A reader asks a few questions about teachers. I follow his questions with my answer:
| Why do some teachers argue on one hand that they are not that important (discounting studies that show the value of excellent teachers, claiming that there are no bad teachers, insisting on equal pay for all teachers regardless of performance, avoiding effective evaluation, deriding the notion of excellent teachers in front of every child, claiming that poverty is destiny and there is little a teacher can do to change that, etc.) and at the same time question why they are not respected as professionals? If teachers are treated like interchangeable parts in some 19th century education factory, it’s because they apparently insist on it and work hard to keep it that way. |
No teacher says they are unimportant, but they recognize that teachers have less impact on children than their families. Teachers are the most important school-based factor in students’ achievement, but families matter even more than teachers. Research says the same thing. Wouldn’t you agree?
No teacher, or none that I know of, says there are no bad teachers. What they say is that student test scores are not a good way to identify bad teachers because teachers who have classes of English-language-learners or special education may be mistakenly identified as “bad” teachers because their test score gains are small. Teachers don’t want to teach with bad teachers, and they rely on good principals to weed out bad teachers, not to give them due process rights.
Teachers don’t want to be paid by the rise or fall of their students’ test scores, because they know that test scores represent student performance, not teacher performance. Teachers would love to be paid more for doing more, but not for teaching to the test. Don’t you agree?
Teachers know they are not “interchangeable parts in some 19th century education factory.” In good schools, teachers think of themselves as members of a team, working together as equals to help children grow up to be good people, responsible for themselves and for their community.
They work hard to keep it that way, but right now there are just a large number of very powerful politicians and financial types who demean the teaching profession, want to lower the standards for entry, and disrespect those who have chosen to devote their lives to educating young people.
Diane
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“No teacher says they are unimportant, but they recognize that teachers have less impact on children than their families. Teachers are the most important school-based factor in students’ achievement, but families matter even more than teachers. Research says the same thing. Wouldn’t you agree?”
100% agree and very well said!
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I disagree with Diane’s understanding of teachers’ knowledge–I do believe that I am an interchangeable part! I’ll never forget when my students scored the highest on our Maryland High School Assessments (I believe 84 or 86%). The principal and assistant principal wanted to shake my hand because, that being my first year at that school, they did not know me (and what value I would add) and because I had not a single honors student. With his hand practically still in mine, the next thing he did was not ask me what we did to score so highly. He did not ask me if I needed any support. Grinning, he inquired, “Now, what percentage will you do next year?” He has no idea how much respect I lost for him with that rookie, inexperienced question. Had he inquired why we were so “successful,” I would have told him that it had nothing to do with any of the ridiculous professional developments I attended the previous year. It had a little bit to do with quantitative analysis and a whole lot to do with qualitative, good-ole-fashion teaching. But, as it was, I was being looked at for what I could produce, not how I brought out the best in my students (and how they brought out the best in me). It was completely discouraging. I would feel less like a factory worker if the “value” I added was properly appraised. Test scores are an end product to 179 days of a bunch of conversations, phone calls, challenges, encouragements, stories, disclosures, laughter, commiseration, seat-moves, inspiration, aha-moments, quick-second judgments, and a relationship–none of which make it on those propped up assessments that measure us–students and teachers. Remember that scene in Good Will Hunting when Will burns the paper with the solution to problem and the professor desperately and pathetically tries to save it?
Well, that professor symbolizes these new pressured principals and all those those that thirst insatiably for quantitative data, looking ever so pathetic in that pursuit before a teacher who gets (I mean, truly gets) that life, the world, the reality entre les murs. Sorry for the long post.
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Sometimes students actually do tell me my teaching has been the most important thing that happened to them in school (and yes, even in their lives). These tend to be the ones for whom quantitative science is the liberating doorway to their own intellectual lives and livelihoods. That’s a hard possibility to live up to, but I believe them enough to try to hold myself together, and come through for as many of them as I can. I’m one of many who are doing that, though, and I try to help students see and appreciate all their teachers’ contributions. The last thing we need is a pay differential, and that’s why we tell you so.
T.S., unlike you I don’t see the important things I do when I’m successful or fail utterly with a kid particularly reflected in the damned standardized tests. The standards-based accountability-driven numbers game isn’t about them, or about me.
The aggregate scores reflect sociometric background noise so strongly individual differences don’t break through to significance, even for whole schools. Individual teachers (and children!) are being deliberately “held accountable” to a random-number-based mowing machine.
The variance within the data is so bad there isn’t any scientific basis for the Data-Masters’ own claims of discriminating good or bad results. With their institutional control, though, corporate reformers were once confident they could “demonstrate” the superiority of their market domination by juggling testing populations, and shutting my students out of educational opportunity. I think they were blindsided to discover that their products are so toxic they have failed to do even that.
So, my job for the past decade has included protecting students from being mowed down as collateral damage in a hostile take over of their school.
Your disingenuous questioner has embedded the Big Lie in his very formulation, Diane. We don’t argue we’re “not that important”. We point out that corporate vendors don’t have any “effective evaluation” to sell.
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How many less than mediocre universities offer state teaching credentials? In what way, precisely, could the standards for entry be any lower?
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