The Death and Life of the great American School System

Chapter 4

Prev List Next

As a member of Teach for America, Rhee taught for three years in a Baltimore elementary school managed by Education Alternatives Inc., a for-profit organization that received a contract as part of an experiment in privatization. According to Rhee, during her second and third years of teaching, the proportion of her students who read on grade level leapt from 13 percent to 90 percent (critics were doubtful since the Baltimore records could not be located).1 From her experience, she concluded that effective teachers could overcome poverty and other disadvantages; as she told From her experience, she concluded that effective teachers could overcome poverty and other disadvantages; as she told Newsweek Newsweek about the students she taught, "Those kids, where they lived didn"t change. Their parents didn"t change. Their diets didn"t change. The violence in the community didn"t change. The only thing that changed for those 70 kids was the adults who were in front of them every single day teaching them." about the students she taught, "Those kids, where they lived didn"t change. Their parents didn"t change. Their diets didn"t change. The violence in the community didn"t change. The only thing that changed for those 70 kids was the adults who were in front of them every single day teaching them."2 She subsequently created the New Teacher Project, an organization that recruits teachers for inner-city public schools. She subsequently created the New Teacher Project, an organization that recruits teachers for inner-city public schools.

As chancellor, Rhee made clear from the outset that "teachers are everything."3 She moved quickly to introduce sweeping reforms. She fired central office staff, closed under-enrolled schools, reorganized low-performing schools, and ousted princ.i.p.als. She focused on recruiting strong teachers and getting rid of incompetent teachers. She offered a buyout to encourage teachers to resign. Her biggest target was teacher tenure, which she called "the holy grail of teacher unions." Job protection for teachers, she believed, was symptomatic of a culture that put "the interests of adults" over "the interests of children." She said that tenure "has no educational value for kids; it only benefits adults. If we can put veteran teachers who have tenure in a position where they don"t have it, that would help us to radically increase our teacher quality." She moved quickly to introduce sweeping reforms. She fired central office staff, closed under-enrolled schools, reorganized low-performing schools, and ousted princ.i.p.als. She focused on recruiting strong teachers and getting rid of incompetent teachers. She offered a buyout to encourage teachers to resign. Her biggest target was teacher tenure, which she called "the holy grail of teacher unions." Job protection for teachers, she believed, was symptomatic of a culture that put "the interests of adults" over "the interests of children." She said that tenure "has no educational value for kids; it only benefits adults. If we can put veteran teachers who have tenure in a position where they don"t have it, that would help us to radically increase our teacher quality."4 In 2008, she offered the Washington Teachers" Union a deal: If teachers gave up their seniority and tenure, they would be eligible to receive salaries up to $130,000 a year, which would make them the highest-paid urban teachers in America. Those who chose to retain their tenure would not be eligible for the higher compensation. Rhee obtained a five-year commitment from several major foundations, including the Gates Foundation and the Broad Foundation, to support the supersize salaries. Rhee wanted the freedom to fire teachers who did not share her belief that all children, regardless of the disadvantages in their life, can post high test scores, and that the only impediment to academic success is not their family or their poverty but the quality of their teacher. In 2008, she offered the Washington Teachers" Union a deal: If teachers gave up their seniority and tenure, they would be eligible to receive salaries up to $130,000 a year, which would make them the highest-paid urban teachers in America. Those who chose to retain their tenure would not be eligible for the higher compensation. Rhee obtained a five-year commitment from several major foundations, including the Gates Foundation and the Broad Foundation, to support the supersize salaries. Rhee wanted the freedom to fire teachers who did not share her belief that all children, regardless of the disadvantages in their life, can post high test scores, and that the only impediment to academic success is not their family or their poverty but the quality of their teacher.5 Her direct a.s.sault on the teachers" union and on tenure won her lavish and admiring attention from the national media. The Wall Street Journal Wall Street Journal praised her fort.i.tude for a.s.sailing the union and quoted her saying that it is "complete c.r.a.p" to claim that poverty prevents students from learning. praised her fort.i.tude for a.s.sailing the union and quoted her saying that it is "complete c.r.a.p" to claim that poverty prevents students from learning.6 As a result of her confrontational stand against the union, she was featured on national television and on the cover of As a result of her confrontational stand against the union, she was featured on national television and on the cover of Time Time magazine, where she was shown holding a broom. magazine, where she was shown holding a broom.7 To her admirers, she was a courageous reformer, prepared to do a clean sweep of a deeply dysfunctional school district; to her detractors, she was a witch with a broomstick. To her admirers, she was a courageous reformer, prepared to do a clean sweep of a deeply dysfunctional school district; to her detractors, she was a witch with a broomstick.

Of course, if Rhee"s policies are implemented, it will be years before anyone can evaluate their effects. Should teachers work without job security, like most workers in the private sector? Should the teachers" unions lose their power to protect their members against arbitrary firings? Should the salary schedule be abolished and replaced by merit pay based on students" test scores? And if all these things happened, would schools improve? Would students be better prepared for citizenship, college, and careers? Many like-minded reformers agreed with Rhee that school improvement hinged on breaking the unions, removing job security from teachers, and linking teacher pay to student test scores.

Although no one can predict whether Washington, D.C., will someday be the best urban school district in the nation, as Rhee pledged, there is a body of research and experience that is worth reviewing on these issues.

Let"s start with the hardest question: Should teachers" unions exist? Do the protections they offer their members depress student achievement? Are they an "adult interest group," as their critics charge, whose priorities conflict with the needs of their students? Would schools improve if there were no unions to represent the teachers?

To answer these questions, I can no longer refer to Mrs. Ratliff, because she was not allowed to join a union. Texas was a "right to work" state, and there were no teachers" unions. As it happened, the teachers in Houston could have used a union to protect their academic freedom, because they were frequently hara.s.sed by an ultraconservative group called the Minute Women. Members of this organization would drop in unannounced to observe cla.s.ses and sit in the back row to find out whether teachers expressed any unacceptable political opinions. Teachers were frightened by these vigilantes, but they could do nothing to stop their unwanted visits, because members of the group were elected to the city"s school board. My beloved world history teacher, Miss Nelda Davis, was ridiculed in the press as politically suspicious by this group because she wanted to attend the convention of the National Council for the Social Studies, which the Minute Women deemed a leftist organization. They also thought the United Nations, the NAACP, the Urban League, and all other groups that advocated for desegregation or human rights were Communist fronts. My teachers needed protection of their basic rights but they didn"t have it.

That"s one important reason teachers joined unions: to protect their right to think, speak, and teach without fear. In my own research into the history of education in New York City, I discovered that teachers joined a teachers" organization for many reasons. In the early decades of the twentieth century, most teachers were women, and most supervisors and board members were men. Consequently, the administrators and politicians who controlled the schools had an unfortunate habit of imposing paternalistic decisions on teachers. The Board of Education fired female teachers if they got married. When teachers won the right to marry without losing their jobs, the Board of Education fired them if they got pregnant.8 When the Board of Education finally relented on marriage and motherhood, female teachers organized to demand equal pay with male teachers. During World War I, the Board of Education fired some pacifist teachers, but the teachers had no teacher-led organization to defend them. When the Board of Education finally relented on marriage and motherhood, female teachers organized to demand equal pay with male teachers. During World War I, the Board of Education fired some pacifist teachers, but the teachers had no teacher-led organization to defend them.

Most teachers joined a union to seek higher salaries and better working conditions. Teachers have historically been underpaid in comparison to people in other professions with similar levels of education. And most urban districts, where unionism got its start, have usually been burdened with aging facilities, overcrowded cla.s.srooms, and a shortage of supplies and resources. Individual teachers could do nothing to change these conditions, but acting collectively they could negotiate with political leaders to improve the schools.

Critics of teacher unions seem to be more plentiful now than ever before. Supporters of choice and vouchers see the unions as the major obstacle to their reforms. The Wall Street Journal Wall Street Journal regularly publishes editorials in opposition to teacher unionism, and the business press can be counted on to blame the unions for whatever is wrong with the schools. One would think, by reading the critics, that the nation"s schools are overrun by incompetent teachers who hold their jobs only because of union protections, that unions are directly responsible for poor student performance, and that academic achievement would soar if the unions were to disappear. regularly publishes editorials in opposition to teacher unionism, and the business press can be counted on to blame the unions for whatever is wrong with the schools. One would think, by reading the critics, that the nation"s schools are overrun by incompetent teachers who hold their jobs only because of union protections, that unions are directly responsible for poor student performance, and that academic achievement would soar if the unions were to disappear.9 This is unfair. No one, to my knowledge, has demonstrated a clear, indisputable correlation between teacher unionism and academic achievement, either negative or positive. The Southern states, where teachers" unions have historically been either weak or nonexistent, have always had the poorest student performance on national examinations. Ma.s.sachusetts, the state with the highest academic performance, has long had strong teacher unions. The difference in performance is probably due to economics, not to unionization. Where there are affluent communities, student performance tends to be higher, whether or not their teachers belong to unions. Some of the top-performing nations in the world are highly unionized, others are not. Finland, whose students score highest on international a.s.sessments of reading, has a teacher workforce that is nearly 100 percent unionized. Most high-performing Asian nations do not have large proportions of unionized teachers (though some do). Unionization per se does not cause high student achievement, nor does it cause low achievement.

While I have never been a member of any union, I was a friend of Albert Shanker, president of the American Federation of Teachers, whom I met after my history of the New York City schools was published. His successor, Sandra Feldman, was also my friend, and I am friends with her successor, Randi Weingarten, who was elected AFT president in 2008. At the behest of the AFT, I traveled to Eastern Europe in 1989 and 1990, as the Cold War ended, to meet with teachers and talk about civic education and democracy in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Romania. I worked with the leaders of Teachers Solidarity in Poland, which opposed the Communist regime and its puppet unions. As a result of these experiences, I came to believe that teachers, like other working people, should have the right to organize and to bargain collectively for their compensation, working conditions, and right to due process. Moreover, as a historian, I recognize the importance of the labor movement as a political force that has improved the lives of working people in many sectors of American life, including education.

Critics say the union contract makes it impossible for administrators to get rid of bad teachers. The union says it protects teachers against arbitrary dismissals. To be sure, it is not easy to fire a tenured teacher, but it can be done so long as there is due process in hearing the teacher"s side of the story. But the issue should not take years to resolve. The AFT, which represents most urban districts, has supported peer review programs, in which teachers evaluate other teachers, offer to help them become better teachers, and, if they do not improve, "counsel them out" of the profession. When it comes to decisions about terminating a teacher, unions want to be part of the decision-making process. It is not in the interest of their members to have incompetent teachers in their midst, pa.s.sing along poorly educated students to the next teacher. Since unions are not going to disappear, district officials should collaborate with them to develop a fair and expeditious process for removing incompetent teachers, rather than using the union as a scapegoat for low performance or for conditions in the school and society that are beyond the teachers" control.

Tenure is not a guarantee of lifetime employment but a protection against being terminated without due process. It does not protect teachers from being laid off in a recession, nor does it protect them from being fired for incompetence or misconduct. Why does due process matter? Teachers have been fired for all sorts of dubious and non-meritorious reasons: for being of the wrong race or religion, for being gay or belonging to some other disfavored group, for not contributing to the right politician, for not paying a bribe to someone for their job, for speaking out on an issue outside the cla.s.sroom, for disagreeing with the princ.i.p.al, or simply to make room for a school board member"s sister, nephew, or brother-in-law.

Teachers do not receive tenure automatically. Every state has its own requirements. Typically, tenure is awarded after three or four years of probationary status, during which time teachers are supposed to be observed and evaluated by their princ.i.p.al. The princ.i.p.al has the authority to deny tenure to any teacher for any reason. Princ.i.p.als are supposed to carefully observe the performance of probationary teachers many times before awarding them tenure. Working with princ.i.p.als and unions, school boards should develop a thoughtful, deliberative process for evaluating probationary teachers. They should also put in place a peer review program to help struggling teachers, whether they are probationary or tenured.10 To a considerable extent, the teaching profession is self-selective. Between 40 percent and 50 percent of new teachers do not survive the first five years. Maybe they couldn"t manage the cla.s.ses; maybe they were disappointed by working conditions; maybe teaching was not for them; maybe they felt that they were unsuccessful; or maybe they decided to enter another profession. For whatever reason, the job is so demanding that nearly half of those who enter teaching choose to leave at an early stage in their career.

Unions have many critics, including some within their own ranks who complain that their leaders fail to protect teachers against corporate reformers. Other critics want the unions to become more a.s.sertive in policing their own ranks and getting rid of incompetents and malingerers. But the critics most often quoted in the media see unions as the major obstacle to education reform. They fault the unions for their resistance to using test scores to evaluate teachers. They want administrators to have the freedom to fire teachers whose students" test scores do not improve and to replace them with new teachers who might raise those scores. They want to use test scores as the decisive tool of evaluation. Their goal is a school system in which scores go up every year and in which teachers who don"t contribute to that result can be promptly removed. In response to NCLB, which required steady improvement in test scores each year, many, including President Barack Obama, endorsed the idea of using students" test scores to evaluate their teachers.

In the NCLB era, the media attached the term "reformer" to those educators and officials who turned to market-based, data-driven reforms to produce higher scores. These free-market reformers advocated testing, accountability, merit pay, and charter schools, and most were notably hostile to unions. The unions objected to the reformers" efforts to judge teachers solely by their students" test scores, and the reformers sought to break the power of the unions. The reformers said that having "great" teachers or "effective" teachers was the key to their goals, and they wanted the union to get out of their way.

In the decade before NCLB, reformers agreed that the teacher was the key to educational improvement, but they pursued a different path. In 1996, five years before the pa.s.sage of No Child Left Behind, the National Commission on Teaching & America"s Future issued a report called What Matters Most: Teaching for America"s Future What Matters Most: Teaching for America"s Future. The chairman of the commission was Governor James B. Hunt Jr. of North Carolina. It included the presidents of the two major teachers" unions, business leaders, university presidents, and other educators. Its executive director was Linda Darling-Hammond, then of Teachers College, Columbia University.

The commission set a goal that by 2006, all children would be taught by excellent teachers. To reach this goal, the commission proposed higher standards for teacher education programs, high-quality professional development, more effective recruitment practices, a greater commitment to professionalism, and schools that support good teaching. The commission recommended additional compensation for teachers who won national board certification, received licenses to teach in another subject, or demonstrated greater pedagogical skills and content knowledge. But it specifically rejected schemes to connect teacher pay to students" test scores. The scores, the report warned, are only "crude measures" that "do not take into account the different backgrounds and prior performances of students, the fact that students are not randomly distributed across schools and cla.s.srooms, the shortcomings in the kinds of learning measured by current standardized tests, and the difficulty in sorting out which influences among many-the home, the community, the student him- or herself, and multiple teachers-are at play." It noted further that "attempts to link student test scores to rewards for teachers and schools have led to counterproductive incentives for keeping out or pushing out low-achieving students, retaining them in a grade so their scores look higher, or a.s.signing them to special education where their scores don"t count, rather than teaching them more effectively."11 After the pa.s.sage of NCLB, however, everything changed. Efforts to improve teacher professionalism were swept away by the law"s singular focus on raising test scores. Schools that did not meet this demand faced public humiliation and possible closure. Superintendents and princ.i.p.als were commanded by the law to get test scores higher every year until every student was proficient. The idea of teacher professionalism became an antique notion; far more compelling was the search for teachers who would get the scores up, especially in urban districts, where superintendents pledged to close the achievement gap between African American/Hispanic students and white/Asian students.

NCLB required that the scores rise in reading and mathematics in every grade from third through eighth, which meant that this year"s fourth grade had to get a higher score than last year"s fourth grade. It didn"t take long for school officials to realize that they needed what were called "growth models," so the progress of individual children could be tracked over time. This way of measuring academic improvement was known as "value-added a.s.sessment" (VAA), a technique that was developed mainly by William Sanders of the University of Tennessee. A statistician and (at that time) adjunct professor in the university"s College of Business Administration, Sanders had worked as a statistical consultant to agricultural, manufacturing, and engineering industries. His value-added method aimed to calculate the extent to which teachers contributed to the gains made by their students, as compared to other factors. Drawing on his studies, which were purely statistical in nature (i.e., not involving cla.s.sroom observations), Sanders concluded that "the most important factor affecting student learning is the teacher. In addition, the results show wide variation in effectiveness among teachers. The immediate and clear implication of this finding is that seemingly more can be done to improve education by improving the effectiveness of teachers than by any other single factor. Effective teachers appear to be effective with students of all achievement levels, regardless of the level of heterogeneity in their cla.s.srooms. Effective teachers appear to be effective with students of all achievement levels, regardless of the level of heterogeneity in their cla.s.srooms."12 Sanders contrasted his method-which involved calculating the rate of progress that students make on standardized tests over a period of years-with what he called "a laissez faire approach," that is, "appropriate more resources and free educators to utilize their own professionalism." Sanders contrasted his method-which involved calculating the rate of progress that students make on standardized tests over a period of years-with what he called "a laissez faire approach," that is, "appropriate more resources and free educators to utilize their own professionalism." 13 13 The "laissez faire approach" sounded very much like the remedies proposed by the National Commission on Teaching & America"s Future, although the commission would not have characterized its proposals as "laissez faire." In Sanders" view, this approach had created huge variability among schools and had failed. What was needed, Sanders insisted, was a rigorous, data-based a.n.a.lysis such as his own. The "laissez faire approach" sounded very much like the remedies proposed by the National Commission on Teaching & America"s Future, although the commission would not have characterized its proposals as "laissez faire." In Sanders" view, this approach had created huge variability among schools and had failed. What was needed, Sanders insisted, was a rigorous, data-based a.n.a.lysis such as his own.

The idea of value-added a.s.sessment made sense, at least on the surface. If you compare the test scores of specific students from year to year, or from September to June, then you can pinpoint which students got the biggest gains and which made no gains at all. The scores of the students can be matched to their teachers, and patterns begin to emerge, making it possible to identify which teachers regularly get large gains in their cla.s.ses, and which get few or none. Using the value-added scores, districts would be able to rank their teachers by their ability to increase gains. Those at the top would be considered the superstars, and those at the bottom would improve or get fired.

Value-added a.s.sessment is the product of technology; it is also the product of a managerial mind-set that believes that every variable in a child"s education can be identified, captured, measured, and evaluated with precision. Computers make it possible to a.s.semble the annual test scores of thousands of students and quickly a.n.a.lyze which students gained the most, which gained nothing, and which lost ground on standardized tests. Sanders the statistician soon became Sanders the educational measurement guru. As the methodology gained adherents, education policy increasingly became the domain of statisticians and economists. With their sophisticated tools and their capacity to do multivariate longitudinal a.n.a.lysis, they did not need to enter the cla.s.sroom, observe teachers, or review student work to know which teachers were the best and which were the worst, which were effective and which were ineffective. Discussions of what to teach and what const.i.tuted a quality education receded into the background; those issues were contentious and value-laden, not worthy of the attention of the data-minded policy a.n.a.lysts. Using value-added models, the technical experts could evaluate teachers and schools without regard to the curriculum or the actual lived experiences of their students. What mattered most in determining educational quality was not curriculum or instruction, but data.

NCLB did not incorporate value-added a.s.sessment, and its failure to do so was grounds for frequent criticism. Of what value was it to know whether this year"s fourth grade did better on the state test than last year"s fourth grade? Wasn"t it more important to determine whether the students in this year"s fourth grade learned more by the time they moved to fifth grade? And wasn"t it better still to be able to measure how much the scores of specific children had gone up or down over time? Even better was to link the scores of specific students to specific teachers. Of course, the missing consideration in the debates among economists and policymakers was the quality of the a.s.sessments. If the a.s.sessments were low-level, multiple-choice tests, and if teachers were intensely prepping their students for the tests, then could it really be said that these were measures of learning? Or that they were indicators of better teaching? Or were they instead measures of how well children had been drilled to respond to low-level questions?

Eric Ha.n.u.shek of Stanford University studied the problem of how to increase the supply of high-quality teachers. Ha.n.u.shek is a friend of mine, and one of the nation"s best economists of education. In 2004, I invited him and his colleague Steven Rivkin to present a paper at a conference at the Brookings Inst.i.tution. Reviewing a large number of studies, they noted that teachers" salaries, certification, education, and additional degrees had little impact on student performance. The variables that mattered most in the studies they reviewed were teachers" experience and their scores on achievement tests, but most studies found even these variables to be statistically insignificant. They cited studies showing that teachers in their first year of teaching, and to some extent their second as well, "perform significantly worse in the cla.s.sroom" than more experienced teachers. Ha.n.u.shek and Rivkin concluded that the best way to improve teacher quality was to look at "differences in growth rates of student achievement across teachers. A good teacher would be one who consistently obtained high learning growth from students, while a poor teacher would be one who consistently produced low learning growth." Since the current requirements for entry into teaching are "imprecise" or not consistently correlated with teaching skill, they argued, it made no sense to tighten up the credentialing process. Instead, "If one is concerned about student performance, one should gear policy to student performance." Ha.n.u.shek and Rivkin projected that "having five years of good teachers in a row" (that is, teachers at the 85th percentile) "could overcome the average seventh-grade mathematics achievement gap between lower-income kids (those on the free or reduced-price lunch program) and those from higher-income families. In other words, high-quality teachers can make up for the typical deficits seen in the preparation of kids from disadvantaged backgrounds." In light of these findings, Ha.n.u.shek and Rivkin recommended that states "loosen up" the requirements for entering teaching and pay more attention to whether teachers are able to get results, that is, better student performance on tests.14 At the conference, Richard Rothstein responded that the policy implications of the Ha.n.u.shek-Rivkin paper were "misleading and dangerous." He objected to the authors" view that school reform alone could overcome the powerful influence of family and social environment. He dismissed their claims about closing the achievement gap between low-income students and their middle-cla.s.s peers in five years, an a.s.sertion similar to one previously advanced by Sanders. Sanders said that students with teachers in the top quintile of effectiveness for three three consecutive years would gain 50 percentile points as compared to those who were a.s.signed to the lowest quintile. Rothstein said their reasoning was circular: "good teachers can raise student achievement, and teachers are defined as good if they raise student achievement." Thus, one cannot know which teachers are effective until after they had produced consistent gains for three to five straight years. But, said Rothstein, if these top teachers were then a.s.signed to low-income schools, then middle-income schools would necessarily have less effective teachers. Rothstein found it hard to imagine how such a policy might be implemented. consecutive years would gain 50 percentile points as compared to those who were a.s.signed to the lowest quintile. Rothstein said their reasoning was circular: "good teachers can raise student achievement, and teachers are defined as good if they raise student achievement." Thus, one cannot know which teachers are effective until after they had produced consistent gains for three to five straight years. But, said Rothstein, if these top teachers were then a.s.signed to low-income schools, then middle-income schools would necessarily have less effective teachers. Rothstein found it hard to imagine how such a policy might be implemented.15 Yet there was something undeniably appealing about the idea that a string of "effective" or "top-quintile" teachers could close the achievement gap between low-income students and their middle-income peers and between African American students and white students. And there was something appalling about the idea that a string of mediocre or bad teachers would doom low-performing students to a life of constant failure, dragging them down to depths from which they might never recover. The bottom line was that the teacher was the key to academic achievement. A string of top-quintile teachers could, on their own, erase the learning deficits of low-income and minority students, or so the theory went.

This line of reasoning appealed to conservatives and liberals alike; liberals liked the prospect of closing the achievement gap, and conservatives liked the possibility that it could be accomplished with little or no attention to poverty, housing, unemployment, health needs, or other social and economic problems. If students succeeded, it was the teacher who did it. If students got low scores, it was the teacher"s fault. Teachers were both the cause of low performance and the cure for low performance. The solution was to get rid of bad teachers and recruit only good ones. Of course, it was difficult to know how to recruit good teachers when the determination of their effectiveness required several years of cla.s.sroom data.

A 2006 paper by Robert Gordon, Thomas J. Kane, and Douglas O. Staiger, t.i.tled "Identifying Effective Teachers Using Performance on the Job," took the argument a step further. Like Ha.n.u.shek and Rivkin, these authors maintained that "paper qualifications," such as degrees, licenses, and certification, do not predict who will be a good teacher. The differences, they said, between "stronger teachers" and "weaker teachers" become clear only after teachers have been teaching for "a couple of years." Their solution was to recruit new teachers without regard to paper credentials and to measure their success by their students" test scores. They agreed that value-added measures of student performance were essential in identifying effective teachers. They recommended that school districts pay bonuses to effective teachers who teach in high-poverty schools. And they recommended that the federal government provide grants to states to build data systems to "link student performance with the effectiveness of individual teachers over time." These recommendations were of more than academic interest, because one of the authors, Robert Gordon of the Center for American Progress, a Washington-based think tank, was subsequently selected by the Obama administration to serve as deputy director for education in the Office of Management and Budget, where he was able to promote his policy ideas. And sure enough, President Obama"s education program included large sums of money for states to build data systems that would link student test scores to individual teachers, as well as funds for merit pay plans that would reward teachers for increasing their students" test scores. In choosing his education agenda, President Obama sided with the economists and the corporate-style reformers, not with his chief campaign adviser, Linda Darling-Hammond.16 The Gordon, Kane, and Staiger study followed teachers in their first, second, and third years. It concluded that students a.s.signed to a teacher in the bottom quartile of all teachers (ranked according to their students" gains) lost on average 5 percentile points compared to similar students. Meanwhile, a student who was a.s.signed to a teacher in the top quartile gained 5 percentile points. Thus, the difference between being a.s.signed to a low- or high-rated teacher was 10 percentile points. Noting that the black-white achievement gap is estimated to be 34 percentile points, they reached this startling conclusion: "Therefore, if the effects were to acc.u.mulate, having a top-quartile teacher rather than a bottom-quartile teacher four years in a row would be enough to close the black-white test score gap."17 So, depending on which economist or statistician one preferred, the achievement gap between races, ethnic groups, and income groups could be closed in three years (Sanders), four years (Gordon, Kane, and Staiger), or five years (Ha.n.u.shek and Rivkin). Over a short period of time, this a.s.sertion became an urban myth among journalists and policy wonks in Washington, something that "everyone knew." This particular urban myth fed a fantasy that schools serving poor children might be able to construct a teaching corps made up exclusively of superstar teachers, the ones who produced large gains year after year. This is akin to saying that baseball teams should consist only of players who hit over .300 and pitchers who win at least twenty games every season; after all, such players exist, so why should not such teams exist? The fact that no such team exists should give pause to those who believe that almost every teacher in almost every school in almost every district might be a superstar if only school leaders could fire at will.

The teacher was everything; that was the new mantra of economists and bottom-line school reformers. And not only was the teacher the key to closing the achievement gap, but the most effective teachers did not need to have any paper credentials or teacher education. There was no way to predict who would be a good teacher.18 So there was no reason to limit entry into teaching; anyone should be able to enter the profession and show whether she or he could raise test scores. So there was no reason to limit entry into teaching; anyone should be able to enter the profession and show whether she or he could raise test scores.

Some scholars questioned whether value-added a.s.sessment should be used for consequential personnel decisions. Economist Dale Ballou wrote in 2002 that value-added a.s.sessment was "useful when viewed in context by educators who understand local circ.u.mstances," but that it was potentially dangerous when used for accountability and high-stakes personnel decisions. The tests were not accurate enough to serve as the basis for high-stakes decisions. Test scores, he wrote, were affected not only by students" ability and by random influences (such as the weather or students" emotional state), but also by statistical properties such as measurement error and random error. These errors affect student scores, and they get "noisier" (less reliable) when used to calculate gain scores and then to attribute the gains to a specific teacher. Gain scores, he pointed out, are influenced by factors other than teachers and schools; social and demographic factors affect not only the starting point but the "rate of progress" that students make. Yet, he noted, most value-added methods do not control for those non-school factors. Also problematic was that gain scores are not necessarily comparable, because test questions are not of equal difficulty. If the gains are not comparable, then the results are meaningless, he said. Ballou, who subsequently wrote articles with Sanders, warned that "there are too many uncertainties and inequities to rely on such measures for high-stakes personnel decisions."19 Another limitation of value-added a.s.sessment is that it applies only to those teachers for whom yearly test scores are available, possibly a minority of a school"s staff. New teachers, those with less than three to five years of experience, cannot be evaluated, because there is not enough long-term test score data. Teachers of history, social studies, the arts, science, technology, physical education, and foreign languages cannot be evaluated, because their subjects are not regularly tested. Only teachers of reading and mathematics in elementary school and middle schools can be evaluated, and they can be evaluated only if scores are available from the previous year and only if they have been teaching for at least three years.

The idea of using value-added test scores to fire teachers or to award tenure posed another problem. In 2008, economist Dan Goldhaber and his a.s.sistant Michael Hansen asked whether teacher effectiveness, measured in this way, is stable over the years. Goldhaber said that if performance were extremely stable over time, then it would be a good idea to use students" scores for high-stakes decisions. But he discovered that teacher effects were unstable over time. Comparing thousands of North Carolina teachers, pre-tenure and post-tenure, Goldhaber found that 11 percent of teachers who were in the lowest quintile in their early years of teaching reading were in the highest quintile after they received tenure. Only 44 percent of reading teachers and 42 percent of math teachers in the top quintile before tenure were still in the top quintile in the post-tenure period. This meant that if an administrator a.s.signed low-performing students to a top-quintile teacher, there was a good possibility that the teacher would not be a top-quintile teacher the next year. Some elementary teachers were more effective at teaching reading than math; others were more effective at teaching math than reading. An administrator who denied tenure to all teachers who were in the bottom quintile in either reading or math would terminate almost a third of the teachers. Moreover, almost a third of them would have eventually landed in the top two quintiles in reading, and about a quarter in the top two quintiles in math, had they not been terminated. Goldhaber also found that consistency of job performance and productivity became greater as teachers became more experienced. 20 20 Other studies of the stability of teacher effects reached the same conclusion: Most teachers who ranked in the top quintile one year were not the "best" teachers the next year, and most teachers who ranked in the lowest quintile one year got better results the next year. Other studies of the stability of teacher effects reached the same conclusion: Most teachers who ranked in the top quintile one year were not the "best" teachers the next year, and most teachers who ranked in the lowest quintile one year got better results the next year.21 In other words, being an effective teacher is not necessarily a permanent, unchanging quality. Some teachers are outstanding year after year, when judged by increases in their students" test scores. Others are effective one year, but not the next, by the same measure. Some become better teachers over time. Some do not. Apparently, the test scores of their students reflected something other than what the teachers did, such as the students" ability and motivation, or the characteristics of a cla.s.s or conditions in the school. Maybe the teacher had a great interaction with the cla.s.s one year but not the next. Or maybe the students a.s.signed to the teacher were not similar from year to year.

Economists Brian A. Jacob, Lars Lefgren, and David Sims identified another major problem with the claim that three or four or five years of great teachers in a row would wipe out the achievement gap. They said that learning gains do not all persist over time. Students forget, gains fade. After a year, only about 20 percent and at best only one-third of any gain due to teacher quality persists. After two years, unless there is continual reinforcement of learning, only one-eighth of the gain persists. The authors concluded, "Our results indicate that contemporary teacher value-added measures may overstate the ability of teachers, even exceptional ones, to influence the ultimate level of student knowledge since they conflate variation in short-term and long-term knowledge. Given that a school"s objective is to increase the latter, the importance of teacher value-added measures as currently estimated may be substantially less than the teacher value-added literature indicates."22 If these studies are right, then the gains students make each year do not remain intact and acc.u.mulate. You can"t just add up the gains of one year and multiply by three, four, or five. Teachers are very important, but students don"t remember and retain everything they learn.

Another economist, Jesse Rothstein, tested three methods of calculating value added by teachers and determined that none of them was reliable. He surveyed data for 99,000 North Carolina fifth graders and asked what effect their current teachers had on their scores in third and fourth grades. This was a falsification test, a deliberate attempt to ask a question whose answer should have been "none," since a fifth-grade teacher cannot influence students" test scores in third and fourth grades. Yet he found that all three ways of calculating value added produced large effects on fourth-grade test scores, meaning that they were flawed. The reason for these results, he speculated, was that many students are not a.s.signed to cla.s.ses randomly, but according to their prior achievement. He reported that students" gains tended to decay, and that only a third of the teachers who were in the top quintile based on two years of data were in the top quintile based on a single year of data.23 In sum, value-added modeling is rife with technical problems. In sum, value-added modeling is rife with technical problems.

While economists traded arguments, prominent journalists joined the fray. Malcolm Gladwell, the best-selling author and writer for the New Yorker New Yorker, wisely noted that teachers are not "solely responsible for how much is learned in a cla.s.sroom, and not everything of value that a teacher imparts to his or her students can be captured on a standardized test." Nonetheless, he was impressed by the likelihood that three or four years of testing data would show which teachers are very good and which are very bad. The biggest problem in school reform, he argued, is "finding people with the potential to be great teachers." He cited the economists who had written that it doesn"t matter if a teacher has certification, a master"s degree, or high test scores. In light of all this, Gladwell concluded that "teaching should be open to anyone with a pulse and a college degree-and teachers should be judged after they have started their jobs, not before."24 Nicholas D. Kristof, a columnist for the New York Times New York Times, described education as "Our Greatest National Shame." He said that the national school system was broken, but he saw a bright spot on the horizon. First, he wrote, "good teachers matter more than anything; they are astonishingly important. It turns out that having a great teacher is far more important than being in a small cla.s.s, or going to a good school with a mediocre teacher. A Los Angeles study suggested that four consecutive years of having a teacher from the top 25 percent of the pool would erase the black-white testing gap." The Los Angeles study to which he referred was the a.n.a.lysis by Gordon, Kane, and Staiger. Impressed by their study, Kristof held that entry credentials and qualifications don"t matter, that it doesn"t matter if prospective teachers had certification or a graduate degree, went to a better college, or had higher SAT scores. Predictably, he proposed "sc.r.a.pping certification, measuring better through testing which teachers are effective, and then paying them significantly more-with special bonuses to those who teach in "bad" schools."25 The theory seemed reasonable, but still and all, it was only a theory. The fact was that the theory had never been demonstrated anywhere. No school or school district or state anywhere in the nation had ever proved the theory correct. Nowhere was there a real-life demonstration in which a district had identified the top quintile of teachers, a.s.signed low-performing students to their cla.s.ses, and improved the test scores of low-performing students so dramatically in three, four, or five years that the black-white test score gap closed. Nor had any scholar adduced evidence that top-performing nations had opened the teaching profession to any college graduate who wanted to teach, without regard to their credentials or experience or qualifications.

One beneficiary of the ongoing debate about the importance of great teachers was Teach for America (TFA). This program began to attract national attention at the same time that growing numbers of economists questioned the value of traditional teacher-training requirements for entry into teaching. In what became an oft-told tale, Princeton student Wendy Kopp wrote a senior thesis in which she proposed the idea of a teacher corps composed of top-flight graduates from the nation"s elite colleges and universities to teach for two years in schools enrolling low-income students. After her graduation, Kopp deployed her superb organizational skills to raise millions of dollars from corporations and philanthropists to create Teach for America, with the mission of closing the achievement gap. Its first cla.s.s of 500 teachers went into cla.s.srooms in six low-income communities in 1990. By 2002, the TFA corps consisted of 2,500 teachers working at eighteen sites. Each year the number of applicants increased, and by 2009, there were nearly 7,500 corps members working in thirty-four urban and rural settings.26 Some of the TFA graduates later founded their own charter schools, such as KIPP. Some remained in teaching. The most prominent TFA alumna was Mich.e.l.le Rhee, the chancellor of the Washington, D.C., school system. Most left teaching after two years, but certainly the time they spent as urban teachers was an important life experience for an influential group of well-educated young men and women. Some of the TFA graduates later founded their own charter schools, such as KIPP. Some remained in teaching. The most prominent TFA alumna was Mich.e.l.le Rhee, the chancellor of the Washington, D.C., school system. Most left teaching after two years, but certainly the time they spent as urban teachers was an important life experience for an influential group of well-educated young men and women.

TFA is akin to the Peace Corps in its appeal to youthful idealism. But does TFA improve the quality of education in the poor urban and rural districts where its members have taught? Linda Darling-Hammond criticized TFA for sending inexperienced young people to teach the nation"s most vulnerable children; Darling-Hammond had been the executive director of the National Commission on Teaching & America"s Future, whose call for better-trained, more professional teachers was in direct opposition to the economists" critique of entry requirements and paper credentials. TFA seemed to be proof of the economists" views. TFA corps members received only a brief training period in the summer before their jobs commenced, yet were supposedly more successful than teachers with paper credentials and experience.

However, the evidence was far from conclusive. Researchers who examined the effects of TFA came to contradictory conclusions. A study in Arizona in 2002 held that TFA teachers had a negative impact on their students as compared to certified teachers.27 A national evaluation in 2004 concluded that students with TFA teachers did as well in reading as those taught by a control group, and significantly better in mathematics. The study had a small sample size of forty-one TFA teachers and a control group of fifty-seven teachers. The gains for TFA teachers were significant but small: Their students" math scores rose from the 14th percentile to only the 17th percentile. A national evaluation in 2004 concluded that students with TFA teachers did as well in reading as those taught by a control group, and significantly better in mathematics. The study had a small sample size of forty-one TFA teachers and a control group of fifty-seven teachers. The gains for TFA teachers were significant but small: Their students" math scores rose from the 14th percentile to only the 17th percentile.28 Darling-Hammond led a study of 4,400 teachers and 132,000 students in Houston and concluded that certified teachers consistently produced significantly higher achievement than uncertified teachers, and that uncertified TFA teachers had a negative or non-significant effect on student achievement. TFA teachers who stayed long enough to gain certification performed as well as other certified teachers.29 By contrast, a study of high school teachers in North Carolina concluded that TFA teachers were more effective than traditional teachers. It held that "the TFA effect . . . exceeds the impact of additional years of experience," especially in mathematics and science. However, another study of high school students in North Carolina determined that traditionally prepared secondary teachers were more successful than beginning teachers, including TFA corps members, who lacked teacher training. By contrast, a study of high school teachers in North Carolina concluded that TFA teachers were more effective than traditional teachers. It held that "the TFA effect . . . exceeds the impact of additional years of experience," especially in mathematics and science. However, another study of high school students in North Carolina determined that traditionally prepared secondary teachers were more successful than beginning teachers, including TFA corps members, who lacked teacher training.30 Thomas J. Kane, Jonah E. Rockoff, and Douglas O. Staiger studied different cohorts of New York City teachers (certified, uncertified, TFA, and Teaching Fellows) and concluded that certification doesn"t make a difference in student test scores, but experience does, especially for newer teachers. They wrote that New York City"s teachers "are no different from other teachers around the country. Teachers make long strides in their first three years, with very little experience-related improvement after that."31 Most studies find that new teachers are less effective than experienced teachers and that the first two years of teaching are the least successful. Most TFA teachers in urban districts leave after their two-year commitment ends, and 80 percent or more are gone after their third or fourth year.32 Thus, many TFA teachers leave the field just at the point when teachers become most effective. Thus, many TFA teachers leave the field just at the point when teachers become most effective.

So is TFA the answer to the nation"s need for large numbers of effective teachers? Can TFA meet its goal and close the achievement gap?

TFA is a worthy philanthropic effort to recruit bright young people to teach in beleaguered districts. The organization brings highly educated young people into the teaching profession, if only for a few years. If some choose to remain in teaching, that is a net plus. Those who leave will have a deeper understanding of the needs of the schools as they enter other walks of life, and that too is a net plus for them and for the schools.

But it is simply an illusion to see TFA as the answer to the nation"s need for more and better teachers: The number of TFA teachers is insufficient to make a large difference in the teaching profession, and most will be gone after two or three years. TFA sends fewer than 10,000 new teachers each year into a profession with nearly 4 million members.

Similarly, it is an illusion to imagine that TFA will close the achievement gap. While some studies report significant gains for their students, none of the reported gains is large enough to close the gap that now exists between students of different racial groups. And since TFA members leave teaching at a higher rate than other new teachers, whatever gains they achieve cannot be sustained. A constant churn of new teachers into urban schools does not help the schools achieve the stability or the experienced teaching staff they need.

We should applaud the idealism of young people from our finest universities who want to devote two or three years to teaching. Nevertheless, the overwhelming majority of new teachers will not be drawn from elite inst.i.tutions but will continue to come from state universities, where the quality of their their education will determine their ability to improve the education of the next generation. The nation needs a steady infusion of well-educated teachers who will make a commitment to teaching as a profession. Every state university and teacher-preparation program should ensure that their graduates have a strong foundation in the liberal arts and sciences and are deeply grounded in the subjects they plan to teach. education will determine their ability to improve the education of the next generation. The nation needs a steady infusion of well-educated teachers who will make a commitment to teaching as a profession. Every state university and teacher-preparation program should ensure that their graduates have a strong foundation in the liberal arts and sciences and are deeply grounded in the subjects they plan to teach.

To make teaching attractive to well-educated young people who are just starting their careers, teaching should offer good salaries and good working conditions. When a man or woman becomes a teacher, he or she should immediately have the support of mentors and colleagues. Simply knowing a lot about history or mathematics or reading theory is no guarantee that one can teach it well. On the other hand, too many teachers are immersed in pedagogy but are poorly educated in any any subject matter. Teachers need both. They need to be well educated in whatever they plan to teach, preferably in more than one subject since a.s.signments change. New teachers need to know about cla.s.sroom management, interacting with children, helping children with special needs, communicating with parents, and working with colleagues. New teachers would also benefit if the schools in which they taught had a coherent curriculum, so they knew what they were expected to teach. And teaching would be enhanced if schools of education stopped insisting on pedagogical conformity and recognized that there are many ways to be a successful teacher. subject matter. Teachers need both. They need to be well educated in whatever they plan to teach, preferably in more than one subject since a.s.signments change. New teachers need to know about cla.s.sroom management, interacting with children, helping children with special needs, communicating with parents, and working with colleagues. New teachers would also benefit if the schools in which they taught had a coherent curriculum, so they knew what they were expected to teach. And teaching would be enhanced if schools of education stopped insisting on pedagogical conformity and recognized that there are many ways to be a successful teacher.

When it is time for a princ.i.p.al to decide whether a teacher should get tenure, it should be treated as a weighty responsibility, not a routine matter. Given the availability of data about test score gains that every state now collects, it is inevitable that this information will become part of the tenure decision. Princ.i.p.als should know which teachers were very effective in teaching their students to read or do math, which teachers were effective on average, and which were extremely ineffective. Undoubtedly this information will become part of the princ.i.p.al"s decision and should be used in conjunction with observations and peer evaluations. Presumably the princ.i.p.al will not grant tenure to a teacher whose students consistently failed to learn anything over a three- or four-year period.

Because the princ.i.p.al must decide which teachers will receive tenure, it is crucial that princ.i.p.als have prior experience as teachers and understand what good teaching is and how to recognize it. They will be called upon to evaluate and help struggling teachers, which they cannot do unless they have experience in the cla.s.sroom. In recent years, a number of programs have recruited and trained new faces to serve as princ.i.p.als, some of them young teachers with only a few years of cla.s.sroom experience or noneducators who have never been teachers. People with so little personal knowledge of good instruction-what it looks like, how to do it, and how to help those who want to do it-are likely to rely exclusively on data because they have so little understanding of teaching. This is akin to putting a lawyer in charge of evaluating doctors, or a corporate executive in charge of evaluating airline pilots. The numbers count for something, but on-site evaluation by an experienced, knowledgeable professional should count even more.

Should test score data be used to award bonuses or to fire teachers? Thus far, there is a paucity of evidence that paying teachers to raise test scores leads to anything other than teaching to the test. Teaching to the test predictably narrows the curriculum and inflates test scores, so it is not a good idea. Similarly, it may be a bad idea to base teacher terminations solely on test score data; the data must be supplemented by evaluations conducted by experienced educators. There are too many other confounding variables. Some states give their tests in midyear-which teacher should receive credit or blame for the students" scores? The one who taught them for nearly five months last year, or the one who taught them for nearly five months before the test was administered?

Districts such as Denver are giving bonuses not only to teachers who bring up their students" scores, but also to those who agree to work in "hard-to-serve" urban schools or accept "hard-to-staff" a.s.signments (e.g., teachers of special education, middle-school mathematics, and English as a second language), or who improve their knowledge and skills (for instance, by getting an advanced degree in the subject they teach). That sort of performance-related pay seems likely to proliferate, especially since the Denver plan was adopted with the support of the local teachers" union.33 Other districts, such as New York City, pay a schoolwide bonus if test scores go up, and a committee of teachers decides how to distribute it to staff members, which might include non-teaching personnel, such as the school secretary. This plan too was adopted with the support of the local teachers" union. But, like the garden-variety merit pay plan, the schoolwide bonus plan puts a premium on raising test scores and encourages teaching to the test. Other districts, such as New York City, pay a schoolwide bonus if test scores go up, and a committee of teachers decides how to distribute it to staff members, which might include non-teaching personnel, such as the school secretary. This plan too was adopted with the support of the local teachers" union. But, like the garden-variety merit pay plan, the schoolwide bonus plan puts a premium on raising test scores and encourages teaching to the test.

A study of international compensation for teachers and princ.i.p.als by Susan Sclafani and Marc Tucker reports that some districts and nations have come up with a variety of compensation schemes to attract or retain teachers. These include signing bonuses for new teachers, housing stipends, reimburs.e.m.e.nt for college loans in exchange for teaching a certain number of years, even subsidies for home mortgages. Bonuses may be designed to encourage teachers to teach in areas where there is a shortage, such as special education, science, or mathematics. They may be used to attract teachers to schools in poor urban neighborhoods or rural districts or simply to honor teachers. Sclafani and Tucker predict that there will be increasing use of incentives based on the school system"s needs and teachers" performance. But they warn that such incentive systems must be properly structured. If a signing bonus is big enough, it will attract applicants, but they won"t remain in teaching if the work is not satisfying. They add, "Performance bonuses based on student performance on low level literacy tests in math and English won"t produce high level performance in any subject." And, perhaps most important from two authors who support incentives, "money is not everything." Teachers, like other professionals, "need to feel competent, effective, and admired."34 Knowing that they are changing the lives of their students, one by one, is a source of satisfaction, to be sure. If teachers are treated with condescension by administrators, expected to work in badly maintained buildings, a.s.signed to large cla.s.ses of poorly prepared students, confronted by unruly students, and compelled to meet unrealistic goals, they are not likely to gain a sense of personal and professional satisfaction.

So, I wonder, what would Mrs. Ratliff do? Would any school today recognize her ability to inspire her students to love literature? Would she get a bonus for expecting her students to use good grammar, accurate spelling, and good syntax? Would she win extra dollars for insisting that her students write long essays and for grading them promptly? I don"t think so. She was a great teacher. But under any imaginable compensation scheme, her greatness as a teacher-her ability to inspire students and to change their lives-would go unrewarded because it is not in demand and cannot be measured. And let"s face it: She would be stifled not only by the data mania of her supervisors, but by the jargon, the indifference to cla.s.sical literature, and the hostility to her manner of teaching that now prevail in our schools.

As we expand the rewards and compensation for teachers who boost scores in basic skills, will we honor those teachers who awaken in their students a pa.s.sionate interest in history, science, the arts, literature, and foreign language? If we fail to attract and retain teachers like Ruby Ratliff, will we produce a better-educ

Prev List Next