This great letter by Phyllis Bush, retired teacher in Indiana, is going viral. Phyllis is a fighter for public education and a member of the board of the Network for Public Education. When I met her, she gave me a tee-shirt that says, “Sisyphus Rocks.”
This came to me from an education activist in Indiana:
“Parents and Educators,
“Here is a call to action. We reported this morning that the Fort Wayne Community Schools (FWCS) School Board “presented a resolution stating the board would no longer publicly recognize schools based on the letter grade assigned to a school based on the A-F grading system. The resolution passed 6-1.”
“The following statement was written and shared by public education advocate Phyllis Bush in Fort Wayne. Please share this resolution and message with your local school board and, if you feel comfortable doing so, ask for their consideration of following FWCS’s school board in no longer publicly recognizing the A-F grading system. Thank you.
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“Lately I have grown so weary of all of the labeling and grading of children that when I drive down the road and see a car proudly sporting a bumper sticker which proclaims,”My child is an HONOR student at “X” school or when I see a school sign board boldly proclaiming, “We are an A school,” I wonder if the purpose is to honor that child and that school, or is it to let others know that they are not good enough?
“Since buildings are not people, I wonder how a building can receive a grade, unless of course, it comes from a building inspector. I also wonder how it must feel to students and teachers who go to a C school in a nearby neighborhood? I also wonder how it must feel to be a valedictorian at a school which receives a C, D, or F rating? Does that mean that all of the work that that student has done to excel academically is for naught? I also wonder if my neighborhood school receives a lower grade, what does that rating mean to my property value? What does it mean to my community?
“Politicians keep saying that parents need to be able to choose which school their children should attend, but I would contend that they already have those choices. While our legislators assume that the reason a family would choose a school is because of a dubious letter grade, I would counter that people choose schools for a variety of reasons, the least of which is an arbitrary grade. Perhaps, many people choose their schools because they want their children to attend neighborhood schools within walking distance from home. Some choose schools because of programs like Montessori or New Tech or IB. Some choose schools because of music or arts programs. Some choose schools because they have talked to friends and neighbors and church members and found that a particular school seems like a good fit for their child. I have never heard anyone say that their kids are going to this or that school because of the State letter grade any more than I remember any kid ever coming back years later to walk down memory lane to remember some awesome test I gave.
“Accountability has become the catch phrase of the reformers; however, for many reformers/policy makers/politicians/know-it-alls, data seems to be the only means of assessment that they understand. However, this flies in the face of what most educators know. If a test is to be meaningful, it should only be used for diagnostic or for evaluative purposes. Tests should give us information about what skills and concepts have been mastered and which skills and concepts still need more work. Most teachers can assess what is happening in their classrooms by walking up and down the aisles, by looking at student work, by looking and listening to what the students are saying and doing, and by reading the clues of the classroom environment. Can those things be measured on a data sheet? Probably not. However, most of us know a good school, a good class, a good teacher when we see it.
“I have no issue with holding teachers to the highest standards; however, why do we not hold that same level of accountability to students, to parents, to administrators, and to policy makers? When we single out teachers and schools as the only ones who are to be held accountable, that does make me wonder what the real agenda is. Why in the world should we siphon even more tax dollars out of all already cash strapped schools to pay a dubious testing company with some mysterious grading system to come in to evaluate students, teachers, and whole school communities based on a test score which may or may not have any bearing on what the teachers are teaching or what the students are learning.
“Perhaps, one solution might be to untie the hands of teachers, administrators, and school boards and to allow them to create programs and assessments which are instructionally sound. Instead of hampering the classrooms with the latest, greatest experts’ ideas, why not trust them by giving them the resources, the class sizes, and the support needed to improve what has been judged so harshly?
“Perhaps we should include parents and teachers in this very important discussion.”
Interesting thoughts about the valedictorian at a school that gets a C,D, or F rating. I wonder if the author wonders if the purpose is to honor that child, or is it to let others know that they are not good enough?
I wonder, TE, if you were really thinking deeply about the logic and relevance of your question?
wonderful post DR and great viral letter PB. The best book on precisely this issue is by Michael Brick, Saving the School, http://bit.ly/Ptzw6K (The True Story of a Principal, a Teacher, a Coach, a Bunch of Kids and a Year in the Crosshairs of Education Reform) And a good summary of book is on this excellent NY Times Op-Ed: When Grading Is Degrading: http://nyti.ms/T9TcKA
For what it’s worth, my son and I came up with an idea a couple of years ago. He’s my only child. I had a bumper sticker made that reads, “My other child is an honor roll student.”
Douglas County, Colorado is going through the crazies here. When our school received an A rating, I spoke during the open comment of the school board meeting. Fits quite well with Phyllis’ message.
“I am proud parent of our Douglas County schools. My daughter’s school was honored here tonight, but not for the things it should be honored for. The awards it received are based on test scores. And like all of the schools in Douglas County it is not the programs or test scores that make her school great. It is the children, staff, parents and community
We love her teacher, an amazing talented person who as a professional educator has built a confidence in my daughter that is worth more than any of money your billionaire friends can give you. As a professional educator myself, I find performance pay to be insulting. Pay professional teachers a professional wage. That’s what works. Merit pay has never worked and will never work.
I value the parent leadership. I’m not at all involved like I should be, but I know many parents who dedicate a lot of time to their school community. As I listen to the PTIO parent leadership, I hear parents who are truly concerned about every child in our school and wanting to make every child know they are valued.
So the test scores that determine the John Erwin Award and the Colorado Governor’s Award for Excellence are not what make our schools great. It’s the people.
Your emphasis on competition. . . not choice, testing, data collection, merit pay, and all other corporate reform top down mandates won’t produce the 21st century learning we want. You are holding us back. Our children are not data points, standard or common for that matter. Stop making them that. Your mandates do nothing to promote our children’s academic abilities, aspirations and passions. Please take your political agendas elsewhere and give us back our schools.
Very well said.
love what you said
great points– have you out that in a letter to Gov Hickenlooper? I think he needs to hear from Coloradans parents with kids in schools– he needs to be made to fully understand what these “reform” policies are doing to our kids and our schools. There is a huge knowledge gap there and those words from you in a short.focused,specific letter might make a difference IMHO
Thanks everyone,
Bertis, so far just gave this as a comment to our school board. We are in the process of a HUGE school board election with 4 out of 7 seats open. If we don’t win these seats our public schools are gone.
Crazy thing is that our very right wing school board wants to distance itself from what the state is doing. They don’t want people to know that the district is doing what the state wants them to do.
I’ll think about sending it to the Gov. though. If you are in Colorado let me know. We’re bringing Anthony Cody here in Sept. He’s well worth your time to come and here.
tutucker: please contact me offline at bed@chronictown.com or 706 215 1155 I am not in Colorado, in GA, but have some friends and insights on your state. Wow just reading up on Dougco– ya’ll’re up against it. Good luck and big courage to you all. Great you are bringing Anthony Cody there– that will help stir up and motivate the troops
Here is the event on Face book, Bertis
https://www.facebook.com/events/1378512652376372/
If you need more info, let me know and thanks for passing this around!!
As we move into implementing “accountability” this year, it is pretty clear that there is theory and there is reality. Our governor says he is a “big picture” guy. He sees Picasso while in real life we’re painting Rembrandts. Planning is a surreal world mix of micromanaging legislatures, talking points and sound bytes, and a plot from Emperor has No Clothes. Should be an interesting year. I just hope at some point I can teach kids how to learn.
While I sympathize with your feelings, the fact is that American public schools have – on average (and there are many exceptions that prove the rule) – have failed to deliver for decades. While it may be politically correct to blame this on parents, greedy administrators, arrogant bureaucrats and stupid politicians, at some point teachers have to share some of the blame. The stats on how our kids perform globally are unfortunate, especially when you consider how much money we spend on education compared to many other countries that do better – at least on those standard tests so many hate so much. I understand that there are all kinds of issues with those comparisons but the overall impression is that whatever our teachers are providing to our students, they are not consuming it properly – again on average. If things were working so well before the era of teacher assessments, why were we already a “Nation at Risk” in the early 1980’s?
As I have said elsewhere, the problem may be somewhat related to the “lower average academic quality of students seeking to become teachers and the poor quality of teacher education schools relative to other professional schools” (this is true despite the many outstanding teachers that prove the rule). It is also probably more related to the changing needs of our society, the different learning and working styles of the current crop of high school and younger students (more integrated mentally with digital devices and the web). These issues are explored by Professor Sugata Mitra http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugata_Mitra and others. They may presage a radically changed role for teachers and schools going forward, much like word processor and computer technology changed the fortunes of skilled typesetters in the post WW.II period and ebooks and the web have altered the fate of journalists and publishers in this new century.
Don’t worry change is also in the wings for lawyers, accountants, engineers, scientists and doctors as a result of expert systems and artificial intelligence. The half life of professional knowledge is dropping fast. It is now well below five years. Finally, I don’t think many people dispute anymore the compelling need – at least in the STEM or STEAM subjects – for teachers to have much deeper domain knowledge than they – again on average – appear to have. Technology may solve this problem but it is still a strong contributor to the poor performance of many teachers today.
Geoffrey Henny
Adjunct Professor of Innovation and Creativity, Ann Arbor, Michigan (educated in the US, UK, France and Switzerland)
(Teaches community college and four year college students, post graduates and faculty at multiple institutions in Michigan).
Former Director of Biomedical Technology Transfer the University of Michigan and the Michigan Core Technology Alliance (University of Michigan, Michigan State University, Wayne State University and the Van Andel Institute).
Former advisor to the Washtenaw Intermediate School District (Michigan) and the Ann Arbor Schools on School-to-Work.
Former CEO of several high technology companies (including an international robotics and automation company, and an expert system/AI company).
Former executive with Shell International Petroleum Company and Diversified Chemical Technologies Inc.
Ghenny, your factoids are suspect, your credentials don’t impress, and your arguments are corrupted by evolutionary psychology. The human brain has changed very little for thousands of years, it certainly isn’t global. Don’t mistake information processing for thinking, that denies creativity. The humanities have been with us much longer than advanced technology, and they will still be there for us when the current fascination has run its course. If you can stop trying to be the one who has all the answers, and just read and listen, there’s a lot to learn here.
You need to have better justification for your assertion that “public schools have failed to deliver for decades”. Do you mean on international tests such as the PISA? You would know this oft quoted test has shown a strong correlation between poverty and the outcomes, but not much more.
Do you mean college readiness? You need to define this as well. Colleges tend to point downstream but also struggle themselves to adequately focus on teaching students. I am not entirely convinced colleges are not just shifting the blame (and cost) of education to K12 rather than work with secondary schools as (equal) partners.
Spending has increased for K12 as for many other services but few would argue post secondary education has remained affordable or held spending to any reasonable measure of inflation. But are you calculating K12 spending using U.S. nominal dollars? Certainly percent GDP spent on education would be a more accurate measure and there we rank around 55th globally. In fact, U.S. teacher salaries are declining relative to the other nations.
I’ve spent a few(!) years myself in business, grad school, startups, universities, whatever you want for a creds list. Surely, we would agree that if a high tech company released a product (CCSS) with no market research, no quality assurance, no evidence if it even works, and coerced every customer to use it – that company would be out of business if not the laughing stock of the industry. Why our nation thinks that is OK for education under the guise of accountability is troubling.
I’ve been deep into high tech all my teen and adult life. I’ve come full circle with the realization that technology is a tool – nothing more. Blind dependence on technology can simply replace one set of problems with another. Technology supplanting humanity is a philosophical question but humans must maintain a choice. Plus step into a classroom and you’ll see kids begging for real human teacher interaction after 40 minutes of Khan videos.
Teachers are taking all the blame for purely political and ideological reasons. That is not productive. I do not share your distain for teachers or their capabilities. I’ve known many who graduated top of their class, hold multiple degrees and world experience, have an amazing gift of organizational and motivational skills any top CEO would envy. It is time to stop listening solely to those in the ivory towers, marbled halls, and mansions. It is time to start listening to teachers.
Ghenny,
Can you be molecle-precise as to how you define or prove that “American schools have failed to deliver for decades?”
I’m sincerely not sure what you mean . . . .
I too would like to hear more. For such claimed impressive credentials, the posters claims – schools are failing, teachers are to blame, teachers are not accountable, teachers are inferior, schools are too expensive – sound more like Fox News talking points than than informed observations. The hysteria and paranoia stirred by “A Nation at Risk” over American exceptionalism has led to a slow erosion of support for teachers and an undermining of the classroom.
Crickets. ghenny, if you can support your position with data then do so, otherwise it is best to stay silent. I believe statements have no place in this conversation.
My greatest hope would be that all those involved in giving schools letter grades would be required to read Phyllis’ thoughtful, well-reasoned letter–and then tested on their comprehension of these complex ideas.
One time, at band camp. . . (just kidding);
One time in one of my rock bands there was tension between the very large egos of one of the guitar players (who loved his songs and mostly wanted them performed) and the bass player. The truth is the rest of us just wanted to play the music and were not emotional about the songs, but in order to decrease the tension we all agreed to go through our usual playlists and rate the songs. And we did. We gave them each a letter grade and then set our set lists accordingly–sets needed to be dominated by As and Bs, and Cs were for the end of the last set and we ditched the Ds and Fs.
That lasted for one gig. And then, the band broke up.
And I know the guitar player was offended by the grades.
So in an effort to decrease tension, we came up with a grading system that resulted in more tension and nailed the final nail in our proverbial Jibblin the Froeline (that was our name) coffin.
Perhaps the grades have a lot of motivation. But to use them to quell conflict is/ was a bad idea. Grading schools is passive aggressive and likely, too, inspired simply to avoid difficult conversations or . . . something like that.
I wish my band had not used grades for our songs. It killed the magic and, ultimately, killed the band.
And sadly that is the idea of the people behind the scheme. They don’t want what we want. IMHO
“If a test is to be meaningful, it should only be used for diagnostic or for evaluative purposes.”
Yay Phyllis!
Does that enforesment depend on who the test is used to evaluate?
The “enforcement” of a test is used to evaluate results, which in turn drive which students need to be further helped and how they will be helped.
The data are what shape the next steps in a teacher’s plan book. They are also converted into specific and corrective feedback by the teacher for the student.
You have been teaching at a college level for – what – 22 years, as you have, I believe, previously mentioned . . . Or something like that.
I am not clear as to why you did not know this, TE, as evidenced by your comment.
And – not to give you a crash course in clarity and specificity in writing – but tests are not “enforced”. Policies are.
Tests are “given”, “used to measure”, “serve as one of several tools for analysis”, etc., but they are not “enforced”.
Please check your writing for clarity before posting.
Another autocorrect issue. Endorsement not enforcement.
Results of final exams may shape how the course is taught next year, but those exams are given to evaluate this year’s students.
Excellent post! I love how she asserts that “Most teachers can assess what is going on in their classrooms by walking up and down he aisles, by looking at student work, by looking and listening to what students are doing and by reading the clues of the classroom environment. Can those things be measured on a data sheet? Probably not.
However, most of us know a good school, a good class, a good teacher when we see it,”.
I also LOVE how she says teachers should be allowed to create our own programs and assessments. My school system adopted the Common Core Scott Foresman/Pearson edition of Reading Street and we had one of their reps. training us on the new series today. The only thing that I got out of the training was the idea that as long as he had access to a SMART Board or could read and had a copy of the teachers edition, even a caveman could teach reading to a class just by following the series to a T and abarakadabara, the class would all be reading and college & career ready!
I think teachers will be limited in their ability to design their own programs and assessments as long as students are assigned to schools based on geography and teachers based on some unclear criteria. The only way to justify such a system is to claim there is such uniformity in the system that it does not matter which school/teacher a student is assigned to.
Teachers are able to design programs and assessments based on the students in their classroom. Geography and unclear criteria?
Teacher autonomy is independent of where children end up going to school. There is no such thing as an “if/then” relation in this context.
Please check you writing for logic.
I think the two are closely related. If a teacher or school drifts to far in the direction of , say, a Waldorf education, there will be too many families in a catchment area that will object to that education and demand that their students be allowed to attend a different school. There will also be families outside of the catchment area that would desire that type of education and demand to be allowed to send their students to the school.
The only way to maintain the traditional zoned system is for schools in the district to be similar enough to each other that parents see the assignment to a particular school as having little impact on their student’s education. This is why any parent in my town who wishes a Montessori, Waldorf, or progressive education must attend a private school.
My last comment was directed to TE.
TE, franchise restaurants offer the dubious quality of uniformity, i.e., ‘at least you know what you’re getting’. The eating is better at local restaurants which must respond to the idiosyncracies of the local market.
I certainly agree with your point about franchise restaurants but I am not sure how it applies here.
If we want to go with the restaurant analogy, what if you were randomly assigned to eat at one restaurant every day and the menu was determined by a restaurant board that was elected by the community. Would you expect your restaurant to be more like a cutting edge local restaurant or Applebee’s?
We need to educate our public about the reasons behind the decisions being made. I cannot wait for Professor Ravitch’s new book to help in regard to educating people about what is happening in our educational system. In the meantime, please read the following:
Why do we say we need to compete globally, but we do not want to learn from those countries supposedly outperforming us? Please read the following and remember, Finland is one of the top scoring countries in math year after year. Let us read and learn.
Finland’s education expert Pasi Sahlberg
Finland’s Pasi Sahlberg is one of the world’s leading experts on school reform and the author of the best-selling “Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn About Educational Change in Finland?” In this piece he writes about whether the emphasis that American school reformers put on “teacher effectiveness” is really the best approach to improving student achievement.
He is director general of Finland’s Centre for International Mobility and Cooperation and has served the Finnish government in various positions and worked for the World Bank in Washington D.C. He has also been an adviser for numerous governments internationally about education policies and reforms, and is an adjunct professor of education at the University of Helsinki and University of Oulu. He can be reached at pasi.sahlberg@cimo.fi.
By Pasi Sahlberg
Many governments are under political and economic pressure to turn around their school systems for higher rankings in the international league tables. Education reforms often promise quick fixes within one political term. Canada, South Korea, Singapore and Finland are commonly used models for the nations that hope to improve teaching and learning in their schools. In search of a silver bullet, reformers now turn their eyes on teachers, believing that if only they could attract “the best and the brightest” into the teaching profession, the quality of education would improve.
“Teacher effectiveness” is a commonly used term that refers to how much student performance on standardized tests is determined by the teacher. This concept hence applies only to those teachers who teach subjects on which students are tested. Teacher effectiveness plays a particular role in education policies of nations where alternative pathways exist to the teaching profession.
In the United States, for example, there are more than 1,500 different teacher-preparation programs. The range in quality is wide. In Singapore and Finland only one academically rigorous teacher education program is available for those who desire to become teachers. Likewise, neither Canada nor South Korea has fast-track options into teaching, such as Teach for America or Teach First in Europe. Teacher quality in high-performing countries is a result of careful quality control at entry into teaching rather than measuring teacher effectiveness in service.
In recent years the “no excuses”’ argument has been particularly persistent in the education debate. There are those who argue that poverty is only an excuse not to insist that all schools should reach higher standards. Solution: better teachers. Then there are those who claim that schools and teachers alone cannot overcome the negative impact that poverty causes in many children’s learning in school. Solution: Elevate children out of poverty by other public policies.
For me the latter is right. In the United States today, 23 percent of children live in poor homes. In Finland, the same way to calculate child poverty would show that figure to be almost five times smaller. The United States ranked in the bottom four in the recent United Nations review on child well-being. Among 29 wealthy countries, the United States landed second from the last in child poverty and held a similarly poor position in “child life satisfaction.” Teachers alone, regardless of how effective they are, will not be able to overcome the challenges that poor children bring with them to schools everyday.
Finland is not a fan of standardization in education. However, teacher education in Finland is carefully standardized. All teachers must earn a master’s degree at one of the country’s research universities. Competition to get into these teacher education programs is tough; only “the best and the brightest” are accepted. As a consequence, teaching is regarded as an esteemed profession, on par with medicine, law or engineering. There is another “teacher quality” checkpoint at graduation from School of Education in Finland. Students are not allowed to earn degrees to teach unless they demonstrate that they possess knowledge, skills and morals necessary to be a successful teacher.
But education policies in Finland concentrate more on school effectiveness than on teacher effectiveness. This indicates that what schools are expected to do is an effort of everyone in a school, working together, rather than teachers working individually.
In many under-performing nations, I notice, three fallacies of teacher effectiveness prevail.
The first belief is that “the quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers.” This statement became known in education policies through the influential McKinsey & Company report titled “How the world’s best performing school systems come out on top”. Although the report takes a broader view on enhancing the status of teachers by better pay and careful recruitment this statement implies that the quality of an education system is defined by its teachers. By doing this, the report assumes that teachers work independently from one another. But teachers in most schools today, in the United States and elsewhere, work as teams when the end result of their work is their joint effort.
The role of an individual teacher in a school is like a player on a football team: all teachers are vital, but the culture of the school is even more important for the quality of the school. Team sports offer numerous examples of teams that have performed beyond expectations because of leadership, commitment and spirit. Take the U.S. ice hockey team in the 1980 Winter Olympics, when a team of college kids beat both Soviets and Finland in the final round and won the gold medal. The quality of Team USA certainly exceeded the quality of its players. So can an education system.
The second fallacy is that “the most important single factor in improving quality of education is teachers.” This is the driving principle of former D.C. schools chancellor Michele Rhee and many other “reformers” today. This false belief is central to the “no excuses” school of thought. If a teacher was the most important single factor in improving quality of education, then the power of a school would indeed be stronger than children’s family background or peer influences in explaining student achievement in school.
Research on what explains students’ measured performance in school remains mixed. A commonly used conclusion is that 10% to 20% of the variance in measured student achievement belongs to the classroom, i.e., teachers and teaching, and a similar amount is attributable to schools, i.e., school climate, facilities and leadership. In other words, up to two-thirds of what explains student achievement is beyond the control of schools, i.e., family background and motivation to learn.
Over thirty years of systematic research on school effectiveness and school improvement reveals a number of characteristics that are typical of more effective schools. Most scholars agree that effective leadership is among the most important characteristics of effective schools, equally important to effective teaching. Effective leadership includes leader qualities, such as being firm and purposeful, having shared vision and goals, promoting teamwork and collegiality and frequent personal monitoring and feedback. Several other characteristics of more effective schools include features that are also linked to the culture of the school and leadership: Maintaining focus on learning, producing a positive school climate, setting high expectations for all, developing staff skills, and involving parents. In other words, school leadership matters as much as teacher quality.
The third fallacy is that “If any children had three or four great teachers in a row, they would soar academically, regardless of their racial or economic background, while those who have a sequence of weak teachers will fall further and further behind”. This theoretical assumption is included in influential policy recommendations, for instance in “Essential Elements of Teacher Policy in ESEA: Effectiveness, Fairness and Evaluation” by the Center for American Progress to the U.S. Congress. Teaching is measured by the growth of student test scores on standardized exams.
This assumption presents a view that education reform alone could overcome the powerful influence of family and social environment mentioned earlier. It insists that schools should get rid of low-performing teachers and then only hire great ones. This fallacy has the most practical difficulties. The first one is about what it means to be a great teacher. Even if this were clear, it would be difficult to know exactly who is a great teacher at the time of recruitment. The second one is, that becoming a great teacher normally takes five to ten years of systematic practice. And determining the reliably of ‘effectiveness’ of any teacher would require at least five years of reliable data. This would be practically impossible.
Everybody agrees that the quality of teaching in contributing to learning outcomes is beyond question. It is therefore understandable that teacher quality is often cited as the most important in-school variable influencing student achievement. But just having better teachers in schools will not automatically improve students’ learning outcomes.
Lessons from high-performing school systems, including Finland, suggest that we must reconsider how we think about teaching as a profession and what is the role of the school in our society.
First, standardization should focus more on teacher education and less on teaching and learning in schools. Singapore, Canada and Finland all set high standards for their teacher-preparation programs in academic universities. There is no Teach for Finland or other alternative pathways into teaching that wouldn’t include thoroughly studying theories of pedagogy and undergo clinical practice. These countries set the priority to have strict quality control before anybody will be allowed to teach – or even study teaching! This is why in these countries teacher effectiveness and teacher evaluation are not such controversial topics as they are in the U.S. today.
Second, the toxic use of accountability for schools should be abandoned. Current practices in many countries that judge the quality of teachers by counting their students’ measured achievement only is in many ways inaccurate and unfair. It is inaccurate because most schools’ goals are broader than good performance in a few academic subjects. It is unfair because most of the variation of student achievement in standardized tests can be explained by out-of-school factors. Most teachers understand that what students learn in school is because the whole school has made an effort, not just some individual teachers. In the education systems that are high in international rankings, teachers feel that they are empowered by their leaders and their fellow teachers. In Finland, half of surveyed teachers responded that they would consider leaving their job if their performance would be determined by their student’s standardized test results.
Third, other school policies must be changed before teaching becomes attractive to more young talents. In many countries where teachers fight for their rights, their main demand is not more money but better working conditions in schools. Again, experiences from those countries that do well in international rankings suggest that teachers should have autonomy in planning their work, freedom to run their lessons the way that leads to best results, and authority to influence the assessment of the outcomes of their work. Schools should also be trusted in these key areas of the teaching profession.
To finish up, let’s do one theoretical experiment. We transport highly trained Finnish teachers to work in, say, Indiana in the United States (and Indiana teachers would go to Finland). After five years–assuming that the Finnish teachers showed up fluent in English and that education policies in Indiana would continue as planned–we would check whether these teachers have been able to improve test scores in state-mandated student assessments.
I argue that if there were any gains in student achievement they would be marginal. Why? Education policies in Indiana and many other states in the United States create a context for teaching that limits (Finnish) teachers to use their skills, wisdom and shared knowledge for the good of their students’ learning. Actually, I have met some experienced Finnish-trained teachers in the United States who confirm this hypothesis. Based on what I have heard from them, it is also probable that many of those transported Finnish teachers would be already doing something else than teach by the end of their fifth year – quite like their American peers.
Conversely, the teachers from Indiana working in Finland–assuming they showed up fluent in Finnish–stand to flourish on account of the freedom to teach without the constraints of standardized curricula and the pressure of standardized testing; strong leadership from principals who know the classroom from years of experience as teachers; a professional culture of collaboration; and support from homes unchallenged by poverty.
International Comparisons of Students
You’ll Be Shocked by How Many of the World’s Top Students Are American
JORDAN WEISSMANNAPR 30 2013, 2:00 PM ET
(Reuters)
When you look at the average performance of American students on international test scores, our kids come off as a pretty middling bunch. If you rank countries based on their very fine differences, we come in 14th in reading, 23rd in science, and 25th in math. Those finishes led Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to flatly declare that “we’re being out-educated.”
And on average, maybe we are. But averages also sometimes obscure more than they reveal. My colleague Derek Thompson has written before about how, once you compare students from similar income and class backgrounds, our relative performance improves dramatically, suggesting that our educational problems may be as much about our sheer number of poor families as our supposedly poor schools. This week, I stumbled on another data point that belies the stereotype of dimwitted American teens.
When it comes to raw numbers, it turns out we generally have far more top performers than any other developed nation.
That’s according to the graph below from Economic Policy Institute’s recent report on America’s supply of science and tech talent. Among OECD nations in 2006, the United States claimed a third of high-performing students in both reading and science, far more than our next closest competitor, Japan. On math, we have a bit less to be proud of — we just claimed 14 percent of the high-performers, compared to 15.2 percent for Japan and 16.2 percent of South Korea.
Part of this is easy to explain: The United States is big. Very big. And it’s a far bigger country than the other members of the OECD. We claim roughly 27 percent of the group’s 15-to-19-year-olds. Japan, in contrast, has a smidge over 7 percent. So in reading and in science, we punch above our weight by just a little, while in math we punch below.
But the point remains: In two out of three subjects, Americans are over-represented among the best students.
If we have so many of the best minds, why are our average scores so disappointingly average? As Rutgers’s Hal Salzman and Georgetown’s B. Lindsay Lowell, who co-authored the EPI report, noted in a 2008 Nature article, our high scorers are balanced out by a very large number of low scorers. Our education system, just like our economy, is polarized.
What’s the takeaway? Salzman and Lowell argue that our large numbers of top scorers should help put to rest the concern that we’re losing the global talent race executives and politicians love to fret about. I’m not sure they’ll do the trick, though. In 2009, Chinese students in Shanghai sat for the PISA test for the first time, and their scores were spectacular. Although data for its other mainland provinces hasn’t been published, the OECD’s test guru says they’re similarly impressive.It seems pretty likely, in other words, that China has more young math and science geniuses at its disposal than we do (whether that’s something that should be keeping any of us up at night is another issue). But Salzman and Lindsay make another point that’s worth dwelling on: You can’t replicate a country’s style of education without replicating its culture, so instead of looking abroad for ideas about how to teach our kids, as some policy-types are inclined to do, perhaps we should look at what’s succeeding here at home and spread it. Our schools are already producing plenty of bright thinkers of their own.
Thank you for reading this paper and let us pray for our children and grandchildren.
Concerned Grandparent
Great letter. An “A” grade really means that children who are not poor and have educated parents attend this school. An “F” means children who are poor and have uneducated parents attend this school. It really is an awful way to label a community.
“I have no issue with holding teachers to the highest standards….”
You should. And, no, spreading around the “accountability” is not the solution. The problem is that no one can define “highest standards”, at least not without reference to test scores.
I think that peer evaluation would work well as a way to endure high standards in teaching. I am thinking about something similar to the program used in Montgomery Count Maryland. There was a bit of a discussion about this last summer.
Beautifully said. I feel like you read my heart. Someday we (or our children, when their generation comes into power) will look at the testing/rating/accountability years and recognize them for the debacle they truly are.