierrez, who began looking into alternatives last year as a fellow for some other program while teaching in Mountain View, regrets "the binary approach" of either using standardized tests to evaluate teachers or keeping the condition quo. He'due south interested in other measurements, including portfolios of student work and district tests measuring student growth through the twelvemonth, without reliance on a single summative standardized test. "I teach my kids how to recall and look at the world with a critical lens," he says. "At the cease of the year, they have a 60-question multiple-choice test that does not appoint any of that. So it's fair that teachers are resisting that to measure their operation."

Contrary to what critics say, Duncan and officials at the Department of Education are listening to what teachers are saying, Gutierrez said, and their position "is not stagnant." Part of his job as an Ambassador Fellow will be to investigate best practices in high-needs schools to see what other districts are doing to attract and retain high-quality teachers. His own experience at Alta Vista, where he is the lead social studies instructor who helped rewrite the curriculum, shows that "providing leadership opportunities to teachers, whether with formal titles or through an ongoing ability to influence a school site, will aid retain teachers."

His mission as an Ambassador Fellow will be to provide a teacher's perspective so that federal policy is "informed, relevant and accepted."

"We cannot wait for reauthorization (of No Kid Left Behind past Congress) to let teachers' voices exist heard." He and the other Fellows are scheduled to take their start meeting with Duncan next calendar week.

"It is critical that we work collaboratively with teachers to develop policies that will truly transform and elevate the teaching profession," Duncan said in a press release. "I am proud of the work our Teaching Ambassadors accept washed to talk with and listen to other teachers across the land as well every bit the direct input they have given staff."

Gutierrez's departure marks the return to the commune of Michelle Bissonnette, a social studies teacher at Los Altos High, who served in a similar capacity in the Department of Didactics during the by two years.

To go more reports like this one, click here to sign upwards for EdSource's no-price daily electronic mail on latest developments in education.