Want to Improve Teaching and Learning? Read This Now

If you’re interested in serious school reform, ramped-up student learning, a transformed teaching profession—and if you have time to read only 1,190 words in 2012, go to Education Week and read Art Wise’s incisive commentary, “End the Tyranny of the Self-Contained Classroom.” Art hired me at RAND some 27 years ago and now is CTQ’s board chair. I still learn a great deal from him.

As Art notes in the piece, even the most ambitious, well-designed, and carefully implemented reforms to improve teaching effectiveness will only go so far if policymakers don’t jettison the “one teacher to 25 students” school model. Tougher evaluation systems will never be implemented if few administrators have to assess many teachers. Expanded learning opportunities for students won’t happen if every teacher has to know everything about the Common Core, working in isolation from one another.

Performance pay won’t mean anything for student achievement until teachers have much more time to team-teach and spread their expertise to colleagues. And according to Art, the “tyranny” of the egg-crate classroom undermines teachers’ capacity to draw on one another’s strengths and solve problems collectively. We are well into the second decade of the twenty-first century, and our teaching profession is still organized as if it were the 1920s.

So what to do?

Let’s begin with a new Race to the Top framework that awards states and districts for breaking down classroom walls, places a premium on teacher teams (and assesses them as a collective), and, looking toward the vision of TEACHING 2030, “blurs the line of distinction between those who teach in schools and those who lead them.”

Then let's focus on using a new organizational structure to capitalize on the skills of 100,000 National Board Certified Teachers—teachers whom Art duly notes are “all dressed up with no place to go.” (Keep your eyes peeled for the development of CTQ's small band of innovative NBCTs from several states who have a lot to offer in implementing the Common Core.)

Isn’t it time to read this piece and think differently about serious school reform, ramped-up student learning, and a transformed teaching profession? I say it is. 

Comments

[Dave Orphal]

Agreed! I can't tell you how important my teaching teams are at Skyline HS, here in Oakland.

We've got our students organized into "house" their freshmen year and then into one of seven career academies for their 10-12th grade.

My Ed Academy team have our collaboration period right after lunch, five days a week. We all have collaboration time together: Anya and I, the career-elective teachers for our Academy; Lisa, who teaches English to all of our 10,11, and 12th graders; and Jeff who teaches our 11 and 12th graders social studies.

It's not perfect. Katie, our 10th grade science teacher had to accept an extra class after lunch to ease class crowding. Lydia, who teaches our 10th graders social studies couldn't be scheduled for our common meeting time. But it's a good team nonetheless.

We talk about learning goals for our students along with whose struggling and what we can do to help. We help each other our with our lesson planning and assessment design. We visit each other's classroom on our other prep period for peer observations.

That's right, I said "other prep period." Unlike most teachers, I have two 50-minute periods in the day without students. The one right after lunch, my collaboration time, and my traditional prep period when I grade and photocopy. We were able to do this, with no additional $$$, by transforming our school from a 6 to a 7 period day.

I love it!

Teaching has always been a team sport. In high schools, a student is educated by a team of dozens of teachers spanning those four years. That's before we start counting the admin and support staff who help us every day.

It's time to get the team to start practicing together.