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

[ggrasta]

I just see darkness at the end of the tunnel. Education is inside-out and upside down. What little Federal and State monies that has trickled down to the Reservations, Barrios and urban schools is for one purpose...to raise test scores. Nothing else matters in the twisted world where I teach.

[Bingy]

Here we go again. The only qualifications this guy has is he is a graduate of New York City Schools. Low performance in school is ALWAYS the teachers fault. It's ALWAYS the unions standing in the way. Test scores will ALWAYS fix everything. Performance has nothing to do with the child's home life, or drug addicted parents, or a totally disinterested populace. Wasn't No Child Left Behind going to fix all that. I'm a teacher. I have no problem with eliminating tenure. But tying a teacher's performance to factors beyond his or her control is NOT going to draw people into the profession. How about paying us like we are worth something to society. That might help.

[nolabels]

Thank you. This guy is a total hack. The only reason he gets any press is because that is the only thing he is good at. He knows nothing about teaching...just selling failed ideas.

[craphappens]

I am a teacher in a small southern town in Mississippi who brings home the grand total of $2433.00 a month. I am totally disgusted by the lack of parental involvement at my school, the lack of student caring, the lack of funds to buy necessities for my classroom. I am sorry that this guy lives in a dream world. Teachers come and go. Students without caring or involved parents are with us always. When the government stops giving money to children to have children, we might be able to achieve something in the classroom. In my day, students did not have children out of wedlock, did not drop out of school, nor did they disrespect the teachers that they had. Everyone, in my day, knew you had to graduate from high school if you wanted to attain your goals in life. Nowadays, girls know that the government will give them free food, medical, and housing so they can raise (questionable) their children. And this guy expect teachers to overcome kids hating school because their parents did, overcome poverty, overcome all the negative environment the kid endures, and educate the child. Yeah, right, fat chance.

[elmerfude]

I taught high school science when I graduated from college and stayed in the profession for 12 years. I finally needed to accumulate some wealth and went to engineering school. I then worked as an engineer and manager in industry for 24 years. After retirement I did some volunteer teaching but even though I still had a California teaching certificate in science valid for life, I realized that I could never get a job as a regular teacher. Why? Because there is rampant age discrimination in the hiring of teachers. Even though I pioneered hands-on, project science instruction when I taught, there is a perception that older teachers are not up-to-date with the latest techniques. Even with a California certificate the state where I live wants me to take a battery of tests, take more college courses and to do "student teaching" in order to get a certificate. This is absurd.

[craphappens]

elmerfude, you couldn't get a job in Mississippi because you have to be recertified in the subject you are teaching ever so often even though you may have taught the subject the last 10 years. Yeah, I know we are last in everything, but we still wouldn't hire you. Geeze, you might teach the kids something.

[fallinforit]

I am a high school teacher (15 years) and also taught at the university here (adjunct) in the teacher ed dept. Teachers must motive many kids that come to us ill prepared, lacking respect for all authority, and terribly misbehaved. We must prepare them to read, write, analyze, socialize, learn some manners; oh, and get them to embrace the joy of learning. Do you know what comes into our classrooms every fall? I absolutely love my job. And that is not sarcasm.
LET ME ASK THIS: If it's all about bad teachers, then why not use the same approach in our health care and police protection systems. Get rid of all the bad doctors and nurses because of the high rate of diabetes. The medical profession is not fixing the problem. They should be blamed for their patients who come to them with poor habits that encourage the development of diabetes.
The police: Shouldn't we get rid of all the cops in communities where crime is prevelant? Isn't it the fault of the police that they work in communities where respect for the law is nonexistent? With this logic, it makes sense to blame teachers. Does the public think teachers have any control over who comes to us every fall? Any idea how many parents are absent (physically, emotionally, or otherwise)? Teachers know and trust me, most of us do the best we can with our hearts and souls regardless of who comes to us in the fall.

[cornflower]

Right on the mark! Disbar all the lawyers who lose cases. Take the licenses of all the doctors whose patients don't lose weight or quit smoking or quit drinking! Why not?