According to Sir Michael Barber, an advisor to former Prime Minister Tony Blair:
"They all select their teachers from the top third of their college graduates, whereas the U.S. selects its teachers from the bottom third of graduates. This is one of the big challenges for the U.S. education system: What are you going to do over the next 15 to 20 years to recruit ever better people into teaching?”
In a recent New York Times article, Sir Michael elaborates on the theme of improving schools and teacher quality. He notes that South Korea pays its teachers more than England and America and, as a trade-off, accepts larger class sizes. On the other hand, Finland draws top-tier college graduates to the profession by "fostering exceptionally high public respect for teachers."While working for the Blair government, Sir Michael reports that Britain attracted "more talented young teaching candidates by offering stipends of £7,000, or about $14,000, for college graduates undergoing a year of teacher training. The government set up a national curriculum to govern such training and started a nationwide public relations campaign aimed at persuading prospective teachers that society would value their work."
“But it’s a lot harder to do education reform in the United States than in the U.K.,” Sir Michael notes. The reason: size. According to the Times article, England’s elementary and secondary educational system has about seven million students and 24,000 schools, which is more similar to the state of California alone (which has about 6.3 million students and 9,500 schools). As a whole, the U.S. has around 50 million students and 90,000 schools.
More importantly, Sir Michael suggests that Britain’s political system gives its prime ministers greater authority to dictate new practices than any equivalent American official enjoys, since underlying education policies in the United States are set by each state and within the 15,000 local school districts.
The Times article also notes that "when it comes to failing schools, Sir Michael expresses impatience. When a public school is failing — not just going through a rough patch, but also systematically failing to educate its students — he says there is only one question the authorities should consider: “How do I get these children a good education as fast as possible?”"
Just do it
For Sir Michael, if a school is failing to adequately serve its constituents, the government needs to be able to fix it, close it, or move students to a better school. This oversimplification of the issue is easily admonishable and in no way addresses the complexities associated with practical school reform (just ask Chris Lehmann). The Times reports that Sir Michael also believes that the No Child Left Behind legislation is "outstanding," but not without flaws: “It depends much too often on quite crude tests and one year’s data.” According to Sir Michael, the best school rating systems, including England’s, not only evaluate test results, but also send government inspectors directly into schools "to search for causes of poor performance," including an assessment of the teaching environment and the school leadership.
Check please!
The reality is, truly meaningful reform takes more than a British accent and a sense of humor.
Unfortunately, the Times article does not elaborate on how schools can hire and retain better teachers. Increasing teacher pay might attract some well-qualified applicants to the teaching profession, but it's no guarantee. Retaining teachers also takes more than a fat paycheck. Public respect might make a slight difference, but again, if a teacher is working under the duress of poor leadership or a loathsome work environment, something more is needed.
Perhaps the issue of empowerment might hold more sway. I'm thinking aloud here, but I wonder what impact permitting teachers to decide curriculum goals and accountability standards might have? Is this akin to having industries police themselves, like having coal burning power plants regulate community air quality?
Perhaps I am being too quick to judge. Schools, like power plants, serve communities, therefore communities are the primary stakeholders and have a right to help determine proper accountability standards and benchmarks, no? With the right protocols in place for discussion, debate, and policy making, this might be a workable solution. (I need to do more homework in this area.)
Research is quick to point out that truly successful schools are a product of hard work and dedication from parents, teachers, administrators, students, and members of the community (Darling-Hammond, et al., 2005). Adequate pay is mentioned in the research as a means of retaining and recruiting qualified instructors, but what is "adequate"? (US $50K, US$70K, US$30K?) And while I have never read anything regarding the importance of public respect, there is evidence that points to the importance of parent-teacher collaboration as well as teacher-teacher collaboration (Bransford, et al., 2005). This is where I believe we can draw a connection between earning respecting and talking about it.Observation vs practice
It seems each time I run across such an article about educational reform, it tends to offer bite-sized solutions to incredibly complex situations. Perhaps schools of education or school districts could offer press guides to help writers better understand that critical issues often require complicated solutions. Interviewing an educational consultant only paints a small portion of a larger picture. Perhaps news editors feel the public has no stomach for in-depth, well-researched articles with multiple sources and multiple points of view. So I'll put it to you: how do educators help the press better understand teaching and learning issues? Similarly, in what ways do you communicate with parents and community members about your specific needs or concerns?
Your thoughts and criticism are encouraged.
References:
Bransford, J., Derry, S., Berliner, D., Hammerness, K., and Beckett, K. L. (2005). Theories of learning and their roles in teaching. In L. Darling-Hammond & J. Bransford (Eds.), Preparing teachers for a changing world: What teachers should learn and be able to do. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Darling-Hammond, L., Pacheco, A., Michelli, N., LePage, P., Hammerness, K., & Youngs, P. (2005). Implementing curriculum renewal in teacher education: Managing organizational and policy change. In L. Darling-Hammond & J. Bransford (Eds.), Preparing teachers for a changing world: What teachers should learn and be able to do. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Comments
On zero evidence, I believe that the UK system is better than the US system. However, the UK system seems to be going down the road of the US system - more standardisation, high-stakes testing, etc.
I'm shocked sometimes when I hear what my American counterparts are worried about in case they lose their jobs. Things are a bit more laid-back in the UK - or at least where I am. Or should I say, at least in my classroom... :-)
Fix it, move it, close it... Over simplification. Schools reflect their communities. If the school is failing usually the area in which the school is in is struggling with poverty. Close it, certainly won't alleviate the poverty, move it won't alleviate the poverty, fix it...well that would involve money and serious effort on the part of all involved.
It's not about high powered intelligence in the classrooom in the form of a teacher, I don't even know if that would be of huge benefit. Well-trained teachers with the authority to make the decisions in their classroom within the bounderies of a strong research-based curriculum and no formal report it in the newspaper testing for children under the age of 16. Life-long inputs for educational opportunities so that if they don't learn it in the first 18 years there is somewhere to go to fix it where they don't have to feel like idiots.
I could go on but I will refrain. There is not quick fix for poverty. Education is as close as we've got.
"Perhaps the issue of empowerment might hold more sway. I'm thinking aloud here, but I wonder what impact permitting teachers to decide curriculum goals and accountability standards might have?"
A trememdous impact in my estimation. I was "trained"
in seven thousand different educational approaches in the glorious NYC DOE I no longer use any of them. What I do is create my "own curiculum" I had the good fortune to start grant writing for my classes about 10 years ago, and then design projects to meet the demands of the grant (of course standards based, funders typically want to see results in terms of standards and test scores), but with a mind to who my students were,and what were areas high-interest to them. Of course bringing in thousand of dollars every year into a small school gives you some clout with administrators, and thereby the autonomy necessary to develop as a teacher.
When I watch what NCLB has done with everyone teaching to the "test" and reading from scripts I realize this approach does not develop teachers or students. I feel very sad of young teachers they have littlle to no chance of ever "becoming great teachers" unless they completely rebel.
"Perhaps the issue of empowerment might hold more sway. I'm thinking aloud here, but I wonder what impact permitting teachers to decide curriculum goals and accountability standards might have?"
I think you raise some important issues in this thought-provoking post but I also wonder wonder the impact of giving students real choice about curriculum goals and the impact this might have on raising educational standards. The Finnish system is characterised by a flexible and individualised curriculum, especially at senior levels and the opportunties for students to learn at their own pace, rather than according to age.
While there is much discussion about student-centred learning I often wonder how meaningful this phrase is when what is being learned is often dictated with no real choices available to students. The Finnish system is certainly worth looking at more closely in terms of student achievement and the value placed in education in philosophical and monetary terms.