In Loco Parentis Or Who's the Boss?

I used to have a benign view of the implications of in loco parentis (Latin: in place of the parents) acquired in my education coursework oh so long ago it seems. I recently did some research on the history and application of the doctrine of in loco parentis, and found it to be more all-encompassing than I had thought. At school open houses, I used to joke that in loco parentis did not mean “the parents are crazy.” I explained that according to the law parents are responsible for the education of the children, but parents subcontract that job to the schools, so schools are accountable to the parents. Similarly, although I am responsible for the maintenance of my home, I might subcontract, for instance, a plumbing job, and the plumber would be accountable to me.

I decided to investigate claims such as this one that in loco parentis is not so benign. These sources believe the doctrine is no more than a ploy of the state to usurp parental authority to raise their children as they see fit. At least that is the raison d'etre for The Alliance for the Separation of School and State , a right-wing site. Historically, courts had long held that a father's authority over his children was inviolate, stemming form the Roman legal doctrine, patria potestas.

Blackstone explained the delegation of authority aspect:

The rights of schools over their pupils were codified before the U.S. Constitution was written. In 1765 the legal scholar Sir William Blackstone wrote that, when sending kids to school, Dad "may also delegate part of his parental authority, during his life to the tutor or schoolmaster of the child; who is then in loco parentis, and has such a portion of the power of the parents committed to his charge." (my bold)

But I could not find an authoritative explicit statement anywhere that reflects the doctrine of in loco parentis the way I had always understood it. In fact, I found that as far as the schools were considered, the main value of the doctrine was in allowing schools to harshly punish students in ways traditionally reserved to the father.

By far the most common usage of in loco parentis relates to teachers and students. For hundreds of years, the English common-law concept shaped the rights and responsibilities of public school teachers: until the late nineteenth century, their legal authority over students was as broad as that of parents...

...snip...

For example, in 1977, the Supreme Court held that the disciplinary paddling of public school students was not a Cruel and Unusual Punishment prohibited by the Eighth Amendment (Ingraham v. Wright, 430 U.S. 651, 97 S. Ct. 1401, 51 L. Ed. 2d 711), and that students who were disciplined in a school setting were not denied due process under the Fourteenth Amendment.

Or here:

Students got whatever rights their school administrators saw fit to give. At Harvard in 1951, the Administrative Board could tell reporters that it would increase the punishment for a window smashing -- by however much it wanted -- "if a student's name is on the police blotter or in the Boston press." That was the power of in loco parentis.

The doctrine can cut both ways, Universities are in trouble for recommending student loan lenders who have a financial relationship with the school.

Bribes, or to put it euphemistically, incentives, require two actors: the giver and the receiver. Lenders are at fault for offering such inappropriate gifts and incentives to university officials, but unscrupulous university officials bear just as much blame for accepting these gifts. As administrators of educational institutions that not only teach, but also care for their students, financial aid officials are acting in loco parentis. They should be giving the same unbiased financial advice that a parent would give to her child, particularly because many students have little experience with financial planning when they take out their first student loan.

In loco parentis has taken on new meaning as epitomized by the title of this article, “In loco parentis: helping children when families fail them.” Schools have taken on more and more of the responsibilities traditionally reserved for parents. Parents welcome breakfast, lunch, daycare, counseling, health care services and more provided by the school, especially if the services are free. A principal in a Northern California elementary school told me the school spends so much time, money and effort on the delivery of these auxiliary services that the main mission of the school, education, is neglected.

School people complain about parental abdication while at the same time sending clear signals that parents are inadequate. Parents talking to teachers are talking to people who usually consider themselves experts, not co-collaborators. After all, the teachers are the ones with the teaching credential. My children's teachers would talk down to me until they learned I was a teacher. The change in their attitude and approach was instantaneous. Teachers entertain themselves in the teachers' lounge with stories of ridiculous parents, while parents tell their friends equally incredible stories of ridiculous teachers.

It is perfectly obvious that teacher credentialing has nothing to do with teacher quality. It only certifies that the teachers have been exposed to whatever information the state wants then exposed to. States have differing and often arbitrary requirements for teacher certification. Teachers who come from a different training environment (e.g. Montessori, Waldorf, etc) or who received their training in a different country may have different political views of education and be wonderful teachers anyway. We have to wonder why some states require homeschooling parents to be state certified to teach their own children. Even though I came back from Japan with a truly awesome teaching resume, it was illegal for me to teach my own children in California.

In order to homeschool in California, the parent must establish a private school using the same paperwork as any other private school. Or the parent can enroll their children in the independent study program of a public school where the coordinator of the program oversees the child's education. The schools often use the independent study program as an alternative to expulsion. In a strange reversal of in loco parentis, the state to whom the parents are delegating the education of the child re-delegates that responsibility back to the parents and controls the parents' efforts to teach their child. The in loco parentis gate swings wildly on its hinges.

Parents can be forgiven for suspecting that the state wants to control the transmission of culture and values to the next generation. Homeschoolers, even nonreligious ones, understandably want to take back their children. Some have even gone to jail because of hostile superintendents of education. The Home School Legal Defense Fund (HSLDF) has extensively documented the level of control states may seek to exert and the legal actions states have initiated, ostensibly because the education of future citizens is in the state's interest. Parents suspect that state funding for enrollment is the true reason. Many homeschoolers operate underground to avoid state meddling.

States worry that if homeschoolers were not highly regulated, the children would receive an inadequate education. On the contrary, parents who voluntarily choose to homeschool are clearly and highly committed to the education of their children. Homeschooled children typically attain exceptionally high levels of academic achievement. In the view of these parents, schools have betrayed their trust and have overstepped the responsibilities of in loco parentis. That is why they have boycotted public and private schools.

For an overview of homeschooling and a list of links, see this website.

The Problem of Gratuitous Self-Esteem in Schools

In this Daily Kos diary there was a comment which got my attention, especially this part:

We have had a surge of self-esteem exercises and students think they are amazing if they bring a pencil.

A psychologist I knew was dismayed that her college interns expected lavish praise for merely doing the minimum. Students have been trained by years of marble jars on teachers' desks to seek validation for trivial reasons because they are starved for real self-esteem based on genuine success instead of the fake success offered in schools today.

The solution is the skillful interlacing of the five strands of success:
1.High expectations
2.Intrinsic rewards
3.Instructional planning
4.Classroom management
5.Motivation

High expectations

We do not really expect much from students or respect their capabilities. One parent told me that it was unreasonable to expect seventh graders to remember to write their names on their papers. Another parent told me that it was the teacher's job to make sure students have fun in school. Any teacher could go on and on about parents. I am saying that the school system itself does not expect all that much. As just one example, many people believe they cannot draw because they have no talent. We call a certain school program “Talented and Gifted” because of an underlying societal belief that the ability to achieve is basically a gift, not something that can be learned. I have observed many instances of the accomplishments of young children, accomplishments achieved with no observable stress or deprivation.

1.During my twenty years overseas, I met many kindergärtners fluent in at least two languages, languages they acquired with no apparent effort in the normal course of growing up.
2.I have seen children in Montessori schools learn an incredible amount of solid math reasoning without picking up a pencil or paper. Some of these students excelled at algebra in the fifth grade and calculus at the age of fourteen, all the while reveling in the fun of math.
3.I witnessed first, second and third graders at Bob Hope Primary School, Okinawa, master basic principles of two dimensional art (light and shadow, proportion, point of view, shading, composition, color basics and color mixing). It was clear that with appropriate guidance all children could demonstrate technical skill regardless of innate talent.
4.I watched a group of about twelve homechoolers aged 8-15 perform the culminating piece of a major project. They had researched and written a play about the immigrant experience at Ellis Island. The project also included an immigrant fair where the the community participated in a reenactment of the Ellis Island intake procedures. I played the part of the registering official, speaking only in Japanese to simulate mutually unintelligible languages. The kids, including my children, worked hard but loved every minute of it.
5.I have conducted biology and chemistry labs for homeschoolers. Although the labs were designed to help high school aged students fulfill state requirements for lab science, the younger siblings were completely enthralled with the labs. I let children as young as nine or ten participate. They had no trouble using the equipment, following lab and experimental procedures, recording data and discussing the analysis of the data. The only area where their skill was not the equal of the older students was the lab write-up. It was an eyeopening experience for me.
6.I knew a ten-year old who had a semester-long apprenticeship with a local veterinarian every Friday. His job was to do the dirty work and keep his eyes open. The vet told me he had to let the boy go after about three months when he discovered that the certified lab tech had foisted her duties (like prepping a cat for surgery) on him. (Personally, I think the vet should have fired the vet tech but it was none of my business).

Children thrive in an environment of high, yet achievable expectations.

Intrinsic rewards

Robert Slavin of Johns Hopkins University has found that intrinsic rewards lead to more lasting achievement with more positive affective results. Students are much happier with successes associated with intrinsic rewards. Nevertheless, teachers receive a ton of training in the design and implementation of classroom token economies. Research has also shown that when the extrinsic rewards are withdrawn achievement levels fall.

Instructional Planning

There is a reason why genuine educational success is an interwoven braid. Strong instructional planning contributes to achievement. Montessori schools are well structured. The art lessons were organized in a logical sequence. Instructional experiences were not only well-planned, but were also open-ended enough to allow students room to shine.

Classroom Management

It is obvious that classroom management has to contribute to high achievement. But classroom management means much more than discipline. It includes, for example, arranging the furniture and establishing routines. I put my desk in front of the chemical cabinet in my science classes, sending a clear “Off Limits” message since students are reluctant to go behind the teacher's desk. Well established and well rehearsed routines greatly reduce the potential for disruption and waste of instructional time.

Motivation

Naturally, the opportunity for genuine success encouraged by the other four strands is a great motivator. It has been said that nothing succeeds like success. Gratuitous success does not genuinely raise self-esteem; real success does.

Technology has Betrayed Education

Technology was supposed to revolutionize education. Schools went for technology in a big way. Technology, for most schools, meant computers. Apple gave a boatload of computers to schools all over the country. Administrators contracted professional development training in technology for practicing teachers. Colleges of education created technology courses for teaching candidates, first as electives, and eventually as requirements, in many certification programs. Foundations began mandating a technology component in grant proposals as a condition for receiving funding. Society expected schools to provide computers either in stand-alone computer labs or in classrooms. Virtually every school in America has computers available for student use.

Background

Schools have computers and they have been using them. A few schools got on the computer bandwagon early, in the 1980's, when the first widely available computers stored data on cassette tapes. By the 1990's, a whole generation of primary children grew up with DOS-based programs like Reader Rabbit and Oregon Trail. A program called Operation Frog was a great help in teaching my junior high students anatomy and allowing them to virtually not only dissect a frog, but put it back together again.

It has been over a quarter century, and now we know computers were not the panacea everyone expected. Why would we have thought they could be? Common sense tells us that people have achieved high levels of academic achievement for hundreds, even thousands, of years, long before computers were invented. There is a school, Waldorf , dedicated to the proposition that computers are not only not necessary, but also potentially detrimental.

In the late 1990's, I judged a science fair that led me to agree with Waldorf. Most of the judges were mothers who may or may not have understood the judging criteria. Nearly all the projects were prepared with a computer; a number were nothing more than cut and paste jobs from Internet sources. One submission stood out. Prepared by a Waldorf student, it looked like a project from the 1960's. It was a beautifully hand-colored project about the solar system. According to the evaluations, most of the judges down-rated the project because it did not possess the glitzy appearance that computer graphics and typefaces gave all the other projects. The actual content, the quality of the research and written text, meant nothing.

Issues

Undoubtedly, there are teachers who have exploited the potential of computers to enhance students' educational experience and achievement. But in general, computers have been less than helpful:
1. Computers are handy for keeping disruptive students occupied and out of trouble.
2. Computers are overused for drill and kill.
3. Learning to read on computers is not the same as learning to read the printed page. Eyes scan a screen differently than they scan a printed page. Distance issues and posture problems (see photo bottom of page 10) with the neck are also evident.

4. Digital math manipulatives are unclear. The transformations seem too magical and often fail to communicate the mathematical process.
5. The focus of education has shifted from knowledge and applications of knowledge to information access. We have often heard that that the important thing is finding information, not knowing information.
a) Students no longer need to know their math facts—just pull out the calculator. However, students often fail to evaluate the reasonableness of a calculator answer. Furthermore, even at the college level, students use the calculator for trivial math. I did an experiment with a math class recently where I allowed them to freely use calculators for a test. I walked around and watched their inputs. It was surprising how many felt the necessity to input calculations like -2+1. Some of them complained that they did not have enough class time to finish the test.
b) Students often do not have enough knowledge to figure out what search terms they should use to find more information on a given topic. Worse, they frequently cannot evaluate the credibility of web sites.
c) Students fail to use the Internet to find or confirm knowledge when they need it. They frequently believe they already know enough. They take these habits into adulthood. A good example are the numbers of young people who got into predatory mortgages by relying on the representations of the loan officer. Famous last words: So and so told me....
6. For a while spelling went out the window as students whined, “Why do I need to learn to spell? the computer can spellcheck.” Email could not even spellcheck for a long time.
7. Students are not learning to create complete presentations; they merely read their PowerPoint slides.
8. Students are developing little tolerance for teachers who use “old” technology like overhead projectors, or no technology like blackboards or whiteboards, believing their education is somehow being shortchanged by the absence of current technology. Such a misplaced belief can contribute to student bad behavior.
9. More examples?


Positive Uses

Nevertheless, computers can be used positively in schools:
1. Computers can be used to teach computers. Most employers want employees to be able to use at least the Microsoft software, Word, Excel and sometimes PowerPoint. Everyone should know how to use a word processor and be able to find and evaluate information on the Internet. Some employers expect employees to use other commercially available programs like QuickBooks and/or be computer savvy enough to quickly master a proprietary program like Raintree for medical offices.
2. Computers can be used to train and enhance certain skills students are already using. In the work world, employees train with Computer Based Training (CBT) wherein they develop skills they are using everyday. The software is integrated with what students are actually doing rather than teaching them to do something they may or may not do.


Actually Nos. 1 and 2 go together. Learning to use the computer to produce a useful project and actually not only complete the project but use the skills ever after. In the early 1990's, I taught math, science, and computer to junior high students. I fully integrated all three subjects, rearranging the math and science curriculum to enhance each other and teaching students to use the computer to, for example, produce data tables and lab reports. In those days, the computers in my school did not have the Internet. Anybody remember those days?

Computers are an important tool in modern life, but they are only tools. Technology can only supplement fundamentally sound education, not produce such an education.

Schools are in the Business of Creating Low Achievement

Currently education reforms efforts operate like cosmetic concealer. Reformers focus on superficial solutions when the problems are profound. Researchers often fail to identify unexamined assumptions, leading to fatal flaws in the research. A good example is test scores. Test scores are low so we need to raise them. So we mandate and implement all sorts of myopic strategies for raising test scores. Then if test scores go up, the cosmetic concealer has been successfully applied and we can declare the problem solved. These strategies are myopic because they do not begin to address the deeply embedded, underlying features of the system. As long as superficial features take up our time and attention, we hardly notice, much less address, the deep systemic problems.

The public accepts increased test scores as an encouraging sign of improving academic achievement, in part because powerful education stakeholders, via the media, have conditioned us to consider test scores an acceptable proxy for achievement. Whether test scores do indeed serve as a valid proxy is a major unexamined assumption. Once in a while, the public becomes aware of an incongruity in the assumption. But we do not stop to question it closely.

For example, in the case of Head Start, whose goal is to give kids the advantages and opportunities they might not be receiving at home, early gains are lost by the third grade. Why is this happening? What is going on in school that is undermining the progress that the kids have already achieved? Is their achievement leaking out? Was it never there to begin with? Or is there a problem with the tests? The public simply is not demanding answers. On the contrary, society seems resigned to accepting low levels of academic achievement. Why could that be?

Let's ask Judge Joe Brown, an African-American TV judge, on Fox TV. On May 9, 2008, speaking to an African-American defendant, the judge declared, “There are not enough jobs to go around. So society is depending on people like you to get themselves in trouble, get locked up, and take themselves out of the job market.” Judge Joe Brown did not originate this idea; sociologists have been saying the same thing for fifty years. The judge is right. The unemployment rate is about 5 percent right now. Imagine what the rate would be if all people were educated to their full potential and much fewer were warehoused in prisons. Think too of all the people the criminal justice system supports. According to at least one account, criminal justice is one of the biggest growing occupational fields today. People who have accomplished high levels of academic achievement expect to be rewarded with a relatively high level job. Society needs to create people to take what society deems to be low level jobs. A PhD does not want to drive a taxi.

So children are legally compelled to go to school where they are exposed day after day and year after year to being molded to the specifications of society. One of the ways school shapes children is through a combination of low expectations and mislabeling the curriculum. Here are some examples:


1.Critical Thinking

What passes for critical thinking is not critical thinking. A second grade critical thinking workbook (critical thinking workbook? a workbook?) asks, Do you like African elephants or Asian elephants? Curriculum tells students year in and year out that any kind of opinion is critical thinking. In college, students often misinterpret an evaluative essay question to be an opinion question. When they lose points, they complain that everyone is entitled to their opinion and therfore there are no right or wrong answers to opinion questions. If so, there would be no point in ever having essays questions which ask for an opinion.

They do not understand that an opinion may be well defended or poorly defended. They have become used to assignments for which they are asked to give opinions without basis. For example, after a lesson on global warming, they typically might be asked how they would solve the problem. Scientists themselves have not figured that one out. Students are also encouraged to consider responses that are tantamount to “I think because I think” to be excellent critical thinking because they get good grades when they write such nonsense. After a lesson on the features of viruses and the debate among scientists as to whether viruses are living things, students might be asked whether they think viruses are living things. The most obvious approach would be to compare viruses to the characteristics of living things and evaluate whether they measure up or not. A response like, “I do not think viruses are living things because I think only living things can make other living things sick” is worthless.

Critical thinking is not just another subject like math or art. Critical thinking is integrative and interdisciplinary requiring research, analysis, synthesis, evaluation and defense. It is not supposed to be just one more piece of an already fragmented curriculum. By mislabeling poor thinking as “critical thinking,” schools betray that they do not really expect students to exhibit good thinking.

2.Integration

There are lots of good reasons to integrate the curriculum. For one, an integrated curriculum reflects the integrated nature of real life problems and promotes critical thinking. In practice, integrated curriculum is nothing but themed units. For example, the teacher might pick “the ocean” as a theme. In reading class, the story will involve the ocean somehow. Science may involve a topic from oceanography. The story problems for math will add and subtract fishes or shells or whatever. In reality the curriculum is as disjointed as it ever was.

At the next level, if “the ocean” is the organizing concept, then maybe the teacher would show how to determine the age of clam shells, or how Fibonaci numbers work in the spiral of sea shells. At an even higher level, the teacher would choose math, literature, science, social studies, art, and music topics where the ocean is integral to understanding the connections between the topics. In “The Old Man and the Sea,” Hemingway describes the anatomical effects of the old man's battle with the fish. This would be a good time to study the anatomy Hemingway describes. The anatomy illuminates the novel and the novel illustrates the anatomy. It would also be a good time to study not only Cuba, but American expatriates in Cuba. I am not saying that elementary teachers should teach Hemingway, but how about a fifth grade book, “To Kill a Mockingbird.” What an opportunity for a compelling social studies unit. By mislabeling themed units as integration, schools betray that they do not really expect students to synthesize knowledge.

3.Grades

Grades are intended to be a reflection of understanding, but they can be more like a fun house mirror with a distorted reflection. The problem is students do not know they are looking at a distorted reflection. A good grade is taken to indicate solid understanding. Students who get an “A” in math thus "know" they are good at math. However, the “A” may only mean the student has a good memory for recipes. The student is able to remember and execute accurately the mechanical recipe for solving a particular type of problem. A student can go a long time like that, but sooner or later, very often in algebra class, they find out they never really had a profound understanding of math. I cannot tell you how many struggling algebra students have complained that they do not understand why they are having so much trouble with algebra because they have always gotten an “A” in math. I often find they are harboring basic misunderstandings of place value, fractions, and other topics.


I surprise college students on a regular basis by telling them that they will not be able to earn an “A” or “B” by relying on partial credit. Too many of them respond as if I were breaching some implicit unwritten social contract. By mislabeling good grades as evidence of understanding, schools betray that they do not really expect deep levels of understanding because such understanding is not essential to earning a good grade.

Many educational buzzwords mislabel, resulting in a kind of Newspeak that allows society to maintain a structure for perpetuating and reinforcing the status quo. Here are few for the dear reader to think about: empower, diversity, self esteem, mentoring, student-centered, collaboration. I will leave it to you to consider how such words obscure more than they elucidate. Perhaps some of you will be able to add other words to the list.

Why “Good” Schools Need “Bad” Schools

Good schools need bad schools. That is one reason education reform cannot work. Here-today-gone-tomorrow education fads give the appearance of constant effort, keeping researchers employed, giving administrators something to implement, and making busy teachers even busier. These fads, masquerading as reform efforts, deflect attention from the need to maintain bad” schools for the benefit of “good” schools.

Standardized tests drive this strange relationship. Most standardized tests are norm-referenced as opposed to criterion-referenced. Norm-referenced tests compare the test taker to the whole population of test takers. Criterion-referenced tests compare the test taker to a set of criteria.

Therefore, norm-referenced tests often express the score in terms of percentile. For example, if you score at the 85th percentile, it means you did better than 85 percent of the test takers. By definition, the 50th percentile means that half the test takers did better than the other half, and half the test takers did worse than the other half. Percentile deems the median to be the average. It does not matter how well a student learned or how well the teacher taught, half of the students are destined to be "below average" on a norm-referenced test (like nearly all standardized tests). Therefore the main problem with percentile is that the existence of a schools with above average performance necessitates the existence of schools with below average performance. It is impossible for all boats to rise.

A second problem with norm-referencing is the inherent competition. Academic achievement is an individual, personal achievement, or should be. All children have the potential to improve their academic achievement; all boats have the potential to rise. Norm-referencing undermines that potential. A third problem with norm-referencing is that it can actually disguise truly poor performance with a mask of apparent excellent performance. A bad score could be better than the 95% worse scores. A misleadingly high percentile could give the test taker a false sense of their performance. A fourth problem is that not all norm-referenced tests are expressed as percentiles. A good example is SAT tests which seem to be in terms of an actual score, but actually the scores are recalibrated periodically to ensure the mean and the median are the same.

Research has shown that time on task under the guidance of a skilled teacher is the major determinant of academic achievement. Every test reduces instructional time. It is ironic that so-called experts who should know better recommend more testing as the answer. Classroom teachers do not need tests to know how their students are doing. The system, however, does require some nominally “objective” measure of student performance. Maybe we can live with some tests; what we do not need is more tests, especially more norm-referenced tests.

Wanted: Teachers in Kansas

No kidding! Kansas, like everywhere else, has suddenly come alive to the fact that their teachers are retiring* and there are no replacements on the horizon.

Superintendent Jerry Burch, who heads USD 309 Nickerson-South Hutchinson, was in Colorado last month trying his luck at a recruitment fair.

In his district, 45 percent of the teachers are eligible to retire within the next three to five years, he said.

The San Luis Obispo California Coastal Unified School District (slcusd.org) realized about a year and half ago that one-third of their veteran teachers were retiring in the next three to five years, and worse, because of the common policy of rejecting experienced applicants in favor of cheaper new graduates, they realized there was a looming gap in mid-career cadre. The district had plenty of novices, few mid career teachers, and disappearing veterans.

The shortage of math and science teachers is especially severe, but should not have been unexpected. I have an article I clipped from Newsweek in 1985 predicting a future severe shortage of math and science teachers in twenty years. The future is now, and America responded by ignoring the warning.

Kansas legislators have come up with a list of suggestions for alleviating the shortage.

the development of alternative licensure programs, including Internet-based, off-campus and weekend programs; teacher preparation programs; scholarships for students pursuing teaching in math, science and special education; financial incentives to attract teachers; and promoting teaching in Kansas.

It is a typical list, but notice what this list, and most such lists, omit. The powers that be never think to attract the proven, mid-career teachers back to the classroom, by, for example, granting year-for-year credit for experience on the salary scale instead of the usual measly five to seven years. Schools insult teachers by paying teachers with fifteen, twenty, twenty-five years experience a wage corresponding to at most five years. Still, many teachers love teaching so much they would have accepted such stingy pay. These are teachers whose only mistake was to move from one school district to another for whatever reason (often to follow a husband's job opportunities), many never realizing that their proven experience had little value next to the cheap wages of novices. Schools could have had highly experienced teachers at the bargain price of just a little more than a newly minted teacher, but no. Schools all over America are facing the consequences of their shortsightedness.

*Link has expired. I could not find an alternative source.

The Ubiquitous 50 Percent

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.