by Travis
Hmmm, five ways I would improve our education system if money were not an issue? I like that. It is a timely topic, often discussed. However, I only need one way. It's a big one. One with huge, sweeping results. But the good news–this one item will not require more money, per se. This one item is something we already have. This one item is nothing that we have not already known for decades. Bonus, improvements will be made quickly and with continued success regardless of levies or measures, politics or procedures. Is it too good to be true? No. It is a reality we already possess.
- The quality of teacher instruction.
Sadly, the one item holding back the high quality of our education system is the very thing that could also improve the education system. Teachers. Yes, my list is a list of one. I am sure to have ruffled some feathers, but before you go straight to the comment section and "let me have it", hear me out.
My list is a list of one because research and personal experience. What I ask is that you put all preconceptions aside and think of what "thing" has the most contact with students and that thing will be teacher instruction. Therefor, teacher instruction should be the center of all education reform.
Yes, budgets will always be an issue and my list of one is not to say that we can ignore the budget (that is hardly the case). Rather, it seems prudent to consider that budgetary needs will grow in relation to an increase in students and resource needs, e.g., more students moving into a district will require more teachers and tables and if a state wants their students to be computer literate, the state will be required to put up the money.
So that is my tip-of-the-hat to the issue of money. But I plan to do nothing more with money. Money will not solve the failing and floundering students. You can throw as much money at them as you want. Money, used as an object, a symbol of change, will create the same results in education that have gone on for decades. (If you do what you have always done, you will get the results you have always gotten.)
For those of you who want to do something with money to improve the system of education, go ahead, but put it toward improving teacher instruction for, again, the variable that will improve student learning the most is the quality of the teacher instruction.
Teacher instruction can be improved with a three level focus–school & district professionalism, state teacher certification programs, and an increase in salary across the nation.
You may have noticed the money aspect to that last one and even inferred the money required to rebuild the other two levels. It appears to be a money issue, but it is a simple as using the money that we already have and redesign how and where it is used.
Schools, and therefor the district, can improve the teaching quality with an attention to continuing professional development; building professional learning communities; and fostering a mentor program for new teachers. I have found that teachers are life-long learners and are constantly looking for ways to improve the craft of their teaching. Let's take this innate want to improve instruction and support it. It is good business sense because teachers are willing to put a great deal of energy into the art and skill of instruction for what little money it would require to build a self-sustaining community of educators.
Working backward, before teachers get to the schools and build their professional communities, certification programs need to be able to provide a consistently high teacher upon completion. These programs need rigorous standards that focus on instruction, the art of teaching.
The very last level is the national level. What can this level do? Nothing directly. At least nothing as personal as a school leader could do for his or her teachers. However, at the national level, teacher instruction can be improved by drawing in the best of the best, and providing a competitive wage for teachers. In this way, teaching won't be a "plan B" job, but a goal. A strong company will hire strong employees and have the insight to strengthen its current employees with training and support.
I don't need new computers or new desks. What I need is a system that sees instruction as the skill, the ability to impact student learning, not just another body to pass out photocopies.
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Aly, it is great to hear from a student’s perspective. Great because this is the perspective that matters as well as being the perspective that has the most honesty for how it is going. If a company wanted to know whether its product was meeting the needs of its consumers, it would ask. For some reason, education does not ask often enough or the correct people.
Thank you for your insight and it is clear that your passion for learning is solidly there.
Mr. Wittwer, you have so many good points. Good teachers should be in every school, and should be at the core of every school. but they arn’t. it isn’t about the money or the poltics or who has the power. is about the people who become the teachers. to many join becuase they innapporitly like children, or they think its easy, too often its a “plan B”. Collages teach to train not to really teach somebody. also, many teachers arn’t thinking about so much as what they are doing as what they arn’t. or the paperwork. What they should be thinking about is how they are teaching, training , making the furture. and to many children miss their chance to improve. I know that I skipped some of my classes soley becuase the teacher was awful. their needs to be a better way to find teachers and mold them into someting even better, and keep them as teachers, not as princpals. the standreds of teaching need to improve, as a way to make and have better teachers.
You state these issues directly, Tom. Thank you.
Yet, I wonder how to know (measure) what’s important, good, and quality education by teachers.
I use versions of classical behavioral science measures of learning, although as a public school teacher, I didn’t know that descriptor, just informal parts of the process I figured out for myself.
Sure wish sometimes that someone had introduced me to the formal ways before I attended advanced grad classes with those who already used these measures routinely. I hope other teachers have better prep than I had. I only took 4 ed classes before teaching (I came from industry). They were not helpful beyond learning teacher talk about learning (no discriptions of how people learn), but had decent, caring faculty offering these classes :).
As an interesting point to me, I never had less than 35 students in regular classes and 30 in special ed. From that vantage point, yes, one teacher can handle it by adjusting instruction from what might be used with 12 to 15 students (classic small groups), although that instruction requires different planning to make instruction more effective and efficient than the roll of the dice. Once I learned to handle the tedium of behavioral measures quickly, it seems as natural as play classes.
The only thing I can add is this: What happens AFTER you get a good teacher in a classroom? If the single, most important factor in the education of a child is the quality of the teacher, then the second most important factor is class size. A great teacher isn’t that great if she has 35 students in her class and doesn’t have the time to attend to all of them.
Bob, et al, yes. Completely yes. Part of teaching is the skill of instruction. This is the element that impacts the students the most (more than taking attendance, cleaning the room, filing papers). When instructing, as teachers we need to have clear expectations for what the goal of the lesson is. Often, a well trained teacher will have those expectations clearly stated for the students. However, and what is often over looked, is that we need to be clear with ourselves what the expectations are so that we can match the instruction to the goal. In other words, is what we are doing in the classroom leading to an improvement in student learning? Is there a connection.
Hopefully so. If we are teaching the correct usage of a comma in a list, then that should be clear to the students and we should teach that skill, not spelling at the same time. Of course, when both commas in a list and spelling have been practiced, then it would be appropriate to work those two skills together in a more wholistic manner.
Oops, double posted. Sorry. Bob
Kudos, Travis. You painted a useful picture of a critical change needed in schooling: Teachers.
We’re the reason student learning usually does not meet state minimum standards, and thus yielding us a conventional “C” grade for teaching.
I’d add, it’s choices teachers make about instruction that limit student learning. So, the first thing I’d urge is for teachers to choose what to count, record, and report during each lesson: number of words spoken, gestures, etc., and adjust instruction to reduce those to as close as each one can to one word, gesture, etc. that yield students meeting each learning criterion for each lesson.
It’s doable. Teachers know how to do it. Some teachers do this and their students’ learning rates increase dramatically and promptly.
Yes?
Lauren, first, glad to hear from you. Those of you reading this should note, if you have not already done so, that Lauren is a student so her views are current and should be taken with serious intent. Second, I applaud you for taking the time to put your ideas in the mix. Your example is solid. Money is not the answer. Money can be used to improve education, but the current way it is being used (computers, desks, band equipment, etc.) is probably not the best use of money if students cannot read at grade level.
I am glad that you have a teacher like Mr. K-C. And he is lucky to have you.
Kudos, Travis. You painted a defining lesson in school reform. It’s about time an incumbent teacher talks straight about schooling and learning. These thoughts came to mind reading your post and others’ comments.
Since teachers are learners, we already know what to do to increase learning: close the gap between what we say-do with how students say-do as they learn.
Some of us close that gap for students. Some of us require students to close that gap. Some of us mix things up in lessons, so students don’t know promptly how to close the gap before they go on to something else.
We all know how to close that gap: tell students what they should do as precisely and accurately as we can at that moment. That’s what we demand of our teachers and professors. Yes?
Those instructions come from a wide range of “methods,” ranging from Harkness Tables to self-paced direct learning to one-on-one learning (with and without PCs) to intense behavior management control.
In other venues, I respectfully call the short-fall of a closed gap “rationed learning.”
John E. Deasy told the National Press Corp recently that it took him awhile to realize how hard it is for teachers to acknowledge that they don’t know how to do something in a classroom. That’s why he backed forms of teacher teams. He also fired educators and administrative staff on the spot, if they did not learn how to increase learning promptly. He was superintendent of Georges County, MD public schools, now with the Gates Foundation. Student learning increased dramatically promptly.
The views of teacher prep and growth open a separate discussion worthy of a separate post. I hope you’ll tackle that by saying specically what you want to learn in PD.
You never know who will read this and that post. They’re timely.
I completely agree, and here’s why:
At River, we went through four band directors in five years, and entering my senior year, this is the first time that I’ve had the same director twice in a row. As a freshman, our band was competitive and consistently in the top three places in our division, and even went to Disneyworld. The director was Mr. B, who at the end of the year decided to move to a different school closer to his home… after only two years at River. The band got smaller even though we recieved two grants to improve our program.
My sophomore year, we got a young new director with very little experience. We had used the grant money to buy shiny new equipment and hire better (and more) staff for our marching band. However, Mr. S had no idea how to run a high school band, and our entire drumline quit. Throughout the year, more and more students ended up leaving the band, and the quality of our music declined drastically. By the end of the year it was determined that we could no longer be a competitive band, and Mr. S decided to leave River.
My junior year, the budget for the music program was even smaller than before. We were sharing a teacher with the art school, and we could only purchase one new instrument. But this year, the teacher was different. He planned to stay. He cared about teaching students quality music. He knew our names, even! Over the year our program drew more and more attention, and soon the band was growing instead of shrinking. We were getting requests to play at community events, the music sounded excellent, and the students were happy.
Today was the first day of my senior year as a music student. While the budget has been cut drastically, the band has literally doubled in size. We have the same teacher as before. We are playing increasingly difficult music, and students are learning.
So, while the amount of money in the program decreased significantly, the quality of teacher instruction was enough to double the enrollment, draw loads of positive attention, increase the difficulty of the music, and keep students happy. All in one year. Bring it on, school board. We have Mr. K-C.
Mike 5, your last note about the increase in teacher salary bringing people into the profession that would then have to be removed later is a true concern. Here is the thinking (I presume it is your thinking, but I am going to elaborate a bit for the benefit of all)…the pay for teaching looks good, even stellar for a single person in college. “Hey,” they think, “I’ll become a teacher because–” and then they fill their heads with all of the reasons why they should teach, but those reasons are on the perceived “easiness” of the job.
These teacher candidates pursue teaching; the university teaching programs don’t weed them out; and they end up in our public schools. Who gets hurt from this? Students.
Thanks for bringing that up Mike 5. You have added a valuable thought to the discussion.
Mike I like the sysnthesis that you have started here. I feel the need to have a crisis situation in which a better version will grow out of the ashes, untouched my the problems of before because all fat and flab have been cut from the system.
Thanks for this great posting Travis. I feel you are absolutely right – that’s the single best answer but also not an easy one to bring up in the staff room.
Cindy-
Would it be such a bad thing for there to be a crisis among those teacher ed. schools that struggle to recruit students? Maybe that’s what needs to happen.
Something else I rarely see mentioned is that a broad increase in teacher salaries might draw even greater numbers of people into teaching who then need to be removed from teaching if they can’t acquire the necessary skill set to be high-quality teachers.
@Connie, You bring up a great point in your last lines about state not allowing others to practice with 5 weeks, regardless of the focus of the training. It takes plenty of time to learn a trade, a skill. That time is both practical experience and academic learning. Put together, it should be more than 5 weeks. Even the weakest state should think to themselves, “Hmmmm, do I want to put our children in the hands of someone who is under qualified, under trained?” Hopefully not.
This is not to say that it is the fault of the teacher candidate. The teacher you described made no mistake on her own. It is the fault of the short-sighted education programs.
How about something more along the lines of an apprenticeship where a teacher candidate goes into the school for at least a year. This would give the school “free” adult time to use in their school. The teacher candidate could spend time in a variety of classrooms; be part of the school running; and then move into a teaching position with a strong mentor who wanted the student teacher. Our teacher candidates should really live and breathe education before going into education.
A Japanese colleague of mine says that a teacher must teach for 10 years to be considered a master teacher, knowing how to impact students.
When my father, a teacher, a superb teacher (as is my mother), was going through his teacher program, you did 3 years of academic stuff, then it was student teaching. However, by that time, a candidate has not had any classroom experience and may not want to be a teacher. My father’s room mate only learned, year 4, when he student taught, that he did not want to be a teacher.
Ouch. It is about creating the best, and supporting the best.
Thanks for the thoughts.
I so agree with all of you. The quality of instruction does make the difference. Teachers have never received an equivalent respect to other professions and I’m not sure that will ever change. I was asked to consult by e-mail with a young college graduate from Cornell who joined Teach for America. I’m in Washington; she is in Arizona. She was given 5 weeks of “training” and was placed in a self-contained elementary EBD classroom in Phoenix. She is sinking fast and reaching out to anyone she can think of for assistance. Kristen’s comment about less qualified/weaker teachers ending up in classrooms with the most academically fragile students brought this situation to my mind. That this “training” program even exists and that school districts feel it necessary to use them demonstrates, to me, that our profession is not valued by our society. States would not allow a doctor, engineer, or lawyer to practice with 5 weeks of “training” no matter how focused the “training,” how close the supervision after placement, or how strong the motivation.
@Cindy, agreed. Teaching is a skill set. There are skills and strategies and techniques that a teacher learns just like an accountant or chemical engineer. This is a good thing for some thought that teaching was a skill that people were born with. Given this, a teacher candidate who acquires those skills should continue in the program and a candidate who has not should find support to continue in the program or find a different course of study.
From FaceBook:
“I’d had a paragraph written, and it vanished on FB when I hit the send button! Anyway, John and you should talk about teaching instruction. Basically, some colleges will be able be strict with their standards because they are well-respected and have students trying to get in their programs. Others won’t be able to raise their standards because they want to hold on to their students. Our little university in upstate South Carolina accepted music ed students who had no business being music majors. There were too many music ed programs in SC, and they even started one down the highway from us while we were there. The VP’s for the schools all get together and vote on whether new programs can start or not, so no one votes against them because they don’t want to be voted against when they have their own new program. I could go on…”
@Kristin, I like your use of the term “molting”. Perfect. :O)
From FaceBook:
Reading the “5 Ways to…” article, I was considering the same point you make. I totally agree. Teacher instruction is critical. That is one variable that reasonable and attainable.
I do believe that there are other key factors. I was reading about it the Harlem Project and its work towards educating parents to be more affective. It seems that home education/values/stability is a no-brainer.
I keep hearing poverty should not be a factor in education and about success stories that support this, and I still believe it is a barrier. Data seems to suggest the poor stay poor and continue disempowered.
Maybe more money to teachers will not solve all problems, but it does infer that educators and education are valued. Perhaps that message can be expressed w/ different means, but it needs to be there and until it is, it seems intuitive that will influence the quality of educators.
Travis, I love your list. Until we expect the best of ourselves in terms of what happens in the classrooms, nothing else really matters.
Kansas has a fantastic program for teacher education, and I wish it existed everywhere. Teacher candidates team teach in their content area for a year, earning a salary and attending classes on the weekend. Not only does this cull those who aren’t cut out to be teachers, but it teaches real skills. I teach methods at a local university, and as hard as I try to make it meaningful my students don’t learn as much as they would if they were designing curriculum for and teaching it to real students. You are so right that our TEP programs need to be revamped. Sometimes I think they’re more about collecting tuition than creating well-prepared teachers. It seems everyone is expecting someone else to create a good teacher – TEP programs rely on the cooperating teacher and vice versa, administrators rely on department heads, the union relies on administrators, the community relies on the Superintendent. No one is on the same page. It’s a broken system of accountability, and by the time the test scores are in the damage is done.
So, another crucial component to this goal is an effective way to remove teachers who can’t teach. I don’t think we can improve every teacher’s skills with collaboration, a fatter paycheck, or coaching. some people simply shouldn’t teach. While some communities and districts do a great job of moving those teachers on, they tend to end up in the schools with the most academically fragile students. Awful teachers are by no means the majority, but they create a tremendous drag on the morale, reputation, and effectiveness of the profession. I think your list – of three in one – is a great place to start molting.
@stuartart, 6 committees designing a car would be a tough situation if there was no communication. This analogy works for education as well. Nicely created. We have a group of well intended people over here and there, and there….However, the system is not improving. How can such a large group of educated, well intending people not make an impact?
Their ability to exert change must be watered down. Back to the classroom. The one place where change can occur is the classroom where the teacher has the ability to change what goes on. It is the only place in the system of education where a teacher can make change. The ability to impact student learning.
It would be cool to get a city that has an education program in its university to talk to the schools of that city, bring in a few (not many…too many and it would lose the poser to change) people from the state, and see if a consistent, thoughtful system could be created.
Thanks for thinking. Do you think there will be a shift? Will the system improve or will it continue to flounder?
teacher education is also about control. colleges design what is taught to students wishing to be teachers. districts decide what is taught. communities decide what ‘extra’ things get taught in THEIR schools. I would guess that the recrutment of students wishing to become teachers is controled in some way too. there does not seem to be a straight one control for getting a person thru the teacher training program to the classroom and teaching. it is like 6 committees designing a car but with no communication or even care for communication. each group thinking they are in control of the decision but actually they all are and it is a muddy result.