In Davis Guggenheim’s “Waiting for Superman,” Eric Hanushek, a researcher of education and economics at Stanford University, noted that for most parents, “a good teacher is what’s working and a bad teacher is what’s not working.”
“Waiting for Superman” ends with the “student-centric” conviction that students must come first. Teachers, legislators, and parents need to put the politicking aside when the academic future of our children is at stake. This sentiment never fails to stir even the most cynical readers to arms.
In order to truly accomplish reform, we must resign to that fact that we cannot reform the students. If a good teacher is what works, then we need a system that rewards excellent teachers, one that is able to provide more resources, training and support for novice teachers. We need a system that is courageous enough to let go of bad teachers.
In one way, President Obama’s “Race to the Top Act” in 2009 was a small improvement over Bush’s “No Child Left Behind Act” in 2002. States that want access to federal funds must also use teacher evaluations to determine the compensation of teachers and principals and the removing of “ineffective tenured and untenured teachers and principals.” RTT at least begins a dialogue that involves teachers and the culture surrounding teaching. However, what started out as a good idea has become politicized into another channel through which we cast scrutiny on how teachers are “failing,” without providing the support for them to do otherwise.
Merit-based pay is sensible in theory but has the potential to be misplaced in application. Political proponents for the reform want to stipulate how low-performing schools are reprimanded but don’t want to — or are unable to — address the larger system that makes them that way. Teachers are historically underpaid and undervalued, and they can’t stand behind a system that might wrongly punish them or arbitrarily reduce their salaries. The American Federation of Teachers — the second largest teachers union in the nation — stands adamantly against a merit-based system
Proponents of merit-based pay want to treat public schools like private corporations by punishing and rewarding teachers on the basis of their final product: the standardized test scores of their students. They fail to acknowledge all of the grey areas of effective education such as accommodating students with diverse learning needs, evaluating student growth with authentic (portfolio-based) assessment. What’s really concerning is the “inspiration” that will spark the necessary change in educators: money. But a money-driven system of education reform is not going to work, and money is not something that should drive the culture of education.
Do we want our schools to turn into corporations? Do we want to stifle the creativity and innovation of students by rendering their greatest accomplishments as a percentile score?
In 2010, George Skelton and a team of reporters from the Los Angeles Times ran a series of articles; publishing the “effectiveness” of individual teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District. In his series, one is able to view a teacher’s effectiveness in subjects like English and Math, making the numerical values of test scores all-important.
If we evaluate the effectiveness of teachers merely with test scores, then each student’s light bulb is only going to be bright enough and shine long enough to pass the test. However, if we decide to nurture the right aspects of education — ideas, innovation and a thirst for knowledge — then we’ve already come a long way in reforming education.
Reach the columnist at ctruong1@asu.edu.
