BLAME A TEACHER DAY

By E.D. KAIN | American Times blog at Forbes.com | http://onforb.es/iCX1yE

May. 3 2011 - 7:20 pm |

Matt Yglesias writes:

I was shocked to read this on the American Federation of Teachers’ official Twitter feed:

If you can’t read, you can’t Tweet. #thankateacher

Hasn’t anyone told them that holding teachers responsible for kids’ learning outcomes is teacher-bashing? That instead of talking about teacher efficacy we should be talking about poverty and segregation? No?

Of course not!

Because, look, it’s totally obvious that teachers aren’t the sole determinant of whether or not a given child knows how to read. Many parents teach kids the rudiments of reading before they start kindergarten. And throughout life questions about whether parents read to kids, encourage kids to read, have books around the house, etc. make a difference. So does the accessibility of a decent library or bookstore. So do a million other things. But when Teacher Appreciation Week comes around then of course teachers and their representatives want to emphasize the fact that one of the many things that makes a difference is the quality of teaching. Indeed, evidence suggests that quality of teaching is the most important non-demographic contributor to student learning. Acknowledging that isn’t a form of “bashing” or “blaming” teachers, it’s identical to celebrating their contributions. But once you accept that quality of teaching matters, then practices like Last In, First Out layoffs and compensation schemes based entirely on seniority and master’s degrees don’t make sense. Money to pay teachers is a finite resource and it’s important to try to allocate it to the best teachers for all the same reasons that good teachers are important in the first place.

 

Okay, for the sake of argument let’s accept each of Matt’s premises here. Let’s say that Last In, First Out and seniority and compensation schemes based on experience and education don’t make sense (even though much of this is unofficial practice in many other industries). Even accepting these premises I fail to see how implementing a complicated, controversial, financially burdensome and ultimately counterproductive testing regime is the correct answer to getting rid of the bad teachers while attracting good people to the profession.

Here is my alternative plan: make teaching fun and rewarding. Treat teachers as autonomous professionals and make teaching more exclusive. Give teachers in urban and rural areas where turnover is high and schools are under-funded more support. Have senior teachers act as mentors at these schools. In fact, make the seniority aspect of teaching more interesting. Give senior teachers more roles than simply classroom instructors. Let them use their experience and knowledge to help new teachers and try to curb the 50% turn-over rates.

Because Matt is right that teachers make a huge difference. He’s just wrong to suggest that we should make teaching a lousy profession that no-one with half a brain would want to join. Why would talented people want to subject themselves to a teaching job under the sort of conditions that Matt favors? “Accountability” and “value-added” schemes are not only bad at actually gauging teacher quality, they have the really awful side-effect of making teachers all teach to tests.

High-stakes standardized testing flies in the face of creative teaching and learning and everything that makes America great: our creativity, our individualism, our ingenuity and problem-solving. Instead we get Teaching By Rote 2.0 and a deeper entrenchment of the school-as-assembly-line model.

Are there bad teachers and do we need to find ways to get rid of them? Are unions sometimes to blame for protecting bad teachers? Yes and yes. Is accountability-via-testing the answer? Nothing in our decade-long experiment with this idea has proven it to be true.

Finally, this is just ridiculous:

Hasn’t anyone told them that holding teachers responsible for kids’ learning outcomes is teacher-bashing? That instead of talking about teacher efficacy we should be talking about poverty and segregation? No?

I haven’t lived in poverty or faced segregation so it’s hard for me to comment on this with total certainty. Then again, neither has Matt and he seems pretty sure of himself. I also haven’t taught in poor urban schools, but then again I don’t think Matt has either. So maybe we’re on even footing here.

So I’ll just hazard a guess that poverty and segregation are huge driving factors when it comes to differences in education outcomes. That’s why our suburban schools do really well while our impoverished inner-city schools don’t. That’s why students with well-to-do families by and large do pretty good on tests and get into college, while kids from single-mother homes in gang-ridden inner cities don’t. You can’t ignore these factors any more than you can ignore teacher quality.

There are a lot of ways that poverty effects education – including making teaching in these schools really, really difficult and teacher turnover really, really high – but poverty is right there at the heart of the problem no matter how you spin it. Countries with much lower rates of poverty and segregation have better education results. Full stop.

Sure, some excellent charter schools have really stellar records with kids in poor areas. But these schools benefit hugely from non-public funding and selection bias. I’m not sure the model is scalable without first tackling the broader issues of violence, poverty, and neglect in these communities. The funding isn’t there and obviously selection gets a bit tougher once everyone is invited.

And that’s all I have to say about that.