Improving Education Through Better Teachers

theodp writes "The teaching profession gets schooled in cover stories from the big pubs this weekend, as Newsweek makes the case for Why We Must Fire Bad Teachers, and the NY Times offers the more hopeful Building a Better Teacher. For the past half-century, professional educators believed that if they could only find the right pedagogy, the right method of instruction, all would be well. They tried New Math, open classrooms, Whole Language — but nothing seemed to achieve significant or lasting improvements. But what they ignored was the elephant in the room — if the teacher sucks, the students suck. Or, as the Times more eloquently puts it: 'William Sanders, a statistician studying Tennessee teachers with a colleague, found that a student with a weak teacher for three straight years would score, on average, 50 percentile points behind a similar student with a strong teacher for those years. Teachers working in the same building, teaching the same grade, produced very different outcomes. And the gaps were huge.' But what makes a good teacher? When Bill Gates announced his foundation was investing $335 million in a project to improve teaching quality, he added a rueful caveat. 'Unfortunately, it seems the field doesn't have a clear view of what characterizes good teaching,' Gates said. 'I'm personally very curious.'"

Comments

It's not mainly about salaries

[TheLink]

All teachers need is a high enough salary to live a decent lifestyle (I know it's relative, but I'm sure you can figure out what I mean). Most good teachers have no illusions about becoming millionaires through teaching. They're not stupid after all. Being super rich is not their goal in life.

Good teachers enjoy teaching. Most don't like dealing with loads of admin crap, or politicking.

So you spend some of the money and resources not on high salaries, but on getting most of that crap out of the way.

Where high salaries can come in handy for teachers are: subsidized/free education for their own children[1], and housing loans/allowances (and in the USA, medical/health stuff).

I suggest that it may be cheaper to provide them that than to directly provide them higher salaries.

For example: instead of paying all teachers high enough salaries so that all their children can go to university, do masters, PhD etc, you just commit to paying for any of their children that want to (and meet the grade/entry requirements), and take a gamble that not all their children will want to do so, and not all would want to go to the most expensive universities[2] (and meet the entry requirements). And so I bet you end up paying less overall.

[1] It would be sad and ironic if teachers cannot afford to provide good education for their own children. And I'm sure most good teachers place significant value on education.

[2] and only the approved ones, otherwise people will be setting up "online super expensive university courses"...

Re:How do you develop good teachers?

[spaceman375]

Peer review. Not from the other teachers who work at the same school, but from teachers all over the state or country:
What I envision is that all teachers should log some 4 or 5 hours per month watching a video feed of a few randomly chosen teachers, and then give those teachers (and their bosses) feedback. This will lead to both nurturing the good teachers and quicker identification of those who should not be in charge of kids. Even those who are watching may learn something from seeing another's approach. Good all around.
The feedback should not be anonymous to avoid the occaisional personal connection that may arise. A bad review from your husband's ex should be challengable.

Why teachers matter.

[jshurst1]

Former Teach For America high school computer science and math teacher here. (I also taught at a school funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's High Tech High initiative noted in the summary.)

First, some positive comments. It's great to see studies like those mentioned in the Newsweek article attracting eyeballs in academia and the popular press. The conclusions may seem to border on the tautological for most of us (great teachers are great at teaching!), but such ideas are largely verboten in the public school system. If you haven't already RTFA, I'd suggest The Atlantic's treatment of the same material.

Anecdotally, I can fully corroborate Teach For America's data. Both in my school as well as those of my TFA colleagues, teachers that continually pushed themselves to excel and improve in their craft were able to consistently produce jaw-dropping results in their students' test scores. It really is amazing. As an example, I co-taught a summer school pre-calculus class with another TFAer in Watts a few years ago. We somehow managed to march through three years worth of material in those two months; our students went from being on average two grade levels behind to slightly above grade level. I attribute this success to Teach For America's philosophy of teacher excellence (which is similar to 'kaizen' in many regards).

The summary asks "What makes a good teacher?" This is the wrong question. There is no one thing that will make a teacher great (vibrant personality, deep subject knowledge, an M.S. Ed., etc.). Rather, it is an attitude that is willing to try anything (and, conversely, promptly reject the ineffective) to make students succeed. To use a math analogy, it is the second derivative that matters, not the current value or even the slope.

Disclaimer: this post does not necessarily reflect the views of my former employers.

Re:Prental Involment?

[fishexe]

In many "at risk" districts teachers spend more than half their day making sure the kids aren't hungry, are behaving in class, have their homework completed, and have the supplies that they need like pencils.

I can't speak to a wider trend, but I can verify this in the case of at least one public school. My wife teaches 9th graders and regularly brings food for her students just to make sure they have eaten, because there isn't any at home. She also gives them books that she's finished reading, because otherwise they wouldn't have any at home. Turns out when somebody actually takes the time to figure out what they're interested in, and then provides those books, these kids really like to read.