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Fire 80 Percent of Teachers? Could this "Thought Experiment" Run Amok?

vonzastrowc's picture
By Claus von Zastrow on August 12, 2010

Eagle-eyed Larry Ferlazzo found this modest proposal in Slate Magazine: Fire 80 percent of new teachers every two years. The authors of the study Slate describes admit that their idea might not be practical. (Larry's response: "Ya think?") They see it as a "thought experiment." But here's my question: Could such thought experiments, like Frankenstein, overwhelm their creators and wreak havoc in the wider world?

Such experiments don't tend to stay in the laboratory. They get picked up by the papers and start to change the way people across the country think about teaching and teachers. Papers like Slate admire the bravado of the wonks and economists who float extreme ideas--the bolder, the better--and they love the crazy headlines. But they don't always put things into context.

Slate offers a case in point. It praises Teach for America but fails to note that TFA produces only 4,500 new teachers a year--a drop in the bucket. The article claims that great teachers are "born, not made" and then says nothing at all about staff development.

The Slate article doesn't ask a very important question. Who would want to go into teaching if you have an 80 percent chance of getting the axe in two years? I can see the logic of raising the bar almost impossibly high if we manage to make teaching one of the most alluring jobs in America. Give teachers movie star status, support them in their jobs, and make the job as rewarding as possible. If you can't do that, then triple the salaries. But if you're going to bring the hammer down on teachers, you have to think about how to increase demand for the job.

TFA is trying. I think they have managed to make students in top universities see teaching in our toughest schools as a badge of honor. But the media tend to portray TFA teachers as the exception that proves the rule: They often diminish other teachers by comparison. And journalists have a way of describing TFA as a kind of missionary work rather than a means of building a stronger profession.

Countries like Finland and Singapore take a very different tack. It is very hard to become a teacher in both countries. Most don't make the cut. So why do so many people keep trying? It's true that exclusivity itself can be a draw. But I don't think Finns and Singaporeans would be clamoring to become teachers if they couldn't count on very, very strong support in the classroom. That's just part of the bargain.

But not here, it seems. We hear an awful lot about the need to cut out all but the best, but we hear little that would that lure many people into the profession in the first place.

Thought experiments have their place. But even experiments can do damage if they aren't well controlled or contained. Will the most recent experiments sour people on teaching?

Link to this story: http://www.learningfirst.org/fire-80-percent-teachers-could-thought-experiment-run-amok

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"Did humans give up easy sex

Submitted by Mrs. C on Thu, 08/12/2010 - 09:27

"Did humans give up easy sex for easy beer?" is one of the headlines in Slate. Others are about the superiority of one race or another (oh! just in certain given circumstances... so it's not racist... good grief), sexting and adultery, and other assorted sure-to-be-controversial articles.

Hey. I can be immensely critical of the public school establishment, and I can think the whole thing ought to be defunded and write that up in a blog post. But most people do NOT think like me, and when you look at the "calibre" (ahem) of the entire online magazine, I wouldn't be losing any sleep over it if I were you. Lose sleep when 80% of the actual VOTERS who show up at the polls start to think like me. God bless ya, Claus. :)

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Don't you worry about me,

Submitted by vonzastrowc on Thu, 08/12/2010 - 12:17

Don't you worry about me, Mrs. C. I still have my smelling salts.

No, I don't think the "fire 80%" idea will actually come to pass .And not everyone will take it seriously. But the idea didn't emerge from Slate. It emerged from a paper by two very distinguished economists.

And, more to the point, it sums up in fairly exaggerated form, the biggest preoccupation of the media when it comes to education. If the only big education reform idea that makes it into the mainstream is that we have to hold teachers' feet to the fire--and few people speak about the conditions that promote excellent performance--then I'm not sure just how many of the "best" will decide to go into teaching. Sure, teachers have to be held accountable. But strong support should be part of the bargain, and the media aren't really talking about that much.

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I haven't read the paper, but

Submitted by melody on Thu, 08/12/2010 - 22:11

I haven't read the paper, but it's hard to believe these guys published anything so stupid. If you fire 80% of teachers every year, 80% of teachers will be rookies the next year. And all their "research shows" that rookie teachers are the worst. How could that possibly be good? So it's not internally consistent even as a thought experiment

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In their defense, they call

Submitted by vonzastrowc on Fri, 08/13/2010 - 05:38

In their defense, they call for (or at least speculate about) the firing of 80% of NEW teachers in the first two years, which would be a substantially smaller number than 80% of ALL teachers. The theory would be that the overall teacher cohort would get stronger and stronger year after year. This, too, might create problems with the supply of excellent new teachers (as the authors admit), but it would (I think) require a much more stable teaching force of more experienced teachers.

I would worry about the supply of new teachers, but I would worry at least as much about demand. If you have a cut-throat two years, there have to be very big rewards later on--and they don't have to be mostly financial. I just don't see what the bargain would be for new teachers.

I'm reminded of a leading graduate school in the humanities (which will remain nameless.) It adopted the practice of culling out 50% of its newcomers every two years--as a matter of policy. The atmosphere of the school soured very quickly. No one spoke with anyone else. No one supported anyone else. Good people left of their own volition, because the experience had poisoned their sense of the vocation they had chosen. (A number got picked off by better schools). Applications declined. The school switched course: Try to get the best people in the door and then really teach them, support them.

People often point to Finland as an example of a system that takes in only the best. That seems likely. But they don't fire them en masse after they come into schools. Here's what a Finnish education leader told me almost two years ago: "We don't have any evaluation of teachers. The working morale and the working ethics of the teachers are very high, and we can also trust that they are competent; they know what to do." Would this work in the 'States? I'm not sure. But the bargain is clear: A high hurdle to get in, followed by a lot of support and trust. I don't see the same bargain here. If you set up more and more hurdles and say little or nothing of the support or rewards, then I don't think you'll get the applicants you need.

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We can't fix teaching until

Submitted by Anthony V. Manzo, Ph.D. on Fri, 08/13/2010 - 15:06

We can't fix teaching until we fix teacher education...

‘Race to the Top’ Leaves Teachers, Free Market Economics & Progress on ‘Soft War’ Behind
‘Teacher Accountability’ is misdirected there is a 21st Century version, Collaboratively Identified Best Instructional Practices that can Raise Teaching-Learning Quotients in Every Classroom Everywhere before Christmas Next
There are some great teachers, and even some great Teacher Preparation programs, but these are random occurrences where consistency is essential. The reason is simple: Professional Education is absent fundamental standards found in all other professions. There is no standard curriculum, no sincere, systemic effort to identify Best Instructional Practices, no guidance in what and how needs to be further researched and developed. To be called a profession it is imperative that a profession, one way or another, needs to convene a rolling forum to collect and prioritize the core content of principles and practices that every member ought to know. An honest Grammar of Teaching. Ironically, Teachers worldwide are being held to standards for annual yearly progress (AYP) of their students. They also are being expected to raise economic competitiveness, to promote tolerance and civility, and reduce hostilities. They fight the “soft war” against ignorance and provincialism every day such as in the Middle East that has America grinding to a halt in conflicts that began over 800 years ago and where illiteracy – the real enemy - hovers around 80%, and in wars that the military fully concedes that guns and drone bombers cannot win. Meanwhile, Professors, Learned Societies & commercial schools, and some painfully self-serving non-profit foundations and Universities never even address the fundamental need for greater investment in solid pedagogical science. The Departments of Education and several of the world’s leading national security divisions should sponsor an ongoing “virtual convention” of the world’s leading educators to consider and endorse a covenant of currently scattered principles and more importantly prescriptive practices that work at several levels. Ideally this should be done on a website that transparently allows these to be challenged, tweaked and further specified for different age-grade-situational-cultural conditions. This effort to improve the quality and impact of Education worldwide is an urgent orphan cause with no natural constituencies. This entire process would cost very little if we do so collaboratively. Ironically, as new schools open in the developing world by NGO’s such as the great humanitarian Greg Mortenson, no one, he included, seem to give any thought to improving the pedagogic technology and educational delivery systems that need to be and easily can be customized for smart tech savvy and dirt floor classrooms. Paradoxically there have been some great breakthroughs in pedagogy in the last 40 years. These new age methods are little known because they are smothered by thousands of scattered publications. Culling, parsing and tweaking these is near impossible for small groups or individual teachers – it is analogous to picking your own wining stock portfolio - but it would be a “duck soup” for doctoral level educators and psychologists. In less then 3 months a preliminary algorithm and list of provisionally supported Best Instructional Practices could be identified and promulgated for further evaluation. Please help by joining the narrative both here and at some early test websites. Realize please that what you will read here I simply sat down and made up from one person’s knowledge, mind studies, experience and relatively limited empirical research. It could be and would be much better if you added your voice. Sources in process:
1. http://bestmethodsofinstruction.com/

2.http://teacherprofessoraccountability.ning.com/main/invitation/new?xg_source=msg_wel_network.
3. https://bestpracticesteachers.groupsite.com/blog

Anthony V. Manzo, Ph.D./ Professor Emeritus/ avmanzo@aol.com

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