Why Should Teachers Be Coddled When Other Workers Are Not?
It sometimes makes sense to help a worker who is failing at their job improve their technique. It sometimes does not. Wise administrators -- in education or elsewhere -- are able to see potential and encourage it.
David L. Kirp writes in The New York Times on Sunday that "Teaching is not a business," arguing for different standards for judging teachers than we do in judging workers in business. I think this is a mistake and will continue to breed the kind of unfirable crappy teachers that are currently a problem in the system.
Kirp:
Firing teachers, rather than giving them the coaching they need, undermines morale. In some cases it may well discourage undergraduates from pursuing careers in teaching, and with a looming teacher shortage as baby boomers retire, that's a recipe for disaster. Merit pay invites rivalries among teachers, when what's needed is collaboration.
I had Ashley Merryman on my radio show on Sunday on the science of competition. What the science shows is that competition breeds excellence -- and collaboration.
Also, charter schools have been shown to be doing very well in educating kids, contrary to what he writes in the piece -- which is why parents fight tooth and nail to get their kids into them.
At HuffPo, Peter Cunningham, who we'll forgive for being a former government guy -- Former Assistant Secretary for Communications and Outreach, U.S. Department of Education -- fact-checks Kirp's ass, as the saying goes:
Like many of his anti-testing allies, Kirp makes the absurd claim that, "high-stakes tests are treated as the single metric of success." Wrong again. Not a single "reform" policy is based on test scores alone -- not evaluation of teachers or principals nor interventions in low-performing schools. These policies are all based on multiple measures and most reformers I know consider high school graduation and college-going rates a more important measure of success than test scores.In yet another exaggeration, he says, "Failing schools are closed and so-called turnaround model schools, with new teachers and administrators, take their place." Actually, under the Obama administration's "turnaround" initiative (School Improvement Grant Program), only a tiny handful of the 1300 schools in the program were closed and in about 75 percent of the schools, none of the teachers were forcibly replaced. Interestingly, in the 25 percent of schools where management and some staff were replaced, achievement gains were greatest, suggesting we should be more aggressive about changing staff in underperforming schools, not less.
Here we can take our cues from New York City Schools Chancellor Carmen Farina, who, according to a profile in the New York Times, replaced 80 percent of her staff when she took over P.S. 6 in New York, achieving significant gains in student achievement.
Next up, he dismisses charters with a misleading over-simplification: "Charter students do about the same overall as their public school counterparts." Well, not exactly. Some of them do a lot better with similarly disadvantaged populations and the purpose of charters, as union leader Albert Shanker pointed out, was to drive student-focused innovations from which traditional public schools could learn.
Professor Kirp's next line of attack is especially baffling. He writes: "While these reformers talk a lot about markets and competition, the essence of a good education -- bringing together talented teachers, engaged students and a challenging curriculum -- goes undiscussed." Huh? On reform websites all across the internet, the discussion never stops.
Harsanyi via Balko
Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at August 18, 2014 10:39 PM
"Professor of public policy" great. He knows a lot about teaching in failing, inner city schools.
However, one overlooked factor: Charter schools do better because the students are better. Parents compete to get their kids into these schools, which means that you have a group of students whose parents actually care about education. Surely any but the worst of teachers will rise to this occasion - the opportunity to teach rather than to babysit.
a_random_guy at August 18, 2014 10:43 PM
The public schools are fulfilling the plans of John Dewey and the authoritarian state. This was the intent from the beginning. John Dewey was a social planner and a still celebrated philosopher of the US public schools:
"Independent self-reliant people would be a counterproductive anachronism in the collective society of the future where people will be defined by their associations (1896)."
[ Restated: The groups you belong to will be much more important than what you know, in the socialist, planned world of the future. ]
"The children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society that is coming, where everyone would be interdependent (1899)."
[ Restated: We don't want independent thinkers. A few smart children will be needed to run the society, from the proper families and trained in the private schools. Any excess from the public schools will merely spoil social harmony by needlessly trying to change or oppose the scientific plans of the elite.]
In such a world, publc school teachers need only to be supporters of the socialist good. Knowledge is a social construct.
Andrew_M_Garland at August 19, 2014 4:51 AM
There's an oversupply of K-5 teachers.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/02/18/oversupply-elementary-education/1917569/
Schools should take advantage of this, take the best, ditch the rest, as the saying goes.
Amy Alkon at August 19, 2014 7:22 AM
Also, charter schools have been shown to be doing very well in educating kids, contrary to what he writes in the piece -- which is why parents fight tooth and nail to get their kids into them.
Not necessarily; there are plenty of disastrous charter schools (and I live in an area where it's charter-school-a-go-go). What there are are mechanisms available to shut down a charter school if it's not working, which isn't the case with public schools.
However, one overlooked factor: Charter schools do better because the students are better. Parents compete to get their kids into these schools, which means that you have a group of students whose parents actually care about education.
This is exactly the point; charter schools tend to attract parents who give a shit, and discourage those who consider school to be publicly funded babysitting.
The problem isn't that it's difficult to fire teachers who are bad at their job; the problem is that it's impossible to fire parents who are bad at their job.
Kevin at August 19, 2014 9:58 AM
Teachers have some of the best spin doctors out there.
Ask people if authors are underpaid, and you'll get blank looks, or farmers, or shop-owners, chefs, beauticians, military, and you'll get blank looks form most peoples for most careers.
Ask about teaching, and you'll have most people saying they aren't paid enough.
Ask how much they are paid and you'll get blank stares, and a reiteration of not enough.
That is all advertizing and spin.
Joe j at August 19, 2014 10:06 AM
As long as we can cull the overpaid idiots who pass for administrators, too.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at August 19, 2014 6:03 PM
Kevin Says:
"The problem isn't that it's difficult to fire teachers who are bad at their job; the problem is that it's impossible to fire parents who are bad at their job."
BINGO!!!
Teachers make for convenient scape goats for uninvolved parents/guardians who do a piss poor job raising their children.
Artemis at August 19, 2014 8:03 PM
Teachers should be adequetely prepped for the job they need to do, and if that means giving them feed back and training, that's what it means.
NicoleK at August 20, 2014 10:32 AM
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