In a radical reversal of position, Diane Ravitch now believes that NCLB has failed. Charter schools and standards, programs that she has championed for years, are not the answer to school improvement. Now, she puts her eggs in the teacher quality basket.
Sara Mosle has an excellent review of Ravitch's book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education
The dirty dark secret of NCLB is that we may know how to identify the
worst performing schools, but no one (yet) knows how to turn them
around in any consistent and reliable way. And I mean no one. Not the
Gates Foundation to date. Not most charter programs. No one.
Ravitch's reversal is front page news. In every policy area, there are a handful of people in the country who really matter. They are political leaders, top academics, the heads of powerful interest groups, and heads of the national bureaucracy. Policies are made by people who have deep knowledge of a topic, have the political power to make things happen, and have the ability to attract the media. Policies are always made by a handful of elites. In education policy, Diane Ravitch is one of those people. She may have single handedly changed the discussion about education.
Stanford economists, Eric Hanushek and Steven Rivkin, are also members of the elite corps in education. Mosle writes that Hanushek and Rivking examined variables that might impact on teacher quality, including certification, general education level, salary. None of those variable predicted whether or not someone would be a good teacher or not. So, those two years that you spent at education school were a waste. However, they also found that good teachers were an extremely significant factor in closing the achievement gap between low-income and high-income
students.
Good teachers are important, but we just don't know how to make them.
This is a big story. With health care reform about to pass (fingers crossed), we're about to move on to education. Obama has unveiled new reforms. I'm going to be watching this carefully.
UPDATE: Ben Wildavsky review Ravitch's book in TNR. Ravitch responds.
Apt. 11d 
Hanushek (not hanucheck) And, I’d like to take credit for knowing that, but, I discovered it trying to google for the Hanushek & Rivkin article.
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And, having found H&R and tried to read it, I have to say, it’s extremely impenetrable. Terrible writing, terrible exposition, terrible graphs (none, only tables). It’s a paper that requires translation, and not from the language of science.
(I gave up and just tried leading the conclusions, but they weren’t conclusions, more like random thoughts that somebody might have after having thought about the subject, a discussion you might have over lunch with someone who studies the identical subject and you all talk in code to one another)
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“it’s extremely impenetrable. Terrible writing, terrible exposition, terrible graphs (none, only tables). It’s a paper that requires translation, and not from the language of science. ”
Thanks, bj. I’m going to avoid reading it. I’ve read so many papers like that over the years, and I think it’s really fucked up my own writing. I’m reading The Time Bind by Arlie Russell Hochschild right now. While I think her conclusions are off, it is so, so good to read an academic who writes fluidly.
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There was a NYT piece earlier in March about some of the research coming out of a mass of Teach for America data. It was focused on producing higher-quality teachers; to me, if we’re pinning our hopes on the teachers themselves, this is a big component.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/magazine/07Teachers-t.html?pagewanted=1&sq=teach%20for%20america%20research&st=cse&scp=3
In my heart of hearts I still believe what’s currently viewed as education reform will eventually morph into a realization that the educational system cannot overcome massive deficits at home. (I personally think many of these within-the-family deficits are related to lowering standard of living, but that’s just me.)
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And, having found H&R and tried to read it, I have to say, it’s extremely impenetrable. Terrible writing, terrible exposition, terrible graphs (none, only tables).
I only write the methods and results sections. I used to let the lead author deal with the rest of the paper and I felt it was over-stepping my bounds to ask the lead author to fix the discussion (excepting cases where something discussed didn’t match with the findings or a typo). Lately, I’ve taken to trying to fix style and readablity issues. We’ll see how it goes.
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You don’t say this, Laura, but I hope people will be careful in making the jump from things like “the time in ed school was a waste” and “we don’t know how to make good teachers” to “people cannot be made good teachers” or “being a good teacher can’t be taught”. I see this sort of jump made quite a bit, and I think it’s not warranted at all. (I also suspect that, in many cases, a good teacher is one who carefully follows a good method or lesson plan. Something like that is so in many areas of life, so it would be surprising if it were different in teaching.)
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I read, as often as I can focus on it, which isn’t much these days, Diane Ravitch’s and Deborah Meier’s blog, Bridging Differences.
Ravitch claims that she has been misread as making a major U-turn: “What did I abandon? The hope that choice and accountability could magically achieve the ends that I believe in. I am not opposed to choice—everyone should be free to choose another school if the school their child attends is not right for the child. And I do not oppose accountability, so long as it is used to help teachers, principals, and schools do a better job, not to punish them.”
Ravitch is also appalled at a recent Newsweek article on education. And I agree. And I personally am sickened by the glee in so-called liberal quarters over the firing of the teachers at Central Falls. (Disclosure: the husband of one of my best friends teaches in the district, but I think you all know me well enough by now to know this would piss me off regardless.) It is clear, if you read anything beyond the headlines, that the CF teachers were not fired because they were BAD teachers. They were fired because they refused to work more hours without compensation. It’s a money issue and it’s a union-busting issue, not a teacher quality issue, and I am pretty sick of the media making it out to be a teacher quality issue.
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Another interesting comment from Ravitch commenting on the Newsweek article:
“Nowhere does the article mention that the highest-performing state in the nation is Massachusetts, where all or almost all teachers belong to unions; nor does it mention that the highest-performing nation in the world is Finland, where all or almost all teachers belong to unions. Nowhere in the article is there an example of a non-union district or state in the United States that has achieved high academic performance.”
I’d also like to point out that Massachusetts devotes very little money to gifted and talented education. Like, miniscule amounts.
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They were fired because they refused to work more hours without compensation.
Well, yes. It is hard to justify that high of a salary for a failing school.
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Nowhere does Diane Ravitch acknowledge that school financing in most of Massachusetts is governed by proposition 2 1/2, which limits the freedom of school negotiators to increase teacher salaries. They can increase teacher pay, but that inevitably leads to the dismissal of teachers with less seniority, to be able to afford the payroll.
Charters are also more effective than union schools, on the whole, in Massachusetts. Their numbers are capped, however, although the governor has proposed lifting the cap. That was in the last minute rush to qualify for Race to the Top funds.
“I’d also like to point out that Massachusetts devotes very little money to gifted and talented education. Like, miniscule amounts.”
Yes, if your child is gifted, they’re ignored by the system. I’m sure the private schools appreciate the guaranteed influx of able applicants.
“It is clear, if you read anything beyond the headlines, that the CF teachers were not fired because they were BAD teachers.”
How would one be able to ascertain the teachers’ abilities, in a school with 7% of the 11th graders testing proficient, and half of the students dropping out before graduation?
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“that inevitably leads to the dismissal of teachers with less seniority, to be able to afford the payroll.”
Which apparently is working. More seniority/practice=better teachers, maybe?
“How would one be able to ascertain the teachers’ abilities, in a school with 7% of the 11th graders testing proficient, and half of the students dropping out before graduation?”
You take any of those teachers and send them to my kids’ school, and I guarantee you that you’ll get roughly the same results as the current teachers at my kids’ school.
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Random thoughts:
I’m a better teacher when I feel appreciated and am supported by the department, when I teach a subject that I know well and love, when I’m paid well, when I like the kids, and when I’m not completely overwhelmed.
I would like to see how merit pay works out. I want to see a big program implemented and see what happens.
I would like to see more Teach for America types working in lower performing, suburban districts as well as higher need urban areas.
I want to see more former PhDs going straight into the high school classroom without having to waste time with certification.
No more education majors, please.
I want the wholesale recruitment of higher achieving college grads into education.
I know too many smart people who are turned away from teaching, because of the dumb hurdles. There are also no openings in the schools around here.
Bad teachers have to leave quicker. They poison the whole pot. One teacher in this district threw a chair at a student last year. The union refused to get rid of her. So, she had a year of anger management lessons and now she’s back in the classroom. Awesome. If my kid ends up in her class, I’ll go apeshit on the school.
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“If my kid ends up in her class, I’ll go apeshit on the school. ”
And then will you be sentenced to anger management?
Are we saying no one can be rehabilitated? One strike and you’re out?
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You take any of those teachers and send them to my kids’ school, and I guarantee you that you’ll get roughly the same results as the current teachers at my kids’ school.
I doubt it, at least for the older ones. Twenty years of that has to really cut your ability to teach. Most of them couldn’t have had to respond to an intelligent question more than once a month.
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So, what happened to the teacher shortage? I had heard that all the teachers were retiring and we weren’t training enough, and there’s a huge teacher shortage. But that was a few years ago. Now my friends looking for teaching jobs tell horror stories of hundreds of applicants for one position . . .
Is there not a teacher shortage any more? Or are my friends just limiting themselves to the districts with the friendly, rich, white kids in them?
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So, what happened to the teacher shortage?
In Pittsburgh, the drop in enrollment outpaced teacher retirement to a fairly large extent. When a teacher retires, they just close a position.
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There’s a film I like a lot called Entre Les Murs (2008). It’s about a French middle school teacher struggling with non-middle class students, many of whom are also non-ethnic French (Matt, you definitely need to see it if you haven’t already). It’s the perfect antidote to the American hero-teacher movie that leaves the viewer thinking, if only we had tens of thousands of Jaime Escalantes.
Here’s Catherine Johnson posting on it at KTM:
http://kitchentablemath.blogspot.com/2009/07/entre-les-murs.html
I don’t know what other people got out of it, but for me, watching M. Marin teach these kids was like watching a scary movie where the people on the screen keep ignoring the audience’s advice (don’t go outside to investigate! don’t split up!). Marin has a few flickers of success and he is trying, but he has little technique. He keeps walking into things, even though he’s been teaching for 3 or so years already. I did several posts on the movie here, and I actually say some nice things about American education:
http://xantippesblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/entre-les-murs.html
http://xantippesblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/entre-les-murs-ii.html
http://xantippesblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/entre-les-murs-iii.html
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“You take any of those teachers and send them to my kids’ school, and I guarantee you that you’ll get roughly the same results as the current teachers at my kids’ school.”
How do you know that?
“More seniority/practice=better teachers, maybe?”
More seniority/practice=more burnt-out veterans, who have too much invested in the system to leave. They also have more sick days built up, so they’re absent more frequently. (This varies by teacher. In the worst case, veteran teachers may be absent, without consequences, every week, leaving the classes in the hands of subs.)
In Massachusetts, the younger teachers now have passed the Massachusetts teacher certification test, so as a whole, they’re more likely to be competent than the teachers hired before the Massachusetts Ed Reform. The teachers who managed to gain tenure in Massachusetts’ premier school districts, such as Newton or Brookline, are likely to be very able. Those who were not able to leave the most difficult districts are a mixed bag. There are undoubtedly some saints among them, but there are also teachers whom no one would hire, given a choice.
“If my kid ends up in her class, I’ll go apeshit on the school.”
Every other parent will be pressing to protect her children from this teacher. The teacher will end up with a class whose parents are the most trusting, or clueless.
So, what happened to the teacher shortage?
Teachers are postponing retirement, perhaps? It’s also clear that public finances won’t support the continued push for small-class sizes. Several large districts recently laid off dozens of teachers. Repeated on a large scale, that increases the supply of teachers, while decreasing the demand.
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I want to see more former PhDs going straight into the high school classroom without having to waste time with certification.
I’m less sure about this, in part because I can think of too many discussion about how people in PhD programs don’t get training at teaching. Teaching is a skill, something that can be learned and taught. Few people have it naturally, and earning a PhD is no indication of having the skill. Many (maybe most) certification programs are bad, but that doesn’t mean that we should just get rid of them, as opposed to improve them. I agree that teachers ought to have expertise in their subjects, and would like to see this start at a much earlier age than happens in the US. But I can’t see that just sending in people w/ PhDs and no training at teaching will be a huge help, or obviously better than people w/ a BA (or an MA) and training at teaching, if the training is worth-while.
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if the training is worth-while
Isn’t that the major point called into question about the lack of statistical correlation between education programs and success?
(Speaking of not getting training at teaching, I had to stop reading the Chronicle of Higher Education series by Henry Adams because I was getting irritated by the generalizations from it. Sure, I’ve not been in English so maybe things are different there, but I’ve gotten a fair amount of training and advice on teaching, and extra when I ask. Admittedly, I always could use some more–like in what composition skills to emphasize and how to teach them, which ended up being a big issue in one class but not my previous classes–but couldn’t everyone?)
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“You take any of those teachers and send them to my kids’ school, and I guarantee you that you’ll get roughly the same results as the current teachers at my kids’ school.”
How do you know that?”
A few ways. First, I oversee writing assessment at my university. We do an assessment after students take all required English courses. This assessment is done through a course, so all my data is categorized per course. Some classes have good passing rates; others have bad passing rates. The same professor can have 80% success in one class and 40% in another. The quality of students when they come in to the class is key.
Second, I have taught at institutions ranging from community colleges in rural areas to one of the top 10 institutions in the country. I am the same teacher. I do many of the same assignments. If you had assessed the outcomes in both classes according to standardized criteria, I am SURE that my community college students would have performed far worse.
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Bad teachers have to leave quicker. They poison the whole pot. One teacher in this district threw a chair at a student last year. The union refused to get rid of her.
Of course: the union has no interest in protecting students. The police, however, do. Were charges filed? If not, why?
I was recently thinking back on the truly terrible math teachers I’ve had, and with an adult’s perspective I finally realize that they just never understood math. They had a brittle system of rules but no intuitive grasp on the subject, and floundered anytime someone asked a question or tried an approach outside of the teacher’s manual.
We have an acquaintance who is a teacher who was telling us how she’s never really understood (elementary-school-level!!) math, but then she took some two-week New Agey teacher’s course, and now she “totally gets” math. So she’s going to teach middle school math next year.
I should just save myself some time and get a shirt printed up that says “So glad we left PPS”.
The people who really understand math and science have plenty of other employment options. I can see how an effect between salary and teacher quality wouldn’t show up, because most people could teach those subjects well are off earning a lot more money. If you don’t get math, you’re going to be a bad math teacher whether you’re making $50k or $80k.
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“More seniority/practice=more burnt-out veterans, who have too much invested in the system to leave. They also have more sick days built up, so they’re absent more frequently. (This varies by teacher. In the worst case, veteran teachers may be absent, without consequences, every week, leaving the classes in the hands of subs.)
In Massachusetts, the younger teachers now have passed the Massachusetts teacher certification test, so as a whole, they’re more likely to be competent than the teachers hired before the Massachusetts Ed Reform. The teachers who managed to gain tenure in Massachusetts’ premier school districts, such as Newton or Brookline, are likely to be very able. Those who were not able to leave the most difficult districts are a mixed bag. There are undoubtedly some saints among them, but there are also teachers whom no one would hire, given a choice.”
What does this have to do with the fact that the Massachusetts education system is the best in the country? My point is that the senior “burnt out” teachers are actually better than the new ones, or so it seems if the new ones all get fired and the union-protected ones get to stay,a nd the end result is that the system is the best in the country.
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My point is that the senior “burnt out” teachers are actually better than the new ones, or so it seems if the new ones all get fired and the union-protected ones get to stay,a nd the end result is that the system is the best in the country.
That’s a great deal of interference from basically one data pont.
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”
“I want to see more former PhDs going straight into the high school classroom without having to waste time with certification.” (laura)
I’m less sure about this, in part because I can think of too many discussion about how people in PhD programs don’t get training at teaching. Teaching is a skill, something that can be learned and taught. Few people have it naturally, and earning a PhD is no indication of having the skill. ” (matt)
I’m with Matt on this one — having a Ph.D. does not mean that you can teach, in most science fields. And teaching in K-12 seems to be a different animal than teaching college, or at least, at the colleges that we get our Ph.D’s from.
I’ve recently been running a Girl Scout troop. Our kids are mostly drawn from my kid’s school, so I know that as kids go they are very smart, quite interested, and relatively compliant. But when of us moms (except the one who actually teaches high school) is in charge of them in a group setting, it’s very very easy for them to get out of control. We just lack the child management skills required to get them on task. My daughter complains when I try to “help” her that I don’t know how to do it right — that I tell her the answers, and don’t guide her to understanding. Mind you, the teachers at my kids’ school are probably “good” teachers. But the experience and contrast shows me taht there is indeed something to be learned.
I recently heard a talk of the nation talking about teacher training — the idea that teachers can be taught the technical skills to teach. They started with how to get a class on task, and pointed out that some people do these things naturally. Others, though, don’t, and need to be taught.
They also talked about how teaching requires not just knowing the material, but knowing how other people think, and think about the material. They gave an example of a math problem, a wrong answer, and how a good math teacher knows how a kid might have gotten to that wrong answer. I spent a few minutes being perplexed about how someone could have possibly gotten to that wrong answer (proving that I don’t actually know how a kid can think).
They interviewed Doug Lemov abut a book he’s written on the subject.
They may not each this stuff in ed school, but that doesn’t mean that teaching people to teach isn’t important.
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In California, they are laying off teachers everywhere in the state. It’s really, really bad right now. There are no teaching jobs– not even in low-income areas or less-compensated private schools. If you are living in California, I would discourage anyone from even thinking about going into education for the next several years– unless they re interested in teaching special education.
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As the son of an excellent teacher, who taught at three different levels, and an admittedly bad teacher, I think I may know what the difference is.
Bad teachers, or people who are generally incapable of teaching, generally believe that there is one right way to doing things and chafe when then their pupils deviate from the one, true method.
Good teachers can accept that there several ways to do something and can adapt to instructing students accordingly.
Yes, there are bits about being engaged with students and the material, having a verve to inspire, etc. But I truly think it comes down to a matter of personality, temperament and flexibility.
It may be no more possible to make a good teacher than to make someone a great writer.
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“It may be no more possible to make a good teacher than to make someone a great writer.”
Wait, you just compared two incomparable superlatives, good and great. I am firmly convinced that it is possible to make many teachers “good”, which I think involves mastery of content and technical teaching skills. Making them great is another story, and may not be something we can create.
I suspect the same about writing. I believe that we can indeed teach most to be competant, even good writers (someone go take on Halushek & Rivlin!). Making them (or anyone else) a great writer, though, is a different animal.
And, I think we’d do well if we could make lots of good teachers, even if the great ones remain as rare as they are now.
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cranberry — what’s your evidence that charters are more effective than union schools in MA. And, more to the point, what’s your evidence that, if they are more effective, what they do is scaleable?
The dirty dark secret of NCLB is that we don’t even know how to identify the worst performing schools very well.
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@bj. You’re right, I goofed in my use of adjectives.
But your response gets to my larger point, that technical skills and proficiency with material can only get you so far.
My (admittedly bad) teacher of a father knew his material so well, that he was brought to this country to establish curricula for other schools. It wasn’t a lack of mastery of the material nor a lack of technical teaching skills, it was quite simply his personality and temperament. Even when instructing me, even on issues not directly related to his expertise but ones which he knew quite well, he displayed the same behavior that he did when he had to instruct a class. My father had all of the requisite skills, but he didn’t have the patience or temperament to instruct. It wasn’t just with kids, he had the same problems when trying to instruct adults.
My mother, however, could teach anything to anyone. She had an instinctual gift for explaining things, but she also had the flexibility to adapt when students couldn’t duplicate her thought process but still arrived at the correct response. My father could never do that, with any subject.
I think it’s one of the reasons why people dread teaching their children how to drive. You drive a certain way, and your children — once able to master the technical procedures, i.e., how to take a curve, how fast to generally drive — may do things differently. You want them to drive the “right way,” i.e., your way, but they drive their way.
There’s an obvious difference between teaching someone long division and teaching someone how to drive, but the basic principle of being flexible to allow your pupil the freedom to do things their way still stands.
You could incentivize smart, engaging people to teach subjects they’re passionate about, you can train them in master’s courses on methods, but at the end of the day, I believe there is an innate quality that teachers possess that can’t be taught.
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harry b,
http://www.gse.harvard.edu/blog/news_features_releases/2009/01/new-study-of-boston-charter-and-pilot-schools-finds-charter-schools-have-positive-effects-on-student.html
Researchers from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and MIT have released the results of a groundbreaking study that suggests charter school students in Boston outperform their peers at other public schools in Boston. Results for pilot schools were less clear; some analyses showed positive results at the elementary and high school level, while results for middle school students were less encouraging. The study uses an innovative research design based on school lotteries that allowed for a direct comparison of charter and pilot school students with their peers.
(link to the study on the page above)
(different study)
Click to access report.pdf
The 10th grade statewide rankings for MCAS scores. Note that Boston Latin, Boston Latin Academy, and the John D. O’Bryant School of Math and Science are Boston’s exam schools. http://www.boston.com/news/special/education/mcas/scores09/10th_top_schools.htm
At this point, I’m more impressed with durable than scaleable. Do the charter schools’ cultures survive past their founders’ term in office?
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I believe there is an innate quality that teachers possess that can’t be taught.
I disagree quite strongly with this, for several reasons. For one, even to the degree that temperament is an important factor, people can learn to adjust it. It’s not easy, but it can be done. Secondly, being a “good teacher” is often a matter of applying certain steps, at least in certain subjects. People can and do learn these steps. We tend to think that, because some people just “get” things, that they are innate or can’t be taught. But that’s not true, at least generally. That there are “natural” teachers no more means that teaching can’t be taught than that there are “naturals” at math or languages mean that those subject can’t be taught. But I’ve seen them taught, and I’ve seen people be taught to be teachers, too, at a school dedicated to that. (One thing the school stressed, that’s out of fashion in the US, was drilling. drilling is boring, for both students and teachers, but I’m convinced it’s an essential element of learning in most cases.)
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“That there are “natural” teachers no more means that teaching can’t be taught than that there are “naturals” at math or languages mean that those subject can’t be taught. But I’ve seen them taught, and I’ve seen people be taught to be teachers, too, at a school dedicated to that.”
Positive reinforcement is one of those things that comes naturally to some people, less so to others, but it can be taught. (I’m a big Howard Glasser fan.)
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Of course someone can be taught how to teach. Which doesn’t mean that ed schools are doing a very good job of it, overall. And like most things, some people pick it up more easily than others and some just never get it (and they should not get through an ed school). Teachers of course need solid mastery of their subject areas, but that is not nearly enough to make them even passable teachers (which is why putting untrained PhDs into classrooms would be highly problematic; a few who had a knack for it might do well, but most would be disaster).
For my very first teaching job, when I was 17, I replaced a guy as a Red Cross swimming instructor. The guy I replaced was an elite swimmer and had lied about being certified to teach. Within a few days of his start date, complaints from parents were rolling in, and none of the kids had so much as learned to put their faces in the water. He was far superior to me at swimming, but he hadn’t the least idea of how to convey that knowledge/skill to kids. You cannot simply demonstrate the back float and say to a child “Now you do it.” I had learned how to teach it, and had refined my skill at teaching by practicing with actual kids. You need to show the children yourself how it’s done, narrating your body position in language that makes sense to them: “Point your chin up to the sky”; “Put your arms out like the letter ‘T’; “Now keep your body floppy like a rag doll.” You have to convince them that if they do the ‘tricks’ you are teaching them, you guarantee that they will be able to float. Then you have the child try it, again narrating the body position and encouraging and correcting her as warranted, all the while reassuring her that you absolutely will not let her go. It worked every time, with minimal fuss.
I read the piece in the NY Times magazine a week ago about Building Better Teachers, and I must say that I learned most of the techniques they were talking about in my methods classes at, yes, an ed school. The most valuable information about how to teach comes from people who have been doing it successfully for a number of years. It’s much harder than it looks and it takes a lot of work and practice to do it well, not unlike most professions.
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“The most valuable information about how to teach comes from people who have been doing it successfully for a number of years. ”
That’s probably true, but the things we’ve been saying about teaching (math, swimming, art) is also true about teaching people to teach, right? A person could be a natural and excellent teacher but not be consciously aware of the tricks and tools they’re using to teach, just like the elite swimmer. That’s why I’m wary of the idea some have — that we teach teaching through some form of apprenticeship alone.
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“But your response gets to my larger point, that technical skills and proficiency with material can only get you so far.”
That’s probably true. Then, the question is, how far do you need to go to teach, and do you need to be more talented, gifted, spectacular in order to teach the most needy kids? or not?
If you need extraordinary talents, the way we usually reward that is with extraordinary pay. We don’t have that opportunity in teaching. Some blame that on unionized pay scales. But, I think it’s more fundamental than that — if extraordinary talent is desired, then it has to be exraordinarily rewarded, not with 10% or 20% “merit” pay. We’d need to be talking superstar rewards, like we give superstars elsewhere. But, in other fields, superstars are rewarded with superstar outcomes because they generate income with which they can be rewarded (i.e. rainmaking lawyers, sports tournament winners, best-*selling* authors).
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“A person could be a natural and excellent teacher but not be consciously aware of the tricks and tools they’re using to teach, just like the elite swimmer.”
Right. I was watching my grandparents talk to my kids after their first ski lessons this January, and my grandparents knew exactly what to say to the kids to encourage them. However, I don’t know that my grandparents would be able to describe what they were doing.
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I showed my students Dan Pink’s TED Talk today, and he was talking about the need for new ways of preparing employees with 21st century skills. I also remembered a recent blog post from Will Richardson over at Weblogg-ed. He asked What’s the problem that schools solve?” As he mentioned in comments the purpose of public education originally was to prepare people for industrial jobs. Now, the skills that make you a good factory worker are not necessarily what will make you a good worker in the 21st century. This is where Jen is especially useful, being one of the few commenting here who seems to work in the non-academic/education world. My impression is that employers want people who can solve problems, learn quickly, and have good people skills (team work/collaboration). It occurred to me while driving home today is that what people need to learn is how to learn as quickly and efficiently as possible. In a way, I think that goes for info literacy as well–how to locate and sift through information and see relevant patterns/commonalities.
But no, I know you guys think we should all be teaching kids to memorize poems or do long division by hand. So maybe I am the crazy one.
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“A person could be a natural and excellent teacher but not be consciously aware of the tricks and tools they’re using to teach, just like the elite swimmer.”
That is part of my point, really; you need to know how to do something well and you need to understand the theory/underlying mechanics of what you are doing and be able to explain those things to your audience at their level. I’m not suggesting an apprenticeship system, though I think that a good student teaching experience and ongoing mentoring and meaningful professional development are critical. In fact, I think that some of the coursework required at my ed school, like child/adolescent development, ed psych, assessment, is crucial, even if it’s not specifically about how to teach or about content.
Rather, I’m saying that those who are teaching teachers how to teach need to have put in solid (and relatively recent) time in the classroom themselves in addition to their study of teaching methods. They must understand how to put the two things together. If they’ve only studied pedagogical methods and have never practiced them in an actual classroom, they don’t have the fluidity to adjust and make suggestions when reality doesn’t follow theory perfectly. At least that is the observation I made in the courses I took from professors who’d come from a teaching background and either had or were working toward a PhD versus those who had only the PhD or whose teaching experience was decades old.
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Speaking from a software perspective, even the most broken system can function if your staff is truly brilliant. But of course that’s totally unscalable and unsustainable; good management and good organizational design is all about making your enterprise successful with the kind of staff you’ll actually be able to get.
What I’m hearing here, over and over, is that ed schools are pretty well positioned to actually teach the stuff that teachers need, but many of them aren’t. And that teachers are often judged based on test scores, which are not corrected for the relative giftedness of the students. These seem like fixable problems.
Given the current reality I would argue we need some short-term heavier apprenticeship time for new teachers, until we can get this ineffective ed school thing under control. As for the uncorrected metrics, not sure how much effort that would take.
Oh and BTW what’s with someone who throws a chair in a professional setting getting a “second chance”? Workplace violence is an auto-term behavior, end of discussion.
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One other thing — by the vehemence of response to “having the skills does not mean you can teach” thread says to me that people who *do* teach feel their skills are undervalued. I think this is key as well; helping all of us understand that teaching is a separate and valuable skill that deserves reward.
Fix the uncorrected metric issue (with judging teachers on students without correcting for their start point) and you’re a long way towards really identifying who’s good, and lifting them up as more worthy of respect and higher pay.
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With respect, discussing more generous pay for the best teachers is the “feel good” side of the issue. It’s very nice to speak of various programs to encourage good teachers to sharpen their skills. It’s wonderful to hope to create a Lake Woebegone of education, where all the teachers are above average. Unfortunately, this conversation has drifted far from the fact that some teachers are miserable teachers by any definition, lacking both teaching ability and content knowledge, and should not be teaching children. Such teachers are not evenly distributed in America’s schools.
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“Oh and BTW what’s with someone who throws a chair in a professional setting getting a ‘second chance’? Workplace violence is an auto-term behavior, end of discussion.”
Not in college coaching.
Besides, does this mean that such a person is unemployable, ever again? I have a hard time getting my brain around that concept.
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“In a way, I think that goes for info literacy as well–how to locate and sift through information and see relevant patterns/commonalities.
But no, I know you guys think we should all be teaching kids to memorize poems or do long division by hand. So maybe I am the crazy one.”
I don’t think that “learning to learn” is a very useful concept. I think that in the end, we’ll find that each domain has a particular set of skills associated with it, and that while there is some overlap, we can’t approach mastering a domain at too high a level of abstraction. Consider riding a bicycle, swimming, typing, driving a car, or playing a musical instrument. Those are all things that you do with your body and there may be some overlap in what each task demands (manual dexterity, stamina, etc.), but each has to be learned as a discrete task or set of tasks.
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I should have mentioned background knowledge, too. Let’s say “we’ll find that each domain has a particular set of skills and background knowledge associated with it.” For example, if you are a horse-y person, all of your movements around a horse are conditioned by the fact that horses are skittish, easily spooked, and prone to lash out when frightened. Or if you are in charge of a baby, your management of the baby’s environment is conditioned by your knowledge of the fact that babies like to stick small objects in their mouths and bigger babies try to pull up on anything in reach.
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My impression is that employers want people who can solve problems, learn quickly, and have good people skills (team work/collaboration). It occurred to me while driving home today is that what people need to learn is how to learn as quickly and efficiently as possible. In a way, I think that goes for info literacy as well–how to locate and sift through information and see relevant patterns/commonalities.
Several acquaintances have regaled me with tales of how they screen for suitable employees. The common threads have been basic math knowledge–such as how to multiply two digit numbers–and the ability to write a coherent paragraph. Team work and collaboration skills aren’t on the radar screen, but then they don’t give TED talks.
I think it’s hard to perceive patterns in information without background knowledge. If someone knows nothing about geography or history, he’s more likely to believe the impossible, such as tree octopuses, or growing cotton in Siberia.
I suppose I’m old fashioned, but I do buy E.D. Hirsch’s line of argument. Knowledge helps to build the structures to gain more knowledge. Math, science, history, geography, everyday observations, current events, all of it helps my kids understand the world. I observe them drawing analogies to processes they grasp, trying to expand their knowledge. I’d far rather they gain the materials to construct their own understanding of how the world works, than sign them up for school instruction which tries to impart abstract theories of how it works.
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Wendy, I can’t imagine you’re arguing that college coaches are our *model* for appropriate workplace behavior. Nor are they anywhere near the norm.
In the private sector, workplace violence may or may not end with a police report (which rarely happens). So it’s unlikely your future employers would learn of it except by back channel. So no, you’re not unemployable. You would however need to explain why you were terminated, deal with the lack of references, etc.
Laura may be able to chime in on what’s tolerated in Steve’s office (financial services, traditionally more accepting of “outrageous” behavior). I’ve never seen anyone so much as throw a book or pile of papers across the room and make it thru the next review cycle unscathed. The term may not happen immediately, but that person will be shed, or will at least have their direct reports shifted to limit a repeat of the experience. (At which point they typically see the writing on the wall and leave.)
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Yes, I’m glad you made that point, jen. I didn’t have a chance to write a comment last night. OMG. Steve’s office would march the chair-throwing employee to the elevator with an armed guard. Their personal items would be mailed to them later. No second chances. No anger management classes. That’s just insane. If they tolerated it and the person did something else, the office would have established “a pattern of workplace indifference”and there would have been a major lawsuit. Believe me, if any adult throws a chair at my kid, I will bring in the big guns from Manhattan.
I completely disagree with the idea that anyone can teach. Was it you who said that, Suze? Dumb people can’t teach. Boring people can’t teach. Impatient people can’t teach. Period. No education class is going to change that the fact that you’re as stupid as a pile of bricks.
When I was at Univ. of Chicago, two of my five roommates were education majors. (One comments here from time to time.) One of those ed majors was studying to be a math teacher. He was smart. He was interesting. But he wasn’t patient. The education school at Chicago, which was one of best programs that I’ve ever seen for getting the ed majors into the classroom with advisers, told him that he shouldn’t be a teacher, even though he had As in his classes. So, he left and now he has a very successful computer business. Chicago’s Ed School was great, because it recognized that temperment was important and that it put prospective teachers into the classroom with actual kids and not learning theories of education (which are crap BTW). It’s really funny that ed schools teach that hands-on education is important, but don’t actually go near real kids until the last semester of the program.
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” As for the uncorrected metrics, not sure how much effort that would take. ”
There are a number of “corrected metrics” out there, attempts at calculating “value-added” scores, for schools and teachers. One version was tested and eventually dropped in our neck of the woods. When it was available, what I generally found was that the “value-added” scores were nearly identical for all the schools. I think the availability of “corrected” metrics is hampered by the fact that teachers have a limited impact on “adding value,” with other factors swamping the effect on student achievement. H&S try to calculate “teacher effectiveness” independent of other factors, and say that it doesn’t matter if it has a much smaller effect than other factors, because, as far as public policy is concerned, it’s a factor (unlike home environment) that we can address. That’s true, but, it could well be cost-ineffective, for example, if raising teacher quality by x points required n dollars and resulted in i student achievement improvement.
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So Laura — would the chair thrower be escorted out of the office if they were the head of a profitable division?
The books suggest not, in the financial industry. I’m pretty sure that chair throwing rainmaking legal partners don’t get escorted out, either. At least, not until someone seems the workplace liability issue that might create.
Neither do grant-generating individuals at universities (even when they’re not tenured faculty).
It seems to me that how a chair-thrower gets treated in any of these work places depend on how much power they wield a fair amount of power. And, we’re bugged by this, because unlike the financial industry or legal work, this power isn’t obviously linkable to the bottom line, and is instead, based no unions and the relative powerlessness of their charges.
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i.e. teachers wield a fair amount of power.
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“I’m pretty sure that chair throwing rainmaking legal partners don’t get escorted out, either.”
Rahm Emanuel still has a job (for now), so there seem to be exceptions to the rule.
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Yes, bj, a bigshot would also be escorted to the door by an armed guard. Lawsuits have changed things quite a bit. Anyone who uses sexist/racist language in the office or in an e-mail is immediately fired. Also, violence.
I had a student who slipped in a pornographic paragraph into a term paper. Steve was shocked that the student wsn’t immediately kicked out of school. He said that the school was setting itself up for a “hostile work environment” lawsuit.
Colleges and universities are miles behind the corporate world on this stuff.
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I think a lot of people get their data about what’s tolerated in offices from books and movies. Media coverage of workplace norms WRT violence is not representing what’s acceptable. Even the biggest rainmaker would at very least be isolated from others if they were throwing chairs. I have even seen co-owners of companies pulled aside by their business partners and told, listen, you have to get this under control or something has to change.
The idea of tolerating such behavior from a (typically minimally supervised) teacher working directly with children is beyond the pale. It puts teachers in the same category as the postal service when it comes to perceived non-fire-ability no matter what.
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One of the KTM gang has a post up with some reflections about what they learned about education from putting kids in ski school:
http://kitchentablemath.blogspot.com/2010/03/lessons-from-ski-school.html
I think we underestimate the prevalence of education in our lives. I think the average person (even non-parents) teaches something to somebody at least once a day, admittedly sometimes badly, and parenting is teaching, albeit with a smaller class size. Also, I suspect that time makes a difference on temperament. If Laura’s roommate were to want to switch careers now to math teaching, I don’t think we should reject him out of hand.
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Speaking of college coaches and violence, even great ones will get the axe is they are too violent. Everytime I want to hit somebody at work, I think of poor Woody Hayes.
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On the other hand, Hayes had a chair endowed in his name, so maybe I should reconsider.
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“When I was at Univ. of Chicago, two of my five roommates were education majors. (One comments here from time to time.)”
I was one of those roommates. Not the math teacher. I’m the one with a head full of theories. I left education because of an overwhelming feeling of hopelessness. These discussions have been going on since I was in grad school (20 years ago). Laura, you will be glad to hear that since the Ed Program was dismantled in the mid 90s, the UofC has gotten into the business of running schools and implementing best practices with incredible success through the Urban Education Institute (http://uei.uchicago.edu/). No more theories without real world applications.
While all this discussion of horrible teachers, bad teaching practices and teacher education reform are important, we have not discussed school management and leadership (or the lack thereof). Great, or even just good, teachers do not exist in a vacuum. Bad schools are often loaded from the top down with bureaucracy. Urban administrators act like big shot politicians, not educators. A good principal or superintendent works with teachers and builds a team. Team teaching, shared resources and ideas, mentoring — this all works, but someone has to organize, implement and follow through (intervene if there is a bad teacher). Charter schools are successful precisely because they don’t have to deal with excess bureaucracy and top down management. They want to try something innovative or just change their strategy, they just do it. None of the filling out of endless forms and waiting for approval from the powers above you find in large school districts.
I have recently gotten back in the field of education as a substitute teacher and it has been eye-opening. So many issue to discuss, not enough time here, but at the root of it, most teachers work hard and want to grow in their craft. Sometimes they need a little guidance.
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It seems to me that how a chair-thrower gets treated in any of these work places depend on how much power they wield a fair amount of power.
I think it’s also strongly correlated with how male-dominant the workplace is. I’ve seen an lot of violent behavior (screaming–with or without spittle, chest-to-chest posturing, verbal threats, throwing tools and/or equipment) on the jobsite, yet only actual fistfighting has repercussions.
Anyway, why isn’t becoming a teacher taught via an apprenticeship program, like craftsmanship? In learning to become an electrician, I worked on-the-job during the day with journeymen, then attended night classes for background information and theory. I was shifted around from job-to-job to get exposure to different elements of the trade.
Why aren’t our teachers brought up that way? I think that system would create better teachers, and provide a better opportunity for identifying the folks who really ought to “wash out” and go into a different line of work.
We have a saying on the jobsite, “we’re not building a Swiss watch”. Education isn’t really about building a Swiss watch, either. Except when you phrase it that way, it raises neck hairs—some people are firmly in favor of their children being the “Swiss watch” kids, with others’ children being the “future Walmart clerks of America” kids. And they put their copious funds where their mouth is, with private schools or exclusive “public” schools in the suburbs (that are de-facto private due to the price of housing)…and all the while voting down tax referendums necessary to improve the quality of education for the masses.
It’s true that not everyone can be a good teacher, just like not everyone can be a good electrician. But just like anyone with basic algebra, good visual-spatial ability, capable of moderate physical activity and ladder-climbing can learn how to be a good electrician (provided he or she wants to), if someone possesses the basic qualities necessary to be a good teacher, they can be taught the techniques.
I’m cynical, though. So far, I haven’t seen any real evidence that there is a strong desire to improve the schools. There’s too many folks that are willing to throw away a great number of children. I’m leery of commentary about “what education is supposed to do”—because in practice that degenerates into the factory/college tracks. Only now there are no factories, and very little chance to earn a livable wage outside of a college degree.
I’m afraid that if the “results” conversation is held too often, that the “natural” conclusion is going to be: college track for some, semi-literate babysitting for others. And I know which track my daughter is likely to be slotted in. And I don’t care who or how many I have to “kill” to make that not so.
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It’s too bad that the old school disbanded, Tina. It sounds much better than other programs around.
And, totally agree that being supported and managed well makes a good teacher. I’ve found that in my own case. One person can be a good teacher in one environment and a bad teacher in another environment.
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La Lubu:
You raise an interesting point — I’m arguing that i don’t think the apprenticeship model will work (though I fully support Suze’s assertion that having taught is a necessary precursor to teaching to teach), because I think many people who teach well don’t know what they’re doing exactly that results in the good outcomes. I think the same is true for moms who are successful teachers. And, I think moms who are good teachers over-estimate the teaching ability of other moms, and of their own teaching with students who aren’t their own children and in classroom situations, when the group size is larger.
Is that not true for the trades? Does an electrician, carpenter, . . . know how to show you to do the things they do? Take, for example, the relatively low level skill of hammering a nail. Do the mentors in those fields know how to teach someone who can’t do it, who gets it wrong, by correcting their methods (in the way that Suze was describing for swimming)? Or, do they just throw a hammer and nail at a kid, and if they can’t do it right, the kid quits, and thus doesn’t need to be taught the skill?
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“And they put their copious funds where their mouth is, with private schools or exclusive “public” schools in the suburbs (that are de-facto private due to the price of housing)…and all the while voting down tax referendums necessary to improve the quality of education for the masses.”
I expect it depends on the area. The District of Columbia, for instance, spends a lot of money.
http://www.examiner.com/a-1315414~D_C__schools_rank_third_in_nation_in_per_pupil_spending__census_says.html
I’ve seen claims that if you count all the money flowing in, it’s actually more than that $13.5k per child.
DC is probably the worst for input vs. output, but Kansas City and MH’s Pittsburgh deserve honorable mention. In DC’s case, there’s probably a lot of actual corruption (mixed 50/50 with incompetence). The money seems to run through the DC school system like through a sieve. In the case of other high-spending, low-performing cities, it may be more a case of maintaining the buildings and the institution, rather than focusing on teaching.
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Or, do they just throw a hammer and nail at a kid, and if they can’t do it right, the kid quits, and thus doesn’t need to be taught the skill?
In my experience, they just throw you a hammer and say go for it. It isn’t that hard to do right, at least in the rough work portion of home construction, and most boys have learned it from their fathers or grandfathers. Using a buzz saw without cutting-off your fingers while standing 15 foot above the ground on a 2×4 is also something that they let you figure-out for yourself.
But, not being able to figure out hammering is not why people fail to be carpenters. The usual problem is that people either don’t want to work that hard, are afraid of heights, or cannot handle the mental part. And by mental part, I mostly mean math. I was able to get framing carpentry work with no experience at a pay that was something close to twice the minimum wage of the time because I could do addition and trigonometry*.
*Not that most of the carpenters knew what they were doing was trig. They use something called a “Speed Square” to calculate angles for the roof**. They say the old guys could just eyeball the angles, but it would take years to get that good.
**The square lets you cut a rafter knowing only the pitch and width of a roof. The alternative is to hold the board-up and mark it with a pencil, which is slow.
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La Lubu as usual keeping me honest with all my white collar assumptions. By comparing teachers to white collar office types I was only trying to illustrate what’s acceptable in other office-y settings. Did not mean to dis the craftsman world.
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Anyway, the pedagogical techniques in the construction industry tend to involve more shouting (partially by necessity as construction sites are loud) and hazing (i.e. if you don’t know which tool is what, you will be sent to ask the surliest man around if you could borrow the 6” Colon Sprocket or something) than would be allowed in most school settings.
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“And, I think moms who are good teachers over-estimate the teaching ability of other moms, and of their own teaching with students who aren’t their own children and in classroom situations, when the group size is larger.”
A classroom setting is different (I continue to have anxiety dreams where I have a new class, I don’t know any names, I don’t have a roster, and I don’t have a lesson plan). However, a few points:
1. It is well-known that children are often more cooperative with non-parents.
2. I think (at least right here) you are underestimating the degree to which parenting is a profession, with a literature and a body of knowledge to be mastered. I personally own somewhere between around 100 parenting and educating-your-kid books, because I wasn’t born knowing all this stuff.
3. I know that I am always pleased when my kids get a teacher who has kids already. She’ll have less time and energy, but there’s a pay-off in terms of savvy. If you think about your work as a parent, eventually you learn to avoid unnecessary Little Bighorn type situations, and to make sure that you don’t voluntarily start engagements that you are going to lose. Or as I tell my husband, “Don’t go out on a limb and then saw it off.” There’s also a payoff in terms of having succeeded on seemingly hopeless long-term projects with your own kids. My kids, for example, only potty-trained at nearly 4 and nearly 4.5, but they eventually got the hang of it.
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La Lubu, do you live in Beverly, or maybe Hegewisch? Have you ever considered trying your same setup (with daughter in Catholic school) at St. Gertrude’s/NCA in the city? It might get you away from some of the gender stuff you worry about, and female contractors are somewhat more common in Edgewater and Andersonville.
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Once upon a time, we didn’t have this discussion, in part because talented women went into teaching faute de mieux – it really was one of THE only jobs, and probably the most plum job, for a college-educated woman. Those were also the days of burnt-out, bitter, “mean teachers” who screamed at the kids and humiliated them in front of the class. Women who HATED kids, really, still taught because what other jobs were there? Nurse, social worker, librarian – you still had to deal with kids, and there weren’t those summers off and vacations, etc.
Now, at least, we have people who, by and large, teach because they want to (though there are still those who say, “I teach because of the schedule and summer break.” Bah to them). From what I see, providing support and mentoring to rookie teachers is a huge help, as are classrooms where the teacher can really teach and not just do crowd control.
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Just did a quick look and Great Neck schools in NY spend about $22K per student. Maybe with $8K more per student, DC could do a better job, mainly by providing meals to students and more aides for disabled students.
Beyond white collar office work a la Jen and Steve, there are many professional cultures where throwing things is not that uncommon. Entertainment fields, for one. I used to be a sucker for backstage soap gossip, and I remember one friend telling me about an actor who threw a chair at a producer. Her words: “And if you knew X, you’d want to throw a chair at X too.” I should point out that the actor worked for 10 more years on the same show and still works in the soap world. As far as I know, he has not thrown another chair at anyone.
I’m not excusing it; I think my point is akin to bj’s, that in some cases power can complicate these situations. I also think that I am unwilling to exclude from the workforce anyone who had ever made a bad choice like that. And if we believe that people who do such things are Amy Bishops in the making, then don’t we have a responsibility to inform future employers? What are you prepared to do for the workplace chair-throwers of the world? Make them jobless for the rest of their lives? Are you willing to pay for that?
Sorry, I’m impatient with what I think are facile solutions to more complicated problems. I’m even more impatient with solutions that involve wiping your hands of the problem and making it someone else’s problem.
And finally, I would rephrase the idea that teaching is an innate skill. I think teaching is a skill some people do not have. I think most of us have the capacity to teach effectively.
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Andrew Coulson, of the Cato Institute, claims the real per-pupil spending for D.C. is $24,600. http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9319
My fear for the workplace chair-throwers is that, sooner or later, they will only be employable if medicated. I see far less tolerance for what I consider normal child behavior in the schools. I also think there’s less acceptance people with melancholy or shy temperaments than there used to be, prior to psychotropic medications.
I think one problem for urban districts is scale. After a certain organizational size, the child in the classroom is too far removed from the center of power. Complying with city, state, and federal guidelines and mandates becomes much more important than whether Jane Smith, in classroom 1A, can read. It’s easier to push paper than to monitor one child’s progress quickly and sensitively. To me, that’s the largest advantage the charter schools and independent schools have. They can discover what works for them, and don’t have to change their approach to education because the superintendent in the district office had to step down.
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Charter schools have the huge advantage over the other schools of not having to educate the students whose parents don’t enter the lottery. This is a major problem with the Kane study you refer to, which doesn’t account for the effects of those students concentrating in other schools, and doesn’t distribute some of the fixed costs the BPS bear to the Charters (do you know how much the most expensive kid in the Boston schools costs? I do, and I also know that the Boston schools have to pay for that kid to be “educated” in another state by a court order).
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Harry b, Boston’s exam schools are also allowed to select their students. In those schools, the fact that the city system has students who are difficult and expensive to educate doesn’t harm the educational experience.
This debate breaks down into teachers vs. students. If the argument is, we cannot improve teacher quality without improving student/family quality, well then, game over. Why are we talking about it at all? Just assume that successful students are successful due to their families, unsuccessful students bear witness to their families’ incompetence, and move on. That was the dominant argument when I was growing up. Certain types of students were assumed to be impervious to education. Yet, some highly successful charter schools have shown that it is possible to educate urban students.
I don’t think there’s necessarily a huge difference between the new teachers who end up teaching in the suburbs and the new teachers who end up teaching in city schools. At the start, given similar grades, test scores, and beliefs, the new teachers could switch schools and function very similarly. What happens to those teachers as they become more experienced? How easy is it to change from teaching in Dorchester to teaching in Lexington? And vice versa? Will the teacher who’s taught in Dorchester be able to get an interview? Or will the administrators think (or say), “Well, she’s done well with that population, but I don’t think she has the skillset needed to teach our kids.”
I think a lot of the perceived problem of teacher quality comes from different value systems as they are practiced in districts and schools. A smaller unit is able to define and defend its own values. When the system grows too large, or is poorly led, there is much less cohesion, and much more cynicism.
As an aside, when it comes to special needs and charters, there is also a flow of certain sped kids to charters. One brilliant boy of our acquaintance changed to a charter school from our local public school. He is much happier in an academically intense program with very traditional classroom structures. In our local public school, he was receiving social counseling for “social skills deficits.” He functions much better in a school with predictable daily routines. It is less expensive to educate him in that setting, rather than try to improve his social skills.
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