Advancing the Teaching Profession

Teaching is a Team Sport

The luminous Eduwonkette has once again served up a shrewd rejoinder -- this time to Malcolm Gladwell’s recent essay in The New Yorker and his off-the-mark analogy relating the spotting of talented pro quarterbacks to the identification of teacher candidates who will be more effective in the classroom.

Great college quarterbacks do not always make it in the pros because the context is so different (e.g., the speed of the defensive linemen and cornerbacks). Teachers with credentials (high test scores, education school training, masters’ degrees, experience, etc.) do not always make it in pro-level school situations because the context is so different (e.g., the diversity of children and the dynamics of peer interaction inside of real classrooms).

For Gladwell, teacher "withitness” cannot be observed until one begins to teach. This leads him to buy -- lock, stock, and barrel – into the conventional wisdom (of labor economists) that teacher education and credentialing do not matter much, thereby throwing a block into the backs of those who see a need to prepare teachers before they begin to practice their profession.

As Eduwonkette points out, Gladwell pretty much ignores school contexts and working conditions – things like having access to effective colleagues and time to work with them, or supportive principals who pave the way for the best teachers to lead. There are few more effective quarterbacks than Brett Favre – but he and his new NY Jet teammates are struggling of late because his talented receivers are not fast enough to race past the corners and take advantage of Favre’s long ball threat. Turns out football is a team sport, too.

Gladwell, in looking for answers, seems to contradict himself. He concludes by calling for residencies and apprenticeships that can serve as training grounds for a new generation of teaching talent. As an example, he draws on the financial advising industry which recruits talent and culls out the best after a four-month training program AND a multi-year apprenticeship, all the while ensuring that novices are not dispensing advice independently until they are safe to practice.

Ironically, given his romance with the labor economists, Gladwell ends up calling for the kind of (pricey) teacher education and credentialing system that many of us teacher-ed apologists have recommended for a long time — a system that recruits talent, offers context-specific pre-service preparation AND substantial opportunities to see and learn from the masters before going solo.

More Evidence on How Teacher Education Makes a Difference

As reported in Education Week today, “it is no secret” the key to dramatic improvements in closing the achievement gap is teacher education. The Broad Foundation just awarded its $1 million prize to Brownsville Independent School District, “where nearly half of the students are English-language learners, nearly all are from low-income families – and where students in all grades outperform those in similar districts statewide in reading and math.” District officials claim it is teacher preparation and professional development – especially in how to work with second language learners – that is making most of the difference in the marked progress among the school district’s students, many of whom are separated from their parents.

So why do the policy pundits continue to trumpet the need for short-cut alternative pathways to teaching, when the award-winning school district points to its partnership with the University of Texas at Brownsville as the major source of effective teachers? The university, in partnership with the district, recruits and prepares the vast majority of the teachers, who graduate with bilingual certification and are not only steeped in how to teach, but are well-versed in the culture of students whom they are teaching. Brownsville teachers are not recruited from high-brow East coast universities, nor do they carry their own chart-busting test scores into their classrooms. Brownsville teachers are from the community.

So what makes them stand apart? They are well prepared in pedagogical approaches that work and can teach students whom are much more like them than not. They are also prepared to use data and analyze student work. They know how to work with students who are living under very adverse circumstances. Many of the teachers have experienced the lives that their students are now living. And guess what? Locally recruited Brownsville teachers stay in teaching and in their communities long enough to make a difference for student achievement. In fact, the district has only 3 percent turnover a year. Imagine that.

I wonder why it is so hard for many policy pundits to understand that short-cut alternative certification programs that actually promote a revolving door of underprepared novices teaching in high-needs schools are not a very good idea. Maybe cultural competence, not just one’s SAT score, needs to be a primary teacher recruitment criterion. Perhaps the Broad Foundation is on to something – and has a new policy story to tell. It is definitely one that needs to be heeded.

School Reform as And/Both

This past week’s Time Magazine paints a poignant portrait of Michelle Rhee’s efforts as the chancellor of the DC Public Schools to transform her beleaguered school district. In some ways Rhee’s dual-pronged focus on 1) paying teachers based on once-a-year, multiple-choice standardized tests and 2)getting rid of tenure in order to rid the system of “incompetent” educators is understandable. Students' learning (not the needs of adults) is what matters most in school reform and any teacher who does not teach (as implied by an anecdote in the article) has no business being in a classroom. 

The well-written article begins and ends with the story of Allante Rhodes, a student at Anacostia Senior High School, who eloquently describes what has changed and what has remained the same under Ms. Rhee’s two-year rein as the district’s top educator. While out-dated computers now work properly for word processing and students consistently don their uniforms, his school is still poorly managed, the building is in disrepair, and teaching does not seem to be any better. Perhaps there is more to school reform.

But here is what is most striking: Rhee’s efforts to transform teaching are presented in a unidimensional light:

• Great teachers are in “total control” and are willing to “quiz kids on their multiplication tables;”
• Teachers need to be paid more when they raise student test scores; and
• Tenure needs to be eliminated in order to get rid of incompetent teachers.

I understand the urgency of now and Rhee’s impatience. Her focus on students is on point.  However:

• Mastering the basics of math does not preclude learning how to use and create knowledge — and great teachers also know how to help their students take control of their own learning.
• Paying teachers for performance does not mean that student test scores should be the sole measure — especially when helping students master 21st century skills are the coin of the realm and cognitive scientists have proven that focusing on creativity can enhance student acquisition of the 3Rs.
• Eliminating rigid tenure rules might be more acceptable if teachers trusted administrators to be fair or even knowledgeable of good teaching — or better yet if the district’s best teachers were more involved in evaluating their peers.

Talented teachers need more than a few weeks of boot camp training in order to be effective to teach in high need schools. (Check out the Residency model we highlight in a recent report). Talented teachers need the teaching tools, resources, and working conditions that allow them to be great. School reform does not have to be either-or; it can be and/both. In fact, it must be if we are going to improve schools and the teaching profession. I wonder why this lesson is so hard for school leaders and policymakers to learn.

What are other areas where you see education policy choosing either/or approaches, when what our students really need are both/and strategies?