5 myths about teachers that are distracting policymakers

By Valerie Strauss

This was written by Barnett Behttp://www.teachingquality.org/about-barnett-berryrry, founder and president of the Center for Teaching Quality, Inc., based in Hillsborough, N.C., which seeks to improve student achievement by advancing teaching as a 21st-century, results-oriented profession.

By Barnett Berry

There’s a lot of talk today about making our schools better and our teachers more effective. Researchers confirm that the right teachers can make a big difference in how much students learn, even in the most challenging schools. But scholars, educators, union leaders and policy wonks still disagree, sometimes vehemently, over what good teaching looks like. And it’s a high-stakes question. Political leaders at every level are demanding we evaluate and pay teachers based on student test scores and value-added statistical formulas. If that turns out to be a bad strategy, the long-term ramifications for the nation could be staggering.

Incredible as it seems, 11 years into the new millennium decision makers are still opting for a patchwork teaching policy that often lowers entry standards to keep salaries and preparation costs down.

We spend too much time debating 20th century arguments — e.g., whether or not Teach for America or university-based certification programs are the best ways to recruit and train teachers. What we need instead are millions of well-prepared, highly savvy teachers who know how to teach the iGeneration and work successfully in teams in order to serve diverse public school populations that include large numbers of English language learners and students from poverty.

Teaching in the 21st century is complex, challenging work, and the fiction that “anyone can be a teacher” threatens our future. We have entered an era of rapid and inexorable change, where the real “high stakes” must be measured at a global level. We don’t have time for myths. Here are five that often distract policymakers from creating the results-oriented teaching profession students deserve.

Myth #1: Teacher preparation matters little for student achievement.

Research Realities: Some research suggests that new recruits from Teach for America and other fast-entry programs perform about as well as those from traditional, university-based teacher training – leading many to assume that in-depth teacher preparation matters little for student achievement. But what if neither approach is giving us the teachers we need? The National Bureau of Economic Research found that beginning teachers with more extensive clinical training (including a full-year internship – like doctors get) actually produce higher student achievement gains than those from either traditional university programs or alternative pathways. Recent research also tells us that teacher who enter with too little preparation are likely to leave the profession much sooner than those who have a thorough grasp of the fundamentals – and they’re less likely to be effective over time.

Myth #2: Teaching experience matters little for student achievement.

We keep hearing that teaching experience beyond the initial three years or so does not necessarily produce higher student test scores. But recent studies say that more experience does matter (up to 20 years) for student achievement when the conditions are ripe – that is, when teachers teach the same subjects and grade levels consistently, especially during their first five years of teaching. Other researchers have shown that experienced, expert teachers know more than novices and organize their knowledge of content, teaching strategies, and students more effectively, retrieve it more readily, and can apply it in novel and creative ways. More seasoned experts are also better prepared to overcome some of the stressful working conditions found in many high-needs schools. Experience does not guarantee effective teaching, but when schools are organize to draw on its best teachers, it matters a lot.

Myth #3: Removing incompetent teachers will fix our schools.

Research Realities: In any professional workplace, dismissing ineffective employees makes common sense. But the best evidence indicates that the percentage of ineffective teachers in American public schools is far lower than media reports might suggest. For example, the Teacher Advancement Program, which includes many thousands of teachers across the United States, uses both student test results and observational methods to assess teaching effectiveness. Only a very small fraction of TAP teachers are rated ineffective. Over 85 percent have been deemed proficient (with a score of 3 or above) and almost one-third earn a score of 4 or above on a 5-point scale. There’s ample evidence that we are obsessing on a small problem while we give short shrift to professional development strategies that could move large numbers of teachers from satisfactory to excellent.

Myth #4: Teacher tenure rules make it impossible to get rid of poor teachers.

Research Realities: A recent study by The New Teacher Project clearly shows that the difficulty in removing ineffective teachers has much more to do with ill-trained and supported administrators than tenure rules. Another report from the Center for American Progress concluded that poor evaluation procedures – not tenure – are most likely to account for a school district’s inability to fire poor performers. Teacher tenure is prevalent in “high achievement” nations like Finland. In America, poor teacher evaluation is common (epidemic, in fact) in school districts with or without unions and tenure. Tenure reform is necessary, but the bigger issue is eliminating the widespread educational malpractice associated with broken evaluation systems, which not only stymie teacher development but student achievement.

Myth #5: Merit pay will motivate teachers to teach more effectively.

Research Realities: In the most rigorous study to date, scholars from Vanderbilt University and the RAND Corporation plainly conclude that “rewarding teachers with bonus pay, in the absence of any other support programs, does not raise student test scores.” Performance pay plans can make a difference for student achievement when they are designed to improve the school climate and encourage teacher collaboration. Studies of effective performance pay systems tell us that: (1) teachers must be involved in the design and implementation; (2) costs need to be known and made public prior to program launch; (3) the system cannot be a one-size-fits-all approach – districts and schools need to be able to adapt based on local contexts; and (4) one or two direct measures of student learning (like standardized test scores) cannot be the only basis for rewards.

These myths drive today’s teaching policies and continue to ground solutions in yesterday’s challenges. They distract us from the demands that teachers already face today and that will only intensify tomorrow. We need to identify our most effective teachers, using fair, rigorous and valid measures, and let them lead the way in removing ineffective colleagues. Most important, we need to invest far more in teacher education and school redesign policies reflective of 21st century demands on our public schools. More than anything else today’s policy focus must spread the expertise our best teachers, in and out of cyberspace.

In TEACHING 2030, a new book I’ve authored with 12 outstanding teachers, we build a compelling case that for teachers to be effective now and in the future, they must know how to:

(1) teach the Googled learner, who has grown up on smartphones and virtual reality games and can find information (if not understanding) with a few taps of the finger;

(2) work with a student body that’s increasingly diverse (by 2030, 40 percent or more will be second-language learners);

(3) prepare students to compete for jobs in a global marketplace where communication, collaboration, critical thinking and creative problem solving are the “new basics”;

(4) help students monitor their own learning – using sophisticated tools to assess whether students meet high academic standards and fine-tuning instruction when they don’t; and

(5) connect teaching to the needs of communities as economic churn creates family and societal instability, pushing schools to integrate health and social services with academic learning.

As described in TEACHING 2030, far too preparation programs, including both alternative and traditional ones, cultivate teachers with these skills. Even fewer schools are organized to create opportunities for our best teachers — or teacherpreneurs — to teach students regularly as well as lead pedagogical and policy reforms outside their classrooms. Now’s the time to transcend the usual debates over how to make our schools better and our teachers more effective – and break free of the myths that keep us fighting 20th century battles. Instead we need to look hard at the realities, framed by research evidence as well as the challenges teachers face everyday, in pointing the way toward a 21st century teaching profession demanded by our nation’s public schools.

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Three Factors That Produce Highly Effective Teaching

In this thoughtful Kappan article, professor Richard Allington and graduate teaching associate Rachael Gabriel of the University of Tennessee/Knoxville, and Brookline, Massachusetts literacy specialist Jeni Peiria Day report on their study of 30 fourth-grade teachers from around the U.S. who have been getting excellent results in high-poverty schools.

Amy, one of the teachers, captured the questing spirit of the group: “I have a really strong belief – and since I started teaching – that the kids’ success, I really believe, is up to me. And I feel like if the kids are not getting it, if they’re floundering or a few kids are lagging behind or failing or whatever, I look at that as my failure. And so I figure there’s something else I need to be doing if they are not getting it.”

This spirit led teachers like Amy to become expert “child watchers” and seek out the most effective classroom methods and materials. In interviews, they all pointed to three key factors that supported their development:

• Professional development – This was not standard PD on methods, materials, and strategies but training that provided a systematic way to observe and interpret students’ work and actions. Two examples: Reading Recovery, which teaches a specific framework for observing and teaching reading to struggling first graders; and a course about writing Individual Education Plans that provided a structure and set of guidelines for collecting information through informal, ongoing observations.

• Collegial support – The teachers all had a peer support network in which they could share ideas and speak reflectively about practice. These included mentors, grade-level or subject teams, and sometimes informal partnerships, such as a teacher who would walk into the other fourth-grade teacher’s classroom and say, “Help! What are your ideas on this?”, and another who shared ideas from educational journals with a colleague in her school.

• Engaged autonomy – All the teachers spoke about administrators who allowed them significant independence to try out ideas yet stayed in touch with the process and the results. One teacher in Texas described an administrator who said, “Try it. It doesn’t have to be perfect. And, let’s talk about it. Let’s talk about what went wrong, let’s talk about what went right.”

“Our hope,” conclude Allington, Gabriel, and Day, “is that this synthesis of voices of exemplary teachers will encourage administrators to loosen the strictures of mandated practice in order to make room for teachers to innovate context-specific solutions that match the individual needs of their students. Allowing teachers to work together and try new things with few instructional mandates is worth the risk.”

“Exemplary Teacher Voices on Their Own Development” by Rachael Gabriel, Jeni Peiria Day, and Richard Allington in Phi Delta Kappan, May 2011 (Vol. 92, #8, p. 37-41),

http://www.kappanmagazine.org

Study Calls for Clearer Teacher Evaluation Protocols

Protocols for observing teachers in the classroom during an evaluation should be written in such a way as to leave little room for inference so ratings are clear and objective, asserts a report released this week by the New Teacher Project.

For example, the measures should avoid vague requirements like "teacher checks for student understanding," and instead should be tightly written and specific, such as: "Students show through guided practice, exit slips, and role playing that they understand the content of the lesson."

The report lists six "design standards" for teacher evaluations, and writing clear expectations is just one of the six standards. But because all teachers are judged by a set of observation protocol, the issue deserves some special attention here at Teacher Beat.

The ongoing discussion about the appropriate place of test scores in evaluations has sucked up a lot of the air in the teacher-evaluation discussion, but figuring out what to put in observation protocols is no picnic either, as evidenced by debate here in the District of Columbia over its IMPACT teacher-evaluation system.

IMPACT's "Teaching and Learning" framework—used to guide ratings by principals and master educators during their observations—is very specific about how teachers demonstrate that they've met each and every standard. To show that they are correcting students' misunderstandings, for instance, teachers are expected to deploy strategies like "using cue cards, using analogies, using manipulatives or a hands-on model, using 'think-alouds,' " to name but a few listed in the framework.

That level of detail has raised the hackles of some, including George Parker, the president of the Washington Teachers' Union. In The Washington Post, Mr. Parker contended that the IMPACT framework reduces teaching to "bean counting."

Opinions really vary on the value of IMPACT's observation measures. A source of mine, for instance, contended that observation judgments are specific so that it's easier for administrators to document poor performance for dismissals and due-process hearings. On the other hand, some teachers—even those who aren't fans of D.C. Chancellor Michelle Rhee—told me that they like the detailed standards because it gives them clear targets for how to improve.

There's clearly room for a variety of different opinions on this topic. And here's a question worth asking: How do you get the right "grain size" of detail in these observation standards so that they're objective without being too prescriptive?

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Op-Ed: Don’t Treat Them Like Widgets

Great teachers are among the most respected people in our society. We revere the teachers who shaped our lives and who go the extra mile for our children. It’s the teaching profession that has a status problem — one that prevents it from attracting or keeping enough talented people to deliver on the promise of an excellent education for all.

The biggest obstacle is that teaching is still based on a set of factory-era policies that treat teachers like interchangeable parts. In a 2009 study, my organization labeled this phenomenon the “widget effect.” Most school districts can’t distinguish their highest-performing teachers from their lowest; wrongly, they act as though all teachers are the same.

The widget effect degrades the teaching profession. If you do a fantastic job in your classroom, you can’t expect a fast track up the career ladder or even a pat on the back. You’ll get the same formulaic, seniority-based raise each year as the lower-performing teacher down the hall. During these hard economic times, you might even get a pink slip, since it’s illegal in 14 states to consider job performance in layoff decisions.

If you’re struggling, you can’t expect any feedback to help you get better. You’ll most likely get a “satisfactory” evaluation rating like 99 percent of your colleagues. After a few years, you’ll probably earn tenure, regardless of whether you improve, as will nearly every other teacher.

Nobody wants to be a widget. So how can we elevate the status of a profession that refuses to elevate its own best practitioners? How can teachers earn public trust when the public sees such indifference to excellence or failure?

It's odd that efforts to increase professionalism in education are often derided as “anti-teacher.” The hard truth is that as long as the widget effect persists, teaching will never be an elite profession.

In Wisconsin and elsewhere, teachers unions have taken much of the blame in this debate. But crusading against unions won’t raise the status of teaching any more than will failing to challenge them when they defend counterproductive policies like “last-in, first-out.” The solution is setting high expectations, evaluating teachers fairly and accurately, and making job performance really matter. That’s what we should all be fighting for.

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Learning Communities Share Resources, Strategies

For too long, teacher-to-teacher communication meant exchanging weekend plans in the faculty room. In professional learning community schools, teachers develop interim assessments, common goals, and share best practices. Included: Examples of professional learning communities.

The irony that the universal mission of education -- to prepare students for the next level of learning or life -- has been pursued mostly by isolated classroom teachers, with little regard for strategies used in the classroom next door, is starting to hit home with educators. Many are finding that once teachers start collaborating with colleagues in their schools and other buildings, a chain reaction leads to teachers working smarter and students learning more.

That is what unfolded at Thoreau Middle School in Vienna, Virginia, and James Madison High School, the high school Thoreau students attend, when the schools principals wholeheartedly embraced the ideas of building professional learning communities and using formative assessments to target student weaknesses.

Ive been at this for seven-and-a-half years, and as a principal, this is the most difficult work Ive ever done, said Mark A. Merrell, principal of James Madison High School. If you think about it, [years ago] a teacher went into a classroom and may never have seen another adult all day. In the private sector, there is more focus on teamwork.

What were starting to see nationally is a change of culture of schools -- going from a culture of isolation to more collaboration, Merrell continued. Fifteen years ago, the idea of teach what you want to teach was the way most public schools operated. We havent had teachers working with teachers before. The hard work is breaking through the culture of isolation.

MEETING COMMON GOALS

The two schools are part of a cluster in the sprawling Fairfax County, Virginia, school district. Each cluster includes several high school pyramids that include a high school and its feeder schools, usually a middle school and between five and seven elementary schools.

At Thoreau, part of being a professional learning community means the school is organized into core curriculum areas so teachers can share resources, according to principal Mark Greenfelder. Its an operational structure and culture built into the school to ensure student success, he told Education World. Thoreau now is considered a model professional learning community school and Greenfelder lectures and gives presentations at conferences around the U.S. Im pretty much a skeptic, and this is the most successful model Ive ever seen.

Staff members also keep themselves informed about current educational practices by reading at least two books a year and participating in discussions. We have a very literate, well-read staff, Greenfelder said.

All subject-area teachers at Thoreau have a common planning period that is used to develop assessments and discuss successful and unsuccessful strategies. Using formative assessments, or mini-tests, developed by teachers helps teachers work together and leads to common language, strategies, and learning approaches, Greenfelder added. I believe formative assessments are a tool for getting teachers together to hold discussions.

Teachers review assessment results every two weeks to pinpoint the strengths and weaknesses of students and share successful approaches with colleagues. Its a bear on the schedule, but worth doing, Greenfelder noted. This is not based on a lot of the nonsense that takes place at a lot of education meetings. This is research and data-based, and we also look at best practices at schools similar to ours. Its a very strategic approach.

KNOWING WHAT LIES AHEAD

Once a month, seventh and eighth grade teachers also meet to discuss what they can do to improve student performance and what they need to do to help students succeed at higher grade levels. For example, one of Merrells goals is for every James Madison student to take at least one Advanced Placement class. To prepare middle-school students for that, all Thoreau students are enrolled in honors science and social studies classes and all eighth graders take algebra. We believe we have the support to help them succeed in high-level classes so they can try them in high school, Greenfelder said.

The strategies and vocabulary for professional learning communities are familiar to parents and teachers in both schools. Were fortunate to apply ideas that work in each others schools, Merrell told Education World. Weve cut down on the transition time from middle to high school -- now kids dont have to learn the vocabulary for high school, such as formative assessments; we use them and use them the same way the middle school does.

While Thoreau was a high-performing school when Greenfelder took over six years ago, now it is one of the top schools in Virginia when it comes to state test scores and making adequate yearly progress (AYP). This has really helped us reduce the achievement gap between minority and other students, Greenfelder told Education World. Now no group of students is below the 90 percentile for proficiency. This is working smarter, not harder.

HELP WHEN NEEDED

James Madison also is organized into curricular teams with common planning time for subject-area teachers. It could be a scheduling nightmare, but this is a priority, Merrell noted. All 11th grade social studies teachers, for example, have a common planning period once a week to discuss curriculum issues. They prepare specific goals based on data and tell Merrell how they plan to meet those goals. Most teachers are not used to making data-driven decisions, he added. Were getting teachers together so they can learn how to do that.

Another strategy paying big dividends is providing academic assistance during the school day for students who are struggling. Every day each student has 35 minutes to get extra help from a teacher or student tutor, do homework, work on projects, or prepare college applications.

have control of the kids between 7:15 a.m. and 2:10 p.m., said Merrell. I have to cut up my school day to get kids intervention during the day. There are just so many things pulling at them.

LOOKING OUT FOR ALL KIDS

When Merrell introduced the professional learning community concept to the faculty, he said it was an effort to reculture the school to allow teachers to collaborate, share best practices, and ensure they are very interested in the achievement of all students in the school. Its taking the best practices of teachers in your school and applying them to all the kids in your school, as opposed to having one superstar teacher who 120 kids were lucky enough to have.

While traditionally an 11th grade social studies teacher might be only concerned with his or her 150 11th grade social studies students. Merrell stressed to the faculty that now all teachers are responsible for all 500 11th graders in the school and for sharing best practices so all students benefit. It makes sense.

This hasnt been easy work, but its been very fulfilling, he added.

DATA TO THE RESCUE

Initially, some teachers were reluctant to participate, Merrell said. Some said, Ive been teaching for so many years, Ive been effective, and why is this different? he said. My response has been that all of us are much stronger than one of us. If we all take responsibility, there is less chance of kids falling through the cracks. When we are using data to drive decision-making as opposed to intuition and anecdotes, it makes it easier to make real clear decisions. If you dont have data to support something, its hard to make an argument hold a lot of water.

Some teachers fear the professional learning communities approach takes some of the individuality out of teaching, Greenfelder said. I agree with that a little, but it does not take away their personality in the classroom, he said. This ensures all students are getting the same level of instruction.

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