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

[GreenTeacher]

I am happy to see so many like-minded comments here. I agree with much that has been said. The question I have is, will Joel Klein, Arne Duncan, and others like them actually listen to the teachers? This whole article points out the fundamental flaw in educational policy in our country: it is written by non-educators. Teachers are often sidelined in this discussion because the only voice we have on a national or even community-wide level seems to be the unions, and people just assume unions want more pay and less work. This national discussion desperately needs a TEACHER'S voice.

[psweeii]

I second that!

[dsws]

"Lower irrelevant entry barriers to the teaching profession­."

Obviously if the barriers really are irrelevant, sure. But knowing the subject matter and having some life experience to share isn't enough: teachers need to know how to teach. If teacher training is so ineffective as to be irrelevant, that's a reason to fix teacher training -- not to give up and throw people into the classroom without it.

"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."

At the level of groups of hundreds or thousands of teachers, data can help evaluate programs. At the level of individual classrooms from one year to the next, it primarily measures whether they have a good class that year or not. There are too many other factors that affect kids' performance, and too few kids in a class to have them average out.

The way to tell whether a teacher is teaching well, and to help them improve, is to have someone competent watch them teach. We need to fix school administration, so that there are competent administrators to evaluate the teachers.

It doesn't have to be just administrators: a classroom can have more than one teacher. The current model, with one teacher lecturing to a hall full of silent passive students, has no room for another teacher. But that model needs to be updated anyway.

[RobinSeattle]

Just to be devil's advocate here....

The problem with that is there are folks who are just natural teachers who intuitively know how to handle a classroom and who have life experience and subject knowledge that would be valuable for kids to learn from. And you often keep them out of the schools because they just don't want to go through the two years of what they see as little more than bureaucratic CYA (and a way to get two more years of tuition out of college students). Plus that also means they will have to make a further sacrifice on their total earning potential while they take up that time getting their credential.

Something has to be done to allow folks to challenge the credentialing process so that those who can do without all the theory and other crap and still be viable teachers can be slotted into classrooms straightaway. Those who are determined to need all the theory and other coursework would then be required to take the two years necessary for the credential.

The factory approach to education has to end. People are not sausages, just empty casings you stuff material into as you see fit. We need folks with ability, period. So let's construct a system that ensures that the able are allowed into the education system with as much dispatch as is advisable on a case by case basis.

[dsws]

There are doctors with natural aptitude too, but we don't let them practice medicine without training. If the teacher training seems like "little more than bureaucratic CYA (and a way to get two more years of tuition out of college students)", that's a reason to improve it.

[cable1977]

My sister is a teacher in the NYC school district. From listening to her about the curriculum and how children are taught today, there are some things that were quite shocking to me. Phonics is no longer regularly taught...c­hildren are not taught how to sound out words, but rather the program now is "sight words" and memorization of those words. I imagine this was done in order to improve children's reading skills because of some study or other, however, I couldn't imagine being able to read without learning how to sound out words. How would you ever be able to figure out a word's meaning or how it is supposed to sound? Maybe part of the solution also needs to be re-assessing how we are teaching children and not throwing out useful teaching mechanisms that have worked for decades in favor of new, flashy, and trendy methods.

[Nommo]

Education, as a practice, has often been out of touch with its constituents and the world that they live in. There is no accounting for the skills and awareness that students bring to the table,rather the emphasis is on some set of "standards" that are only functional as a part of someone's theoretical construct. Nothing occurs in a vacuum An educational system that has been adversarial toward its constituents will not be turned around overnight and certainly not under the purview of one individual be he a mayor or a minion of the same.

There is no education taking place when the rest of the community is allowed to deteriorate. The legacy of community destruction that characterizes the history of NYC, the failure to maintain structures or the deliberate destruction of entire communities through the infestation of drugs and crime is not going disappear overnight. The "war on drugs' that has decimated entire generations and left the survivors to difficult and transient survival is not going to be abated by "mayoral" control.

That they stopped teaching fundamentals is only part of the problem. They have lost touch entirely with what new generations are shaped by. What is to be taught to kids who might routinely defeat one at common video games?

[RobinSeattle]

Powerful post Nommo. Nice one.

[tom928]

Your argument is suspiciously absent of reference to agents who could bear responsibility for "the failure to maintain structures" and for allowing "the rest of the community ... to deteriorat­e."

[Live4literacy]

Then your sister doesn't understand reading instruction nor do the people instituting the curriculum. There is nothing wrong with teaching sight word vocabulary as instant recognition helps improve reading fluency and comprehension. Phonics are not the be all and end all of teaching kids to read. Many children come to school without any formal phonics instruction already reading. Phonics is but one of three cueing systems that good readers use to read...tha­t would be the graphophonic cuing system. Good readers also learn by using Semantic cues ( meaning) and Syntactic (grammar) cues when learning to read. ALL must be taught simultaneously in order for children to become fluent readers. Simply sounding out words will not make a good reader much like teaching a tennis player only a forehand make him a good tennis player. He'll get by but it will be a lot of work. And try sounding out R-I-G-H-T. Sounding out a word does not give you it's meaning, the context around it does. Good teachers know what and how to teach despite and in spite of lacking curriculum.

[Nommo]

Obviously. But if it is not taught at all, then the other skills are meaningless. Word recognition is inefficient for the time it consumes. Not only that, but what if the words are irrelevant or meaningless to those being taught? There are not that many sounds and rules to be mastered that children cannot handle. They learn language anyway, but with no method for deciphering strange words, they are dependent upon being taught. Nothing progressive about that.

[mady]

I have to vehemently disagree with your last statement---that our current education system has become the source of inequity and injustice. Seriously, you think all students come to school equally ready and willing to learn and our system makes them unequal?!?!

Our public schools ARE a great equalizer to those who apply themselves. As a high school teacher, every year I see students graduate who have overcome tremendous adversity in their lives. I also see students who have been given every opportunity, extra tutoring, second chances, third chances, etc., and they still drop out. Schools should offer every student the opportunity to learn and be successful, but they can't fix everything in a student's life. And schools are surely NOT the SOURCE of inequity and injustice.

[tom928]

Unfortunately, the folks hurling those accusations seem to think a school must bear the total responsibility for making more equal of all who arrive from outside it. I loathe having to make an argument that sounds like it comes from the Right, but it does seem that ultimately you need a culture outside the schools of parents who desire some degree of assimilation for their kids into a mainstream. As a progressive, I'm afraid the postmodernist rejection of liberal norms is hurting the culture of moderate-a­ssimilatio­n that makes progress -- and pluralism itself -- possible.

[Ben Foley]

French schools manage to narrow the achievement gap between poor Muslim French kids and affluent whites, whereas our schools make the gap larger. Why is this? It's probably because France has a national curriculum that systematically imparts a body of core knowledge to all its citizens. Our system tends to discount the value of knowledge, focusing instead on skills, processes, projects --if kids are engaged in activities they're learning, we say. It doesn't really matter to us if they've learned where Brazil is, or know the times tables, or have read Dickens. We think teaching facts stultifies; in fact, it does the opposite. It gives the kids the wherewithal to think creatively and critically, to read and write well. We are providing our kids a nutritiona­lly-defici­ent curriculum, and this impacts the poor most severely, since rich kids get more cultural capital supplements from home. See E.D. Hirsch's The Knowledge Deficit for more info.

[zombie fairy]

This is all great, but doesn't address the primary problems facing underachieving urban students.
1. Urban schools are more likely to be violent, dangerous for both students and teachers
2. The lure of easy money, power - and the lifestyle glamourized by music - in the drug world. Seriously. Why graduate with a diploma and get a $9 an hour job when you can drop out, deal, and drive an Escalade in a couple years?
3. Parents who are unequipped to be partners in their child's education because they a) work multiple jobs, b) are users themselves, c) don't speak English, d) are here illegally, or e) just don't care

Watch The Wire season four for a good look at exactly how our education system fails urban students. And if you have the stomach for it, watch season five to find out what happens to those kids.

[luckybear]

So we should give up? I don't think reality should be gathered from a tv show. Would legalizing drugs fix this? That isn't going to happen any time soon so something else has to be done. The black and hispanic community has to address this problem and the country must find an answer. The kids that want to escape shouldn't be forced into a failing school. At this point I'm all for vouchers. It isn't fair that poor kids should be penalized because of illegal drugs and a powerful union.

[jrsposter]

Any plan for getting "super teachers" who can boost the scores of students who are not "ready to learn" is doomed to failure, no matter what teacher incentives are instituted. Education Goals 2000 said that all 5-year-olds should come to school "ready to learn." When kindergartners are evaluated, the percentage who are not "ready to learn" mirrors the percentage of future dropouts. Most teachers can be successful with the children of the well-educated. So why not make all students like them? That can be accomplished by providing high quality very early childhood education to students whose parents cannot give them a strong educational start.
We say that the quality of the teacher is crucial, while forgetting that the teachers the child has before age 5 are the most crucial. And the child's teachers during that time of life are the child's parents. Leveling the playing field for children who grow up in poverty will require the same kind of strong intellectual start that is the birthright of the children of the economically secure and well-educated. Therefore, we should take the money that Joel Klein wants to throw at punitive merit pay schemes likely to be fraught with favoritism and divisiveness and use it instead to provide at-risk children with high-quality very early childhood education starting at age 2. Then, every school in the country would make Adequate Yearly Progress every year.

[Scotty108]

You are correct. If the parents didn't go to college and don't value education, why should their children be any different?

[alexa07]

I have long thought likewise. Early education is the key to success in school. Working moms fill the breech if they can afford good daycare with support from a non-working grandma if they are lucky enough to have one to call up at 5 a.m. when the kids are sick. If they are lucky also to have a working dad in the picture, they have yet another resource to call upon. If they can't afford good day care or they do not have a familial support system, they are mostly out of luck. So far our govt has turned its back on working moms of every income level by providing little if no support for child care beyond a few tax credits. Lack of health care for kids is yet another topic of concern. What this all means is that our children arrive at school having come from any variety of previous experience with many not ready to face the daunting challenges of the classroom. They struggle at every level, but never catch up to those kids whose parents were able to provide the essentials. Societal recognition of the importance of supporting families with (1) early childcare as well as (2) health care for families has occurred in almost every other industrial nation except the US.

[gelfling545]

Most of my life( nearly 60 years), school officials have been trying to fix education by "fixing" teachers. Have students learned more & more? Well, no. All this emphasis on teachers is mainly to obscure the fact that they have NO control over the real issues i.e. you can't make someone learn who doesn't want to; students who are sick or hungry or anxious for their safety probably won't achieve much; students who are given developmentally inappropriate tasks won't do well (curriculum comes from the state, not the teacher),etc. Most teachers are average. Some are great, some are bad, most are average - just like workers in every other field. The biggest problem for teachers is that they are given extreme responsibility with no authority. The changes this article calls for won't do anything to raise student achievement but it WILL make it look like something is being done when, in fact, they have no idea what to do.

[Gdebs]

Nailed it! You sound like you've taught a few years.

[Mikeatle]

It is heart warming to see such passionate, involved discussion on this issue. We've come through a long period of time during which public education has been demonized by those who hate having to put money toward anything except the next new military technology. It's time that we take responsibility for our education system and do what is necessary to build it back to being a model of efficiency and achievement.

I think it was John Dewey who wisely stated that a strong Democracy is dependent upon a strong public education system. It is, thus, incumbent upon all of us to make sure that our education system--both public and private--operates with the highest quality possible.

[Ben Foley]

John Dewey's ideas are harming American education. Our infatuation with him has led us away from the sort of rigorous, coherent, knowledge-focused curriculum that makes for truly smart, high-powered brains (and citizens who can really think well and critically about issues). His ideas sound wonderful, but they result in impoverished brains, especially when applied to low-income kids whose parents cannot supplement the cultural capital they're failing to get in school. Notice: India, China, Finland, France, etc. do not follow Dewey's ideas and it's students from these nations that are populating our grad schools and Silicon Valley.

[bksnhoops]

While tenure for teachers does present problems you need to recognize that there are administrators who would actively go after seasoned teachers who have been around and are not easily manipulated. I guess you have never worked for a principal who tries to get rid of anyone who objects in any way to his/her agenda. It happens all the time! The only way to protect teachers and their right to voice their opinions is through tenure and membership in the teacher's union.

[luckybear]

I guess you haven't had to look at children who learn nothing after an entire year with a bad teacher. Some teachers are not very good at their job no matter how long they've been there. They are impossible to fire. You have to document for years bad performance in order to force a teacher out. Just think if every profession was like this. Incompetence is rewarded when you have tenure. You practically have to physically hit a child in order to fire a veteran teacher. This is ridiculous.

[phloxy]

My daughter wants to be a teacher. She says she wants to teach elementary age, not middle or high school because the kids don't know how to respect the teacher or be quiet long enough in class so the kids can hear the teacher teach. She is in high school at a pretty decent fairly large city high school.

On the other hand, I have seen quite a few lousy teachers teaching her . Mainly in math and science. Somehow, getting 100% on homework and flunking the majority of her math tests gets her a "B" in the class. I've tried getting her to a lower level class, but results are similar. I've also heard this from parents of kids who are known to be strong in math.

[RobinSeattle]

But let's say that teachers start flunking most of their students because they won't or can't learn the material. That teacher is getting canned, no matter how hard he/she worked in trying to inculcate the necessary concepts into his/her students. Principals don't wany any grief from school board members when parents call those board members about that teacher being parsimonious with good grades.

There was an incident a few years ago where one high school teacher flunked all of his students in class because they just did not perform at the high level he expected and he was against all the grade inflation going on. He got the gate. So much for the practical viability of demanding excellence.

I hated math in junior high and high school. Just utterly boring and I never saw the use for it. Got a D in geometry as a high school sophomore and that was an act of sheer charity since I had mentally checked out about two weeks in to the semester. So at JC, i had to take liberal arts math courses. Aced the lot because I had a lot more patience for it at that juncture in my development. Still have never used algebra or any higher math in my job, though. That math requirement was a total waste of time and money and I have forgotten it all (I could relearn it in a few months, though no sweat).

[TurgidCaterwauling]

Which is why "what kids need to know" needs to be revisited. I won't argue the need for reason and abstraction, a benefit of complex math, but for the most part, most of us don't need it, and if we do, calculators can do the job. Basic math, reading, and writing, yes, but kids are wilting on the vine with over-testing and the absence of a varied and stimulating curricula, which is a direct result of continual budget cuts. In most schools the sacred cow that doesn't get cut is sports, whereas vocational, arts, languages, and counseling do.

[EvelynU]

The whole "parental involvement" meme is a fraud. In "good schools" teachers assign work that actually has to be done by the parents. Go to a suburban middle school science fair and ask yourself who did these projects. The kids whose parents can spend time and money to "help" them succeed. The kids whose parents can't do that taste failure early and often. Schools and teachers should not demand that hard-working parents do the job of teaching their kids in their "spare time." If the schools actually did their job, parents would not need hours of "involveme­nt." This is one of the most pernicious sources of inequality in our schools. How can immigrant parents and poor parents be expected to also teach their kids math and reading? If kids can't do their homework without input from a well-educated parent, then poor kids are doomed to more failure. Keep the kids at school for 8 hours a day and do the whole job there. Don't send them home to exhausted parents and expect the parents to do more teaching.

[buckbuck11]

And who spawned these children????

[EvelynU]

What does that gave to do with who should teach them math?

[RobinSeattle]

When I was living in South Korea, not only were students there going to public school from about 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., but then they were often going to specialist academies (hagwon) to get instruction in music, math, science, english or a combination of all the aforementioned. This was six days a week. And you think American kids have it hard? I had one class there I taught that started at, I kid you not, 6 a.m and that was a junior high level class. It was insane.

I will give you that sometimes what gets assigned as homework in schools is just busy work thanks to the standards imposed by the boobs on school boards who equate homework tonnage with the quality of education. They are just emptyheaded grandstanders and bounders for the most part. That is one reason why school boards should be abolished.

[EvelynU]

I didn't say that kids should not work hard. I said that their parents should not be the ones who have to teach them or do their work for them, as is currently the case.

[throwcautiontothewind]

I agree that we need to eliminate inequities in schools attended by largely white vs. largely minority students. However, we need to acknowledge that the BEST predictor of child IQ and academic success is the child's FAMILY, and especially mother's educational level. This is due to a complex combination of genes, value placed on education, parental involvement, etc. and unfortunately inequality in academic achievement will not be completely solved at the school level. If we truly want to make the system work better, in addition to luring the best teachers to low SES areas, we need to institute family policies & lure in the parents for more training.

[rwext]

two ways to achieve ....1) States need to fund all school districts equally , the affluent suburb gets the same $$$ per student as the inner city ... also just dumping dollars at schools doesn't always equate to better education, as seen by the usually superior results from private schools... and 2) VOUCHERS.

[Scotty108]

"Usually superior results"

Superior results because they can choose which students they educate; public schools cannot.

[GreenTeacher]

Exactly. Ask private schools in Texas what happens when there's an overwhelming influx of enrollment due to vouchers. Turns out the problems just move.

[KWiz]

I teach at a private school where students' parents are CEOs, attorneys, physicians, etc. I can say that the education we provide is good, but it doesn't mean anything if there is no parental involvement. I just had this conversation with one of my neighbors, whose boys attend a private school. There are, of course, public schools close by, but she will not let her sons associate with the children who attend those schools. Why? Because those kids spend their time hanging out around the neighborhood doing nothing, while her sons are busy with their friends from private school, doing homework, asking questions, and having family time. I contended with her that the reason her sons are doing so well is that they have her full support, she spends quality time with them, she encourages them. I will be sending my daughter to kindergarten in public school this fall, and I guarantee that I will be working with her daily, reading books to her (which I already do), teaching her phonics this summer, playing games with math, trying to get her prepared for a system that might not do her justice. But I honestly believe it's my and my husband's involvement that will ultimately put her over the top. Yes, I teach at a private school. I get paid pretty good money. Many of the teachers where I teach get paid well. That doesn't mean that they teach well. Parental involvement is key.

[Mikeatle]

Agreed. Ultimately, it doesn't matter if a student attends a public school or a private school. It's the quantity and quality of time spent between parent and child that makes the difference.

Your friend desperately needs to understand that her arrogant attitude is a major part of the problem with our education system. By segregating her sons, she is reinforcing the stereotype that public schools are bad, when, in reality, it's the parents that make or break the education process.

I bet there are students at your private school that lack positive parental influence in their lives--perhaps because their parents are working so hard to provide their children with "things"--and will, thus, not achieve what they could from the private school experience.

[baldblackman]

What about the parents and the various sub-cultures that view educational achievement as "acting White"?
The idea of "merit pay" is a good one, but how do you really measure the teacher's outcome? The students can do great on tests but do they really have a thirst for knowledge, or do all they care about is passing a test?
What about children who come into the public school system unperpared or unwilling to learn?

[Mikeatle]

Michelle Obama spoke to the issue of being branded "white" in school. She is a role model.

[NotesFromME]

She is, indeed. But the primary problem is NOT the teachers--it is a culture that simply does not value "being educated" as opposed to just learning skills, or "striving for excellence" when doing the minimum is all that is expected. You can not improve the process of education without changing the context. Even "white" kids in relatively good suburban schools could care less about what they are supposed to be learning. Most see it as a "joke."

By the way, I am now on my fourth kid getting through high school. We have an excellent HS here, and over 80% go on to some type of post secondary education. Working with your kids and trying to instill them with that desire to excel goes out the window when "being cool" and accepted among the scrupulously ignorant takes its place.