I Am a Rock. I Am an Island
"Every teacher for himself!" Is that the new rallying cry of school reformers? Well, no. But school reform ideas that are getting the lion's share of press don't necessarily do much to foster a climate of collaboration in our schools. If we're really aiming for dramatic improvement in our schools, that's a big deal.
Here, for example, is an idea that has been gaining ground recently: Sack the bottom 25% of teachers up for tenure each year. How do you identify the bottom 25%? By measuring their students' growth in state test scores, of course. A new study (PDF) suggests that this tactic may raise a district's test scores in the long run. This finding buoyed the spirits of folks at the National Council on Teacher Quality, who urged districts to "hold to their guns" and give the bottom quarter the axe, year after year.
The study's authors are a bit more cautious. They note that the effects of this strategy could be "modest by some standards" and that they might reflect "changes in class or school dynamics outside of a teacher's control." They also limit their analysis to teachers for whom test data are available in the first place--a minority, as it turns out. Still, they feel that student performance on tests should be fair game when it comes time to make decisions about personnel.
Maybe. But I'm more worried by the collatoral damage of draconian firing policies. What will happen to the climate of a school where every new teacher knows he has a one-in-four chance of getting the boot in a couple of years? It's a truism by now that staff in good schools work together and share responsibility for their kids. In the best low-income schools, any given child will have seen any number of adults in a single day--resource teachers, special education teachers, counselors, you name it. Some schools are trying new team teaching and flexible staffing models that are showing real promise.
This work is new and exciting, though it doesn't seem to pass for innovation in the current reform lexicon. Too many ideas that bear the name of reform these days treat every teacher in splendid isolation. If we implement them carelessly, we just do even more to confine each teacher to her own pensive citadel.
Many reformers talk of grand goals for children, but their reforms often reveal pretty limited ambitions. Some of their reforms assume a world where teachers stay in their cells, keep their strategies to themselves and savor their triumphs in solitude. Throw Teacher for America grads into this mix, fire a set number of teachers every year, researchers say, and you might see a modest bump in test results. But I don't see much hope there for dramatic improvements. Perhaps some reformers are being realists. Teachers do in fact tend to stay in their narrow rooms and do most of their work alone. Maybe reformers want to make the best of a bad situation.
But I hope the manic focus on hiring and firing doesn't distract us from the need to create much better conditions for teaching and learning. That's a real danger. People with influence in Washington have urged federal policy makers to divest from staff development and fund evaluation and alt cert programs instead. They have a point when they say the feds have wasted a lot of money on very bad professional development. But we should focus on quality, evaluation and accountability rather than just turning our backs on the whole enterprise.
The more hopeful members of the hire-and-fire set might think that, if you get the smartest people into our schools, they'll make all good things happen. But I'm not sure the evidence supports that. We're in a business that requires faith in every child's limitless potential, but many people take a dim view of teachers' potential to grow or learn on the job. No matter what reforms we pursue, we have to get staff development right, foster more collaboration among teachers, and create better conditions for learning.
And we'll have to do a lot more besides. A new book by the Consortium on Chicago School Research finds that successful schools took on reforms in five key areas: "school leadership, parent and community ties, professional capacity of the faculty, student-centered learning climate, and instructional guidance." Take just one of these items out of the mix, the authors write, and see your results drop. They give real weight to things that get scant attention in today's policy debates: collaboration, strong curriculum, and tools that help teachers implement that curriculum well.
So we have to keep thinking about hiring and firing. We shouldn't cast aside our work on value-added measures or ignore the promise of groups like Teach for America. But let's not let that work drown out or even undermine all the rest. We need policies that foster the best possible environment for teaching and learning.
It ain't easy, but it sure is important.
SIGN UP
Visionaries
Click here to browse dozens of Public School Insights interviews with extraordinary education advocates, including:
- 2013 Digital Principal Ryan Imbriale
- Best Selling Author Dan Ariely
- Family Engagement Expert Dr. Maria C. Paredes
The views expressed in this website's interviews do not necessarily represent those of the Learning First Alliance or its members.
New Stories
Featured Story
Excellence is the Standard
At Pierce County High School in rural southeast Georgia, the graduation rate has gone up 31% in seven years. Teachers describe their collaboration as the unifying factor that drives the school’s improvement. Learn more...
School/District Characteristics
Hot Topics
Blog Roll
Members' Blogs
- Transforming Learning
- The EDifier
- School Board News Today
- Legal Clips
- Learning Forward’s PD Watch
- NAESP's Principals' Office
- NASSP's Principal's Policy Blog
- The Principal Difference
- ASCA Scene
- PDK Blog
- Always Something
- NSPRA: Social School Public Relations
- AACTE's President's Perspective
- AASA's The Leading Edge
- AASA Connects (formerly AASA's School Street)
- NEA Today
- Angles on Education
- Lily's Blackboard
- PTA's One Voice
- ISTE Connects
What Else We're Reading
- Advancing the Teaching Profession
- Edwize
- The Answer Sheet
- Edutopia's Blogs
- Politics K-12
- U.S. Department of Education Blog
- John Wilson Unleashed
- The Core Knowledge Blog
- This Week in Education
- Inside School Research
- Teacher Leadership Today
- On the Shoulders of Giants
- Teacher in a Strange Land
- Teach Moore
- The Tempered Radical
- The Educated Reporter
- Taking Note
- Character Education Partnership Blog
- Why I Teach
Test scores should NOT be
Test scores should NOT be that important. "Fire the bottom 25%" is an attitude that would just keep bad teachers of gifted children in the classroom and give the axe to many of the GOOD teachers in the special ed. rooms.
Good staff respect the student and the family, teach and model consideration, and truly care for the children they serve. (How you can measure that, I have no idea! But I've seen it in action and wish it were possible!)
When I lived in Australia and went to public school as a child, the threat of "the cane" was everpresent. I did well enough on my *tests*, but long-term, I imagine I didn't learn anything but a disrespect for these so-called professionals who hurt children and then made sure we were on time for our Scripture lessons.
Actually, I liked the Scripture lessons as the teacher was a parish volunteer and he never brought a cane, never screamed and never threw things at us. And yet, we respected him very much and were pretty attentive in his class. :)
Wow, caning! Mrs. C, were you
Wow, caning! Mrs. C, were you born in Australia?
The test score measure is actually a "value added" measure, which means that it represents growth rather than raw scores. So, a special ed. teacher, or a teacher of students beginning behind could conceivably prompt more growth in students than a teacher of advanced students could. I'm not familiar with the research on what tends to happen in practice, but I suspect that students starting far behind can make a lot of progress.
There are, of course, a lot of big technical hurdles to clear when using value-added measurement for personnel decisions. One is that tests were not designed to help evaluate both their students and their teachers. Another is that it's tough to separate out-of-school factors from in-school factors. Finally, I worry it would be difficult to promote strong collaboration and shared responsibility among teachers if we see them all as free agents.
As for measuring their kindness and concern, that's difficult--but no one would disagree that those are critical characteristics for a teacher.
The authors of this study
The authors of this study admit that their method is a very blunt instrument. Early career effects of test scores are actually fairly poor predictors of later career effects, and the predictive power weakens with the passage of time. This is why the simulated policy of annually denying tenure to the lowest ranked 25% of early career teachers has a fairly small impact: it misidentifies quite a few teachers who subsequently have stronger effects on test scores -- and it also fails to weed out many who have weak effects on test scores later on.
Even assuming that test scores are all we really care about, given that attrition rates among early career urban teachers are already astronomical, does it really make sense to terrorize them with such a blunt measure? Isn't there a way we can simply wire up children with electrodes to measure the amount of learning a teacher puts in their heads?
Claus, I am an American
Claus, I am an American citizen, but moved frequently in the US and spent 2 1/2 years in Australia (Sydney suburbs).
LOL on Melody's comment. A cheaper solution would just be to put on some "educational programming" on the tv in the gym. Every student could then have an exactly equal education because they'd all see the same show. Feel free to use that idea, Claus... you're welcome. :)
And a rock feels no pain. And
And a rock feels no pain. And an island stands alone...
Oh, whoops. Stop singing and pay attention to policy, then.
@Melody--What I found surprising in the study was Goldhaber and Hansen's contention that, contrary to research I've read (you, too, from your comment), student test scores in the first two or three years of teaching were "reasonably" reliable predictors of later teaching success. It was fish or cut bait, according to G & H, when it came to new teachers.
Now, I've met some teachers whose work was so abominable in year one as to make clear that s/he ought to go into real estate--but most teachers are on a strong upward curve in the first few years. Or so I thought...
Here's what I want to know: who replaces this lower 25% annually? Similar new, green teachers, I would imagine. And who is being taught by this parade of newbies?
Melody--The study's authors
Melody--The study's authors certainly do raise a number of cautions. They do argue that value-added measures are better predictors of student performance on tests than are things like Master's degree or licensure score. They also imply that that doesn't set a very high bar. I don't think they give NCTQ cause to be quite so triumphant, noting in their conclusion that their study will provide ammo for supporters and detractors alike.
Mrs. C--Thanks for the free education policy! TV's cost a lot less than teachers.
Nancy--Goldhaber and Hansen also find that teachers' effectiveness as measured by test scores increases in the first three years and then levels off. Their contention is that teachers' performance in those first three years is a better predictor of future performance than other factors are. But they also write that there is "noise" in these findings.
The question about the effects of a policy to fire the bottom 25% who are up for tenure every year is on-point. Many urban and rural districts have shortages to begin with. Also, will such a policy make people all the less willing to go into the field? Goldhaber and Hansen write that their analysis doesn't examine such possible effects. I wonder how a research design could possibly predict such effects.
By the way, isn't it "And and island never cries?"
For the record, and its too
For the record, and its too early to really think through Goldhaber and Hansen, you've got a seriously different stituation on tenure with three years of data than annual evaluations. Not that many are waiting for the facts before firing ...
I haven't read the new research on VAMs and tenure carefully enough to comment either way on that.
So--here I sit, gazing from
So--here I sit, gazing from my window, to the street below, on a freshly fallen, silent shroud of snow...
Claus, your response sent me back to the G & H study for a more thorough read. There were several assumptions (including the interchangeable use of "performance" and "effectiveness," all test-based) that irritated me. "Teacher effectiveness estimates have a 'long memory' when correlating estimates across increasing intervals" is what they're saying, then--if you start out with low test scores, your test scores are likely enough to remain low that being sacked after your third year is a good bet for the district. The noise might be lot of things--they mention non-random grouping (and 30 years of working in schools tells me nearly all student grouping is decidedly "non-random" and often for good reasons, despite the frustration for researchers).
Once again, while the data are interesting, the policy implications are skewed toward *teacher* quality rather than *teaching* quality--fixed and inherent "talent" valued over characteristics and skills that might be quickly improved. A marginal teacher starting out in a weak school climate would not be surrounded by colleagues and practices likely to lead to growth--but marginal beginners do sometimes become fantastic teachers.
Any teacher reading the study might consider their own inaugural teaching experiences. Frankly, I probably should have paid the school district in my first year. I guess I was lucky that student learning, rather than raising test scores, was our primary goal back then.
"An island never cries?" No wonder I remembered it wrong.
I, too, am watching the snow
I, too, am watching the snow fall--a silent and almost decorous snowfall that belies what's to come. Two feet before the end of Saturday! This will, of course, bring DC to its knees.
I agree with you about the bias towards teacher quality rather than teaching quality-and that's more than just a subtle difference. I get the sense that the authors are using their research design to test the validity of value-added measures rather than to recommend the 25% firing principle. Still, the impossibility of random assignment--and the legitimate concern that the tests that drive all this analysis may be too easily gamed and too blunt to measure all that matters--should give us pause.
Could studies like this one be the wages of long-standing against sound professional development principles? We say we need to support teachers, help them grow in their jobs, give them opportunities to collaborate in richer and more sustained ways, but that just doesn't happen in enough schools. So unless really strong professional learning and growth become the norm in more places, do we open the door for more brutal, blunter policies like the hire-and-fire policies advanced by NCTQ?
Nancy, when they say "noise,"
Nancy, when they say "noise," they simply mean that the predictive power of their models is not very good. It's better than the other factors in their models (including the competitiveness of the college that a teacher graduate from, which has zero effect -- take that TFA!), but it's still not very good.
The key graph is on the last page. It looks like three overlapping hills. The leftmost hill is the distribution of teacher effects at 5 years for "deselected" teachers (i.e. those who were ranked in the lower 25% in the first few years). The rightmost hill is the distribution of teacher effects at 5 years of the other 75%. You can see LOTS of overlap. Many of the top 75% aren't doing so hot after 5 years, while many who would have been "de-selected" eventually do pretty good.
There is a fine balance
There is a fine balance between grooming high quality teachers and selecting random cut off points for dismissing new teachers. I do not support retaining teachers who are not making progress with their students and who refuse to grow professionally through workshops, being guided by a coach/mentor, etc. Test scores, though, are not the only measurement of success in the classroom. Other factors must be given consideration, too. For instance, did the school have an induction program? Did the teacher have access to trainings, support, modeling of best practices? If true capacity building and collaboration are ongoing at a school, it is rare to find a teacher who has not grown in his/her professional practice. Whether or not to retain a teacher should be reviewed on an individual basis. If a teacher is not helping students on the road to academic success, we must take a deeper look into teacher preparation, induction programs, and coaching.
Aviva Ebner, Ph.D.
http://www.avivaebner.com
Post new comment