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Everywhere you look these days someone’s writing about assessing and paying K-12 teachers based on the improvement in their students’ test scores. The idea’s been around for a couple decades, long enough for it to spread from mostly conservative education critics into the left-of-center mainstream. It’s now a requirement for states seeking federal grant money from the Obama administration’s Race to the Top challenge.
Typically, Friday’s op-ed in The Seattle Times by Brad Smith, Microsoft’s general counsel and board chair of the Washington Roundtable, which advocates the Race to the Top reforms, carried the teacher-pay message, urging school districts to buy in, urging them to “…be willing to implement bold reforms such as evaluating and compensating teachers based on student performance…”
Not surprisingly, the idea is a battleground nationwide between those advocating education “reform” — now with President Obama and his secretary of education, Arne Duncan, on their side — and teachers' unions, which argue, predictably, that such a system wouldn’t be fair because teachers have no real control over the levels of preparation and the home environments of the students who come into their classrooms. In the pay-for-performance debate, that is actually a reasonable caution, but its force has eroded through years of use as an excuse for the poor performance of urban schools.
The conflict, though, tells us there should be a better way to ensure there’s a “quality teacher in every classroom,” which educators rightly say is a crucial goal. After all, how successful would a major company or school district be if its key strategy for improvement amounted to war on its employees? (For a case study, see Chapter 4, “Lessons from San Diego,” in Diane Ravitch’s new book The Death and Life of the Great American School System.)
Without doubt we need better teachers — here in Seattle and in every public school district in the U.S. Every parent knows this. Some fraction of teachers is incompetent, lazy or burned out — I’d say one in 10 based on my children’s experience at Whitman Middle School and Roosevelt High School a decade ago. Another group lacks subject matter knowledge. Keep in mind that such problems are not unique to teaching. Various levels of incompetence and malfeasance are the standard. Consider auto and oil company executives and bankers, for example. You can argue the percentages but not the fact.
So maybe when we test students to see how good their teachers are, we're testing the wrong people. Maybe we are testing the victim. Maybe the answer is to test the teachers. Raise the bar for admission to the profession and for continued employment.
It’s easy to find news accounts of officials deploring the lack of trained math and science teachers. Other stories document how frequently teachers find themselves teaching subjects for which they are not prepared. And there is the general (and valid) complaint that colleges of education lack rigor, focus on classroom “strategies” and produce graduates who, in fact, lack subject-matter knowledge relative to graduates in other majors. Not true everywhere nor true for every new graduate teacher, but true enough. And despite its use as the basis for teacher pay increases, researchers can’t find a solid correlation between a Masters’ Degree in education and improved teacher performance.
All these are problems that can be tackled by testing teachers.
In fact, Washington already does this, requiring a test for each subject-matter endorsement on a teacher’s certificate. Unfortunately, the one-time tests given for initial certification or endorsement are not particularly rigorous. Content is largely set at high school level — the level students should reach at graduation! — or devoted to probing knowledge of teaching strategies. Furthermore, what the education establishment really thinks teachers should know and do is contained in the Washington State Teacher Endorsement Competencies. Click on a few samples here and see what you think.
There are several weaknesses with the current system. One, of course, is the lack of rigor. Another is that teachers face the challenge of a subject-matter test — and a short one at that — only at the start of their careers, despite changing information in the sciences and scholarship in the humanities. Testing teachers’ subject-matter knowledge with a rigorous battery of exams every five years, say, would push them to keep current in their fields, probably with greater effect than the typical summer training institutes which tend to focus on teaching techniques rather than course content. Most people in any field coast a bit on what they know, or think they know. Regular tests would work against that.
Third is the lost opportunity. A broad-based testing system, coupled of course with on-the-job evaluations, could have benchmarks at several levels that states or local school boards could use to set pay ranges much as some states now authorize extra pay for National Board-Certified teachers. For example, failure to reach a level of basic knowledge would mean probation and, after a second chance a year later, dismissal.
To make this work, the examination system would need to include a number of tests to capture breadth of subject-matter knowledge and to ensure reliability of the results. The battery should include tests like ETS’s Praxis tests, SAT II subject matter tests and the Graduate Record Exam (GRE) — all of those and maybe one or two more. Benchmarks could be set by testing control groups of academic experts and professionals in various subject areas, thus setting up an equivalence between teachers and the level of knowledge typical in the professions their students will ultimately enter.
Such a system would have a variety of benefits. It would tie pay to the characteristics of the teacher (his/her subject-matter knowledge along with additional on-site evaluation), not to the variable skills and uneven readiness to learn of the students (though good teachers can overcome these things). Further, creating an equivalence between teachers and professionals in their fields would enhance the stature of the teaching profession. It would generally increase the public's and legislators’ confidence in the quality of our teachers, paving the way for greater support and higher pay, which in turn would help attract the most talented college students to the profession.
A subject-matter testing system clearly would work best for high-school teachers. It would be applicable for middle-school teachers but less so for elementary teachers. And still, at any level who would not want their children taught by a person with a broad and solid knowledge of the world? That would be worth paying for.
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Comments:
Posted Wed, May 19, 6:39 a.m. Inappropriate
Mr. Lilly...you can have an advanced degree in mathematics and still be a lousy teacher. It doesn't matter how much you test a teacher candidate...if you can't teach...if it is not in your blood and soul...you will never be effective. Some of the best teachers I ever had were Korean and Vietnam War Veterans. They barely made it through college, but acquired a passion to serve the community after their traumatic and unique experiences. Some were former Peace Corps volunteers. How do you test for that kind of skill?
As to National Board Certification: The process is akin to training dolphins a Sea World. If the teacher does everything the trainer says he/she gets a reward in the form of a little slip of paper. That little piece of paper does not mean you can teach, only that you can do a lot of paper work and create a portfolio.
Posted Wed, May 19, 7:12 a.m. Inappropriate
We spend a lot of time thinking of new bureaucratic requirements to impose on teachers in an effort to improve education. I suppose none of it is a bad idea, including the idea here. But isn't the real problem that we don't pay teachers enough to draw the best possible people in the first place? Creative, dynamic people who nowadays usually choose to go into higher-paying fields. That's why we need all the rules and paperwork and other things that infantilize teachers in a way you just don't see in any other profession.
We can either pay teachers more (and drop tenure) and give them the actual responsibility and professional latitude to innovate and achieve that goes with a high-paying job, or we can continue to pay teachers crumbs and infantalize them by having all kinds of ongoing bureaucratic requirements, standardized lesson plans and curricula, etc., so that the very weakest possible teaching candidates, who will be low-paid, can meet whatever standards.
Posted Wed, May 19, 8:30 a.m. Inappropriate
I agree with both posts; tests do not a good teacher make, and salaries are low. The problem as I see it, is very simple. The teacher tenure law makes it extremely difficult and expensive to dismiss those teachers whose skills are marginal and below. Short of being a convicted sex-offender, unions rise to the defense of any teacher facing dismissal.
Great and good teachers don't enter the profession for money; they love their subject matter and teaching students. That attitude is readily apparent in observing them in a classroom.
Posted Wed, May 19, 8:49 a.m. Inappropriate
Good comments. Subject matter expertise is at best half of what makes a good teacher. I have also read recently that new teachers feel their education of subject matter and teaching theory leave them unprepared for the realities of managing a classroom. This is supported by data that shows teachers improve with experience over their first 5 years.
Judging teachers on their own merits is fairer, but punitive testing is still, well, punitive. Better to fund professional development opportunities, to be chosen by the teachers, in their subject matter, as opposed to training in whichever textbook has been imposed on them.
Posted Wed, May 19, 9:25 a.m. Inappropriate
Pay teachers as much as garbage truck drivers and demand students put in two hours supervised home study time each day without TV, computer games, facebook, texting, or cell phones and teachers might go for it.
Posted Wed, May 19, 9:39 a.m. Inappropriate
Wait! I have a better idea!
Let make journalists an bloggers take a test before they print blather! That's right Glenn Beck will no longer be able to claim there is no such thing as climate change unless he's able to make a scientific paper passed by Climatologists and printed in journal!
Then, if we applied the same standards to inane articles on why teachers are failures because they have kids who don't have support at home. We'd first make the journalist spend a month in a class room actually trying to teach! Then they can claim that more teacher testing will improve teaching!
Why is it that everybody thinks they know more about the other person's job? Don't you figure that if someone spends 100% of their working life doing a job they are probably better at it than someone who only writes about it?
Yes there are crummy teachers, but now we can see that there are also bad journalists!
Posted Wed, May 19, 10:28 a.m. Inappropriate
"how successful would a major company or school district be if its key strategy for improvement amounted to war on its employees?"
Most if not all major companies have outsourced, offshored, de-skilled, de-unionized, resisted unionization and/ or rolled back union contracts the last 3 decades. Conservatives then compare wages between public and private sector workers to attack the wages of public sector employees in the name of competitiveness.
Posted Wed, May 19, 11:51 a.m. Inappropriate
I'd think that a teacher would be thrilled to show off their mastery of their area of expertise. I know that I love having my knowledge about my job challenged so I can show off how much I know about what I'm doing.
Posted Wed, May 19, 5:12 p.m. Inappropriate
When I graduated from the U.W. Education Program my first task was to find a dumpster and drop in every textbook I had purchased (for real). What I learned about teaching in that program would not fill a spiral notebook. Teaching is the art of connecting with disparate souls, coalescing them into a functioning amalgam, and sending off a little more independent than when you started. Our job is 90% empowerment and 10% content.
Problem is; there are school administrators out there that actually believe education theory rhetoric. Teachers face a constant battle to appease administrators by insuring them they can talk in the bizarre language known as "Eduspeak." If they get good at it, it will get them off their backs for awhile so they can get back to the job of teaching.
Posted Wed, May 19, 5:16 p.m. Inappropriate
"So maybe when we test students to see how good their teachers are, we're testing the wrong people. Maybe we are testing the victim. Maybe the answer is to test the teachers."
Dick Lilly hints at the answer but apparently lacks the courage to go far enough. He doesn't follow the logic of his analysis to its inexorable conclusion. Half-measures like No Child Left Behind and Rat-Race to the Top will not win the battle. What this nation needs to effectively answer the challenge of global competition is nothing short of a full-scale WAR ON EDUCATION. At this critical moment in history, we must heed the call of duty. A War on Education Czar must be appointed immediately, with the plenary autocratic powers appropriate to a National Security Crisis, to do whatever it takes in whatever way it needs to be done, including at least the following:
-- TEST ABSOLUTELY EVERYONE. More testing equals better results. So if testing is the answer, then obviously everyone needs to be tested. Not just teachers and students, but administrators, counselors, football coaches, janitors, cafeteria workers, bus drivers, crossing guards, PTA presidents and school board members. Especially school board members. The Achilles Heel of the system is that, while nobody was looking, card-carrying morons have infiltrated and in many cases taken over the school boards. Don't get me wrong -- I'm not saying this was actually a deliberate communist plot -- but there certainly are interesting "coincidences" out there that merit a Congressional investigation, or at least a blue-ribbon Presidential panel.
-- BRING BACK LOYALTY OATHS. Related to testing, but one necessary small step further down the road, is the need to reinstate loyalty oaths. For those readers not old enough to remember, the pinnacle of American civilization was attained in the Fabulous Fifties. Folks back then were peaceful and happy; all the kids did their homework on time and sold Girl Scout cookies door to door. There were two basic reasons. One was that everyone pretty much looked and acted the same, and those that were different, well they were parked conveniently out of sight on the other side of the tracks. The second reason people were so happy is that everyone had to take loyalty oaths now and then. This made everybody feel more secure. And we had patriotic Congressional committees that barnstormed around the country holding hearings and weeding out the traitors. Those were wonderful times. If we are serious about conducting a successful War on Eduction, we will need not only to test school teachers but also once again make them take loyalty oaths.
-- ELIMINATE FRIVOLOUS COURSES. You would think this would be so obvious as to not require mentioning, but one of the key reasons for America's precipitous moral and economic decline is that too many students are wasting valuable class time on useless junk like art, music, drama and literature. This stuff has absolutely no vocational value. How are we going to have a chance to keep up with the Chinese in the cut-throat global economy when our best and brightest are frittering away precious hours on trivia like this? And just think how many tax dollars could be saved if these frivolous diversions were eliminated. A simple solution here would be to require each school district to submit its proposed curriculum yearly for approval to the practical and ever-helpful folks at the Business Roundtable. As always, the right answer is the pro-business answer.
So those are just a couple of easy first steps to get our War on Education off the ground. We should demand that our leaders enact them immediately. Is it too late for Tim Eyman to crank out another initiative? As with any emergency, it is usually better to act first and ask questions later.
Posted Wed, May 19, 6:34 p.m. Inappropriate
Woofer for Potentate (Perhaps Apostate?)!
No, Emperor! Perhaps even Sainthood. So eloquent...so insightful...OMG I think that I want to run him/her for School Board. He/she takes Mr. Lilly's contentions to their natural and logical apogees. Brilliant...bravo...bravo...
Woofer is il Duce...but, what does that make Mr. Lilly?
Posted Thu, May 20, 10:36 p.m. Inappropriate
The idea that a good teacher can teach any subject is best described as fraud.
As a parent of SPS kids I met math illiterates teaching advanced algebra, a barely computer literate teacher charged with setting up programs in computer literacy, and even an illiterate (but very nice) kindergarten teacher charged with teaching kindegarten to kids with advanced reading skills.
Some of the teachers had great classroom skills but had taken these jobs based seniority to avoid being laid off.
None of this says that good teaching skills do not matter. Obviously those skills are predominantly important in the lower grades. However, by the time kids reach high school, they really do need help from experts.
That need for knowing what you teach, is not just for esoteric subjects like calculus and Mandarin. I would certainly not want my kids taking woodworking from a novice ... even one whose credentials included reading "Crosscut."
The need for expertise also reflects the love of a subject. I fondly remember lessons in English composition from my senior year of high school, Sid Rosenthal loved good writing. Later, in college, I took a course in religion from a man who was, to be fair, often a bit soused. He mumbled. However, Professor Knock's ideas on religious conversion have affected me all my life. I would not trade the most highly polished lectures for my chance to listen to this wonderful man.
I have one more anecdote. I served during Vietnam in the US Navy. An acquaintance of mine, a former skipper on a nuke sub, mustered out at a young age and tried to become a high school teacher. He was told by the Seattle Schools that he was not qualified because he did not have a teaching credential.
Who wrote "Catch 22?" Yossarian would understand our current teaching system.
Posted Fri, May 21, 10:36 a.m. Inappropriate
"So maybe when we test students to see how good their teachers are, we're testing the wrong people. Maybe we are testing the victim. Maybe the answer is to test the teachers. Raise the bar for admission to the profession and for continued employment."
Not a bad idea--just as long as the people formulating and administering these tests know what the hell it is they're talking about. As a professor of performing arts, with over 35 years experience in theatre and acting, I just adore some of the questions, memos, dictates, that cross my desk or appear on on my computer screen from truly clueless administrators.
Posted Sun, May 23, 7:48 p.m. Inappropriate
I've always wondered why the state of washington developed the WASL test when many states use the ITED (Iowa Test of Educational Development). I was in high school in the 70s and we took ITED tests every year even back then. One thing they were NOT used for was to bash teachers like they are by some of the righty think tanks like the washington policy center. For college exams, the SAT or the ACT (also developed in Iowa) is used nationwide as an acceptable test.
My point here isn't to boost Iowa and I'm not in education so I have no idea about any independent evaluations or criticisms of the ITED tests. But why did WA state spend so much time and money designing their own tests when they could have used something like the ITED test right off the shelf?
Posted Sun, May 23, 7:55 p.m. Inappropriate
For those wanting a great overview of some of the issues confronting education reform, give a listen to this 2 part series from TVW.
TVW - The Quest for Quality
http://tvw.org/media/mediaplayer.cfm?evid=2009090103A&TYPE;=V&CFID;=7533781&CFTOKEN;=16183980&bhcp;=1
They interview people from the unions, the washington roundtable, teachers, parents, even the students. Imagine that, asking the students how to improve schools. I've never seen that done before. The kid they interviewed at the end was very articulate. I'd love to know what these same kids think of the new non-math based math books. Or the rewriting of history books by the Texas Board of (mis)education.
Posted Wed, Jun 2, 7:13 a.m. Inappropriate
In the end we are seeking accountability. Some, like Mr. Lilly, hope to find it through testing. The simpler answer - but more difficult path - is for the adults in the system to find the moral courage to do what's right. Everyone, from the school boards, to the superintendents to the principals to the teachers need to find it within themselves to draw the line and stick to it.
That sort of resolve, that commitment to principle, is what has been lacking in the culture of public K-12 education. Not nearly enough of them has the vertebrae (or the heart or the sack or whatever body part is deficient here), to cut people off when it is time to do so.
The testing, like zero tolerance policies, is an idea designed to relieve people of their adult responsibilities and, as smacgry wrote, to infanticize them. Only the people are trying to infanticize themselves. They are trying to create mechanistic systems and transfer their responsibilities to the system because they don't want to wield them - they want to abdicate their responsibilities. They want to keep their hands clean. Well adult life is a dirty job. Grow up. Man up. Do your job. And if that means that sometimes you have to fire people because they don't perform, then that's what you have to do. I'm sick of principals who shirk their duty to remove bad teachers and central administrators who shirk their duty to remove bad principals. These people are putting their comfort above the academic, social, and emotional needs of the children in their charge. That's cowardly and criminal.
The way to end this culture of non-accountability is not to invent accountability machines, like testing, but for the people in the system to start demanding accountability. It should start at the top with the school board and trickle down through the superintendent to the principals to the teachers. It should definitely NOT start at the bottom.