Teachers Misbehaving

Purveyors of professional development don't like it much when the teachers they are supposed to be teaching misbehave. I have been on both sides of the podium. Teachers have good reason for regarding professional development sessions as a monumental waste of time. Usually the sessions are mandatory, and the presenter has been commissioned to present specific information whether or not the audience is interested. One school district asked me to present a hands-on literacy session to high school teachers on developing questions that build critical thinking.

It quickly became clear that what these high school teachers really wanted was tips on phonics, and how to integrate phonics into their content lessons. I converted my presentation to phonics on the fly. Because I had not brought any phonics materials with me, I had to abandon the hands-on part. I ended up delivering mostly lecture, but the teachers loved it. Six months later I was commissioned to present an overview of the six traits of good writing to a group of elementary teachers in a completely different geographical area. What the teachers wanted to do was vent their complaints about the district's adoption of the reading curriculum, Success for All. When they were done, I carried on with my presentation. Only later I found out that the administration canceled my future presentations because I did not shut down the criticism.

So you never know.

For every expectation, there are other conflicting expectations. If some teachers expect presenters to model hands-on techniques, other teachers want the presenter to just tell them the info and let them go back to grading papers. The presenter comes prepared with the information commissioned by the administration only to find the audience deems the information irrelevant to their needs. I gained appreciation and sympathy for presenters when I became a presenter.

The worst problems with professional development can be avoided by letting teachers create their own professional development. Administrators are notoriously out of touch with the teaching staff.

Districts Pushing Out Math and Science Teachers

If Researchers Say It...Will That Make IT True?

None of the plethora of programs for increasing the supply of math and science teachers ever focuses on bringing back the great teachers America already has. Schools constantly look to hire novice teachers, and routinely reject teachers with over five years experience. Hiring committees in Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Idaho and upstate New York have told me so. I made the telephone calls back in 2001 as part of commissioned research in public school district practices regarding the recruitment of substitute teachers, but often conversation ranged to general hiring policies.

What these hiring policies mean is that a teacher who moves to another district may very well be unemployable.

“I admit I’m being heretical,” said Richard M. Ingersoll, a professor of education and sociology at the university. “But it’s not that we’re producing too few math and science teachers. It’s that we’re losing too many.”

...snip...

The findings are important, Mr. Ingersoll said, because they suggest that national efforts aimed at expanding the pipeline of new math and science teachers are misdirected. If policymakers really want to ensure that those subjects are being taught by skilled teachers, he said, they ought to focus on retaining the much larger pool of science and math teachers who are already in schools.

The research studied the reasons that teachers leave teaching. The top three reasons: dissatisfaction, another job, or personal. The study did not address teachers who did not leave teaching but found that teaching had left them when they moved for whatever reason, usually to follow a spouse.

But the research is poor.

While teacher supply-and-demand issues are much debated, there have been relatively few efforts to examine the issue empirically, Mr. Ingersoll said.

It is notoriously difficult to get frank answers to questions. My telephone survey is a good example. I was collecting data regarding substitute teachers, but when the conversation veered to other areas, I heard interesting stuff, but I was not prepared to collect that information in any systematic or “scientific” way. Yet when I have tried to collect information about hiring policies directly, I get different answers from those previous “off the record” responses.

One thing the study highlights is that supply is not the problem.

But the researchers maintain that (supply) difficulties stem more from teacher turnover than from supply-side problems. “For science, those leaving teaching at the end of the year represented 130 percent of those who entered at the beginning of that year,” the study says.

For math, the number of teachers leaving their jobs was 120 percent of the number who entered the pool of qualified candidates at the start of the year. In both fields, retirements accounted for only a small percentage of leavers, suggesting that most of the attrition is not the result of a graying workforce.

The high rate of non-retirement-related job movement led Mr. Ingersoll to suggest that retention, rather than supply, is the key to solving schools’ staffing problems.

Retention should mean not only keeping the teachers who are already in the schools, but also bringing back teachers who were ended up working who-knows-where after moving. Teachers who are no longer teaching but want to teach become invisible in our society. Their identity as teachers is effectively scrubbed. A receptionist who is a once and hopefully future math teacher is a receptionist, not a teacher. The fact the receptionist was ever a teacher becomes part of a past life, not a present possibility.

Schools can reduce turnover, Mr. Ingersoll said, by improving their working conditions—supporting new teachers, for example, offering better pay schedules, getting a handle on student-discipline problems, or showing more effective leadership.

Schools should do all that, but schools should 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 should remove the arbitrary obstacles that make it difficult for proven out-of-state teachers to get certified in their new state of residence. For example, an out-of-state teacher who moves to Arizona must pay for and pass Arizona's certification tests, even if they have already passed either the National Teachers Examination (NTE) or other state tests. Once they pass Arizona's tests, they get a provisional credential which expires in two years if they are unable to land a teaching job. The more experienced the teacher, the more likely their provisional credential will expire. Then these teachers are barred from tutoring for the schools or serving as teachers for the home-bound or in other public capacities.

They suffer even when they try to tutor privately. The first question any parent asks is, “Do you have a teaching credential?” “I have an expired one,” does not satisfy. The public simply does not understand how society is barring some of its best teachers from teaching.

Good News for Education? Or Not?

MetLife's first survey was done in 1984. How have things changed in 25 years? If the survey is to be believed, things have significantly improved. At least the 1000 teachers they asked say so.

The percentage of teachers reporting high satisfaction with their careers has increased from 40 in 1984 to 62 in 2008, while more teachers today (66 percent) feel respected by society than did their counterparts in 1984 (47 percent).

Perhaps even more provocatively, the percentage of teachers agreeing that they can earn a “decent salary” has nearly doubled since 1984, to 66 percent, and far more teachers today (75 percent, compared to 45 percent in 1984) say they would recommend a career in teaching to a young person.

In addition, two thirds of today’s teachers affirm that they were well-prepared for the profession, compared to 46 percent in 1984. Teachers also feel better equipped today than in past years when it comes to addressing student-learning challenges such as poverty, limited English language proficiency, and lack of parental support, according to the report.
Meanwhile, the number of teachers who rate the academic standards in their schools as excellent has doubled from 26 percent in 1984 to 53 percent today, and 89 percent of teachers say their school’s curriculum is excellent or good, compared to 81 percent in 1984.
Even regarding the availability of materials and supplies in schools—a notoriously sore subject among teachers—the numbers have improved: The percentage of teachers rating their access to such resources as excellent, while still not reaching a majority, has doubled to 44 percent since 1984.

What about all that bad news we hear all the time? Well, I guess that is just the mainstream media missing the message yet again... except it is teachers themselves who report so much of the bad news. It's a conundrum...

...however, MetLife’s data does also underscore persistent disparities among schools and mounting challenges facing the country’s public education system.

If schools are a mirror of society, MetLife's data polishes the reflection. Economically, the middle class is being gutted, resulting in a growing chasm between the rich and the poor in America. The same chasm is widening in American education.

For example, teachers in urban and secondary schools, especially those with high concentrations of low-income students, are significantly less likely to rate the academic standards in their schools as excellent, according to the report. Urban teachers are also considerably less positive than their suburban counterparts on the availability of teaching materials in their schools and the degree of parental support their students receive.
Pointing to significant demographic shifts,the percentage of teachers responding that limited English proficiency hinders learning for a quarter or more of their students has doubled since 1992, from 11 to 22 percent, with the level reaching 30 percent for urban teachers. In addition, nearly half of today’s teachers (up from 41 percent in 1992) say that poverty limits the day-to-day capabilities of at least a quarter of their students.
The number of teachers saying that students’ learning abilities in their classes are so varied that they cannot teach effectively has also jumped, according to the report, from 39 percent in 1988 to 43 percent today.

There is an achievement gap between students, and there is a corresponding achievement gap between schools. More surprising, it looks like our students lose abilities as they get older.

The teachers' responses also reveal some potentially major cracks in the overall quality of U.S. students’ education. While the majority of teachers say their students’ skills in reading, writing, and math are excellent or good, for example, significantly smaller percentages of secondary school teachers than elementary-level teacher feel that way.

Of course, since Americans believe all roads lead to America, preparation for success in a global environment has low priority.

In an increasingly global economy, nearly two-thirds of teachers rate their students as only fair or poor in their knowledge of other nations and cultures, and more than half rate their students as fair or poor in foreign languages.

In fact, some schools have returned to teaching Latin, but refuse to teach languages such as Russian, Japanese, Chinese, Arabic and more. Our schools do not have language teachers, and they do not want language teachers anyway.

Furthermore, this survey echoes many other other surveys in reporting the pervasiveness of the one problem, which more than any other, drives teachers out of teaching.

The report also highlights apparent communication problems between teachers and principals and discrepancies in the groups’ views on a number of issues, including school-disciplinary policies, parent-involvement levels, and the use of teachers’ time.

An example of divergent views appeared in the comments to a previous post. A school administrator discourages teachers sending unruly students out of class because the class will see the teacher as weak. Teachers consider the ability to send out unruly students as a way to maintain effective instruction for the students who remain.

President Obama said, ”But I also know that every American who is sitting here tonight loves this country and wants it to succeed.  That must be the starting point for every debate we have in the coming months, and where we return after those debates are done.

Teachers and administrators have to stop being adversaries.

Here are the Department of Education provisions from American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Honestly, there is not much in the way of education reform in this new legislation. I am not seeing “new incentives for teacher performance; pathways for advancement, and rewards for success.” I did not expect much reform. America still has not had the wide open debate it needs on education. For example, certain groups dislike charter schools on principle; other groups dislike the teachers unions on principle. All groups need to set aside ideological rigidity, and systematically examine education from every angle. Americans need to decide whether they want a world-class education system, and what they want the education system to look like.

Educators like John Taylor Gatto argue that the system is not broken. He believes the system is doing what it was designed to do—produce compliant workers. Somewhere I read you cannot expect a Ford to be a Cadillac, and you cannot fix (read: reform) a Ford to be a Cadillac. Until Americans are ready to talk about a total overhaul, a complete redesign, it be impossible to reform.

DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
Education for the Disadvantaged
For an additional amount for ‘Education for the Disadvantaged’ to carry out title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (‘ESEA’), $13,000,000,000: Provided, That $5,000,000,000 shall be available for targeted grants under section 1125 of the ESEA: Provided further, That $5,000,000,000 shall be available for education finance incentive grants under section 1125A of the ESEA: Provided further, That $3,000,000,000 shall be for school improvement grants under section 1003(g) of the ESEA: Provided further, That each local educational agency receiving funds available under this paragraph shall be required to file with the State educational agency, no later than December 1, 2009, a school-by-school listing of per-pupil educational expenditures from State and local sources during the 2008-2009 academic year: Provided further, That each State educational agency shall report that information to the Secretary of Education by March 31, 2010.

Impact Aid
For an additional amount for ‘Impact Aid’ to carry out section 8007 of title VIII of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, $100,000,000, which shall be expended pursuant to the requirements of section 805.

School Improvement Programs
For an additional amount for ‘School Improvement Programs’ to carry out subpart 1, part D of title II of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (‘ESEA’), and subtitle B of title VII of the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, $720,000,000: Provided, That $650,000,000 shall be available for subpart 1, part D of title II of the ESEA: Provided further, That the Secretary shall allot $70,000,000 for grants under McKinney-Vento to each State in proportion to the number of homeless students identified by the State during the 2007-2008 school year relative to the number of such children identified nationally during that school year: Provided further, That State educational agencies shall subgrant the McKinney-Vento funds to local educational agencies on a competitive basis or according to a formula based on the number of homeless students identified by the local educational agencies in the State: Provided further, That the Secretary shall distribute the McKinney-Vento funds to the States not later than 60 days after the date of the enactment of this Act: Provided further, That each State shall subgrant the McKinney-Vento funds to local educational agencies not later than 120 days after receiving its grant from the Secretary.

Innovation and Improvement
For an additional amount for ‘Innovation and Improvement’ to carry out subpart 1, part D of title V of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (‘ESEA’), $200,000,000: Provided, That these funds shall be expended as directed in the fifth, sixth, and seventh provisos under the heading ‘Innovation and Improvement’ in the Department of Education Appropriations Act, 2008: Provided further, That a portion of these funds shall also be used for a rigorous national evaluation by the Institute of Education Sciences, utilizing randomized controlled methodology to the extent feasible, that assesses the impact of performance-based teacher and principal compensation systems supported by the funds provided in this Act on teacher and principal recruitment and retention in high-need schools and subjects: Provided further, That the Secretary may reserve up to 1 percent of the amount made available under this heading for management and oversight of the activities supported with those funds.

Special Education
For an additional amount for ‘Special Education’ for carrying out parts B and C of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (‘IDEA’), $12,200,000,000, of which $11,300,000,000 shall be available for section 611 of the IDEA: Provided, That if every State, as defined by section 602(31) of the IDEA, reaches its maximum allocation under section 611(d)(3)(B)(iii) of the IDEA, and there are remaining funds, such funds shall be proportionally allocated to each State subject to the maximum amounts contained in section 611(a)(2) of the IDEA: Provided further, That by July 1, 2009, the Secretary of Education shall reserve the amount needed for grants under section 643(e) of the IDEA, with any remaining funds to be allocated in accordance with section 643(c) of the IDEA: Provided further, That the total amount for each of sections 611(b)(2) and 643(b)(1) of the IDEA, under this and all other Acts, for fiscal year 2009, whenever enacted, shall be equal to the amounts respectively available for these activities under these sections during fiscal year 2008 increased by the amount of inflation as specified in section 619(d)(2)(B) of the IDEA: Provided further, That $400,000,000 shall be available for section 619 of the IDEA and $500,000,000 shall be available for part C of the IDEA.

Rehabilitation Services and Disability Research
For an additional amount for ‘Rehabilitation Services and Disability Research’ for providing grants to States to carry out the Vocational Rehabilitation Services program under part B of title I and parts B and C of chapter 1 and chapter 2 of title VII of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, $680,000,000: Provided, That $540,000,000 shall be available for part B of title I of the Rehabilitation Act: Provided further, That funds provided herein shall not be considered in determining the amount required to be appropriated under section 100(b)(1) of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 in any fiscal year: Provided further, That, notwithstanding section 7(14)(A), the Federal share of the costs of vocational rehabilitation services provided with the funds provided herein shall be 100 percent: Provided further, That $140,000,000 shall be available for parts B and C of chapter 1 and chapter 2 of title VII of the Rehabilitation Act: Provided further, That $18,200,000 shall be for State Grants, $87,500,000 shall be for independent living centers, and $34,300,000 shall be for services for older blind individuals.

Student Financial Assistance
For an additional amount for ‘Student Financial Assistance’ to carry out subpart 1 of part A and part C of title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965 (‘HEA’), $15,840,000,000, which shall remain available through September 30, 2011: Provided, That $15,640,000,000 shall be available for subpart 1 of part A of title IV of the HEA: Provided further, That $200,000,000 shall be available for part C of title IV of the HEA.

The maximum Pell Grant for which a student shall be eligible during award year 2009-2010 shall be $4,860.

Student Aid Administration
For an additional amount for ‘Student Aid Administration’ to carry out part D of title I, and subparts 1, 3, and 4 of part A, and parts B, C, D, and E of title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965, $60,000,000.

Higher Education
For an additional amount for ‘Higher Education’ to carry out part A of title II of the Higher Education Act of 1965, $100,000,000.
Institute of Education Sciences
For an additional amount for ‘Institute of Education Sciences’ to carry out section 208 of the Educational Technical Assistance Act, $250,000,000, which may be used for Statewide data systems that include postsecondary and workforce information, of which up to $5,000,000 may be used for State data coordinators and for awards to public or private organizations or agencies to improve data coordination.

Departmental Management
office of the inspector general
For an additional amount for the ‘Office of the Inspector General’, $14,000,000, which shall remain available through September 30, 2012, for salaries and expenses necessary for oversight and audit of programs, grants, and projects funded in this Act.

RELATED AGENCIES
Corporation for National and Community Service
OPERATING EXPENSES
(including transfer of funds)
For an additional amount for ‘Operating Expenses’ to carry out the Domestic Volunteer Service Act of 1973 (‘1973 Act’) and the National and Community Service Act of 1990 (‘1990 Act’), $160,000,000: Provided, That $89,000,000 of the funds made available in this paragraph shall be used to make additional awards to existing AmeriCorps grantees and may be used to provide adjustments to awards under subtitle C of title I of the 1990 Act made prior to September 30, 2010 for which the Chief Executive Officer of the Corporation for National and Community Service (‘CEO’) determines that a waiver of the Federal share limitation is warranted under section 2521.70 of title 45 of the Code of Federal Regulations: Provided further, That of the amount made available in this paragraph, not less than $6,000,000 shall be transferred to ‘Salaries and Expenses’ for necessary expenses relating to information technology upgrades, of which up to $800,000 may be used to administer the funds provided in this paragraph: Provided further, That of the amount provided in this paragraph, not less than $65,000,000 shall be for programs under title I, part A of the 1973 Act: Provided further, That funds provided in the previous proviso shall not be made available in connection with cost-share agreements authorized under section 192A(g)(10) of the 1990 Act: Provided further, That of the funds available under this heading, up to 20 percent of funds allocated to grants authorized under section 124(b) of title I, subtitle C of the 1990 Act may be used to administer, reimburse, or support any national service program under section 129(d)(2) of the 1990 Act: Provided further, That, except as provided herein and in addition to requirements identified herein, funds provided in this paragraph shall be subject to the terms and conditions under which funds were appropriated in fiscal year 2008: Provided further, That the CEO shall provide the Committees on Appropriations of the House of Representatives and the Senate a fiscal year 2009 operating plan for the funds appropriated in this paragraph prior to making any Federal obligations of such funds in fiscal year 2009, but not later than 90 days after the date of enactment of this Act, and a fiscal year 2010 operating plan for such funds prior to making any Federal obligations of such funds in fiscal year 2010, but not later than November 1, 2009, that detail the allocation of resources and the increased number of members supported by the AmeriCorps programs: Provided further, That the CEO shall provide to the Committees on Appropriations of the House of Representatives and the Senate a report on the actual obligations, expenditures, and unobligated balances for each activity funded under this heading not later than November 1, 2009, and every 6 months thereafter as long as funding provided under this heading is available for obligation or expenditure.

Office of Inspector General
For an additional amount for the ‘Office of Inspector General’, $1,000,000, which shall remain available until September 30, 2012.

National Service Trust
(including transfer of funds)
For an additional amount for ‘National Service Trust’ established under subtitle D of title I of the National and Community Service Act of 1990 (‘1990 Act’), $40,000,000, which shall remain available until expended: Provided, That the Corporation for National and Community Service may transfer additional funds from the amount provided within ‘Operating Expenses’ for grants made under subtitle C of title I of the 1990 Act to this appropriation upon determination that such transfer is necessary to support the activities of national service participants and after notice is transmitted to the Committees on Appropriations of the House of Representatives and the Senate: Provided further, That the amount appropriated for or transferred to the National Service Trust may be invested under section 145(b) of the 1990 Act without regard to the requirement to apportion funds under.

Being a Great Teacher is Risky

Many observers wonder if the reformers know what they are doing.

Politicians and politicians' appointees regularly propose improving teacher quality by linking teacher compensation to student performance on standardized tests. Teachers may greatly influence, but they do not control, student performance. The test may actually measure lots of other variables, most of which go unidentified.

I remember a seventh grade boy taking both math and science from me. In the spring, when he took the Stanford 9, he dropped from 4.7 grade equivalency to 4.3 grade equivalency. The next year he was assigned to both of my classes again as an eighth grader. His Stanford 9 results that year put him at 7.2 grade equivalency for a one year improvement of 2.5 grade levels. Wow! Was I lousy teacher the first year and a great one the second? What about all his other teachers? Maybe it was simply the fact that his alcoholic uncle finally moved out of the house.

But for the sake of argument, let's suppose I get to take the credit for my student's splendid improvement. After all, I am the one who stayed after school with him every day. If I am a great teacher, what should the school do with me? If I were the parent of a struggling student, I would want my kid to get me. If I have more than a few struggling students, and my status as great, as well as my compensation, hangs on ever-increasing test scores, it would not be in my interest to teach struggling students. 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.

Furthermore, research has consistently shown that students do not sustain higher levels of achievement motivated solely by extrinsic rewards. They need intrinsic rewards. Why would teachers, being human after all, be any different? The best teachers do not teach for the money. They teach for the joy of watching understanding spread over the faces of students, the light in the eyes, and the satisfaction of training the next generation well. Money is how society demonstrates it esteems and appreciates the work that great teachers do. Society likes its movie stars and sports heroes way more than its teachers.

So what should be on the table? Diane Ravitch says the Nicholas Kristof says (how's that for an attribution?) we should scrap certification, education degrees and SAT scores.

Since teachers uniformly diss their education degrees as worthless, since certification certifies state indoctrination more than quality, and since statistics from the colleges of education show that their students have lower SAT scores than the general college population, maybe we should rethink teacher quality. Meaningful reform means that nothing is off the table. It is a huge job, but as George Lakoff reminded us, values need to trump programs, and more importantly, values need to trump ideology. We need to talk and listen to everyone.

Alternative Certification No Better, No Worse

Oh no, Ed Week, Say it ain't so.

Students who have teachers certified through alternative-training programs do no worse in mathematics or reading achievement than students whose teachers have been certified by traditional teacher education programs, according to a study released today by Mathematica Policy Research Inc.

The study, which was commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences, also found no correlation between teacher effectiveness and the amount of coursework that teachers received as part of their alternative or traditional teacher-training programs.

But Jane Leibbrand does not agree.

Jane Leibbrand, the vice president of communications for the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education, who had not yet had a chance to read the Mathematica study, said, however, that previous studies have shown otherwise. “A number of studies have shown that fully prepared and licensed teachers do make a difference with student achievement,” she said.
“Some alternate routes are of high quality, but many are mediocre to low-quality,” Ms. Leibbrand added. “Alternate-route programs often do not have to meet the same standards as traditional programs must meet.”

The study avoided the most selective programs, such as Teach For America, in order to compare more closely to typical traditional routes. Colleges of education are not very selective, so the study chose alternative programs that were also not very selective. Given the number of traditionally certified teachers who dismiss their education training as worthless, the study's conclusion is not surprising.

The number of course hours taken by teachers didn’t affect student achievement, according to the study.

Louisiana Fed Up with Unruly Students?

Gov. Bobby Jindal will push legislation to give teachers more authority to remove troublesome students from their classrooms...

Did you know that it is against the law in some places for teachers to send misbehaving students to the principal's office?

Currently, teachers can remove students only when the behavior is deemed to prevent teaching or poses an immediate safety threat. Jindal wants to add new circumstances for removal,
including unruly behavior, threats to teacher or students, inappropriate physical or verbal conduct, property destruction or harassment.

Is anyone else surprised that the idea of teachers removing unruly students from their class should be a legislative issue? It seems to me the current law is satisfactory. When students are disruptive, they are by definition preventing teaching, usually by exhibiting unruly behavior and verbal conduct. What specific disruptive behavior could possibly be acceptable under current law?

Everyone knows that teachers have little respect and esteem in American society. Many teachers are actively discouraged from sending students to the principal's office. The administration construes an office referral as prima facie evidence that the teacher is unable to maintain control in the classroom. We need to change our attitude. Education in the context of a classroom is a group activity. Education is a right and a privilege for all. If a student cannot appreciate class, even a boring class, even a class with a less than stellar teacher, simple respect and courtesy would demand that the student be somewhere else, like the principal's office. Students should not be permitted to disrupt class and interfering with their classmates' right and privilege to an education.

One tangible way school administrators could support the teachers and promote higher levels of respect is stand fully behind the teacher's decision to remove disruptive students rather than hold it against them. Teachers soon learn that their best strategy is to stay out of the administrator's radar. Teachers and students should not be punished with having to put up with misbehaving classmates.

Bill Gates: “How do You Make a Teacher Great?”

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.