Transforming the Teaching Profession

Eliminating the racial and ethnic achievement gap in our nation's public schools is the most urgent civil rights challenge for this generation.

I co-founded the Education Equality Project to address the injustice and inequity that African-American and Latino students confront every day in their schools.

Poor and minority students will never get their fair share of educational opportunity -- and are far more likely to lead unsuccessful lives -- until administrators and political leaders commit to fundamentally changing the way teachers are recruited, rewarded, and retained. The goal is as easy to articulate as it is hard to realize: that every classroom will one day be led by an effective instructor who demonstrably advances student learning.

Here are specific ways we can do it.

1) Lower irrelevant entry barriers to the teaching profession. Advanced degrees and certification are not linked to producing effective teachers, and traditional schools of education typically attract lower-achieving college students from less competitive institutions. Alternative certification programs, like the Defense Department's Troops to Teachers initiative, are already demonstrating that mid-career and retiring professionals could provide a rich source of new teaching talent, particularly in high-need subject areas in inner-city schools like math and science.

2) The federal government should require states and districts to develop longitudinal data systems that allow school administrators and principals to use value-added data to measure and track the impact teachers have on student achievement. To move toward a performance-based system for teachers, school districts will need to have information that tracks the effect that individual teachers are having on student performance from year-to-year for a number of years. Performance-based metrics must not only be fair but transparent.

3) States and districts should be encouraged and free to use a variety of outcome-based measures to evaluate teacher effectiveness. One proviso: any system that states devise to evaluate teacher performance should include student test scores as a key measuring stick--and should not succumb to the temptation to substitute input-based measures to gauge teacher effectiveness, like licensure status and education credentials, that have been shown to have no connection to effective teaching. While student test scores over a multiyear period should figure prominently in value-added assessments of teacher performance, they should not be the only measure of effectiveness.

4) Every school and district should assess and document the impact that probationary teachers have on student learning from the moment they enter the classroom. Fledgling teachers should receive better professional development support, including on-the-job mentoring and supervision from peers and master teachers. Just as barriers to entering the teaching profession should be lowered, barriers to earning tenure must be raised.

5) To transform tenure into a progress-based prerogative, states and districts should require tenure candidates to demonstrate that they are effectively boosting student learning. At the same time, the least-effective probationary instructors should be denied tenure.

6) To stem the suburban tide, urban school districts should pay large bonuses -- on the order, perhaps, of 25 percent of annual compensation -- to effective teachers who stay to teach disadvantaged students. Teachers who raise student achievement should receive large bonuses for teaching in high-poverty schools and extra compensation for teaching core subjects in shortage areas like math and science. At present, top-notch instructors often end up leaving inner-city schools to teach at suburban schools that are closer to home, less disruptive, and pay higher salaries.

7) Tenured teachers should periodically be reassessed to ensure that they are still raising student achievement. Tenured instructors who are doing a good job should receive significant merit pay hikes. But persistently incompetent teachers should be dismissed -- after getting a chance to improve their performance. In much the same spirit, unionized teachers should enjoy the due process protections and seniority rights afforded to other white-collar professionals -- but not be shielded by excessive due- process requirements from meaningful job performance assessments or layoffs.

Transforming the teaching profession into a merit-based system will not be easy. But urban school reform and closing the achievement gap can no longer be secondary to protecting the prerogatives of union representatives, district bureaucrats, and professors at teachers colleges. Some of the reforms we need to create real opportunity for disadvantaged students and boost learning for all students are sure to be politically charged. They threaten a vast educational establishment that for decades has privileged the needs of adults over children.

The good news is that this radical transformation of the teaching profession could again help make education the great equalizer in America -- and not an ongoing source of inequity and injustice.

On Saturday May 16th, on the 55th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education I will be joining with civil rights leaders, education reformers, students, teachers, parents and concerned citizens at the White House Ellipse to issue a call to action. That call begins with improving teacher quality in our public education system.

Comments

[RLarsen]

The uncivilized behavior of the majority of city students is the clear reason for the diastrous situations in these schools. It is the 800 pound gorilla that is never addressed because it is not politically correct to do so. This is why the problem will never be solved. "Experts" and chancellors can come up with wonderful ideas about how to "transform the teaching profession" but the real issue will never be addressed.
Just outside the NYC area, teachers on Long Island work in schools where the students perform extremely well. These Long Island teachers go to the same area colleges and teach to the same NYS standards as do their NYC counterparts. The average Long Island teacher is no better or worse than the average NYC teacher. The Long Island classroom is quiet and civilized, the NYC classroom is not.
The original post and the hundreds of comments that followed had wonderful, perfect world solutions, but in reality, they are silly and do nothing to address the real problem.

[Iteachtoo]

RLarsen is a a genius I hope to see you as our next chancellor because you actually know what is going on the public schools. Administration closes their eyes to major discipline issues to make their lives easier these kids run the school and we teachers get in trouble for their poor test grades.

[RLarsen]

Thank you for the kind words. You are truly a scholar and a gentleman. My apologies if you are a woman. This article reminded me of what 2 gym teachers told me years ago about one of their classes. They had the kids simply walking around the gym as a warmup, yet the kids couldn't even control themselves for that. They would run, hit each other, fall down, etc. Granted, the gym teachers were cranky old women, but you get the point. I fear these problems will never be solved.

[j.gold]

I am for Merit pay for parents.

If they get their kids to school on time with their homework done, If they have few absences, if the kids make good grades, if the kids see a doctor regularly, and so forth pay them for it.


It's much more productive then paying for prison latter.

[skyreader7]

Before anyone has a prescription for how to solve the education problem, go teach seven years. Only then will you be qualified and have any idea of how education works. And don't start with the "It is the teachers who are at fault" myth. Most of the problems start above teachers. And until children are held accountable for their behavior and have respect for teachers, the system won't work no matter how much money you pour in or how much testing you do. Many kids today want to go to school to socialize and get mad if they have to do assignments. It is not that we do not have good teachers. It is that even the best of teachers find it hard to be effective under the current circumstances.

And as for vouchers? This is a welfare gimmick for the rich.

[shorepoet]

Let's make it really simple, Mr. Klein. Allow public schools to operate like private schools: we can select our teachers based on talent and content area knowledge, not degrees and certification. Also, we get control over who comes into our schools and our classes. ( I'm talking 8-12 here.) Don't care about school? come back when you're ready That would clean out a lot of inertia, and we could take those savings and give our elementary schools help to remediate those kids who come into kindergarten not knowing their numbers, shapes and colors. Also, pivate school don't test much, so for high school, maybe just the SAT, ACT, etc. That would be a start, and since it seems that everyone wants school vouchers to send their child to a private school, people would go along with these simple changes. By the way, I teach at a small, very rural school, with about a 75-80% poverty rate and a 70-25-5 diversity ratio (black, white, hispanic). We have no money. It costs us quite a bit more for all the accountability nonsense than we get from the state and feds combined. Every resource goes to testing; we have about 7 elective classes, and a much diminished career and technical program. Oh, and by the way, none of our present ninth graders will be allowed to drop out or stop coming, because in four years we will have to have a 100% graduation rate. Rosy, huh?

[shorepoet]

BTW, I really love this job and my students. It's just the you-know-what- that's always rolling downhill from lawmakers that makes life hard. I coach football, too, and I couldn't imagine if every child had to play and be in every game. That's a lot like this accountablilty crud. It sometimes seems to me like they are just trying to find ways to make the schools look bad, so that the voucher crowd can have it's way.

[cornflower]

I'd say you hit the nail on the head shorepoet! You'll get vouchers and get rid of unions - the real agenda here!

[cornflower]

I'm a teacher, a Seven Sister grad and one who switched from a "learned profession" to teaching. There is so much wrong with Mr. Klein's statement, where does one begin? In my former profession, I received respect; as a teacher, I don't get any. How will bashing teachers attract the best people to education? I suspect pols can do it, because teaching is a female-dominated profession. But start with the definition of failure. Public schools educate about 95% of Americans and have for centuries now. I graduated from a public system, got into a Seven Sister college, graduated cum laude, got into professional school, graduated from that, held down a full-time job for my entire adult life. Failure is in places - some districts, some schools and not others. Many districts, schools and teachers are now highly successful. And the teachers belong to unions. Teachers in my union lose their jobs. A fair procedure for firing poor teachers can co-exist with a union. Union bashing doesn't serve education. It's just union bashing.

The idea that you don't need to study education to teach is blarney. There's lots going on in education that you need to learn before you can teach.

If you think that teachers don't work, you haven't been inside a school for too long. Go hang around in a school after school, on weekends. Stay for a few weeks. And don't judge all by your experience with one. Generalizations should be banished.

That's just for starters.

[breakingpoint]

What do you plan to do with the good teachers you wish to replace?

This thinking never fails to remind me that these folks think every patient who walks into the dentist’s office has the same teeth.

Instead, why not advocate paying for the underfunded programs mandated by the Feds already like, special education, where funds are being diverted from the regular classroom. Address that dirty little secret.

These people never take into account the problems these kids have at home. They think teachers should not only teach, but pose as psychologists, social workers, referees, grocers and cops.

Get a clue, this isn't just about education, this is about the ills of society which could be remedied greatly with adult jobs training, affordable housing and single payer health care; less than 1/8 of the US military budget.

Merit pay, what a joke, what an insult! What's a couple extra hundred dollars in a teacher's pocket when they are already shelling out the little they make for school supplies, and don't get me started on the fraud and waste of the politically and well connected text book industry.

My advice to Mr. Klein, if you really want to make a difference? Quite witting this same old b as in b s as in s, move into an urban public neighborhood (not the good part) and pick up a classroom in the worst public school system in the US, stay there until you retire and do the job.

[raechel]

I am sick of this debate. I am sick of the "it's not possible to succeed because parents are so bad" and "it's not possible to succeed because kids are so disrespectful" teachers. As a parent, I have met many teachers over the years, and I can tell you that EVERYONE knows who the good teachers are. Great teachers know how to control a classroom, are respectful and respected, are knowledgeable, and are hard-working, responsible professionals. EVERYONE knows who the lousy teachers are, too. They are full of excuses. They are all about "you don't know how hard it is." They lose papers, can't get themselves organized, and park their students in front of the TV to learn about history from movies like Titanic.

Every time I involve myself in one of these discussions, I come away more disheartened, and more hopeless about our public schools. I read posts from teachers who can't spell, can't compose a sentence at the fifth grade level, can't construct a scientific argument. Yes, of course engaged parents are helpful -- that's because we do the teaching ourselves. God help the kids whose parents can't teach them.

[DofG]

Forty years ago, as a nation, we did not question the efficacy of education to the extent we do today, despite the fact that we have more pedagogic "bells and whistles" than at any other time in the history of Man. What happened? What happened was that there was always an underlining flaw in our system just waiting, like a virus, to expose inherent socio-economic weaknesses. That flaw was due to the notion that the quality of education should reflect one's economic station (unbalanced capitalism) despite the ramifications of this inequity being continually expressed over time. Specifically, when it comes to minorities, and general urban populations, we have seen this inequity being played out over two generations, because of cultural events, and middle class economic decline. Unfortunately, since we are basically a segregated culture of segregative thinkers, we tend to examine problems by their particulars, and fail to understand that these problems concerning education have nothing to do with teachers, or teaching per se, though they have become, politically, society's easiest targets.

Of course the answers have always been there. We just don't want to acknowledge them. We prefer sweeping these problems from one rug to another!

[senga6]

I can go on and on, but basically I am tired of these idiots who think they are going to test our kids to death, eliminate any fun subjects that bring kids to school and an alternate path to learning, and by some magic alchemy come out with a better education system. I'm tired of education administrators abdicating their responsibilities to charter schools and vouchers. But I'm also tired of educators who are all-too-ready to abdicate their responsibilities to parents and the amorphous "community" at large which supposedly fills their classrooms with kids who are "impossible" to reach. Surely not ALL of these children an impossible to reach. Weed out the really bad cases and put them in remedial classrooms with even more intense instruction until they can get their acts together.

Let's just stop with the defeatist attitudes and start really giving our children the education they deserve.

[senga6]

Please stop trying to make test scores the end-all, be-all. Start treating the dire situation in education like the emergency that it is. I'd rather see incentive pay instead of merit pay. Use high salaries and a rigorous, strict hiring process to lure the best teachers to the worst schools; then make them earn their keep with long school days (which the children need), an extended school year (to help the kids catch up), and rigorous standards for enforcing classroom order, keeping morale high, and inculcating kids with a positive attitude towards learning. If a teacher cannot make the cut, he or she can always be placed at a less-demanding school. I know it's tough to get through to some of these children, but far too many are slipping through the cracks. We as a society end up paying later as they wind up in prison and/or on some kind of social assistance.

[ron071]

Why are the suburban schools " less disruptive " and more rewarding? Why are the suburban schools more successful? Joel Klein wishes to IGNORE the reality of what ails urban education in favor of lowering standards for incoming teachers and making any protection for teacher tenure reduced and hence making it easier to get rid of" higher" paid teachers. Mr. Klein refuses to deal with the realities of urban education and seeks mainly to scapegoat teachers who daily try their best to overcome the societal problems of the inner cities. Until these problems are effectively addressed his " re forms" are merely a sham and a cover for the abolition of teacher tenure and protection from the political abuses which ( pre-unions ) used to hold sway. " Reformers like Klein have come and gone and their footprints are like castles in the sand.

[JusdaTruth]

Rono71- Thanks for speaking the truth.

[MatoSka]

Reprint from my paper: Special Education Funding: The Dominoes Fall, 1992, sent by Sen. Harris Wofford to the PA Sec. of Education. Recognizing the date of the piece, the paper nevertheless predicted accurately the ramifications of GHW Bush's policies and those that followed the tax cutting philosophy on public and Special education.

"What all this comes down to is that the government has failed to act in a manner consistent with the educational needs of millions of special needs children. It has attempted to obscure the impact of its policies by preaching a doctrine of “excellence in education” that will further aid wealthier districts and is attempting to implement a national standardized testing system. The impact of the results of this testing on funding has yet to be addressed. The goal of inclusion, championed by Madeline Will, Assistant Secretary of Education and Director of the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services has had “a negative effect on the funding for students at risk, including handicapped children”. (Kauffman, 1989)

Kauffman, James W. “The Regular Education Initiative as Reagan Bush Education Policy: A Trickle-Down Theory of Education of the Hard-to-Teach”. The Journal of Special Education. Vol. 23, No. 3. 1989. p. 260

[Solaris123]

"One proviso: any system that states devise to evaluate teacher performance should include student test scores as a key measuring stick."

1.It is beyond dispute that low soci-economic status negatively affects academic performance.

Therefore, test- performance based salaries will eliminate the ONLY incentive which brings high quality teachers to low SES areas --higher salary.

2. Where is a proposal for performance-based salaries for for incompetent district administrators, board administrators, principals, vice principals, assistant principals and last but not least chancellors of Departments of education????

[ron071]

Solaris123 has it just about right. Klein is a sham reformer who is the current advocate for the destruction of teachers and teacher unions. His cover is ignoring the realities of the urban problem and blaming the teacher for the problems of urban life which are ignored by his anti-teacher tirades.

[Solaris123]

"Alternative certification programs, like the Defense Department's Troops to Teachers initiative, are already demonstrating that mid-career and retiring professionals could provide a rich source of new teaching talent..."

Please cite relevant data, research, peer-reviewed studies, NOT hearsay.

[zipowitz]

Although a lot of these are nice suggestions, you will never get them past the some of the most powerful unions in the U.S.. Here in CA the California Teachers Association would squash ANYTHING that has to do with measuring a teachers effectiveness as well as dismissing anyone that isn't up to par. If you have tenure in CA as a teacher, then you have a job for life. The CTA has pushed education in CA down a path that puts a teachers job and the unions very being above a students education.

Reform is absolutely what is required but extremely powerful forces are in place that want the status quo.

[Solaris123]

Union protects the interests of its members. As it should.
These anecdotal stories about horrible teachers are analogous to the Republicans pitch about the welfare mothers gaming the system.
Are teachers less than perfectly knowledgeable: There are teachers less than perfectly selfless and dedicated. There are teachers less than willing to spend their money on buying supplies.
And... Let's see some reliable stats about prevalence of " bad" teachers. Otherwise, hush.

Addendum: An incompetent principal can do an infinite amount of damage and single-handedly destroy a well-run school. No one seems to go hysterical over their civil services protections.

Now about those uncaring parents.....

[zipowitz]

Hush...are you kidding me? I am not a child to hush. I am a very concerned AND caring Father of 2 here in SD. Maybe I should say your response is the typical liberal BS. I did not refer to the quality of ANY specific teacher in my post however we have had a few doozies in our days here with some that should not be teaching AND cannot be let go. I was referring to the union and it's powers. They control our State Legislator with the power they wield. However if you want a few examples here is an excerpt from an LA Time investigative piece and the link is here for you to do some reading.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-teachers3-2009may03,0,5765040,full.story

"The district wanted to fire a high school teacher who kept a stash of pornography, marijuana and vials with cocaine residue at school, but a commission balked, suggesting that firing was too harsh. L.A. Unified officials were also unsuccessful in firing a male middle school teacher spotted lying on top of a female colleague in the metal shop, saying the district did not prove that the two were having sex."

Those are not anecdotal and the system here is gamed quite well by the CTA. This union needs to protect the interests of our children first!

[write2bheard]

There are many good ideas out there about how to improve education; We can start with improving parenting skills - just like advertising works to sell everything else, it can work to help us learn how to parent. Early childhood education also helps towards this goal. Recognizing and rewarding different kinds of intelligence instead of trying to fit everyone in the same box is also important. Psychologist Howard Gardner has id'd 7 types of intelligence including bodily-kinesthetic (atheletes­-dancers), musical, and interpersonal (leaders, communicators). We need to build curriculums that nourish all types of intelligence. Dr. Gardner's approach resonates as he states:
"We esteem the highly articulate or logical people of our culture. However, Dr. Gardner says that we should also place equal attention on individuals who show gifts in the other intelligences: the artists, architects, musicians, naturalists, designers, dancers, therapists, entrepreneurs, and others who enrich the world in which we live. Unfortunately, many children who have these gifts don’t receive much reinforcement for them in school. Many of these kids, in fact, end up being labeled "learning disabled," "ADD (attention deficit disorder," or simply underachievers, when their unique ways of thinking and learning aren’t addressed by a heavily linguistic or logical-ma­thematical classroom."