Over at The Education Gadfly, Michael J. Petrilli has an editorial entitled “What if ‘improving teacher quality’ isn’t THE answer?” In it Mr. Petrilli goes through a pretty thoughtful discussion of some of the reservations that have been expressed about the improve-teacher-quality path for improving outcomes for students (e.g., recruiting a la Teach for America; alternative certification; incentives for teachers who take tough assignments). Ultimately, he comes to the conclusion that those paths are not likely to be fruitful.
So let’s summarize: we’re unlikely to fill all of America’s classrooms with teachers from the ranks of society’s “best and brightest.” And we’re particularly unlikely to do so in tough urban or rural areas, outside of a handful of hot cities where young college grads like to live. Which means that lots of our children–especially poor and minority children–are going to have teachers who may be good but are not likely to be great. These are teachers who themselves received so-so public school educations, attended so-so colleges, are raising families and thus probably don’t want to work sixty hours a week, but who do care about their students and want them to succeed.
Shouldn’t we be thinking about how to make these average teachers more effective, too, and augmenting them via technology and other stratagems, rather than putting all our eggs in the “superstar teacher” basket? (Look out for my thoughts about how to do that in a future Gadfly.)
I think Mr. Petrilli arrived at a close-to-right conclusion. It’s not a bull’s-eye shot (technology?), but we do need to begin helping average and below-average teachers teach more effectively. In fact, although he seems to have backed into it, teaching effectively is about our only hope for improving schools. Other solutions (recruiting smart people to teach) are still one or more steps removed from teaching effectively.
As Erin Johnson noted in one of the comments on Mr. Petrilli’s post, and echoing the very premise of Teach Effectively, what we need is less talk about teacher quality and more investment in teaching quality.
Link to Mr. Petrilli’s editorial.
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I don’t like the term teacher quality. It’s the combination of teacher inputs (inherrent traits and training) and curricular inputs that really matter. There must be a term for this.
I would argue that “teacher quality” is even more complicated than Ken suggests. There are teacher inputs, which (outside of undergraduate or graduate content training) appear to have minimal connection to student learning. There is teacher curricular/assessment/instructional decision-making (i.e., the content a teacher chooses to emphasize, the way in which a teacher chooses to measure learning, and the instructional strategies a teacher chooses to employ), which appears to have a strong connection to student learning. There are curricular/assessment/instructional inputs outside of the teacher’s hands (e.g., highly scripted curricula, assessments, or lesson plans), which can impact student learning, depending on the inputs and their implementation. There are workplace factors (e.g., leadership, culture), which appear to have possible indirect connections to student learning.
All of those variables, to different extents, determine the effectiveness of the teacher, which is another way of saying determine the efficacy of the student’s learning experience.
So what does an investment in teacher quality mean? More staff development to impact classroom decision-making? More structured, centrally developed curricula, lessons, and assessments (developed either by central offices, state departments, or outside vendors)? More effective school leadership?
Parry
Parry, I’d add that there are also some important workplace factors that directly affect student learning like school wide classroom management systems and culture.
(I also noticed that I spelled inherent incorrectly. Ooops.)
Ken, I agree with your objection to the term “teacher quality.” I think people use the term to refer to a complex of variables (some of which Parry mentions), but the most salient one of those is something like “knowledge of subject matter.” However, I think many people use it as a code term for “smarts,” leaving open the implication that many teachers are not intelligent enough to do other jobs. (I object to that idea, but that’s another topic.)
“Highly Qualified Teachers: To be deemed highly qualified, teachers must have: 1) a bachelor’s degree, 2) full state certification or licensure, and 3) prove that they know each subject they teach” (source).