Creating Conditions for Effective Teaching

Late last week, in reading both an essay by New York Times columnist David Brooks and a report by a team of economists, I wondered when American policymakers will begin to take seriously the need to address not just effective teachers, but the conditions that will allow them to teach effectively. Brooks’ opinion piece (titled “The Relationship School") and Matthew Ronfeldt, Susanna Loeb, and Jim Wyckoff's intricate economic analysis, combined, tell us much about what it takes to improve public education.

Brooks relates the story of the New American Academy, where teachers are well prepared and supported. With backing from both unions and education schools, teachers there have time to really know students and their families well. Ronfeldt, Loeb, and Wyckoff show how faculty turnover creates a revolving door of teachers and undermines academic achievement. Their study found that for each of their several analyses over eight years, students taught by teachers in the same grade-level team in the same school had much lower achievement in years when turnover rates were higher, in contrast to years in which there was less teacher turnover. The negative effect of teacher turnover was far more profound in schools serving low-achieving and black students.

I wonder how much more we could be doing for students if our nation’s Race to the Top strategy placed a premium on school designs that promoted faculty retention (and not the hiring of itinerant teachers), as well as conditions, like more time and support, that allow teachers to learn from one another and spend more time with students and their families. 

We know how to make this happen, and not just at the New American Academy. Take a look at the work of Ted Sizer at the Coalition of Essential Schools, the thoughtful leadership of Furman Brown at Generation Schools, or the role that teacher leaders play in the top-performing nations of Finland and Singapore. Isn’t it time for us to focus on the right stuff of school reform?

Comments

[Stephen Lazar]

My thoughts exactly, Barnett. Nearly everything being done these days by the so-called reformers is about the package of schooling, but until we make reforms that directly support the core relationship between teachers, students, and curriculum, nothing will change.

[Barnett]

And this is why you have -- as a teacherpreneuer -- have founded Harvest Collegiate in NYC. Reforms of today are not focused on the "core relationship between teachers, students, and the curriculum." If we prepared and rewarded teachers for doing so then we would head toward the transformation of public schools -- the kind that students deserve.

[DrBote]

Thanks Barnett. We need to focus on patterns of interaction that support professional capital, collective efficacy, and community satisfaction.

[Cheryl Suliteanu]

I think that my school site is plagued with this very issue. I have spent some time researching longitudinal data on my school's test scores. We have absolutely dismal results although our students and teachers are highly capable. I realized prior to reading your post, and of course now feel quite validated, that we have been impacted severely by the movement of teachers caused by layoffs in our district. Teams have not had time to nourish trust in each other because every year there are new teachers in the grade level and at the school. I look forward to hearing more about your thoughts on the patterns that support collective efficacy, and how to encourage its development.

[Barnett]

Cheryl. Rosenholtz’s landmark study of over two decades ago concluded that “learning-enriched schools” were characterized by “collective commitments to student learning in collaborative settings… where it is assumed that the "improvement of teaching is a collective rather than individual enterprise, and that analysis, evaluation, and experimentation in concert with colleagues are conditions under which teachers improve.”

How do our teacher evaluation and pay systems encourage the spread of teaching expertise?

In nations such as Singapore as well as South Korea and Japan, teachers spend only about 35 percent of their time teaching students. The other 65 percent is spent preparing and critiquing lessons, observing colleagues, grading papers, tutoring students, and working with parents, and working with colleagues. Most of their planning is done with fellow teachers, with whom they share responsibility in teaching students. Singapore, similar in size as well as student diversity to many large U.S. urban school systems, is one of the top-scoring countries on international assessments. Most analysts conclude that Singapore students do so well because they learn in schools that have a highly coherent system of teacher and principal development. There are no rapid-entry alternative certification programs like Teach for America in Singapore. Instead, incentives are in place to attract talented recruits, prepare them well, and offer a multi-faceted career development system that provides meaningful rewards and career options for teachers to teach and lead