Posted on 08/29/2014 8:31:15 AM PDT by Kaslin
For the past half-century, and particularly since the 1983 "Nation at Risk" report, Americans have been heaving great sacks of money at schools. Federal spending alone has tripled since the 1970s. The New York Times calculates that the federal government now spends $107.6 billion on education yearly, which is layered over an estimated $524.7 billion spent by states and localities (source: National Center for Education Statistics).
Reformers have urged -- depending upon where they stand ideologically -- smaller class sizes, more accountability, merit pay for teachers and educational choice. Each year seems to bring a new fad: child-centered learning, new math, cooperative learning and so forth. The No Child Left Behind reform focused on testing. There have been proposals to repeal teacher tenure and to provide every child with a laptop. And always there are fights over curriculum -- the Common Core being the controversy du jour.
But perhaps the most promising thinking about education arises from the discovery from economist Eric Hanushek that the most important factor in student performance is the quality of the teacher. Not class size. Not spending per pupil. Not even curriculum.
Our system produces some great teachers, but only by luck. Each year, 400,000 new teachers enter American classrooms, many knowing little about the nuts and bolts of teaching. As Elizabeth Green argues in her new book, "Building a Better Teacher: How Teaching Works (and How to Teach it to Everyone)," our education schools do not teach the mechanics of teaching: how to control a classroom, how to engage students' imaginations, how to check for understanding. They've been sidetracked by educational psychology and fads at the expense of teaching how to teach.
Green cites "education entrepreneurs" including Doug Lemov, author of "Teach Like a Champion," and Deborah Loewenberg Ball, now dean of the University of Michigan's school of education, who focus on helping ordinary teachers to become great.
Lemov, an education reformer and consultant, was struck by something he found by poring over statistics from the state of New York. While the correlation between zip codes and educational success was notable, there were always outliers: schools or classrooms in which even kids from impoverished backgrounds were doing well. Lemov zeroed in on those schools and those particular teachers.
The result is found in the subtitle of "Teach Like a Champion": "49 Techniques That Put Students on the Path to College." Some of the techniques are inspired; others are quotidian but still important (like how not to waste time pleading for responses). The point is that teaching is a performance every day, which is not easy. Teachers must engage the interest and attention of their students (who bring all kinds of troubles from home), encourage the weak ones along with the strong, maintain discipline, and build a sense of team spirit. Lemov doesn't believe that anyone can be a great teacher, but he does think that with coaching and mentoring, good teachers can become great.
Some of Lemov's proven techniques will not surprise educational traditionalists. He believes in drill, though he calls it "muscle memory." A great teacher will drill arithmetic skills, for example, until they are second nature, so that students needn't stumble over the easy stuff when they get to algebra and geometry. (Education schools had disdained this as "drill and kill.") Another technique Lemov suggests is "cold calls" -- that is, having the teacher choose students randomly rather than just those who raise their hands. Each child, knowing he might be called upon, must be ready. (It works in law schools). A companion technique is "no opt out." If the child says he doesn't know, the teacher asks a related question to another student to narrow down the possible right answer and returns to the first child for a second chance.
There are broad suggestions about classroom management and more subtle and difficult challenges like maintaining "emotional constancy," that is refraining from showing anger when a child gets the wrong answer. Anger will teach a child to try to hide his ignorance rather than accept it as a normal part of the learning enterprise.
Teaching is a craft. It may be among the hardest to master. Renewed attention to teaching teaching seems long overdue.
Good teachers are only half of the equation. Good families are the other half. A kid coming from a home where education is not stressed and where good performance in school is not demanded will be very unlikely to succeed in school regardless of how good the teacher is. By contrast, kids from families who encourage education and demand good performance in school often succeed despite the presence of a poor teacher in the classroom. Certainly better teachers are to be desired, but I don’t think that will entirely fix our schools.
Nothing will improve in education until government is out of it. Every government program costs more and delivers less than promised. Public schools are dinosaurs and public universities are the last bastion of Communist true believers. Privatize all of it for real progress and innovation.
The problem starts with the fact that as a general rule, education majors come from the very bottom of the SAT barrel.
Too much of the required ‘continuing education’ is phone-it-in fluff designed to grant them higher salaries for doing nothing.
Outlaw teachers unions and start firing the slugs.
I have come to the conclusion that we do not want better teachers.... For example, folks with tremendous life experiences and substantial academic credentials are essentially prohibited from teaching in many states without certain certifications...while the very states have extreme shortages is competent teachers. Let me give you a personal example. I have a PhD in Chemical Engineering, easily providing the background to teach mathematics, chemistry and physics. I have also won awards for teaching at very prestigious universities in those very subject or related capstone courses that also include business and regulatory issues.... I am also rapidly approaching retirement and complete financial independence. Given the HUGE push for STEM related education, I find myself locked out of bringing this passion for science, math and careers in those fields to high school kids because I do not have certain certifications required by the State of Florida, yet I could teach in ANY University in the US including those in FL. My first take is that this is little more than the teacher protection syndicate with union interest using the regulatory muscle to prevent highly qualified individuals from participating.
The tired aphorism, ‘Those who can, do. Those who cannot, teach” is so deeply ingrained in our collective psyche that it will be difficult to pry it out.
Not to mention the pressure on young people to get a college education when many of them have little or no business going in the first place. Plus, if you’re not particularly adept at the ‘hard’ (as opposed to ‘soft’) curricula, going into teaching seems like (begging the reader’s forgiveness in advance) a ‘no-brainer.’
There's your problem.
All the emphasis is on 'the nuts and bolts of teaching'.
It's bass-ackwards.
The emphasis must be first on knowing the 'nuts and bolts' of subject matter.
I find this to be completely ridiculous on the state of Florida’s part. The school districts should be fighting over you.
And that's actually easy to fix. Get rid of the schools of education. Get rid of the education degree. If you want to teach math, you should be required to get a degree in math, and then do an apprenticeship under a recognized master teacher.
Perhaps we should investigate how private schools hire new teachers.
What qualifications do they look for? How do they train new teachers in the art of teaching? How do they identify and eliminate the incompetent?
First day of school, the man came dressed as Henry VIII, all the way down to the turkey leg. We were mesmerized! Awesome class.
He spent nearly every summer in Europe and liked high school kids better than college kids.
You really can tell when a teacher has passion and when they are just phoning it in.
Not really. If you did get a teaching job in a unionized school district, you'd be paying union dues. So the union wouldn't care how you got there.
But you do bring up a very good point. There's got to be a streamlined way for folks like you to get a state teaching certificate. Take one semester of teaching methods, then off you go.
Perhaps the obstacle here is not the unions, but the college schools of education. The colleges would certainly prefer you take not one semester of teaching methods, but four years.
Um, my 32 students are taking a vocabulary and grammar correction quiz silently. All you need is someone that talks to them like adults and punishes fairly when they refuse to act like adults.
Well ... there you go.
You can get that kind of enthusiasm for the subject out of someone who has intensively studied or worked in that discipline ... but not likely out of someone who studied ‘education’.
And what do they refuse to try? Classroom discipline, including physical punishment for offenders. Maybe if teachers spent less time baby-sitting, they could spend more time teaching...
“My first take is that this is little more than the teacher protection syndicate with union interest using the regulatory muscle to prevent highly qualified individuals from participating.”
Agreed. And Democrat politicians will enforce it forever, all “for the children”.
I have an interesting perspective on that, because I taught for three years in a private school before becoming a public school teacher.
My private school interview focused solely on my qualifications to teach the subject matter (chemistry and physics in my case). There was no discussion at all about the latest teaching fads, etc.
For me, that was refreshing. But I must say that the school was taking a chance there.
Because I had an industrial chemistry degree, and had not done any student teaching by that time. I could have been an expert chemist, but a horrible teacher. And the school would have found that out the hard way.
>>But perhaps the most promising thinking about education arises from the discovery from economist Eric Hanushek that the most important factor in student performance is the quality of the teacher.
This is why Common Core is such bullsh*t. I teach high school English in a public school, I have total control of my class, and my students like the class even with the heavy workload. They have to learn 20 vocab words a week, start the class by correcting grammar, and learn composition.
All you need to be successful is experience, tenacity, and a POSITIVE attitude. I may be the only conservative teacher they talk to in their HS life.
>>But perhaps the most promising thinking about education arises from the discovery from economist Eric Hanushek that the most important factor in student performance is the quality of the teacher.
This is why Common Core is such bullsh*t. I teach high school English in a public school, I have total control of my class, and my students like the class even with the heavy workload. They have to learn 20 vocab words a week, start the class by correcting grammar, and learn composition.
All you need to be successful is experience, tenacity, and a POSITIVE attitude. I may be the only conservative teacher they talk to in their HS life.
I doubt that better teachers are coming.
Another Reason to Homeschool
ARTH
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