I started to respond to Tom’s post about the Darling-Hammond
book we have been reading in class. The
response grew in length to the point that it was too long for a comment and so
I decided to spill it over into my blog post.
I recall researching the merits of merit pay (horrible pun intended)
last year for our debate in Matt's Educational Policy course. I found a few things during the research that
really bugged me. The first was that many
studies found at best a very week correlation between student achievement and a
teacher's education level and also a very week correlation between student
achievement and a teacher's years of experience once they had taught at least a
few years. This really bothered me. It seemed to say that in general, you are
what you are after a few years of teaching.
The other thing that bothered me was how extremely difficult it was to
define a "high quality teacher."
What exactly is a high quality teacher?
How does one measure such a thing?
I would be interested to know how they were defined in the research
cited in the book. A hypothesis might
be, perhaps, that a high quality teacher is someone who graduated at the top of
their class; who has mastered the content they teach and has a knack for
learning. Maybe that is indeed our
problem. Simply too few of our teachers
are truly bright enough to be "high quality." This then begs the question of how we attract
and retain these high quality teachers.
I believe that Tom hit this on the nose when he said that RESPECT and
PAY are the two things we need in the teaching profession to attract the best
and the brightest. When thinking about
how to achieve this pay and respect, I again go back to our Educational Policy
class in last summer. George proposed an
educational policy which would extend teaching contracts from the equivalent of
9 months to the equivalent of 11 months.
Teacher’s salaries would increase proportionally to reflect their
increased work time. This would address
the pay and I also believe that it would go a long ways towards addressing the
issue of respect. Many people feel that
people only go into teaching for the summers off. This would allow teachers the necessary time
for professional development while also increasing pay and respect. I believe this is the best solution for our
education problem.
I found myself pondering the same thing about the definition of "highly qualified' teacher. In our district, at the middle school level, it means a teacher who has either passed the praxis or is endorsed in their content. However, I have worked with some incredible teachers who are not considered "highly qualified" and I have worked with some, not so great, teachers who are. There must be something more to highly qualified besides being a great student.
ReplyDeleteI think your idea about longer school contracts is very interesting!
I read an article last year that said that teachers work hard to improve their first five years, but then many feel they have mastered the skills they need so they stop working on improving. I thought that was interesting, and I can name a few teachers who do nothing to improve their skills. Most of our new teachers are better teachers than them for that reason. I know we're required to have 5 credits to recertify, but there's no standard for what types of classes you can get credit for. I've gotten a credit for sitting through a leadership seminar where I've learned nothing.
ReplyDeleteWe definitely need a standard for judging "highly qualified" teachers, and I don't think standardized testing is it! Unfortunately, I don't know what is.
I think an 11 month contract would definitely improve respect for teachers, but I also think more rigorous teacher preparation programs and focused, relevant ongoing education would as well.
Interesting idea Chris. I also would like to say that I appreciate being included in your equation for Educational Nirvana. Year-round school not only gain us respect, it would also speak to the problem of knowledge retention we face every summer. Those three months of video games and no reading seems like it backslides some kids almost half a grade. I don't know if we need a full 11 months at the current level of daily contact time, but you have my vote for year round school. I can see a longer Christmas Break, a shorter school day, and no more atrophied little brains on the first day back from summer.
ReplyDeleteTom, George's original proposal called for only marginal increases in student face time. The additional contract time was to be spent on really awesome professional development and collaboration. Think of the lessons you could prepare and assessments you could create if you had the equivalent of one paid planning day per week of school!
ReplyDeleteChris,
ReplyDeleteI just watched a TED Education show on PBS. Bill Gates was one of the speakers. He agrees that improving teacher practice is the best way to improve student learning. The idea was to help all teachers be as good as the best teachers. He suggested:
+weekly study groups
+observing colleagues and giving real feedback to them
+they have conducted research - MET Measurement of Effective Teaching - to identify what makes great teachers
Gates suggests putting cameras in the classroom so that lessons can be submitted for expert review. We saw something like that in Singapore.