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The Role of Government in Enhancing Teacher Quality
In a panel discussion Thursday morning on the role of government
in enhancing teacher quality, moderator Dr. Stephen Goldsmith, professor of
government at Harvard University, asked Ted Sanders, executive director of the
Cardean Learning Group, what level of education reform has the most impact on
the future of education. According to Sanders, the state level was probably
where the greatest difference can be made.
Dr.
Goldsmith asked Henry Johnson, assistant secretary of elementary and secondary education
for the U.S. Department of Education, if there was a correlation between high-performance
teachers and the most effective teachers. Dr. Johnson said generally speaking,
yes. "That's what we're working on now," he said. "We're trying
to concentrate on classrooms of greatest need."
Dr.
Goldsmith asked Chester Finn, president of the Fordham Foundation, if the
government is doing more harm than good. When it comes to government, said
Finn, less is more. "Most people have the most confidence in the level of government
they've had the least experience with," he said. "I've worked at all
levels, and I don't have much confidence in any of them." If government imposed
fewer restrictions and schools could hire who they wanted—and were held
accountable—we would have a great improvement in education, argued Finn.
Sanders
said that government can help by putting more into research and development,
and by improving professional development. We ought to be willing to experiment
with very, very radical ideas, he said, because the situation as it stands has
serious problems.
Steve Robinson, aide to Senator
Barack Obama (D-IL), said we should put in place twenty competitive grants to
get ideas that work in the hands of the teachers and find out innovative
techniques that are working.
Finn addressed the
issue of certification, saying that while some of the panelists were certified
to teach, others were not, and that those who wanted to teach what they knew best,
wouldn't be able to because of their lack of certification. Some of the members
of the panel, he said, would make great teachers, particularly on the subject of
government, but they would have to go back and get certified before they could
walk into a classroom. "I don't mind background checks," he said, "but
all this certification is insane."
There is a
series of levers we could use, he said, but none is as important as recruiting.
We need to figure out how we can improve the pipeline.
Nina
Rees, vice president of strategic initiatives for the Knowledge Universe
Learning Group, said that teaching is as much an art as it is a science. We are
trying to recruit people to teach in inner city schools, but we are tied down
by bureaucratic rules. At the federal level, she agreed with Sanders that the
best thing the government can do is more research and development. Our portion
is awfully small, she said, and we need to increase it.
Dr.
Goldsmith brought up the subject of pay for performance, asking why not more?
Rees
said that in the most successful schools, there is a network in place to
facilitate communication rather than competition among colleagues.
For
Dr. Johnson, the critical components are "knowledgeable" and "skilled."
I don't care how we get that in place, he said, and we don't know who will
succeed going in. We need to look later.
Dr.
Goldsmith asked, why all these criteria like No Child Left Behind?
Sanders referred
to a slide showing the results of a study that indicated that five consecutive
years of quality teachers raised the achievement of students who were at the 14th
percentile to the 53rd percentile. We've got to find out how to
identify high-quality teachers and get them into the classroom, said Sanders. He
had originally wanted to be a math researcher, but he didn't have the money to
go straight through to a Ph.D. in number theory. This was just after Sputnik,
and math teachers were really in demand, so he decided to accept a teaching
job. He knew math, but not pedagogy. If it hadn't been for Eva Simmons, a
fellow teacher next door, he says he would have failed as a teacher.
Dr.
Goldsmith asked what we can do to remove the barriers to getting the good
teachers?
Robinson said it's hard to tell, because "teaching"
is a different thing at higher ed versus high school versus middle school. What
we really need, he said, is to figure out how we can we build a collegial
system.
Then why lower barriers? asked Dr.
Goldsmith.
Because then, said Robinson, we can set
up systems of mentoring on the job, rather than giving teachers a lotof theory
and then cutting them loose.
Are there sufficient
alternative routes to licensure? asked Dr. Goldsmith.
Sometimes,
said Rees, they are as burdensome as traditional routes. We need to give kids
access to online curriculum and let the local teacher supplement the
instruction, she said. To reward good performance, we need to put the data
systems in to be able to determine who is doing what.
Robinson
argued that there is almost no research that can tell you prospects for success—with
the possible exception of content knowledge and verbal ability. If we can't
predict effectiveness, he said, why regulate who gets into the professional by
means of some arbitrarily selected criteria?
A
spirited question-and-answer session followed. One of the panelists replied to
a question by saying, "There is a relatively large group of people late-
or mid-career who want to do some socially redeeming work. That is one group we're
trying to prepare for survival in the classroom. Technology holds a great deal
of promise for teacher preparation."
Chester
Finn said, "Fifty years ago, teachers were thought of as professionals. Then
the unions started emulating the steelworkers. In the 1980s they wanted to get
the professionalism back. Student numbers grew by 50 percent, but the number of
teachers tripled. If the number of teachers had increased by the same rate and
the same money were spent, teachers would now be averaging $100,000."
At the end of the session, the group broke off into job-alike sessions and a panel discussion on the federal government's newly passed Teacher Incentive Fund. The Conference continued to amaze...
For more information on the Conference—including the agenda, bios of Conference presenters, photos and videos—please visit the Milken Family Foundation Web site at www.mff.org.
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9/21/08 3:59 PM