At a conference on teacher preparation, Vanderbilt Professor David Steiner presented an analysis of 200 courses taught at 30 top-rated schools of education. National Council on Teacher Quality says his paper is a must-read.
Professors, instead of preparing their students for the world of performance-based assessment and content-rich curricula, “teach a profound suspicion for that world.” Although there are bright spots like the impact of the movement towards clear national standards in mathematics, overall, ed programs need to focus far more on measures of effectiveness: Are children learning and how can the teacher show evidence of that?
California will require fewer courses for teacher certification under one of the last-minute bills signed by outgoing Gov. Gray Davis. What will be cut? Jerry Griswold, an education professor, predicts content (what to teach) will be cut to preserve courses on process (how to teach).
The wrong kinds of questions are already being debated: “Should Johnny’s teacher know math or know how to teach math?” “Should Juanita’s teacher actually have read children’s literature or only learn how to use it?”
The law was changed to ease the teacher shortage, but there is no shortage now, except in certain specialties (math, physics, special eduation). The recession took care of that.
“Should Johnny’s teacher know math or know how to teach math?”…raises many other interesting possibilities:
“Should flight instructors know how to fly airplanes, or know how to teach people how to fly airplanes?”
“Should professors of structural engineering know how to perform stress analysis, or know how to teach people how to perform stress analysis?”
No one would ever fall for things like this if their personal safety was at stake..if it’s the education of children, that’s evidently another matter.
How about knowing your subject and knowing how to teach it? It’s not supposed to be a dichotomy. A person who knows math but can’t teach it is useless as a teacher.
Most teachers out there already know basic English, basic math, etc. Teaching those subjects, however, is what requires skill and training. Only ignorant people - usually the ones who think teachers should be paid on par with bus drivers and grocery clerks - believe that teaching the subject matter is sipple so long as the subject matter is known.
Is basic math arithmetic, or is it algebra, trig, and calculus? I agree that any educated adult knows the subject matter taught in elementary school. I’d like some specialized knowledge in my high schooler’s teachers.
IF they know basic math and basic English, some of them are keeping it a secret. I’ve had papers home from elementary scnool teachers with astonishing mistakes in grammar, spelling and construction. I’d rather they know the subject well than the “methods” of teaching.
I’d agree, except that the knowledge that you pick up in a full four year degree is not likely to be of much use in the classroom. I can’t imagine that the average high school math teacher uses anything above 2nd year calculus, if that.
Many of my most knowledgeable math professors couldn’t do arithmetic to save their life. Nor was it relevant to their success. However it *is* relevant to the success of a high school teacher. Likewise with English. A university degree in English requires a mastery of literary criticism that is not likely to be useful in the classroom.
I’d much rather see a stronger emphasis in the knowledge that *is* going to be used in the classroom (i.e. intense subject testing in teacher’s college) than assume that high level university courses will provide more knowledge useful in a classroom setting.
I’d rather they know the subject well than the “methods” of teaching.
Case in point: universities. Outside of Schools of Education (almost an oxymoron these days, heh), almost as a rule are professors lacking training in “methods of teaching.” Now, sure, I’ve had some bad profs, but I’ve also had some bad teachers; I’d say the proportion is probably about the same.
Only ignorant people - usually the ones who think teachers should be paid on par with bus drivers and grocery clerks - believe that teaching the subject matter is sipple so long as the subject matter is known.
As long as teachers insist on having unionized jobs that don’t have any accountability whatsoever, then I certainly see no reason to start paying them more. Even bus drivers and grocery clerks have accountability standards; if they wreck the bus or their till comes up short, they’re fired. Teachers, on the other hand, can consistently not teach students (which is what their title implies that they are obligated to do) and have near-infinite job security.
Anyway, back to the discussion at hand, think about a student in a calc class in high school who wants to understand the subject on a deeper level: is a teacher who only knows how to teach the material but doesn’t understand it going to help him one bit? No, not in the least.
Final word?
Knowing a subject isn’t a guarantee that you can teach it - but not knowing a subject is a guarantee that you can’t.
Tom West — sez who? I use my lit crit stuff — even the stuff I’ve done in grad school — all the time. I don’t teach the way I was taught in college; I take what I know and adapt it for the secondary classroom. That’s my job, ya know?
I’m not sure teachers “insist on having unionized jobs” — the union system is just here and we deal with it. Most teachers I’ve talked to aren’t wild about the unions, but don’t trust the School Boards enough to do away with it. Where I am, union membership is optional, and runs about 50%. Those of us who opt out have to buy our liablity insurance ourselves, but that’s not a big deal. If I didn’t trust my school board, I might decide differently.
I think the idea that subject area knowledge is quite important is reflected in the new “highly qualified” stuff. Since my degree is in my subject area, I don’t have much input on what my grasp of it might have been if I were an education major, but I’m seeing more and more emphasis on subject area knowledge as opposed to pedagogy (which tends to follow fads anyway).
Many elementary teachers in the US _do not_ know primary math well enough to teach it. Read Liping Wang’s book “Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics”, and prepare to be shocked.
Correction: the author of that book is Liping _Ma_. Sorry.
Rita,
I stand corrected. I have to admit I was thinking about my Math and Computer Science upper year courses in connection with High School.
“Hello students. You may have thought computer science had something to do with computers, but don’t worry, we’ll correct that impression. Here is some group theory…” Scene of students sprinting for the exits.)
Many elementary teachers in the US _do not_ know primary math well enough to teach it. Read Liping Wang’s book “Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics”, and prepare to be shocked.
No way around that. One can debate about what extra material a teacher should know, but a teacher *must* at least have a firm grasp of the material they are teaching. This should be covered in teacher’s college with rigorous testing before certification is granted.
However, once they have been certified for a subject area, I don’t think that teachers should have to be retested on it every few years. After all, doctors and engineers aren’t. In fact, are there *any* professions that face recertification tests regularly?
> After all, doctors and engineers aren’t.
Neither doctors nor engineers have tenure - the incompetent (and unlucky) lose their jobs. Doctors and professional engineers also have significant personal liability in the form of malpractice.
Teachers aren’t professionals.
*sigh* - I should have left my example occupations out. Regardless, can anyone name any other occupation that face recertification tests regularly?
> Regardless, can anyone name any other occupation that face recertification tests regularly?
Flight and scuba instructors do, as do commercial pilots. Soldiers with specialties do as well. None of these groups have tenure.
Recertification is an attempt to impose some sort of personal accountability on teachers, accountability that they’re shielded from by tenure and lack of personal liability.
Personal accountability is something that every other profession, and even some “non-professions” (like burger-flipping), has.
But teachers are special, right? (Hint - wrong.)
Tom, are you saying that teachers don’t have to re-certify? I think that depends on the state and when you entered the system. I’ll have to. Most of the hoops are beurocratic and pointless, except for the stipulation of a graduate degree or 15 grad hours .
I’m contemplating the idea of soldiers with tenure.
If the client of a dentist doesn’t brush her own teeth, is the dentist “personally accountable”?
If a doctor prescribes medicine that the patient won’t take, should the doctor be fired?
The job of a teacher is to teach, and he/she should be held personally accountable for excellent lessons and lesson plans. But staking a teacher’s job on how kids perform - and I’m talking about urban schools with transient, troubled kids who don’t do homework, eat breakfast, or show up to class- is just plain dumb.
West isn’t saying that teachers aren’t recertified - he’s saying that he thinks that recertification requirements are wrong.
His major argument is that other “professionals” aren’t recertified, but he’s shying away from specifing the professions because the comparisons weren’t working the way he hoped.
While some/many parents are to blame for their children’s failure, do you really want to argue that ALL failures are the parents’ fault?
Andy, I don’t think SusieQ is saying that all failures are the parents’ faults. I think she’s saying that not all failures are the teachers’ faults.
In the case of recertification, I’m only familiar with the Ontario example, in which the government tried to introduce recertification tests, which in my mind were both pointless and expensive. I doubt most teachers forget their subject area.
As far as tenure goes, while it isn’t easy to fire a teacher, certainly gross incompetence will get you the boot (if not instantly). This seems to correspond to the rest of the world were mere adequacy (or even minor inadequacy) isn’t grounds for firing.
Andy, the point I am trying to make is that teachers (in my not so humble opinion) don’t seem (in any practical sense) to be subject to any lesser (or to be sure greater) standards than anyone else I see. I don’t see the need to spend dollars better spent elsewhere to perform useless tests that wouldn’t weed out the teachers that I’d like to see gone.
Do you really think that testing would improve the school system? Or is this all a matter of principal?
I will say, this is from a background of Ontario teachers who have been reasonably well paid (in my opinion) for a while. This means that we get (in my experience) a reasonable caliber of teachers. In locations where they have had to incorporate a lot of less well prepared teachers (due to inadequate payscale or fast growing schoolage population), I could see a need to recertify (once) the teachers that are already in the system.
His major argument is that other “professionals” aren’t recertified, but he’s shying away from specifing the professions because the comparisons weren’t working the way he hoped.
What I was *trying* to point out is that there are few professions where the employers feel the need to constantly test the employees to see if they have forgotten what they are using. We don’t even recertify drivers, and each incompetent driver can kill many others!
> Andy, I don’t think SusieQ is saying that all failures are the parents’ faults. I think she’s saying that not all failures are the teachers’ faults.
The question is whether there should be any mechanism to get rid of incompetent teachers.
SusieQ argued against that by mentioning parents that caused failures. That’s a valid argument iff no failures are due to teachers.
Should I have assumed that SusieQ wasn’t making a valid argument? If so, should I assume that the invalidity is a mistake or intentional?
> This seems to correspond to the rest of the world were mere adequacy (or even minor inadequacy) isn’t grounds for firing.
Actually, it is, unless there’s some protective mechanism, such as a union contract or some sort of “favored status”.
Note that state employees have the luxury of an employer that can’t go bankrupt for poor performance, so the hurdles for firing should be lower, not higher.
> Do you really think that testing would improve the school system?
Yes, because (good) testing improves everything else. West has failed to show that schools and teachers are different. (The existence of bad tests does not imply that good tests do not exist.)
> What I was *trying* to point out is that there are few professions where the employers feel the need to constantly test the employees to see if they have forgotten what they are using.
And West failed because every other profession does have constant measures addressing competence and quality. The true professions even have malpractice liability. The “get paid” ones have liability for damage caused.
> We don’t even recertify drivers, and each incompetent driver can kill many others!
I just got back from such a recertification….
I note that drivers who cause problems are personally liable for their mistakes, both criminally and civily. Teachers aren’t.
I do wonder about someone who repeatedly offers arguments with the same factual and/or logical errors.
Andy, I was responding to this in your post:
“…do you really want to argue that ALL failures are the parents’ fault?”
Then you said this:
“SusieQ argued against that by mentioning parents that caused failures. That’s a valid argument iff no failures are due to teachers.”
Which is a bit different, since SusieQ never said that teachers are never at fault. But in a case where there is definitely parental fault, as in kids who are never able to do their homework because there’s no place for them to study in a chaotic household, how are you going to know if the fault lies with the teacher? And how will firing the teacher help?
But I do support periodic recertification. Teachers are kind of like doctors and airline pilots, in that their clients have to place enormous trust in them. It’s very important that they know what they’re doing.
And Andy is still in the lead, logical arguements and facts to back ‘em.
Tom, even in states without a point system, drivers are retested everytime they hit the road. Enough tickets and you’re out.
> Which is a bit different, since SusieQ never said that teachers are never at fault.
I’ll stand by my inference. SuzieQ is arguing against holding teachers responsible by blaming others. That argument doesn’t make sense without the “teachers are never at fault” assumption.
Is it wrong for me to assume that SuzieQ is making sense?
> But in a case where there is definitely parental fault, as in kids who are never able to do their homework because there’s no place for them to study in a chaotic household, how are you going to know if the fault lies with the teacher?
Yes, parents are sometimes/often at fault. And, there are situations where figuring out “who did it” is difficult. Neither fact implies that teachers shouldn’t be held accountable or that we shouldn’t try to figure out why things went wrong, at least not without some unstated assumptions that are, shall we say, loopy.
Even when parents are at fault, teachers are still at fault? Dang, Andy. I doubt there’s a teacher in the nation that could meet your high standards.
Actually, physicians ARE required to certify every seven years (at least Family Practice physicians). So are Physician Assistants.
KPM
Andy,
Please don’t put words in my mouth. I’m not against accountability or the firing of bad teachers.
Go back and read my post. I clearly stated that the job of a teacher is to teach. A teacher can create the best, most whiz-bang engaging lesson plans in the entire world, but if kids:
a. Don’t show up to class
b. Don’t do the homework (or classwork, for that matter)
and c. Aren’t fed meals properly
then (read my lips here) TESTING THE TEACHER ON THE PERFORMANCE OF STUDENTS SETS THE TEACHER UP FOR FAILURE.
I’m talking about a very specific set of circumstances. I’m talking about the reality in many urban schools. I’m NOT talking about blaming all parents, all students, all of the time.
Where you read the premise of blame in my post is the insertion of your own bias.
I think we all know what goes wrong. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why some kids succeed and others do not. The problem is that kids have lots of moving parts, and getting those moving parts (teacher, community, parents) to work together in a functional way is often impossible with those unsuccessful kids. I will certainly work hard to make sure I’m working flawlessly, but everything else is a hail mary. Please note, that’s not blame shifting. I’m not saying, why should I work hard if nothing else is working at all? I’m saying a teacher absolutely should work very, very hard, but that a teacher is not the only factor for success.
I don’t mind re-certifying, but I’d like that process to be meaningful. If they’re testing me on stuff I know now in 15 years, what’s the point of that? What kind of knowledge should a teaching professional 10, 15, 20 years out have? How would you test it? Are you going to talk to my students, parents, administration? Sit in my classroom for a couple of weeks? Look at my lesson binders? Or are you just going to go for basic compentency?
> Even when parents are at fault, teachers are still at fault?
That can happen, but it wasn’t the situation that I was describing.
You want to talk about parents - fine. But when we’re discussing teacher performance and accountability and the only thing you can talk about is parents, well, you’re trying to change the subject.
> I don’t mind re-certifying, but I’d like that process to be meaningful.
So would I, as I’ve written repeatedly. I’d even like levels of tests. (I think fantastic teachers should be paid more than “good enoughs”.)
However, now you’re going to be arguing with folks who think that there are no meaningful tests for teachers.
> TESTING THE TEACHER ON THE PERFORMANCE OF STUDENTS SETS THE TEACHER UP FOR FAILURE.
I read it every time you wrote it, and you’re missing something important.
Student performance is the only reason we pay/have teachers. Student performance IS the measure of teacher performance.
Yes, some/many students fail for reasons that teachers have no control over. Welcome to the real world - there’s something like that in every job.
Andy,
If you believe student performance IS the measure of teacher performance (and I’m quoting you exactly) then you’re severely myopic. Here’s what you’re not considering:
* Teacher evaluation
* Teacher peer review
* Principal/administrator evaluation
* Peer coaching
* BITSA (Beginning teacher assistance program)
All of these currently exist in my district, and I find them to be much more *helpful* measurements of my ability to instruct than actual student tests. Test scores are helpful to a point. They tell me where kids are weak. But in no way is student performance the SOLE measure of my work.
You said that, and you’re wrong.
There are other, more intangible “measures” of my performance - such as when kids come back after years to say hello, or e-mail me, or when I run into parents who hug and thank me - but in your world, Andy, those don’t count. I’m sorry for you. If your “real world” consists *only* of numbers and tests, it’s one I want no part of. It’s not why I went into teaching, and it sure isn’t why I stay.
Further, I want to apologize for using all caps in my previous post. I was frustrated and tired, and at this point I’m out of momentum on this topic. Thanks.
Yes, some/many students fail for reasons that teachers have no control over. Welcome to the real world - there’s something like that in every job.
I take it that you are in favour of removing the license of doctors that have too many patients die while in their care.
Of course, some/many patients die for reasons that doctors have no control over. Welcome to the real world - there’s something like that in every job.
Or is there? Doctors are held responsible only when it can be proved that they were directly responsible for the demise.
Okay, I’m going to have to admit that there seems to be a lot more recertification out there than I’ve personally been exposed to.
I’m also not dogmatic (despite appearances :-)) about it. So, I’m ready to be persuaded if someone people will actually tell me what sort of recertification test they can imagine that will
remove a significant number of teachers (not massive, but it’s just a bureaucratic exercise if everyone is passing).
removes a lot more bad teachers than good ones.
doesn’t make it even less attractive to teach in poor schools than it already is.
can actually be implemented (i.e. won’t bankrupt the schools).
I’m not against recertification testing, I’m against *useless* recertification testing.
Me: This seems to correspond to the rest of the world were mere adequacy (or even minor inadequacy) isn’t grounds for firing.
Andy: Actually, it is, unless there’s some protective mechanism, such as a union contract or some sort of “favored status”.
I don’t know about the US, but having read the labour laws here (Ontario), you’ve got to have a damn good reason to fire someone or you could be facing a wrongful dismissal suit. Performing a job adequately is not reason for dismissal (after the probationary period). Maybe most states allow firing more arbitrarily.
I will admit that in a business there’s a lot more opportunity to shift someone into a dead end and then get rid of them. However, to reiterate, my exposure to both private and public sector has not led me to believe there’s that much difference between them (in large companies, anyway). There’s a reason interest in Dilbert is pretty much universal
> If you believe student performance IS the measure of teacher performance (and I’m quoting you exactly) then you’re severely myopic.
Not at all. I understand what a teacher’s job is and the “educators” commenting here don’t.
We pay teachers for their effect on student performance and nothing else.
For example, we don’t care how teachers feel about one another. We don’t care how they feel about principals, or principals feel about them.
It may be that some of those things correlate and/or predict how teacher’s affect students, but that doesn’t change the fundamental fact that our sole interest is student performance.
As I wrote previously, I used to think that the school critics overstated their case. I was wrong - they’ve understated it to make it somewhat believable. I wouldn’t have believed that teachers didn’t know what their job was.
> Performing a job adequately is not reason for dismissal (after the probationary period).
I assume that that should read “inadequately”
> Maybe most states allow firing more arbitrarily.
In what sort of fantasy-land is “can’t do the job” an arbitrary reason for firing someone?
Does West actually think that it’s a good thing to not fire the inadequate? If so why?
In particular, why is he so intent in protecting inadequate teachers?
> I take it that you are in favour of removing the license of doctors that have too many patients die while in their care.
Ah, now we’re inventing strawmen.
Hint - when doing so, don’t quote sections that prove you’re making things up.
See SuzieQ’s latest for an example. (BTW - she makes an interesting type error. Peer coaching may improve her teaching, but it isn’t a direct measure of her ability to teach. Interestingly enough, it’s a subjective evaluation, something that West has screeched against in the past.)
Does West want to argue that MDs that have a disproportionate number of deaths shouldn’t be scrutinized a little more closely than others? Would he knowingly choose a doctor whose patients died more often than similarly situated patients cared for by others?
Of course, West has improved; he now admits that professionals are tested, that there might be good tests for teachers, and that using them might be a good idea. Of course, he doesn’t admit that he once argued against all three of those positions.
Actually, according to my parents (of which I saw about 60 sets this past week) often tell me that test scores are not my entire job.
It may well be that there is a test out there that will weed out the inadedequate teachers (as opposed to the basically adequate but not super teachers Tom is talking about). But any such test will have to recognize the complexities of the art of teaching and will have to be subjective. Student performance is one facet of such a test, but not the sole test. If you were going to use student performance, it would have to be a long-term test that tracked trends in performance among students over several years. Do my students *tend* to do well — not whether each student does well. And I’m not sure how you would isolate for other variables aside from my teaching.
Of course, West has improved; he now admits that professionals are tested, that there might be good tests for teachers, and that using them might be a good idea. Of course, he doesn’t admit that he once argued against all three of those positions.
Ye gods! I’m presuming that this discussion is not simply a practice of empty rhetoric. If I thought that there was nothing that I could learn I here, I wouldn’t be here. I’m here to find interesting opinions and challenge them. If they can meet the challenge, I’m likely to be persuaded. More to the point, my positions evolve and change as I am forced to defend them to others, I learn differently, or I must clarify to myself why I hold the position.
Indeed, I did argue against all three, and I still stand against the idea that a “good” test can be found (certainly *a* test can be found that postively correlates with ability, but that’s far from “good”). I’m still anxiously waiting (no sarcasm here) for your reply (or anyone elses) to what *you* think would make a good test.
Andy, I am not against making someone responsible for their job, but I am against making an arbitrary case and calling it responsibility. You make the claim that a business can go bankrupt. I agree, but I don’t consider it likely the responsibility of the lower level workers. As a doctor your patients can die, but I don’t consider it likely the responsibility of the doctor. As a lawyer you can lose a case, but I don’t consider it likely the responsibility of the lawyer.
In all three cases, there are many more factors (the changing market, the patients initial disease, the evidence in a trial) that are far more likely to be responsible for the outcome than the person’s competency. In other words, barring strong incompetency, we have to trust the professionalism (or, if you prefer, personal responsibility) of the employee.
I understand your desire for responsibility, but it sometimes feels like (to me) that you think its more important that teacher *can* be more easily fired than the means of fairly choosing such teachers.
My daughter is in a program in her public school that to qualify for, kids must test at or above the 80th percentile in total reading and total math, on a nationally normed test. Since these kids are going to test well no matter what, by Andy’s standards, their teachers could be golden retrievers and they’d still be successful.
And actually, Tom, the medical license system is SUPPOSED to revoke the licenses of doctors who get toomany of their patients dead. The fact that it often doesn’t today is not a reason to cut teachers slack, it’s a reason to start nailing more doctors.
As it stands, all we can do is use the lawsuit to bankrupt them, and that’s a very blunt instrument. Insurance companies, who look at classes rather than individuals, don’t consider that Dr. Quack is the reason they’ve had to pay out more damages in Podunk; they just assume that to cover the doctors there they have to make more money on average, and raise everyone’s premiums. I’d rather nail Dr Quack early. Likewise, I’d rather stop ignorant teachers from getting into the system in the first place.
Let’s make Tom’s analogy a bit more specific. Suppose that Dr. X works at a cancer clinic that takes really tough cases. A lot more of Dr. X’s patients die than would if he were a dermatologist. That doesn’t make him a bad doctor.
‘Good’ teachers impart knowledge that can, in fact be measured. It may not be ‘fair’ to evaluate teaching skills based upon the ‘achievement’ type tests most states use currently, but, it certainly IS possible to administer pre-tests (at the beginning of the school year) and post-tests (at the end of the school year) in order to evaluate the progress of individual children. (Transfers are a separate problem.) When a student enters the third grade reading at whatever level, and ends the year with less than a year’s worth of progress, something IS wrong. Maybe the problem lies with the student’s family, maybe the student is of less-than-average ability, maybe the teacher is less than competent, or maybe multiple factors are at play. Nevertheless, it’s reasonable to look at such children, and, while remaining aware of the student population type (ie., inner city), to analyze the effect an individual teacher has had on the child. If I recall correctly, Tennessee is using testing something along these lines to examine annual student progress, though I don’t think the results are tied to teacher competence.
> As a doctor your patients can die, but I don’t consider it likely the responsibility of the doctor. As a lawyer you can lose a case, but I don’t consider it likely the responsibility of the lawyer.
Wowsers.
Me - I buy the most capable that I can afford.
> Let’s make Tom’s analogy a bit more specific.
I’ve got a better idea - why doesn’t Laura READ the point to which she’s responding.
>> Would he knowingly choose a doctor whose patients died more often than similarly situated patients cared for by others?
The phrase “similarly situated” is important. (One can compare when the inputs are different, but the method for determining “better” is more complicated.)
> I agree, but I don’t consider it likely the responsibility of the lower level workers.
How is West so sure that they’re not to blame?
After all, he doesn’t think that they should be fired for incompetence, so surely there’s some chance that they are….
Andy, I thought your point was that the situation was meaningless. Kids test poorly, fire the teacher. Period. Sorry if I misread you.
As a person who got a teaching credential later in life and briefly considered devoting perhaps the last 10 years of his working life to full-time teaching, I’m very ambivalent about this whole issue. On the one hand, I’ve seen a number of teachers whom I wouldn’t trust with any kid and I shudder when I get near them. On the other hand, I know teachers who work as hard and effectively as anyone I’ve ever encountered in my professional life—and I’m a retired U.S. Army officer, who later occupied senior management positions in industry.
So how do we identify the top performers and at the same time get rid of the time-servers? Based on my experiences in teaching, it occurs to me that merely using student test scores is not the way to go. I don’t blame teachers for being wary of the standardized tests. Having one’s livelihood dependent on the caprices of 13-year-olds, many of whom don’t care about school whatsoever (and their parents, who often care as little) is not a recipe for success. A dirty little secret: rating teachers on student test scores will only result in the teachers in upper-middle class areas getting higher ratings than those in the inner-city trenches. Well, duh. So we keep all of the teachers in the privileged areas and fire all of those in the ghetto. Right?
No one is more in favor of teacher accountability than me. But student tests aren’t the way to do it. One of the reasons why I decided against full-time teaching was the inability of teachers to do anything about the hardcases who just wouldn’t get with the program, and the atmosphere in the schools, where the most egregious behavior is tolerated. My career dependent on these kids and their parents? No way.
In the military, officer performance is gauged on how the officer’s subordinates perform—just like those who like using test scores want the schools to be. The difference is that a military officer can do something about an individual who won’t do the job. Ask a teacher about that.
Teachers will ultimately have to be rated through honest supervisory reviews. But that means principals have to get off their butts, stop being bean counters and PR people, and become “master teachers.” Teaching is the one “profession” of which I’m aware where neophytes are left to sink or swim with little or no attention from the putative bosses. Junior officers in the military get an enormous amount of attention from senior officers. So do junior managers in good companies. There are two reasons for this: (1) organizational efficiency is dependent on it; and, (2) the junior officer/manager is the future and will someday occupy that senior position. Young teachers often get squat from school administrators.
Improve management in the schools—state, district, individual school. Then talk about teacher accountability. If you haven’t been a teacher, you don’t know how lonely it can be in that classroom. Although I don’t like ‘em, there is a reason for the unions.
U.S. labor law differs significantly and dramatically from Ontario labor law as described. The vast majority of U.S. employment is at-will, meaning you may be fired for any reason or none at any time. Legal recourse is available only for specific categories of discharge which violate public policy (racial discrimination, etc.). The plaintiff must prove that her discharge falls into one of these categories to prevail.
The default terms of employment in the U.S. are at-will. They apply to doctors, lawyers, executives, grocery clerks, fast food attendants, just about everyone from all parts of the economic spectrum. The public sector, public school teachers included, operates under a different set of rules far more protective of the employee.
All the more reason for some other method of weeding. I believe most teachers are qualified and hard-working. A system which cannot identify or remove bad teachers does some disservice to the good teachers, and a great disservice to the students. The obvious measure of teacher skill is what their students learn under them, compared to what similar students learn under other teachers.
As Mr. Wright says, the administration of the public schools is also a disgrace, and arguably a more pressing one than the lack of teacher accountability, which can be understood as a problem dependent upon poor administration. Those unions who comfort teachers ‘alone in the classroom’ perversely work to keep them that way. The unions oppose very effectively any effort to impose administrative accountability through bottom-up or market means, and have participated in the top-down administration that produced the existing system.
Forgoing teacher accountability because administrative reform is currently unattainable forfeits present improvements to future plans when they are not mutually exclusive.
I reiterate that properly analysed test scores would not favor teachers at upper-middle class areas - just as the student test gains would be higher, so too would the teacher goals.
hc wrote: The default terms of employment in the U.S. are at-will.
Then since observation of employers establishes conclusively that they can’t be trusted with that much power (do you think they’d grant you unrestricted license to kill off their customer base, their business, and their livelihood?), it’s long past time that changed!
HC,
Duh. Why would that be do you think? As the husband of a teacher, I can tell you a little of what is going on at her school. While the good teachers are grading papers, the administration has more time to attend meetings. Remember that the unions represent the administration as well as the teachers. Oh, by the way, who are the administrators? Could they be failed teachers, the burn out cases, the ones who don’t like the kids and the time servers who don’t want to rock the boat? In my wife’s school (with a large minority population compared to our city as a whole) accountablity is dead.
If parents raise a stink about a grade, don’t look at the fact that they are skipping school and don’t do homework. Blame the teacher.
How is West so sure that [those involved in a failure] are not to blame?
I can’t, and statistically there’s bound to be *some* correlation.
However, one of the strengths of the American system is supposed to be that the aura of incompetence does not attach itself to people involved in a failure. It’s what makes young people willing to take business risks, doctors willing to take on cancer patients, and lawyers willing to take on the toughest cases.
Change that, and you lose one of the greatest advantages that America has over the rest of the world.
As an aside, I think Jeff Wright’s column was spot on. But it also raises one of the fundamental ethical points about education: what do you do with the “hardcases”?
Expel them? They’re kids - do we let them take responsibility for ruining their life already? Keep them? Let them diminish everyone else’s education experience? These are the truly hard questions that I have yet to answer to my own satisfaction. I must admit that my heart leaps each time that Joanne publishes an article about how a system does achieve success in difficult situations.
Alternative school for the thugs.
This happened recently at one of our schools. A 15-yr-old girl complained to the principal about being beat up by another girl. Ordinarily, she explained, she wouldn’t have tattled, she would have just kicked the other girl’s butt, but she won’t hit a pregnant woman. The complained-about girl was transferred to alternative school.
There is a really simple solution to the “students in inner city schools test poorly, thus we would fire their teachers if we use test scores” problem. Sort teachers based on changes in test scores. If that teacher’s students score significantly better on end-of-year exams in that teacher’s subject than they did on end-of-year exams the previous year, then they are doing ok. The more improved the students do, the more ok the teacher is doing. We can norm this based on a longer time line for student scores, for fear of firing the teachers who inherit good teachers’ students. Use only the students who scored in the 10th to 90th percentile, to avoid using students who can’t do worse or do better, to avoid judging teachers because Johnny bubbled ABCDCBA and Janie already had a perfect score. Create a scoring system for teachers, to factor in the principal evaluations, test scores for students and teachers, “bonus points” for graduate work or whatever we think is important. What is important is that we set up an evaluation system which is objective, and for which “adequate” scores are a non-trivial proposition to reach. Teachers who fail get one or two years to get up to snuff, or they are out. Teachers “outed” or put on probation could get credit for significant continuing education above and beyond that required normally- but one class or a few seminars shouldn’t be enough. New teachers, or returning “failed” teachers, should be on probationary periods their first few years, though new teachers probably should get some slack the first couple of years, certainly compared to returning teachers.
The idea is to create a system with clear individual performance goals for teachers, and real penalties for failure. (And raises or bonuses for teachers who create success, raise test scores hugely, etc.) And to get away from relying on “continuing education” requirements, seniority, and subjective appraisals.
In addition to being used as a significant carrot-and-stick approach for kids, it may be that the standardized tests will assist in evaluating teachers. Metrics are clearly needed and judging how well a teacher and his/her kids make it through a given year’s curriculum makes a lot of sense. However, we’re not there yet.
Proponents of using the test results to evaluate teachers begin with the fundamental assumption that all students try equally hard in class and on the tests themselves. This is just not the case. The unfortunate reality is that many children in middle and high school have already given up, usually for reasons having nothing to do with the school, be it home life, lack of English skills, whatever. This is manifested in refusal to work in class, do homework, and oftentimes serious behavioral problems. This is why I harp so much on disciplinary issues. Not only does the misbehaving kid torpedo whatever hope he may have for an education, he often spreads the rot to his classmates. Fact: when the teacher is dealing with such kids—cajoling, threatening, sending to other classes, whatever—the teacher is not teaching. Result: hole in other kids’ education and burned out teacher. So, IMO, we need to do whatever it takes to foster an environment conducive to learning before we can take the tests seriously.
Taken literally, “no child left behind,” is a fatally flawed premise. Some will have to be left behind, or at least, moved to an environment where their issues can be addressed and they can perhaps be salvaged. But, for the sake of all, some kids will have to be moved from the general population before meaningful reform can occur.
To get the schools under control, reform must begin at the top. Politicians, school boards and school districts continually refuse to bite the bullet: little Johnny and his parents have to do their part, too. And I believe these so-called “leaders” will continue to flinch, which is why I am so negative about the chances of successful reform. As I said before, although I have a lot of problems with the teaching profession, I don’t blame them for their wariness in this instance.
First get the schools under control. Then talk about the rest of it.
rvman, an interesting proposition and one of the only concrete teacher testing proposals I’ve seen around here (everyone knows there has to be testing, nobody knows how it’s to be done :-).
A few comments:
Even if you are not using final marks as a metric, I’d assume that yearly student improvement has to be proportional to final marks. Thus difficult schools are still even less attractive than they are now.
I get the feeling from teachers that the standard deviation of individual classes is really high. In my area of expertise (comp. sci.)some teacher talk about orders of magnitude differences in ability between the successive years of students. If there really is that big a difference, you have to hedge for bad luck.
Are there bad years? I.e. certain grades where students who are going to get into trouble are more likely to start a nosedive. Somehow I can imagine (without evidence) sinkholes for teachers in grade 7 and 8.
Requires extensive (read expensive) testing at the beginning and end of each year!
One could imagine teachers pressuring students showing little progress to drop out.
In my mind, the big question is whether all this effort and expense would, in the end, produce significantly better student results than spending the money in other ways.
What we need is a rich school board (all 0 of them) to perform the experiment :-). It would probably be instructive, even if you ran it without penalties. Even keeping the results within the school (but making them available to all the teachers) would probably be incentive for all but the most egregious of less adequate teachers to hone their skills, put more effort in, etc.
(I consider class by class comparisons in the same grade and school over several years would likely be instructive. If one grade 7 teacher is performing significantly worse over several years than another one in the same school, it’s probably a pretty good indicator of relative teacher quality.)
rvman,
Sounds like William Sanders’ work on the Tennessee “TVASS” tests. Grade teachers by the the change in students’ test scores, not the absolute scores themselves.
Sadly, if the poorer teachers don’t get training, or better curricula, or removed from the system, then the system suffers — just as a kid suffers from a “social promotion”.
I’ve read this exchange with interest. Jeff Wright and Rita C., as always, make sense, as does SusyQ. Andy Freeman, who says he values logic, has one unstated premise that makes it impossible to argue with him: what he means by student performance. Andy, what do you mean? I could infer that you mean performance on tests only, but I would prefer that you state your opinion clearly, that we might see what you’re talking about.
“what he means by student performance.” Gee, Michael, what on earth might Andy mean by “student performance”?
Karoke? Or must they do their own singing?
Clue: what measurements do we currently use for student performance? Grades? Standardized tests? A plus-check-minus scale for “shows improvement”? Any reason why these - while allowing us to determine which students should be passed to the next grade or admitted to certain programs - are so fatally flawed that they have no place in assessing a teacher’s work?
How is your question crucial? Either we hold teachers accountable for how their classrooms serve children or we don’t. Do you really think this can’t be discussed until you have established every metric for every student in every classroom? Or did you throw out this question just want to defend SuzieQ’s vote for “peer review”?
JC, You say Do you really think this can’t be discussed until you have established every metric for every student in every classroom? Of course not, and no one could reasonably infer that from what I said. What I do think is that if you say teachers should be evaluated based solely on student performance, you ought to define your terms, and not leave it to people to infer what you mean.
Teachers here report watching helplessly as the kids christmas-tree their standardize test bubble sheets, or having to wake kids up repeatedly to finish their tests. The tests are high-stakes for the teachers, not the students, and the kids know this. I’d hate to think that my job hinged on heedless or downright spiteful adolescents. I know, Andy, it’s just how life is, but actually it’s not been for me in my career and I can’t think of any nonteachers of my acquaintance that have experienced this sort of thing either.
I find it interesting that while teachers (rightfully) refuse to take blame for a failure of parents to send their child to school prepared, they don’t seem to have the same qualms about taking credit for student progress when students’ education has been supplemented at home by parents. One of the things that has kept schools in my area from imploding is the fact that many, many parents around here supplement. They teach enrichment curricula over the summer, or give their kids extra math drills during the year, or hire tutors like myself. The teachers and the schools get all the credit, and they have the nerve to turn around and send home a contract for the parents to sign telling them exactly what their part in education is (hint: it includes not supplementing).
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