The Educated Society

Accountability initiatives like Race to the Top has focused on creating models that gauge teacher effectiveness by linking evaluations (in part) to student progress. Under New York’s new legislation, for example, 40 percent of a teacher’s grade will be based on standardized tests (with the balance based on more subjective measures such as principal observations). In Florida and Colorado, the minimum will be 50%. All told, 15 to 20 states have passed or are considering overhauling legislation to meet this federal mandate. Such emphasis on test scores is misguided, however, considering that teacher quality, though the most influential in-school factor, generally accounts for less than 20% of student outcomes (some, like studies by Rivkin, Hanushek & Kain, 1998 and Goldhaber, Bewer & Anderson, 1999, assert that teachers account for no more than 8%).

Matthew Di Carlo of the Shanker Blog argues that random error, weighting issues, and the complex interaction of factors make teacher evaluations fraught with risk, and calls into question the validity of such performance-based evaluations. Though significant, this issue skirts an even more fundamental question:

How can teachers be made more accountable if they are not adequately prepared?

A new study released by the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) found that three-quarter of teacher preparation programs nationwide were “generally weak, with fully 25 percent falling into the most deficient category.” The report concludes that:

• there is a saturation of student teachers and not enough cooperating teachers to make this process efficient and beneficial;
• placement schools, where student teachers learn the trade, lack rigorous criteria for selecting cooperating teachers;
• teacher prep institutions have anemic influence with school districts on student placement and preparation; and
• institutions also provide inadequate supervision, guidance, and feedback for student teachers to grow.

I was a product of such programs; I remember as a student teacher in New York City in the early 2000s only sporadic observations by my institution supervisor. In fact, my cooperating teacher, though a natural talent, was himself a student teacher just the prior year, with little pedagogical experience to pass on. Convenience and expediency characterized the whole process, which lends further credence to the NCTQ report. And one quickly learns that teaching in America is a personal enterprise — how you run your class is really up to you — an insular culture that permeates and ultimately undermines the profession. A recent pilot program in New York revealed almost 1 in 5 teachers (18%) to be “ineffective,” according to Crain’s New York Business. No doubt this lack of preparation has contributed to the high attrition rate (nearly 50 percent of new teachers leave within five years, according to the National Education Association), which of course further debilitates the profession.

The bottom line? New teachers are not being developed properly for teacher evaluations to have any meaning. If the purpose of the proposed evaluations is to ensure high quality teaching and student learning, then a poorly prepared teacher will not only fail the evaluation but also imperil student progress. The lack of rigor in the teaching profession, reflected by the low priority of education in American culture, will contribute to a collective and systemic failure. Only now has the talk of rigor reached critical mass.

The solution is for educators policymakers is to overhaul teacher prep programs (as I have advocated in a previous post, Putting the Focus on the Profession, Not the Teachers, and as outlined in both the NCEE report, Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: An American Agenda for Education Reform and the 2010 McKinsey Report, Closing the Talent Gap). This means emphasizing more rigorous screening, preparation, and support as has been done in high achieving countries like Finland, South Korea, and Singapore. Change expert and education reform authority Michael Fullan calls this capacity-building. Only 23% of new American teachers come from the top third of college graduates, according to the McKinsey Report, compared with Finland, for example, where only 15% of college graduate applicants are admitted. The result? A higher paid, respected group of professionals capable of making autonomous decisions that helps all students. Isn’t that what Americans should be striving for?

Addendum: The New York Post reported that the teacher certification tests for New York has a pass rate of over 99%, which certainly confirms my assertions that: 1) current teacher preparation programs are feckless; and that 2) proper recruitment is at the root of the problem, followed by substandard support and preparation. See details of the article here.  

This is not another article bashing charter schools — far from it. They continue to thrive not only because of widespread dissatisfaction with public schools, but more importantly because they have duplicated the quintessential culture of education that I have advocated for (i.e., that student learning and subsequent success are possible when surrounded by support and commitment from all parties equally: the family, administration, teachers, and the community). I wrote about the limited success of Harlem’s Promise Academy, whose modest gains were only accomplished when health and other non-academic interventions were as equally emphasized as academic ones. This comprehensive approach is lacking in public schools; but even more so, the charter school culture of quality education over everything else reminds me of the singular focus of education in Asian cultures.

Public schools and charter schools should not be competitors in a zero-sum game. Though both are publicly funded, they are apples and oranges whose achievements cannot be compared, as most pundits are wont to do.

Charter schools may not have an admissions criteria (though parents must apply, and limited spots can be filled by a lottery), but they do have an unofficial one for retention, in the form of signed contracts. These agreements with parents (and/or students) are based on rules, obligations, and expectations to support children’s behavior and academic progression. They tend to be two to three pages and often specify expectations, such as committing to volunteer eight hours a semester, ensuring student punctuality, or even providing a conducive environment for doing homework. (See samples for Kingsley Charter School in Dekalb County, GA or Palm Bay Community Charter School in Florida.)

If the parent or child violates the contract (e.g. a parent fails to come in for parent teacher conferences, or a child repeatedly misbehaves), corrective action can be taken. If it doesn’t work, the child can be “asked” to transfer. That’s what happened to Matthew Sprowal, whose behavioral disruptions at Harlem Success Academy 3 Charter School in New York led to being counseled out. Though he has thrived at Public School 75 ever since, his mother Katherine was disillusioned by the fallout. Their painful experience was highlighted in the recent NYT article, Message from a Charter School: Thrive or Transfer.

In this way, charter schools are more specialized, much as Stuyvesant or Bronx Science are for the academically and mathematically ambitious or LaGuardia Arts for the creatively-inclined. Critics are incorrect when they argue charter schools “cherry pick” their students; in fact, they do not. But to stay, a student must have a relentless focus on academic learning and proper behavior based on these unofficial contracts. Though teachers work to correct any deviance, ultimately, maladjusted students will be referred elsewhere based on their needs — a thoroughly understandable solution to maintain the integrity of the school’s culture of education.

That is really the difference between them and public schools, which cannot counsel out students no matter how difficult or expensive they may be. In the end, because they serve different populations, one cannot make the argument that charter schools are, or are not, better than public schools. They are simply specialized, by serve disadvantaged students whose parents are motivated to change. It only becomes a zero sum game when dollars meant for general public schools are diverted to charter schools in the mistaken belief that their model should completely replace public schools. Who, then, will take on the difficult and the truly disadvantaged?