There are three kinds of teachers: disheartened, content and idealistic, according to a new study released by Public Agenda. Disheartened teachers comprise a huge 40% of the teaching force, but it is not like they are randomly distributed. Some students are very much more likely to have a disheartened teacher than a content or idealistic one.
The view that teaching is “so demanding, it’s a wonder that more people don’t burn out” is remarkably pervasive, particularly among the Disheartened,—they are twice as likely as other teachers to strongly agree with this view. Members of that group, which accounts for 40 percent of K-12 teachers in the United States, tend to have been teaching longer and are older than the Idealists, and more than half teach in low-income schools. They are more likely to voice high levels of frustration about the school administration, disorder in the classroom, and the undue focus on testing. Only 14 percent rate their principals as “excellent”” at supporting them as teachers, and 61 percent cite lack of support from administrators as a major drawback to teaching. Nearly three-quarters cite “discipline and behavior issues” in the classroom, and 7 in 10 say that testing are major drawbacks as well.
I am going to come back to the disheartened in a bit. They deserve more attention.
The “content,” a group almost as large as the disheartened, likewise are not randomly distributed. In fact, “complacent” might be a better description of this group.
| By contrast, the vast majority of teachers in the Contented group (37 percent of teachers overall) view teaching as a lifelong career. Most say their schools are “orderly, safe, and respectful,” and are satisfied with their administrators. Sixty-three percent strongly agree “teaching is exactly what I wanted to do,” and roughly three-fourths feel that they have sufficient time to craft good lesson plans. Those teachers tend to be veterans—94 percent have been teaching for more than 10 years, the majority have graduate degrees, and about two-thirds are teaching in middle-income or affluent schools.
Ironically, veteran teachers fill the ranks of both the “disheartened” and the “content.” When veteran teachers from both groups get together, it is like they come from different planets. The old locus of control issue threatens camaraderie.
| A locus of control orientation is a belief about whether the outcomes of our actions are contingent on what we do (internal control orientation) or on events outside our personal control (external control orientation)." (Zimbardo, 1985, p. 275)
The content believe they are happy and successful because they are great teachers. The content sometimes take a judgmental view of the disheartened. Discouraged teachers, in the view of the content, should take matters into their own hands and pursue every avenue to becoming a better teacher. Yep, that's their problem, they are disheartened because they are not good teachers, or so the content console themselves. The disheartened have been so beaten down by forces outside their control, they see the content as hopelessly naïve in their cushy high-end schools. Once upon a time, both groups of veterans started out as young “idealists.”
| However, it is the Idealists—23 percent of teachers overall—who voice the strongest sense of mission about teaching. Nearly 9 in 10 Idealists believe that “good teachers can lead all students to learn, even those from poor families or who have uninvolved parents.” Idealists overwhelmingly say that helping underprivileged children improve their prospects motivated them to enter the profession (42 percent say it was “one of the most important” factors in their decision, and another 36% say it was a “major” factor). In addition, 54 percent strongly agree that all their students, “given the right support, can go to college,” the highest percentage among any group. More than half are 32 or younger and teach in elementary schools, and 36 percent say that although they intend to stay in education, they do plan to leave classroom teaching for other jobs in the field.
If accurate, Public Agenda's characterization of idealists causes me angst. What we do not know is the extent to which the percentages overlap and describe the same people. I am willing to go out on a limb and guess that most of the 36 percent who intend to leave the classroom are among the nine out of ten idealists who believe that “good teachers can lead all students to learn, even those from poor families or who have uninvolved parents.” Furthermore, the vast majority of the same 36 percent who intend to leave the classroom said that “helping underprivileged children improve their prospects” was the most important or major factor in their decision to become teachers.
So who is left to actually become the high-value experienced veteran teacher who can make a difference to underprivileged children? The tragedy is that in our education system, teachers who start idealistic end disheartened.
They are just doing the best they can with what they've got, says Pedro Noguera. First he grants the schools of education deserve some criticism.
It’s true that many schools of education don’t recruit the best students into the profession... and that too often the research produced in schools of education is of little use to public schools...As is true for American universities generally, there is considerable variability in quality among the nation’s schools of education.
Many graduates of even the best schools of education lack effectiveness in the classroom.
Graduates of teacher-credential programs at my university, for example, and at Teachers College, Columbia University, are highly sought after, even at a time when teaching jobs are scarce. Does this mean that they are highly effective when they enter schools? In many cases, they are not.
The game is rigged against these promising graduates.
But this is not because they lack the intellect or dedication. Rather, it is largely because they are frequently assigned to work in the most dysfunctional schools and are expected to teach the most disadvantaged students. This is precisely what many schools and districts do to new teachers.
I completely agree that many schools essentially sabotage their new teachers.
In fact, there are schools which routinely assign the most difficult students to the most novice teachers. Older teachers believe they have paid their dues and deserve less challenging students even as their competence presumably improves with experience.
Mr. Noguera has four recommendations:
1. Give schools of education a financial reason for establishing lab schools in difficult areas.
2. Provide more debt relief for math and science majors.
3. Incentivize academia to collaborate with classroom teachers in the development arts, humanities, and science curricula.
4. Use work-study to motivate undergraduates to tutor in high-need schools.
I will add a fifth recommendation. Schools should hire the veteran math and science teachers they have pushed away for decades.
schools could also welcome veteran teachers who move into their communities as the valuable assets they are instead of viewing them as budget breakers. State credentialing commissions could remove the arbitrary obstacles that make it difficult for proven out-of-state teachers to get certified in their new state of residence. I am not talking about alternative certification. I am talking about proven classroom veterans. I also agree with the first comment to Mr. Noguera's article.
Why not establish teacher-training programs with instructors who can show education students how to work effectively and exclusively in dysfunctional schools? In fact, I did a small study of the curriculum vitae (resume for the uninitiated) of professors of education. The data confirms the common student perception that half of their professors of education do not have genuine teaching experience. It is difficult to find a professor of education with over ten years genuine teaching experience, and exceedingly rare to find one with more than twenty years.
Ironically, at precisely the time when a life-long teacher would be most valuable to the next generation of teachers training in our schools of education, they are at an extreme disadvantage. Anybody with a PhD goes to the head of the applicant line over dedicated teachers who were too busy actually teaching to go to graduate school. If they are hired, they will very likely be relegated to the ranks of the never-eligible-for-tenure. A little budget trouble and they are laid off on a last-in, first-out basis. Schools of education unload their most experienced teachers first. Maybe the schools of education could do with their own alternative certification program.
"Good teachers matter. The data on that are clear. If we want more talented people in the classroom, a first step toward encouraging them would be to stop discouraging them."
I did not expect to see a piece about education under Yahoo Personal Finance, but there it was. What would an economist, Charles Wheelan PhD, say about education? Usually it is educators (like me) who write about education. The fact he is not an educator may be a point in his favor. At least he will not have an educator's biases. On the other hand, not being an educator, he may not understand the shortcomings of applying a business model to schools.
He implies that “alternative league” players become teachers, and because they are “alternative league” players, they naturally resist the threat that merit pay proposals represent.
The idea of some kind of merit pay has been kicking around for 20 years, if not longer. But this discussion almost always focuses on how compensation practices affect the incentives (and therefore the behavior) of existing teachers.
In fact, too many teachers chose education precisely for the cozy situation of job security with no accountability.
Economists refer to this phenomenon as adverse selection. Individuals use private information (their expected productivity in this case) to sort themselves into a job with a compensation structure that suits them best. Public education is the equivalent of the alternative league.
His wife is about to make a mid-career change into teaching math, so very soon she will be able to enlighten him about the realities of our education system. Apparently she has already begun.
First, all prospective employees must undertake two years of full-time specialized training, at their own expense, just to be considered for a job. Study after study has shown that this training has zero connection to subsequent performance at the firm, but Company B sticks to this screening mechanism anyway.
… snip...
As you may have guessed, Company B is public education.
I do not know about you, but I can almost hear his wife talking as if I were right there sharing breakfast with them.
Prospective teachers jump through hoops because state law says they have to. If a state requires that all public school teachers take a course on the history of discrimination against left-handed children, then training programs will make a fat living offering courses on the history of discrimination against left-handed children. The state requires the course, education schools offer it, and future teachers must take it. There is nothing in that process to ensure that it actually produces better teachers.
I agree with something Dr. Wheelan says right now.
Good teachers matter. The data on that are clear. If we want more talented people in the classroom, a first step toward encouraging them would be to stop discouraging them.
He strongly implies that merit pay will attract higher quality aspirants to teaching.
The most pernicious aspect of the public education pay structure is that it discourages motivated, productive, energetic people from entering the profession in the first place.
Between the pay structure and the certification requirements, the situation is well nigh hopeless.
We compound that problem with ridiculous teacher certification laws. Despite a steady flow of evidence that our current teacher training requirements have essentially no correlation with performance in the classroom, most states continue to mandate that prospective teachers undertake expensive and time-consuming courses. That, too, is a huge deterrent for bright young people who might otherwise be attracted to teaching.
One day his synthesis of education and economics may produce pearls of insight. I look forward to a regular place at his breakfast table.
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Does Jonathan Alter at Newsweek really know what he wants? His recent article, Peanut-Butter Politics, rightly pinpoints teacher effectiveness as a crucial component of classroom effectiveness, but accuses the teachers union of reluctance to actually hold teachers accountable. The problem is he has no viable accountability plan except a nebulous call for measuring teacher effectiveness in the classroom.
Teacher effectiveness–say it three times. Last week a group called the New Teacher Project released a report titled "The Widget Effect" that argues that teachers are viewed as indistinguishable widgets–states and districts are "indifferent to variations in teacher performance"–and notes that more than 99 percent of teachers are rated satisfactory. The whole country is like Garrison Keillor's Lake Woebegon, except all the teachers are above average, too.
Why? The short answer is teachers' unions. Duncan complained recently that the California school system has a harmful "firewall" between student evaluation and teacher evaluation. In other words, teachers can't be evaluated on whether their students actually learned anything between September and June. The head of the San Francisco union says it's nuts to judge teachers on whether there's evidence that shows improvement in their classrooms. An A for accountability, eh?
...snip...
It takes a tough man to say, in the middle of a recession, "no improvement, no check." But if not now, when?
I addressed The Widget Effect a couple weeks ago. It is not so much that there is a lack of desire to hold teachers accountable. The main problem is that there are simply too many variables the teacher does not control. No one has yet proposed any fair way of evaluating teachers. And no teacher can or should be held responsible for (for example) the drunken uncle who lives in the student's home.
The worthlessness of evaluations creates a major disconnect in the school policy.
Though it is widely accepted that a teacher’s effectiveness matters more than any other school factor in student success or failure, it is almost never considered in critical decisions such as how teachers are hired, developed or retained.
Teacher effectiveness cannot be considered because teacher effectiveness is unknown. What's more, researchers have no consensus as to the characteristics of an effective teacher.
I would like to address the first two points.
It is easy to be negative and overlook the legions of highly motivated, highly competent, and highly effective teachers in our classrooms. In spite of the evaluation difficulties, we know they are there. here's the thing: many are recognized only years after a student has benefited from their influence. At the time, their students, with their lack of life experience, may not have realized what a treasure their teacher was. In fact, they may have even “hated” their teacher. Nevertheless, great teachers populate our classrooms in great numbers. A commonly appearing estimate is 50%. Around 50% of education students have the right stuff, but nearly all students will graduate and end up in our schools. Any college of education cohort can differentiate the more able from the less able among their peers. Maybe our colleges of education should be more selective, evaluating teaching candidates for suitability long before they have invested four plus years of time and money in becoming teachers.
I love reading old stuff. Did some expert pundit's analysis and future projections come to pass or not? A quarter century ago, there were lots of articles wondering what we would do with all our future free time. The answer turned out to be---work even more. A quarter century ago, lots of articles wondered how America would solve its looming math and science teacher shortage. The answer turned out to be ---not much. Many universities are importing math and science professors from other countries because America is not producing its own. So it was interesting to reread an old article from Time entitled "Help! Teacher Can't Teach" dated Monday, Jun. 16, 1980, nearly thirty years ago. It could have been written yesterday.
Like some vast jury gradually and reluctantly arriving at a verdict, politicians, educators and especially millions of parents have come to believe that the U.S. public schools are in parlous trouble. ..Experts confirm that students today get at least 25% more As and Bs than they did 15 years ago, but know less.
Society holds the teachers responsible.
the new complaints about teachering also arise from a dismaying discovery: quite a few teachers (estimates range up to 20%) simply have not mastered the basic skills in reading, writing and arithmetic that they are supposed to teach.
Even as criticism abounds, Time (and all of us) recognize that 20% is quite a bit less than 100%.
Of course, among the 2.2 million teachers in the nation's public schools are hundreds of thousands of skilled and dedicated people who, despite immense problems, manage to produce the miraculous blend of care and discipline, energy, learning and imagination that good teaching requires. ...The best-educated and most selfless teachers are highly critical and deeply concerned about the decline in teaching standards and educational procedures. Their frustration is perhaps the strongest warning signal of all.
Testing tends to be the first line of defense. Many states began mandating teacher competency tests, only to find that far too many practicing teachers were unable to pass these tests. Lest one should think that teacher competency tests were perhaps too hard, most required math typically taught between the eighth and tenth grades, and English at corresponding levels. Any teacher, presumably all of them college graduates, should be able to pass easily. But they do not.
I was astonished to be the first one finished with the California Basic Educational Skills Test (CBEST). I put that test away in less than two hours. It was supposed to be a four-hour test. I once took the National Teachers Examination (NTE) in early childhood education cold, no study, review or preparation of any kind. I had been a secondary teacher for many years. I scored at the 86th percentile. I was not happy. My score was too good for someone like me who had taken a test outside of my field. According to the normative data on my score report, the vast majority of test takers were graduates of early childhood education programs. I did better than 86% of them. Not good.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan's support of merit pay for teachers, though framed as a way to pay teachers more, is really just a disguised way of saying if teachers taught better, our schools would be better, and so maybe more money would motivate teachers to teach better. One of the problems of merit pay is the unstated assumption that teachers are not already doing their best.
Okay, let's face the issue of teacher quality head on.
1.Teaching credentials are no assurance of teacher quality.
2.Schools do not hire the best qualified candidates, but the cheapest.
3.School of education attract students of lower academic ability than other academic departments.
4.Graduates of colleges of education must often take basic teacher competency tests many times before they pass.
5.Math teachers often do not possess a profound understanding of fundamental mathematics.
Some schools, like The Equity Project charter school in New York*, is determined to acquire high-quality teachers. They are offering $125,000 per year and the application process is a grueling four-step process. The charter school has created such a grueling process because the usual documentation, university degree with or without a state teaching credential, is worthless.
It did not used to be like this.
In 1900, when only 6% of U.S. children graduated from high school, secondary school teachers were looked up to as scholars of considerable learning.
Things were going swimmingly as high schools graduation rates steadily improved to a high of 70% by the 1960's. Sputnik was a huge surprise in 1957.
Almost overnight, it was perceived that American training was not competitive with that of the U.S.S.R. Public criticism and government funds began to converge on U.S. schools. By 1964, achievement scores in math and reading had risen to an alltime high.
Let's repeat that: Public criticism and government funds began to converge on US schools. Though only a child, I remember that time well. Society did not simply complain and moan; society demanded action and the government responded. The result, which directly benefited me, was that by 1964 achievement scores in math and reading had risen to an all time high. Only genuine achievement would do because society had a stake in knowing accurately if education was working. There was no interest in the statistical juggling so common now. Want SAT score improvement? In 1995, the College Board simply added 100 points** to everyone's score.
Over the last thirty years, there has been plenty of societal moaning and complaining, but no demand, no collective will. So society had the education system it wants. What did now Research Professor of Education at New York University Diane Ravitch say thirty years ago?
Diane Ravitch: "It is really putting things backward to say that if children feel good about themselves, then they will achieve. Instead, if children are learning and achieving, then they feel good about themselves."
Colleges of education are still teaching a backwards concept of self-esteem.
Although the driving motivation to beat the Soviets to the moon was not the noblest, my generation was the last beneficiary of America's once legendary education system.
Ever since the mid-1960s, the average achievement of high school graduates has gone steadily downhill.
...snip...
Many teachers have come to see themselves as casualties in a losing battle for learning and order in an indulgent age. Society does not support them, though it expects them to compensate in the classroom for racial prejudice, economic inequality and parental indifference.
In 1957 it was Sputnik. What will it take today for society to set aside complacency, ideological wrangling, or perpetuation of social status quo?
*The Equity Project's 4-stage application process
**To be fair, the purpose of recalibrating scores was not to artificially raise scores, but to realign the scores to the population so that a score of 500 would once again be average. According to the New York Times article, The average verbal score today is 424; the average math score, 478.
So the College Board officials have decided to "recenter" the scale, changing it so the average student will once again get scores of 500 on the verbal and math tests...
In 1941, when the current norms were established for scoring the S.A.T., the world was a very different place. A small group of middle- and upper-class Americans attended college...
As colleges diversified in the 1960's, opening their doors to more poor and first-generation Americans, S.A.T. scores began a steady drop. By 1969, the average verbal score was 462; today, it is 424.
So President Obama wants to get rid of the bad teachers.
"We need to make sure our students have the teacher they need to be successful. That means states and school districts taking steps to move bad teachers out of the classroom. Let me be clear: if a teacher is given a chance but still does not improve, there is no excuse for that person to continue teaching. I reject a system that rewards failure and protects a person from its consequences. The stakes are too high," Obama said.
Nobody wants bad teachers. But exactly who are the bad teachers? How do we go about identifying them? Oh, I know. Let's take a look at the teacher evaluations. Surely the evaluations, many of them professionally designed, will point out the bad teachers. After the bad teachers are identified, all that remains is the battle with the teacher's union, whose mission is to make sure bad teachers teach until retirement. (snark alert).
Every school I have ever seen has a program (at least in the employee handbook) for annual evaluations. In my whole career, I have been evaluated just five times by supervisors (principal, vice principal, or department chair). And here is something else everyone knows: the evaluations are worthless. Now a new study by the New Teacher Project confirms what everyone knows. Entitled “The Widget Effect,” the study show that teachers are fungible.
The study illustrates that teacher evaluation systems reflect and codify the “Widget Effect”—the fallacy that all teachers are essentially interchangeable—in several major ways:
All teachers are rated good or great. Less than 1 percent of teachers receive unsatisfactory ratings, even in schools where students fail to meet basic academic standards, year after year.
Excellence goes unrecognized. When excellent ratings are the norm, truly exceptional teachers cannot be formally identified. Nor can they be compensated, promoted or retained.
Professional development is inadequate. Almost 3 in 4 teachers did not receive any specific feedback on improving their performance in their last evaluation.
Novice teachers are neglected. Low expectations for beginning teachers translate into benign neglect in the classroom and a toothless tenure process.
Poor performance goes unaddressed. Half of the districts studied have not dismissed a single tenured teacher for poor performance in the past five years.
The worthlessness of evaluations creates a major disconnect in the school policy.
Though it is widely accepted that a teacher’s effectiveness matters more than any other school factor in student success or failure, it is almost never considered in critical decisions such as how teachers are hired, developed or retained.
Teacher effectiveness cannot be considered because teacher effectiveness is unknown. What's more, researchers have no consensus as to the characteristics of an effective teacher.
I would like to address the first two points.
All teachers are rated good or great. And because all teachers are good or great, excellence goes unrecognized.
At best, evaluations are worthless. In many schools, an evaluation is a pro forma process, if it happens at all. The busy administrator visits the class for a few minutes, walks out and writes the glowing report.
At worst, the evaluation is a retaliatory or evidence-fabrication tool. I am reminded of the young elementary art teacher whose reputation for excellence was well-known by staff and parents alike. Teachers dropping off their class at her classroom often lingered and teachers retrieving their class often came early to observe and hopefully glean some useful tips. One fine April morning the vice principal came to observe a class period and stayed for the whole class. His one and only comment after the class left: he did not like that the students were allowed to chat with their neighbors as they worked on their art.
The resulting evaluation was a disaster. On a 5-point scale, her average came to 2.7. She objected to the principal and he allowed her to write a rebuttal. But the rebuttal went nowhere. All that survived of the evaluation was the average which appeared on a list of all the teachers with all their 4.X averages. The school submitted the list to the district office.
She complained bitterly to the principal who told her not to worry—it would have no effect on her future career. She complained to her colleagues, some of whom interceded for her with the principal. You see, this young teacher had rebuffed the vice principal's advances at the school Christmas party. Her colleagues suggested the principal replace the vice principal's evaluation with one of his own, but he refused, saying it would be unseemly to override the vice-principal.
This story is not a fluke. Evaluations, if done at all, are often undertaken only because the teacher has entered the administrator's radar for some reason. In such situations, greatness cannot help but go unrecognized. I would go so far as to say that Teachers of the Year are not necessarily the top teachers. They are teachers with spare time. Many of the best teachers are simply too busy to fulfill the onerous essay and video requirements to be considered for a Teacher of the Year award.
What, you say. You thought Teachers of the Year were nominated for doing their jobs every day. Most Teachers of the Year are self-nominated. Typical is the application for the Arizona Teacher of the Year.
Teacher nominees/applicants must submit a written application that is reviewed by a panel of judges consisting of educators, students and members of the business community. Ten finalists are selected from the written applications.
The 10 finalists are asked to prepare a 15-minute videotape. The final selection process includes review of the videotape, an interview and an impromptu speech by each of the 10 finalists. Following that process, the Teacher of the Year is selected along with four “Ambassadors for Excellence” and five finalists. The Teacher of the Year and Ambassadors have multiple opportunities during the year to make public appearances throughout the state, speaking to professional, civic, educational, parent and student groups. (my bold)
The written application includes 13 double-spaced pages of essay material:
Educational History and Professional Development Activities (2 double-spaced typed pages) – 5 points
Professional Biography (2 double-spaced typed pages) – 5 points
Community Involvement (1 double-spaced typed page) – 5 points
Philosophy of Teaching (2 double-spaced typed pages) – 15 points.
Education Issues and Trends (2 double-spaced typed pages) – 15 points
The Teaching Profession (2 double-spaced typed pages) – 20 points
National Teacher of the Year Message (1 double-spaced typed page) – 10 points
Arizona Teacher of the Year Message (1 double-spaced typed page) – 10 points
The school administrator must agree in writing to approve up to 30 days for a substitute teacher to allow for newly-minted teacher of the year public appearances.
You may be the greatest teacher in the world, but if you are, and you are honest, you are very likely not going to write essays that will get you selected as teacher of the year, especially when you write about “education issues and trends” and “the teaching profession.” John Taylor Gatto was voted New York's Teacher of the Year in 1991 and immediately, with his acceptance speech, began telling everyone about the insidious goal of compulsory education to de-educate students. He has written several books, all with the same message. Somehow I have trouble believing the message he proclaimed from the Teacher of the Year platform was the same message he told the committee he would proclaim when he wrote his application essays.
Neither the complicated, multifaceted, self-selected Teacher of the Year evaluations nor the run-of-the-mill annual evaluations performed (or not) in most schools succeed in any meaningful way.
Bill Gates says we are not making teachers great. The top 20% of students who get a good education are the ones with the opportunities for innovation and success. Bill Gates says while the quality of education is declining for those top 20%, the problem is even worse for the lower 80%. He was “stunned at how bad it is.” 30% never finish high school, an alarming statistic masked by the usual way drop-outs are counted.
”How do you make education better?”
Not with smaller schools, scholarships, library programs and all that. The key, Bill Gates learned from the research, is having great teachers.
”How much variation is there within or between school” attributable to great teachers?
The variation between the top quartile teachers and the bottom quartile teachers is huge, says Bill Gates. A top quartile teacher can raise achievement levels 10% in a single year.
”What does that mean?”
If all American classroom were staffed by top quartile teachers, within two years the Asian advantage would be gone. Within four years, the US would “blow away” the whole world.
”What are the characteristics of a great teacher?”
Surprisingly, it might not be years of experience. Great teachers have figured it out within about three years. They generally stay great for the rest of their careers.
”What factor predicts teacher quality?”
Possession of a Masters degree came in dead last. Teach for America ranked just a little ahead of a Masters degree. The top predictor is past performance. Sadly, past performance has not been sufficiently studied. Clearly the observation and checklist approach used in most schools when a rare evaluation is conducted reveals almost nothing.
”Do good teachers stay and bad teachers leave?”
Unfortunately, better teachers are more likely to leave, or be driven out, than stay. Part of the problem is the good teachers are not told they are good. In fact, often just the opposite. Good teachers, unbelievably, are resented by students and other teachers, undermined by school administrators and parents, and disrespected by society.
What can we do?”
Bill Gates recommends more research, and video recorders in every classroom. He does not favor a surveillance role for the cameras. (However, once cameras are in place, the ability to watch is likely to be irresistible). He would use the cameras as device for the observation and collection of best practices.
Bill Gates' conclusion?
”Education is the most important thing to get right.”
America is not appreciating, monetarily or otherwise, its best teachers. In fact, the system and society regularly drive out members of the top quartile. Bill Gates is obliquely pointing to the same problem many others have observed: the presence of deeply entrenched mechanisms that operate to preserve the status quo.
Do teachers teach too much? That is the question under consideration at Teacher Magazine. It would be nice if some of the respondents actually read the cited report. The discussion starter asks, “What would you do with 15-20 hours of non-teaching time per week?”
I can tell you why Japanese teachers have 15-20 non-teaching hours per week. So can Susan Sclafani, director of state services for the National Center on Education and the Economy, a Washington-based nonprofit group that promotes a tighter link between education and workforce development. Ms. Sclafani ... noted that several of the top-performing countries have stricter front-end selection criteria for teachers, larger class sizes, and longer hours to facilitate on-site professional learning. The United States, in contrast, typically has lax entry standards and smaller classes, and the majority of teachers receive no more than 16 hours of training in their subject per year.
How does Japan stack up? Stricter front-end selection criteria for teachers—check.
Larger class sizes—check. Japanese classes average 45 students.
Longer hours—check. Japan has more calendar days in their academic year, as many as 240 compared to 180 in America.
Japanese teachers enjoy something else American teachers wish they had.
If we want professional teachers, we need to treat them like professionals...The report also found that other countries typically gave teachers more autonomy at their school sites.
America may be afraid to think about overhauling education. It is scary to think about teacher quality.
The United States, in contrast, typically has lax entry standards.
Americans do not believe their teachers deserve professional status. Neither do the employers of teachers. That is why publishers have a ready market for “teacher-proof” curriculum.
“Books Moore” (see comments in Teacher Magazine link) lays it out in a lengthy comment:
Lodging complaints about teacher contact hours during the day is a little like standing in a dilapidated building and complaining that there is a slightly crooked hanging on the wall. The real issues are much more severe, and legions of reforms are needed to change this.
One is...why should the best and brightest among us wish to even bother to become teachers? What do they have to look forward to? Sure, it can be immensely gratifying to teach, but all that goes with it--and what does not go with it--often very much more than offsets that. Entering teaching becomes an irrational decision for many who otherwise would love to enter it.
Two is the byzantine requirements mandated to achieve certification. Does anyone else find it odd that an education major with a 2.5 GPA from Podunk U can be straightway certified, while someone else with a 3.9 from a rigorous program, plus a Masters degree, would first need to do an additional year of mostly irrelevant courses? Added to that is the fact that teacher education programs are typically geared to producing compliant technicians rather than critical scholar-educators.
Third are teacher salaries. A single parent entering teaching would still qualify for a variety of welfare. And the salary of the person who delivers your mail can keep up with the salary of the person who teaches your children. Need I say more?
Fourth is that education has transformed largely into an authoritarian regime. The cost is the freedom required to not only be an outstanding pedagogist but the freedom required for students to become highly engaged literates...
In short, there is a serious lack of relational trust. More and more, relational trust is becoming recognized as the overarching predictor of academic achievement.
So what do Japanese teachers do with their 15-20 non-teaching hours per week? Women work hard, plan lessons, grade papers, collaborate with colleagues, and go home at 5:00 to cook dinner and take care of children. Men can be found in the mens' teachers lounge playing Go and Shogi between classes. They make up for it by staying after school all hours planning lessons, grading papers, and collaborating with colleagues.
(I would like to correct a misperception in “Melissah's” comment: “In Asian countries--Japan specifically--teachers spend one half of their day in class, teaching students. They spend the other half of their day grading, planning, and collaborating with colleagues. Given half a day to grade would allow me to provide specific, more immediate feedback for students, which would lead to classroom instruction that better matched the needs of the learner. The point of restructuring the teaching day would not be to leave students alone; rather, it would be to stop the "babysitting" that makes up much of our day. “
Japan does not do as much babysitting as we do. The teachers' desks are all located in a large teachers' room. The student's homeroom is really home. They take nearly all their classes in their homeroom. Teachers go back and forth to classes. Consequently, there is no adult supervison among the students during the ten minute break between classes. Furthermore, Japanese do not bring in a substitute teacher unless the absent teacher will be gone at least three days. For every teaching hour of an absent teacher, there is a class of 45 students completely unsupervised. Japan has a severe problem with violent bullies. Most of the the incidents take place during unsupervised time. Maybe Japanese schools could do with a little more babysitting).
50 Percent. That number comes up again and again and again. Tonight I heard it yet again on The Newshour with Jim Lerher . Principals say it. Some principals, like Nelson Burton, are eager to shake up their staff. Burton leads Coolidge High School. Low test scores show that his school has been failing for years.
L. NELSON BURTON, Principal, Coolidge Senior High School: It's a terrible thing to say, but half of the staff here ought not be(my bold). They just don't fit in to what we're doing here. And I dare say many of them won't fit into any program where they're trying to raise student achievement.
JOHN MERROW: Does that surprise you, a principal says, "I wish I could fire half my teachers, they're not on board, they're not effective"?
MICHELLE RHEE: Does it surprise me? No. I've heard things like that from lots of principals.
Professional developers say it. JOHN MERROW: Michelle Rhee has set aside nearly $20 million for professional development. But Cheryl Krehbiel, who runs the program, doesn't think she can help every teacher.
CHERYL KREHBIEL, District of Columbia Public Schools: We have a number of teachers who I don't believe will ever believe that kids can learn at high levels. And those are the teachers we need to move out quickly, rapidly, at whatever cost.
JOHN MERROW: Can you quantify -- I mean, what percentage of your roughly 4,000 teachers feel this way, have this problem?
CHERYL KREHBIEL: Fifty percent don't have the right mindset(my bold). And there's the possibility that more of them don't have the content knowledge to do the job.
I have heard professors of education say that 50% of preservice teachers should never have been accepted into the schools of education. I have heard professors of math classes for preservice elementary teachers say that 50% of their students do not have the math skills or understanding to lay the essential foundation our children need to master math to the levels needed in the modern world. I have heard teachers say that 50% of their colleagues should not be teaching.
Tonight I decided that I have heard the 50 percent estimate so many times that I am going to start a collection of citations and look for research that may confirm or deny the estimate. I fully understand that I have cited nothing but anecdotal evidence, and I fully understand that some people believe anecdotal evidence equals worthless evidence, but anecdotal evidence is a place to start. Anecdotal evidence can often be the first indication of important research-worthy trends.
What research has confirmed is that the most crucial factor leading to academic achievement is teacher quality. If significant numbers of teachers should not be in the classroom and yet remain, all other education reform efforts are a waste of time, money and energy. Research may find that less than 50 percent should find another career, but even so, efforts to recruit and retain quality teachers must be the linchpin of education reform. One place to find quality teachers would be among the proven older teachers from out of district who are routinely denied teaching jobs in favor of younger, less experienced (read: cheaper) applicants. If such older teachers manage to get hired, they must accept deep pay cuts since most districts will only give about five to seven years credit for experience on the pay scale even to proven teachers with ten, twenty or thirty years experience.
That is what the book Mathematical and Analogical Reasoning of Young Learners says there are. The three kinds of teachers are 1. theoretical, 2. experiential, and 3. intuitive. In reading over the respective descriptions and case studies of actual teachers, the categories began to remind me of those primary school reading groups, you know, the squirrels, bears and rabbits. Everybody knows the squirrels are the best and the rabbits, shall we say, are not, regardless of the attempt to camouflage the differences with neutral category names.
The researchers asked about twenty teachers of children ranging from kindergarten to third grade the following questions:
1. What does mathematical reasoning mean to you?
2. Are you familiar with the term, analogical reasoning? What does the term mean to you?
3. How competent at mathematical and analogical reasoning do you consider young children to be?
4. How did you acquire your understanding of mathematical reasoning?
5. How did you acquire your understanding of analogical reasoning?
6. How do you perceive your role in developing the children's mathematical reasoning?
7. How do you attempt to stimulate your children's mathematical reasoning?
8. What differences in reasoning ability do you see in your children?
9. How do you attempt to address these differences?
10. What kinds of mathematical reasoning abilities do you think your children will need to be successful in first and second grade?
11. Do you take these future reasoning needs of your children into account? If so, how do you do it?
12. In what ways do you think the children's out-of-school experiences contribute to the growth of their mathematical reasoning?
The beliefs and practice of the teachers of our youngest students should be examined more often. These teachers are instrumental in laying the academic foundations which may mean the difference later between academic achievement and academic frustration. According to the authors, theoretical teachers displayed substantial and detailed knowledge of mathematical and analogical reasoning, pedagogy, and cognition. Theoretical teachers believed that children are highly capable and competent. They also considered home experiences and mathematical language to be essential to the the children's development of mathematical and analogical reasoning skills.
On every question, as a group (but not necessarily as individuals) the authors found the experiential teachers and the intuitive teachers displayed less knowledge and lower expectations. Experiential teachers relied primarily on their own experience and their reflections on that experience without reference to the professional literature. Intuitive teachers were just guessing and hoping; their answers to the research questions “were brief and often included jargon” (emphasis supplied) (page 148). In fact, their responses often included the phrase, “I guess.” Although all groups emphasized the process of doing math over getting answers, the intuitive teachers “did not see a need for direct instruction. This may relate to their lack of attention to conceptual development and their emphasis on learning being “fun” (page 149). (In the near future, I will be examining the jargon and buzzwords of education, and how terminology can substitute for clear thinking.)
I mentioned earlier that I got the impression that the labels, “theoretical,” “experiential” and “intuitive,” were hardly more than euphemisms for good, middling and poor. By the end of the book, the impression was pretty much confirmed.
The knowledge, beliefs, and practices of the teachers in this study can be placed on a continuum from intuitive to experiential to theoretical. Theoretical teachers explained their knowledge and and beliefs by referencing theoretical frameworks, teaching experience, and listening to children. They provided rich examples of practices associated with effective/exemplary teachers. The experiential teachers made decisions based on knowledge that appeared to reflect their experience as opposed to the multiple sources of knowledge used by theoretical teachers. In contrast, the intuitive teachers appeared to make instructional decisions more spontaneously. Although the examples of practice the intuitive teachers provided were not necessarily ineffective, these teachers could not clearly articulate any rationale for the decisions they make regarding their instructional practices (p 167).
Since the book was written by a bunch of education researchers, the high standing of theoretical teachers may mean nothing more than theoretical teachers quote education researchers so education researchers like them. The authors recommend that future research focus on the question of whether more learning occurs in the classrooms of theoretical teachers than in the classrooms of other teachers. Maybe I am a little rankled because I know that most of the here-today-gone-tomorrow education fads that have burdened veteran teachers over the years are usually perpetrated by education researchers, researchers who may have little teaching experience of their own.
Plenty of PhD types have made their careers researching and reporting on what is wrong with our education system and how to fix it. Most research leads to here-today-gone-tomorrow education fads. These fads consume precious resources and impose extra responsibilities on teachers, but in the end, education reform remains as elusive as ever. The research does not even agree on the characteristics of academic achievement except for ONE factor.
Over and over again, the most important factor contributing to the academic achievement of students is THE TEACHER. Just this week yet another testimony to the importance of the teacher appeared in “Education Week” summarizing a recent report of ten “top performing” education systems and seven other “rapidly improving” systems, and concluding that what all the systems had in common was a commitment to attracting and keeping the highest quality teachers. Encouragingly, three of the seven rapidly improving systems were in the United States: Boston, Chicago and New York.
“Top-performing systems, for instance, are typically both restrictive and selective about who is able to train as a teacher, recruiting their teachers from the top third of each group leaving secondary school.” Once top performing systems have their high quality recruits, they train them well, pay them well, and accord them professional respect and esteem.
In typical fashion, critics justified the poor performers. “Tom Loveless, a senior fellow in education at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, said the report 'needed to define the variables [that affect school performance] and measure them carefully' across systems hitting the full range of performance. Identifying the practices of the better-performing school systems does not mean much if less successful systems do the same things, he said.“
That is the question, is it not? Do less successful systems, in fact, do the same things as the better-performing systems? For example, can the less successful systems show that their teachers came from the top third of each group leaving secondary school? One of the top performing systems cited in the report, Japan, because of various factors, tend to have more consistent quality of secondary schools across the country than the US. So how does the top third from one community differ from the top third of another community within the United States? There's a great research question.
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