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Great post. Most reform conversations I'm in with teachers are so overly broad as to be useless and probably counterproductive. Policies and practices need to be named specifically these discussions. Whenever I drill down through someone's generalized call for reform, what I find is that the phenomenon he or she wants to change is actually in place because of someone's thin idea of accountability. I know that when I was in the classroom, I would purposely tune out reform conversations because of the tone; I think a lot of the really great teachers stay out of the conversation because it's so anti-teacher.

I think we can tie this back to Daniel Pink's work on motivation. Most 'reform' efforts are based on extrinsic motivation, basically carrots and sticks.

In reality, most educators will respond better to the autonomy and purpose elements. Most went into education for a purpose of improving our society by improving the younger generations.

There aren't any teachers who are holding something back waiting for the big performance pay reward.

I love this post. The idea that we can staff our challenging schools with an endless supply of bright-eyed, ideological, and most importantly, completely unattached young people appeared to be the plan where I was in New Orleans. Not only is it a little anti-teacher, but like you alluded, it cleverly ignores the working conditions that drive teachers towards mediocrity, leaving the profession, or writing snarky blog posts with poorly thought out basketball references.

Superman ain't walking through that door. If we worry more about what happens IN those doors though, we'll be getting something a little better than Clark Kent.

Dig the new layout btw.

-Matt

I think that this highlights the real problem of educational reform. In so many ways, this reform is being pushed WITHOUT the teachers. Most programs and changes are top down and not organic. By the time it gets to the teachers, its overworked and loaded down with supervision and paperwork and bureaucracy...exactly what teachers don't need.

My second year of teaching was in a school that was eventually taken over by the state of Texas. On the last day of school, teachers turned int their keys at one table, and then went around the corner to another to get a letter that told them whether or not they were requested back for the next year. Fortunately I was asked to return. I was one of those bright eager new teachers selected to change a school that had been allowed to be run into the ground for over a decade. I was even chosen to "write curriculum" for the upcoming year. But I soon realized that this was not the campus for me. Because like your article states...I wasn't a superhero. I didn't want to be on a mission or a crusade. I wanted to teach.

I finally found a campus that allows me to do that. Yes. I still deal with at risk students. Yes. I even deal with students who have all the necessary supports from home. Yes. I work hard to inspire my students to do their best. But I don't feel like a martyr in doing it...and that feels great. I take my job as an educator seriously, but I do not want to be a caped crusader by any stretch of the imagination.

Boy did this post hit home for me. I am a middle school teacher. I have been awarded for my teaching. I get statistically impressive test results nearly all the time-- but I do not focus on the test. Jay is perfectly right to mention Daniel Pink's ideas: I am not motivated by carrots or sticks, and I would not work any harder--couldn't work any harder, in fact-- under the promise of merit pay. I work hard because I love my job, my school, my students, and my subject area. It is a calling.

The stronger the reform efforts get, the more I wonder how much longer I can stay in teaching, despite the fact that I love it. Everyone seems to want good teachers, but no one seems to listen to what good teachers want. They assume they know what we want.

Here's what I want: autonomy. Yes, let's have curricular goals, but treat us like professionals and let us achieve those goals as creatively as we can. I will exceed expectations. But more and more, they expect us to follow orders lock-step (with "fidelity"), and that compeletely removes my motivation. Besides, how can I be held accountable if I've been given no choice about how to teach?

I have a great, supportive principal right now. I dread the day she leaves. Why doesn't it occur to anyone to ask good teachers what they think should be happening in schools?

Tim--I think you're right to mention tone, which is very important. The tone of many discussions these days is drowning out the content to some degree. It makes people angry, adversarial and withdrawn.

Jay, you might be interested in our interview with Dan Pink: http://www.learningfirst.org/carrots-and-sticks-are-so-last-century-conversation-author-dan-pink. While I'm a bit more of a motivation 2.0 guy than Pink is, he offers some very important food for thought in the current policy environment.

Thanks for your kind comment, Mr. Brown. Your blog (and I loved the basketball references) makes many of my points much better than I can.

Keishla--Does your campus serve fewer at-risk children, or is the climate of the school simply more conducive to the kind of teaching you love

David, do you think strong curricular guidance--especially for new teachers--can actually improve their working conditions? (I'm thinking of better curricular tools rather than scripted lessons, for example.)

Like David Lee Finkle I have been given awards for my teaching. That's nice. What is more important is that it has given me the opportunity to have my voice heard by school board members, County Council members, state legislators, and the administration of our district.

Those of us who are recognized as at lest good teachers (I'm not quite sure what makes one "great") have a responsibility to speak on this issues precisely to the points Claus raises.

Maybe if enough of us who have been honored will speak out honestly on the issues we can make a difference before it is too late.

But then, the outgoing NTOY Anthony Mullen has been pretty blunt on a number of these issues, and yet those shaping educational policy seem to ignore him.

Are we therefore doomed?

I wonder.

Check out Sam Colbert's Get Rid of Performance Reviews. On NPR this morning he explained the two inherent problems with performance reviews, that they are fraudalent and bad management. These reviews start off in a "clash" because the boss's boss has typically reached the conclusion that the evaluating boss is suppoes to reach. So the immediate boss reverse engineers the evaluation to reach the organization's target. The employee wants a positive outcome, so trust is undercut.

Some jobs you can score with metrics, says Cobert, but the metric that matters is the boss's opinion. And metrics don't measure everything. They don't measure the destructive things the employee does to keep the boss happy whether it is harmful practices or refusals to let bad news up the chain of command.

In addition to Willingham, Pink, and Dan Arielly's great book Predictably Irrational, Ariely has new research documenting the ways that performance incentives hurt performance because they generate stress and stress generates mistakes. And all of this is built on a long history of social science and novels from the Great Gatsby to Catch 22.

Bob Calder: "...conservative reform usually takes on teachers from an anecdotal POV, emotionally recruiting people with stories of 'bad teachers' we all have."

Fascinating conversation. I have long been intrigued by the question of how many "bad teachers" there really are out there. Nearly everyone can recall one or two truly awful teachers they--or their children-- ran across. But then, many of us have experienced truly awful plumbers, doctors, clergy, waitresses and tax accountants, too.

Some people just aren't very good at their jobs. And while it may not matter if the clerk at Target sends you to the wrong aisle, anyone who's every had to pay for thousands of dollars of unnecessary car repairs or watched an seriously ill friend treated by an ineffective parade of specialists and drugs while hospitalized-- sometimes it matters very much.

While most people have had few dealings with personal investment bankers or hedge fund managers (speaking of demonstrably poor job performance), everyone's been to school. As John notes, we don't have reliable metrics for "good" teaching (although we have excellent indicators for efficacy in banking--and we're giving some of those guys bonuses). So we all get to decide who's a bad teacher, and where bad teachers congregate.

Guy Strickland wrote a book about getting rid of bad teachers; his estimate was that somewhere between 5 and 15% of teachers are incompetent. That strikes me as a reasonable number. Which means that 90% or so of teachers are doing a job somewhere between OK and terrific. While I certainly agree that every child deserves a good teacher, I don't see bad teachers as a scourge (and the inability to get rid of them) ruining our public schools.

The biggest proponents of school reform are either politicians or Educational Ph.D.s. One can quote statistics and the other can quote "data driven" research, but none of them have ever been in a classroom. I'm so glad that I'm nearly at the end of my career, but I do worry for the future.

Ken and Linda--I wonder if it would be worthwhile to poll highly accomplished teachers--Nat'l Teachers of the Year or National Board Certified Teachers, for example--to see if the rhetoric of school reform has been demoralizing to them. Even if we set aside debates over the value of specific reform strategies, I wonder whether the effect of the rhetoric is something we can begin to measure. At times when we want to promote big change--big improvement--perceptions among people in the field mean a lot.

Bob and John--Ariely's work has been very interesting. As far as I know, he hasn't ventured into education. (Am I wrong?) The research on performance pay in education remains cloudy, but I'm still worried about what can happen if systems aren't designed to promote rather than discourage collaboration. 

Nancy and Bob--I'm at least as concerned about bad systems as I am about bad teachers--though surely every profession much be concerned about what happens to poor performers. But the apparent blindness to policies that improve working conditions and collaborative structures is worrying.