A reader comments on an earlier post about a conference tomorrow in Chicago that will discuss TFA and the privatization movement.
She writes:
“Diane, it is not only ex-TFA members. I am also one of the presenters at the conference, representing traditionally trained teachers in New Orleans who now struggle to find employment. We also have parents, students, and community members who have suffered from the corporatization of public education presenting at the conference. We are an inclusive group that has come together to work against the takeover of our schools and communities, because we all must unite in order to defeat the privatization agenda.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
That’s the agenda of putting students first, right? Caring less about how has jobs, and more about the success of students?
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Joe, why wouldn’t a person who has chosen education as a profession, trained, and become licensed at great expense and time commitment not be concerned about having a job?
Are you advocating a return to the medieval practice of religious orders under poverty, chastity, and obedience running the schools? Is teaching to become a life mission of noble self-sacrifice with no expectation of remuneration instead of a mean’s of making a living?
Your point is insulting and spurious. The only connection between “who has jobs” and “the success of students” is the old union canard: My working conditions are your child’s learning conditions”.
In your zeal to promote charter schools and “choice” why do you present a false dichotomy that we can’t have people caring about having a job and succeeding students? How could those things be mutually exclusive, other than as a continued repetition of an old anti-union shibboleth?
Why can’t professional teachers also have a choice to have job security that allows them to promote student success safely and without worry of political retaliation and manipulation?
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Chris, Of course who has trained for any job want to have a job. That’s true regardless of profession.
You are the one who presents this situation as an either or. But I think the top priority should the student.
As a person who spent time & money becoming certified as a public school teacher and administrator, and who has a child and in-law who have done the same, I’m deeply concerned about the quality of teacher and administrator preparation. I’m concerned that too many young people are coming from colleges of ed not well prepared.
When I talk with educators, whether district or charter, throughout the country, I often him similar concerns.
As a person whose 3 children all attended urban public schools, I think the first issue is what’s going to help youngsters, not is good for this particular system or that particular system.
Yes, I advocate giving families – especially low and moderate income families options among public education. Wealthy people have had the for decades. But I certainly don’t think school choice is the only important part of improving schools… and some school choice plans stink (like vouchers, like allowing “public schools” to have admissions tests, like creating schools just for wealthy people who can afford to live in affluent suburbs, to name a few examples)
I think every professional should be evaluated yearly (that definitely includes college faculty…having spent part of my time in k-12 and part in colleges I see some college faculty who are close to being retired on the job).
I think every person deserves a thoughtful evaluation based on multiple measures, based on the goals of her/his job.
Should someone be guaranteed a job forever? No.
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Joe, stop ducking the question of whether you want to replace all teachers with Monks. Answer the charge!
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No, I would not force principals to hire anyone. Would you?
I want school principals to have options about who they can hire, including people from traditional and non-traditional training programs. I am impressed with the commitment and skills of some people who have gone through both kinds of programs.
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Was joking, Joe.
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This article and quote might interest you – along the lines of what can be possible within a district.
http://www.startribune.com/local/minneapolis/215396431.html
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Joe, I have also worked in K-12 education and in colleges. I also worked in business and industry as a technical trainer for 7 years before becoming a classroom teacher. Several of my relatives are lifelong teachers as well. I do not represent a national organization, however, but we do have some things in common.
Who is arguing for a “guaranteed job forever”? No one that I am aware of on this forum or anywhere else.
If we use “real life” as a model to think about tenure then we can consider human relationships that are long-term and thought of as being a serious commitment with high expectations of acceptable outcomes and governed by mutual offers and acceptances to the benefit of those involved.
Marriage, for example, and raising children, are good examples, as is membership in a religious sect.
You are free to leave a church or synagogue as you will but the ties and experiences you have shared within that organization are built upon mutual agreements and commitments. Few religious organizations seek to dissolve these relationships without procedures and processes in place to ensure fairness and accuracy.
If your spouse does not measure up to your expectations you are free to seek a divorce and dissolution of the marriage but overall it is not a quick, easy, or cheap process. The system is designed to keep you together because longterm marriages are considered to be of great benefit to both spouses and society.
If your children fail to meet your expectations you are free to disown and disinherit them but while they are minors you have legal, moral, and social obligations to support and protect them until they are considered legal adults.
There are other associations within our culture and society that reflect these familiar connections and relations and the family has served as the model of many social institutions, at least until recently.
Teaching has long been seen as a pseudo-familiar relationship with teachers acting in loco parentis. For generations teachers were offered long-term job security in return for foregoing higher, market-based wages, personal freedoms, and limited upward mobility. A largely female occupation, the low wages and often uncomfortable working conditions were considered an acceptable tradeoff for job security by the majority of teachers, many of whom had spouses’ incomes to offset the low wages.
In the last century a need was perceived to support teachers who dedicated their lives to the education and support of the children of our nation when they reached old age and were physically unable to teach anymore. Thus were born pensions and benefit packages including health insurance.
Salaries were kept artificially low and generous pensions and benefits packages were offered in their stead, perhaps as a way of putting off until tomorrow what politicians would rather not have to deal with today but the deals were made.
Now you and all the other reformers come along and claim that we are in a state of emergency that requires the dissolution of these longterm commitments and relationships between teachers and school boards.
Suddenly the systems we have had in place for over a century have become useless if not dangerous and must be dissolved and replaced with urgency and without thought or discussion.
Contracts, pacts, covenants, and agreements that have been in place are to be dissolved and ignored with no need to honor commitments and promises.
Guarantee of due process is not and never has been a “guaranteed job forever”. Tenure was designed to protect teachers at the university level from persecution and political maneuvering so that they would be free to research and teach whatever interests they had and no newly-elected administrator could fire, intimidate, or silence them based upon political, religious, or social views.
State governments and local school boards saw this as a desirable protection for teachers in public schools and extended tenure to teachers for the very same reasons using locally determined procedures for obtaining tenure.
Administrators have always been free to bring charges of incompetence against tenured teachers as long as they have proof and have built a case against that teacher. It was purposely difficult and time consuming to discourage frivolous dismissals and political paybacks.
The alternatives offered today to replace these traditional systems are based in profit making and rentier-like behaviors rather than on human interactions and longstanding covenantal relationships.
There is no proof that treating schools, students, teachers, and the very conception of public education as business entities where the players are simply inputs and the results are as easily measured as piece-work is any better or more desirable than what is in place outside of the fever dreams of Milton Friedman.
Unless and until there is some kind of proof that the current reforms have merit outside of being different we should oppose their wholesale implementation lest we wake up one day and realize that we have dismantled, destroyed, and irrevocably damaged a system that led our country to become the richest, most innovative, and freest nation in the history of the world. We are not perfect.
We have much that is wrong, racism, inequality of opportunity, and child poverty among the highest priority, but destroying our public schools and the profession of teaching is a fool’s errand and a short-sighted solution to a largely non-existent problem. Stop! Before it is too late.
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Chris when you assert that “Now you and all the other reformers come along and claim that we are in a state of emergency that requires the dissolution of these longterm commitments and relationships between teachers and school boards.”
Could you please show me where I asserted that “we are in a state of emergency that requires….”
I said every professional should be evaluated yearly.
To Linda – no, none of our funding is tied to comments about TFA. And I don’t think TFA is perfect. I do think, based on conversation with district and charter educators throughout the US, that there are problems with the present system of teacher prep.
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And you have no opinion about the teach for a while prep….the five weeks experimenting on needy children in the summer…does that suffice?
You didn’t question their training. You just said it wasn’t perfect. Can you elaborate?
Do you have a problem with adminstrator training? Reformer training?
What training have Bill and Eli had that qualifies them to experiment on our children and our schools (please note Bill’s children are safe from high stakes testing, data collection, invasion of privacy, the loss of music and art and booming class sizes)?
Of course “charter educators” have a problem…although those two words seems like an oxymoron here in CT where our charter chains practice questionable techniques that border on child abuse or at least they would if practiced in public schools. So their opinion on the training of educators doesn’t really rate too much since they can’t seem to manage children without shaming or humiliating them.
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Chris– thank you. Good summary and assesment of the situation–I appreciate it.
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Chris:
Maybe Joe needs TFA churn and maybe his organization, Center for School change, would lose funding if he didn’t beat their drum:
Funding for center for school change:
Funding for the Center has come from Cargill, Gates, Annenberg, Blandin, General Mills, St. Paul, St. Paul Companies, Peters, Minneapolis, TCF, Joyce, Bradley and Rockefeller Foundations, the U.S. Department of Education, the University of Minnesota, the Minnesota Initiative Funds, Best Buy, Pohlad, and Wallin Foundation.
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The same district as this one:
http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-22/segregated-charter-schools-evoke-separate-but-equal-era-in-u-s-education.html
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Do you see any difference between being forced to attend an inferior school miles from home, and being given options among a number of schools, some of which have excellent records of working with African American students?
While the professor quoted here does not, many African American families, including the first African American elected to the St Paul City Council, and a former Minnesota Commissioner of Human Rights do see a difference.
Moreover, many African American leaders, including Dr. Martin Luther King attended historically black colleges and universities. So while some disparage schools freely selected by low income families of color, many families are selecting them.
Click to access Wilson-B_Nathan-J_11-16-12.pdf
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The same district as this one:
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2012/02/24/study-charter-school-performance
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The requirements for college tenure are vastly greater than for public school tenure, a Ph.D. and seven years for college, three years in the public schools. In the universities the professor is supposed to be creating new knowledge and needs tenure to pursue that goal. In the public schools teachers are merely transmitting knowledge and thus do not need protection for that reason. Tenure in the public schools OUGHT to serve the function of permitting teachers to commit to long term careers. It has become, however, a job guarantee without a performance expectation.
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Harlan,
You are quite mistaken about tenure for public school teachers. In my state, tenure requires four years, 120 continuing education credits, completion of a two-year program in which approximately 80 pages of documentation are required and scored by the state. You must pass that program, and a percentage of teachers fail to do so.
You are also mistaken about the role of public school teachers. We are hardly mere purveyors of information; on the contrary, we teach students how to conduct research, how to write, how to read for information, how to explore diverse perspectives. I teach history; I have students explore the different sides in every topic. Your statement shows your ignorance.
Finally, tenure is not a job for life, as even the most rudimentary and elementary checking on your part will have shown you. It is merely a teacher’s right to due process. During our extended non-tenure period of four years, basically an extended period of probation that private workers undergo their first month on the job, a principal can fire us or non-renew us for any reason what-so-ever. Following tenure, a principal can fire a teacher for cause, but he/she had better be able to show documentation of counseling and the opportunity for giving the teacher a chance to improve. It is no different than any other employee in any private corporation. As a Union Rep, I have seen quite a few tenured teachers be fired for cause.
Harlan, please do you fact checking before you make such ridiculous statements again.
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Some of my points may be partly in error in details, but the difference between what high school teachers do and what university professors are supposed to be doing is not. Nor is the difference between what a university professor is supposed to be doing to earn tenure (original research) and what a school teacher does to certify competence. It’s just two different levels of intellectual functioning.
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It’s different, but equally strenuous. I have experienced both.
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To Joe,
“As a person who spent time & money becoming certified as a public school teacher and administrator, and who has a child and in-law who have done the same, I’m deeply concerned about the quality of teacher and administrator preparation. I’m concerned that too many young people are coming from colleges of ed not well prepared.”
And you believe an “elite” (as judged by TFA) college graduate with five weeks of training, comprised of Doug Lemov seal training techniques, is more prepared than a young adult who spent four years earning an education degree?
Is that what you’re saying?
And TFA gets a free pass on the recent NCTQ “study” because?
I am not following your argument.
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Linda: When the discussion threatens to devolve into a dead end diversion into what is good “for this particular system or that particular system” and human beings—real live caring human beings whose lives, reputations and dreams are at stake—are taken out of the ‘equation,’ then your last sentence makes perfect sense.
“I am not following your argument.”
You’re in good company.
Read my [unfortunately, too long] response under today’s posting “Jeff Bryant: ‘No Excuses’ for Abandoning Kinds and Public Schools.” Your last sentence would not be out of place there, except that perhaps we might change it a bit to read,
“We are not following your proof by assertion even if it is saturated with the Holy EduLuminary glow of a Rheeality Distortion Field.”
I think Mark Twain would forgive me for the liberty I am taking with a most excellent quote by him that begins with the word “Patriot,” but using your felicitously Innovative Twenty First Century Cagebusting Gap-Crushing term “Edufraud” — “the person that can holler the loudest without knowing what he is hollering about.”
Keep posting. I’ll keep reading.
🙂
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I love the word “dissidents”.
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I’m confused, Joe. As a teacher holding my Professional Educator’s certificate, and with a Ph.D. in my academic field, and who has been tenured for years, I am informally observed at least twice yearly and formally observed once per year, and am evaluated at the end of every year.
Do you mean to tell me that teachers in other districts or states are not observed and evaluated at least once per year? I find that hard to believe.
Also, what other profession has the formal observation requirement?
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Bill, I spent about 30 minutes trying to find research about what percentage of k-12 teachers receive a formal evaluation each year. I was not able to find any research on this.
As to yearly evaluation practices, we work with a variety of non-profits that do yearly evaluations of all their staff.
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Maybe you should talk to real teachers rather than assume.
We have always had yearly evaluations, formal and informal within one year ALL THE TIME.
Who evaluates TFA? Who evaluates adminstrators? Who evaluates “reformers”? Who evaluates you?
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Joe,
I’m not asking about evaluations. I am talking about full hour visitations of the boss watching an employee work. I have worked in other professional settings both as the employee and the supervisor and have never seen such a practice except when administrators sit and watch a teacher teach for a full class. Where else does this happen? Most employees would never put up with it; it is nerve-wracking to many people.
I ask again, can you cite an example of any other profession in which the worker is subjected to such a practice?
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Bill, I have not studied all professions so can not answer your question. When I was a public school teacher, I welcomed observations. They provided feedback about things I was doing well, and things that I could improve.
Not all people who are doing observations are well qualified – a teacher who teaches Spanish told me this week that he had been asked to use “less Spanish” with students during the class in which he was observed. That’s because the person who was doing the observation (of a Spanish class) did not speak Spanish. Pretty absurd.
In some schools and districts, master teachers (selected by teachers and administration because of their skill), are doing observations that provide feedback. That seems to be an example of a good approach.
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“When I was a public school teacher, I welcomed observations. They provided feedback about things I was doing well, and things that I could improve.”
So do most teachers Joe, not just you. That happens today while many of us are still public school teachers.
And this anecdotal story about the Spanish teacher was posted here on this blog as a comment. Is that the same teacher who recently spoke to you?
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I talk regularly with a variety of teachers throughout the country. The spanish teacher was one of them.
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Of course we teachers welcome observations. My comments are simply a response to those who believe that we are under-evaluated and observed. We are, in fact, one of the most heavily observed and evaluated professions in the United States.
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Joe,
My original response to you dealt with your statement that teachers are only observed and evaluated once every three years. My point is that no other profession observes and evaluates their workforce more so than in education.
Teachers are under fire from political figures on both the right and left, and we teachers are extremely tired of hearing such falsehoods being made, outright lies simply to advance a political agenda for corporate America.
It is clear that, not only must teachers be directly observed several times each year by administrators who may or may not know the teacher’s course content, we are also evaluated only on the basis of those few snapshots of observations. It is very unreasonable for someone to argue that we are only evaluated once every three years.
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Bill, could you please point to where I asserted that teachers are observed only once every three years? I don’t recall making that assertion. I think observation policies vary from place to place.
Do you agree, or do you think the observation policies are the same in every school and district?
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Joe,
It would stand to reason that they differ from district-to-district, but every district in which I have taught was essentially the same.
Bill
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Bill, and any others who care to respond, If you were going to design a system to provide feedback and evaluation for faculty that would serve students, faculty and the broader public, and you did not have an unlimited budget, what would be the key features?
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Joe,
My criteria are that evaluations are:
1. . . . not affiliated with any corporate interests.
2. . . . locally controlled and written.
3. . . . not affiliated with any political movement.
4. . . . focused on a given teacher’s performance throughout the year and not focused on one snapshot of an observation.
5. . . . not considering issues that are outside a teacher’s job.
In other words, Charlotte, go home.
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Joe,
I have one more consideration:
6. Evaluations are NOT to be based on student performance on standardized tests or in general.
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Bill,
Would it matter in your evaluation scheme if there were actual students in the classroom or could the teacher be teaching to an empty room?
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Are you serious?????
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Bill,
What raised the possibility was your sixth criteria:
Evaluations are NOT to be based on student performance on standardized tests OR IN GENERAL.
What do you mean by or in general? I assumed it to mean that student performance is irrelevant in your evaluation scheme, so it is unclear what role students would play in your evaluation scheme.
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I do not believe that student achievement is a valid part of teacher evaluation because “achievement” is subjective. There is no acceptable definition, nor is there an acceptable measure.
Here in CT, Governor Malloy has made a major push to have 43% of teacher’s evaluations be based on “achievement,” or, in his words, standardized test scores. Many of us have overheard students talking about which teachers they will “get” by performing poorly on the tests.
Are we going to define grades? If so, how? Are the teachers who have been assigned the better students going to be favored over the others who have been given the poor students?
The issue of student achievement is not as simple as it sounds.
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But you think the result of teacher observations ARE NOT subjective?
Always good to hear from you Linda. Would you like to hear about students like my foster son? Students like him have many defenders here, so I tend to carry the flag for my middle son.
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No I don’t want to hear about them ad nauseum. We all have children. A reader recently referred to your ideas as solipsism. I learned a new word that day.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism
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Seems like lots of insults get used by people who say they don’t like people questioning some aspects of public education.
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Especially those so continually insult the host…..practice what you preach Joe.
Hold yourself to the same standards.
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I raise questions, I don’t use insults.
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Linda,
Have I insulted Dr. Ravitch?
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No, not that I can recall. I was referring to Joe.
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You pointed out many times in your condenscending tone where Diane sent her children to school. It wasn’t a question. It was a statement.
“Sorry, the elite, wealth abandoned “the common good” long before charters came along. Diane Ravitch and others of similar wealth/status have sent their children to private schools since the 1800′s, said Joe Nathan.”
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That happens to be a fact.
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It is also a fact that TE mentions his son constantly and that a reader used a term to describe it. My fact is an insult and yours is not. Got it….
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No the term you used is an insult.
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Joe and Economist,
How do you define “student outcomes”? Do you mean standardized test outcomes, grades? How do you measure where a student begins and ends? Please, define your terms for me.
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How does an observer know that one teacher is doing a good job and another doing a poor one? Is it simply dependent on the teaching fashion of the day or is it based on which approach contributes more to student learning?
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That is why the evaluation has to be based not on one observation but on performance throughout the year. But, the very vague term du jour “student performance” does not really enter into that equation; teacher practices and technique are easily seen through lesson plans and informal visits, through professional discussions, through monitoring the types of lessons and assessments.
There are many socioeconomic and cultural factors far, far beyond the teacher’s control for “student performance” to enter into a teacher’s evaluation.
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But what is the criteria that the observers used based on? How do we decide which approach to teaching a subject works better if student learning can not, in principal, be used to evaluate different approaches to teaching?
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I have already stated that I believe that the criteria should be locally developed. What part of that is confusing you?
I have tremendous experience in evaluating people, both in the public and the private sectors. It is a huge problem evaluating people as objectively as possible; all evaluation systems become predominantly subjective. However, teachers are the only profession where evaluation involves an evaluators coming in and personally observing that teacher; in no other profession does an evaluator sit and observe an employee for over an hour. It just doesn’t happen in corporate America.
Yet, corporate reformers are screaming for even greater evaluation of teachers, even advocating that some wishy-washy criteria based on “student performance” or even based on student comments of teacher’s proficiencies. Can you imagine being evaluated by a child after you have spent years working towards your professional standing? No reformer would put up with that for himself!
Millions of dollars are wasted by the private and public sectors on evaluations that, in the end, really improve nothing.
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Also, once again, how do you define “student achievement”? I am asking because I cannot answer your question until you tell me what you mean!
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I think my question is a simple one. If as you say, student achievement is too subjective to be usefully used as a standard, what are the evaluation standards used by the observers based on? It can not be that students will learn better if a teachers does A rather than B, because that is based on the flawed notion of student learning being a useful metric..
Is it simply what is fashionable at the time?
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Once again, how are YOU defining student achievement?
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I am not trying to define student achievement.
I am trying to understand the basis for a classroom observer to say teacher A is doing a good job teaching and teacher B is doing a poor job. What is the basis for the criteria that they use?
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1. Does the teacher TRY to engage all students, even the ones who refuse to be engaged?
2. Does the teacher employ accepted teaching and assessment methods, including differentiating for special needs students?
3. Does the teacher control classroom behaviors effectively?
4. Can the teacher show a record of parental contacts?
5. Does the teacher know and understand the IEP’s and 504 plans of students in the room?
6. Does the teacher write appropriate lesson plans?
7. Is the teacher knowledgeable in his/her subject?
8. Does the teacher manage class time effectively?
I’m sure that there are other criteria that can be included. But, these criteria are centered on the teacher and are not dependent on a child who may or may not be vindictive towards that teacher.
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I think my question is about your point number 2. How do teaching and assessment methods come to be accepted? Why are some accepted and others rejected?
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Teaching methods are taught in the universities. We also receive many professional sessions throughout our careers about new methods. Methods are research based by the recognized experts in education.
This doesn’t mean that teachers cannot be innovative but rather that their practice is based on current theories.
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What is the research based on? Why does an education school teach this method instead of that method? Do they have a reason or is it just the education school professor’s preference?
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There are thousands of books published by recognized experts. Teaching methods is not simply based on a given professor’s preferences, although every teacher can use many methods to fit their teaching styles. Again, teaching is a profession that has standards of practice.
For example, lecturing has been discredited by many experts. However, there are circumstances when it is the method of choice. There are circumstances when group activities involving project-based learning is the method of choice, or silent, sustained reading. The issue of methods selection is more affiliated with the type or amount of material being covered, who the learners are, etc. Does the teacher’s method coincide with the type of lesson being conducted? Again, standards of practice widely recognized by a professional population.
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On what basis is lecturing discredited? What evidence is it based on? Maybe it would help me if you could complete this sentence: the guide on the side is a better approach to teaching than the sage on the stage because……
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It is not that simple. Sometimes, the sage on the stage is the appropriate way to go. There is a school of thought based on the book “The Courage to Teach” in which the researcher conducted a survey of over 10,000 people about their most memorable teacher. The researcher then conducted focus groups and interviews and found that the particular preferred pedagogical style of the teacher is less important than the passion for the subject and the love of learning that that teacher brings to his/her teaching. In some ways I subscribe to that school of thought. But, I must bring that passion to an intelligent use of pedagogical theories.
However, the literature base is huge. Teachers must be professional and make themselves aware of the literature base just as in any other profession. Toward that end, our professional education includes courses in Teaching Methods. It includes courses in Human Development and Psychology, including courses in how human beings learn and think. We are constantly given professional development that address these issues.
Let me offer a scenario. You are a physician who has a patient suffering from a cold. According to current practice, you tell that patient to stay in bed, drink plenty of fluids, and take Actifed. The patient reports back that all the Actifed did was to make them sleep. You alter your approach, giving Coricidin. It works. You chart it and you remember that one approach did not work but the other did. You make your adjustments to your practice.
It is the same in teaching.
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Bill,
Your analogy with the physician depends on the physician being able to measure patient outcomes (you say “it works”). You also say that it is not possible to meaningfully talk about student outcomes (you say “achievement is subjective”). There is no way for an education researcher to conclude “it works” in the way that the physician concludes it works.
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But, it is the physician who determines the outcome, whether or not his/her treatment has been effective. No outside board will review the record to make that determination. And, it is the physician who determines the appropriate following actions. If the outcome, as determined by the physician, remains problematic, he/she is expected to consult with other physicians. If the patient is dissatisfied, he/she can file a lawsuit for malpractice, but the jury will make their determination on the basis of the standards of practice.
This is precisely how teachers work. We apply appropriate strategies, assess for effectiveness, reteach if necessary, and consult with our peers should we not experience appropriate success. This is professionalism and it recognizes our professional status and responsibilities. That is what our professional certification is about. There is no room for lay people to make the determinations for us; quite frankly, most do not know what they are talking about, least of all the corrupt corporate reformers..
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It is not the physician that determines the success or failure of a treatment, it is the patent outcome. The physician records those outcomes and comes to a conclusion about the effectiveness of the treatment based on patient outcomes. To be generally accepted as a treatment, other physicians must be able to duplicate the same patient outcomes.
The analogies situation for a teacher would be to have an index of student learning at the beginning of the teaching period, try alternative methods of teaching, and compare the student learning from each method for the two groups of students. This, however, is precisely what you have ruled out, arguing that student outcomes are too subjective to be useful.
I think your analogy does not work because of your position that student outcomes are too subjective to be meaningful.
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If that were true, TE, them most oncologist are failures because so many of their patients die. Dermatologists are great !!!
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Dianne,
Thanks for weighing in. Please read my follow-up comment.
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Oncologists treatments are often successful and dermatologists treatments sometimes fail. But that is all besides the point.
I am trying to understand what Bill considers evidence when it comes to teaching students. What students learn, he says, is too subjective a standard to use as evidence.
He does seem to think that some teaching approaches are better than others. As to why he thinks that, I am leaning to appeal to authority (someone in an education school said this was best or someone wrote a paper saying this was best) or simply tradition. If forced to choose, I think it is tradition.
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You really do not have a clue, do you? That is sad, given all that has been said here.
State assessments cannot be a real gage of student learning because they are too subjective. They do not measure any particular curriculum, as written by each district. Even with Common Core, each district interprets how best to apply those dubious standards. Nor do state standardized tests reflect subjects as required by each district’s curriculum. For example, a test administered by the state in the tenth grade might include questions about Biology, which a given student might not have taken until grade 11. Additionally, the given class of students might not have reached the particular section being tested by the state, which is in no position to monitor.
Once again, and I will say it only one more time, the only person able to determine student achievement is the professionally educated person in the room . . . the teacher. Get over it.
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Can you please point to anywhere in this discussion where I said ANYTHING about state assessments?
I am still trying to figure out what standard of evidence the teaching profession can use to determine that some teaching practices are better than others. What makes them better?
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TE, how do you compare the death rate of patients of an oncologist and a dermatologist? Are all dermatologists better doctors than all oncologists?
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I don’t compare the death rates, I compare the effectiveness of treatments.
The question at hand, however, is how to compare the effectiveness of teaching strategies when student learning is too subjective to be used. I would be interested in any thoughts you have, even if you disagree with Bill that student learning is too subjective.
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You are quite mistaken about who determines the outcome in the patient/physician relationship. Physicians listen to the patients subjective symptomology, but base their assessments on their own objective findings. In medicine, it is called the S.O.A.P. process; S: Subjective, defined as the patient complaint; O: Objective findings, defined as that which the physician sees; A: Assessment, defined as the physician’s differential diagnosis; and P: Plan, defined as the course of therapy. If the patient returns, the physician goes through the same process, but it is the physician who decides. We recognize that patients might be malingerers. I practiced medicine as the Medical Department Representative onboard submarines in the Navy for 24 years.
Teachers do undergo a similar informal process when deciding on methods and the lessons.
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The relative health of the patient doesn’t define the outcome? The physician may determine the course of treatment, but the patients health determines the outcome. That is why we use clinical trials to determine the effectiveness of treatments and standards of care.
Unfortunately that sort of procedure is impossible in education if you believe student outcomes are to subjective to have any use. We can’t make a statement that teaching method A is better than teaching method B because we can not define “better”. That is why I think your analogy is misplaced given your views on student achievement.
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You keep grasping at straws. The physicians objective assessment of the patient’s condition is the determining factor. Physicians do not prescribe narcotics just because a patient says he needs them.
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And physicians count a treatment a success when the patient still suffers from the malady? Would anyone consider bleeding successful if it had no impact on the patients broken collar bone?
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Again, read my comments. You are either completely misunderstanding everything I’ve said or you are deliberately distorting everything I’ve said. The answer I have already given repeatedly is that the physician uses his/her own observations about whether or not that clavicle is broken, not the patient. Please READ!
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It is the patent’s body that determines the success or failure of the treatment.
But this is also tangential to my main question. What constitutes evidence that one method of teaching is better than another?
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Perhaps it would be easier if I give you a scenario. The editor of an education journal has asked you to referee a submitted article. The author of the article argues that teaching method A should be the new professional standard over the old professional standard teaching method B. What would you count as evidence that the author of the article is correct? For me it would be evidence that students taught by teaching method A were able to achieve more than students taught by teaching method B. What would it be for you?
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One thing I am trying to get you to understand is that there is no one teaching method just as there is no one method a physician uses to treat an illness. Different students require different methods, and teachers might use differing methods when re-teaching versus the initial teaching of a given lesson. There is no “Method A” versus “Method B”. Teachers are professionals who have been professionally educated and professionally certified to practice. That is one tremendous reason that TFA fails so dismally.
Educational research is strongly based upon brain research and the many different ways that human beings learn. Teaching is a complex profession that cannot be broken down to simple formulae. Methods that work for one teacher might not work for another; similarly, methods that work for one student might not work for another. Teachers have been educated, re-educated, and professionally certified to be flexible in their various approaches.
In medicine, we know that certain medications are more effective for certain illnesses based on gender, physiology, height, weight, etc. Physicians have been educated to be able to practice flexibility based on their standards of practice. So, too, have teachers.
I cannot make it any more simple.
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Let me try again. You point out that there are accepted teaching and assessment methods. There must be other teaching and assessment methods that are not accepted. What is the evidence that leads to some being accepted and others rejected?
This would seem to be of some import e cause you would evaluate teachers based on this standard. How would you answer a teacher who claimed that the unaccepted method they are using is superior to the accepted teaching and assessment method?
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We know, for example, that most people retain only a small part of what they hear based on many different research studies conducted throughout the past fifty years. So, if a teacher only employs lecture, we know that most students will not retain this information.
We know that there is no universal learning style. But, if we employ some lecture, mixed with video, mixed with project work, mixed with research and writing, mixed with presentations by the students, that each student will learn and retain more. A principal can see each of this, but only after time. No one observation will show him/her the full range of a teacher’s practice.
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We know that by looking at individual achievement?
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Bill, he doesn’t want to process info…he argues and picks apart random points. It will go on and on and never ever ever ever end.
Interesting as a teaching economist, did he ever say how he is evaluated? If so, I missed it somehow.
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Always nice when you drop in.
I am evaluated annually, and as I do not have tenure or whatever you want to call it, am in danger of losing my job every year if my employer thinks I am doing it badly.
That’s it for the ad hominem break. Now can we discuss what constitutes evidence for good teaching techniques?
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Linda,
No, he never did. I don’t believe he is a teacher if his reading comprehension is so low.
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And, you completely misunderstand what I am saying about student achievement. The only person in the right place to make any real determination of student achievement is the teacher. Standardized test scores cannot do so, nor can administrators who are not in the classroom daily. Only the teacher can make the determination. Period.
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So educational research extends no further than an individual teacher?
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And your point 6 as well, what determines if a lesson plan is appropriate or inappropriate?
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It’s based on accepted practice. Like it or not, PROFESSIONS do have standards of reasonable accepted practice. Ours is no different.
School administrators can also inform teachers of the appropriate elements that they will check for when evaluating or observing.
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So it is just tradition? That does seem plausible.
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No. It involves professional decisions being made by practicing professionals based upon the professional literature. Just as in medicine, there is no “one-size fits all” teaching method. The evaluator must make a decision, “Do the teaching methods employed make sense for the lesson being taught given the population of students in the classroom?”
For example, if I am teaching about the Battle of Gettysburg to an Honors class, I may use some lecture and note taking. I might use a Paidea Seminar based on primary source readings. For a General class, I might use worksheets and a question & answer session or a group project of some sort. It depends on the students and their abilities, and my professional determination of the best form of lesson.
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Basically, if I were to try to use a Paidea Seminar of a primary source to a class of students who are low-level readers, I should be marked down on any observation because the method does not make sense given the student population.
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How do we know it doesn’t make sense?
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I’ve already answered that question.
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But, I’ll try again.
If I give a class of students who suffer from poor reading abilities a difficult reading source and ask them to read and offer detailed analyses of that source, even though the material is far beyond their abilities, my practice would not make sense. If I gave to a group of students reading material in English who cannot speak English, that would not make sense. If I gave a low-level article to a group of students who are far above that source, that might not make sense, depending on the lesson.
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By the term not make sense, do you mean the students will not learn as much as they would if you did something else? How would you know if measures of achievement are subjective and therefore invalid?
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Joe use close reading. It was a term used to describe his ideas by another reader. I agreed with theory and it fits. We all have children we raised and taught. We don’t mention them nonstop.
You know you come on here praising how you are for all public schools, but you jump on any criticism of charters..such as when the word controversial was recently used, but you never defend the traditional public schools when they are criticized. Actually, just the opposite. You even posted examples of sexual abuse in public schools ONLY, when there have been many, many instances in private schools, especially residential.
You like to bring the appearance of supporting all schools, but the words you use and the topics you choose to defend prove otherwise.
In that regard, you lose credibility.
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Actually I think Joe jumps on lumping charters together as a group. Some are good, some are poor, most are about the same as public schools.
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Joe,
You are coming close to being banned from my space. Stick to the issues or go away.
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Linda,
Any opinion about what we are talking about? Do you think that the folks who observe teachers provide an objective evaluation of the teacher, unlike what Bill calls the subjective measure of student outcomes?
I have to wonder how we came to have any idea about good teaching and bad teaching if student learning is so subjective to be unusable. Is it all just theory?
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Bill, just a warning…soon you will hear about his son.
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Currently reading, Closing the Opportunity Gap edited by Prudence Carter and Kevin Welner. The first article is from Gloria Ladson-Billings entitled “Lack of Achievement or Loss of Opportunity” where she discusses the educational failure in New Orleans. One statistic she gives according to Louisiana State Department of Education, retention of TFA is .04% traditionally trained teachers is 40%. TFAs are not teachers, and not committed to the children or the profession. They use it to further their own agenda not the youth of America. It is a crime against our children, our educational system and our future.
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Chris-beautifully said! I’m so tired of hearing things like “it’s all about the kids” & “kids first.”. If the reformers really believed that they’d be lobbying Congress to fund things like the food stamp program, universal preschool & access to good public health services for all children & their mothers. That’s never their fight, though.
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Actually, Beth, the Obama administration has worked hard to promote high quality early childhood education for students from low income families, and to significantly expand health care coverage. Both are wise ideas, both are things the Obama administration has proposed.
I agree with both and have contacted members of Congress to support both.
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Obama, Arne and Bill are destroying public education in our country.
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To Flerp, yes he skips around the direct TFA questions but he is concerned about teacher training until he is not concerned. He loses credibility….just another defender of she status quo, I suppose.
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TE, I have posted thoughts and ideas many times. I don’t want to engage in a back and forth with you. It is pointless; you never process and I would prefer to read.
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I will take that as a no.
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In terms of my processing point, you just made it. Thanks for the support.
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That is, I am pointing out a fact about where Diane (and others with wealth) sent their children to school. Inconvenient perhaps, but a fact.
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I can think of other inconvenient facts….if that’s the new term.
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About the topic at hand? I would be interested in hearing them.
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