Firing Bad Teachers and Promoting Good Ones

I teach a statistics class as an adjunct faculty at a college in California. The other day, a student came up to me, almost in tears. He was having a terrible time in his economics class. He wants to major in business. Economics and statistics are two core requirements that he must fulfill before transferring to a university.

“I am getting nothing out of my economics class,” he lamented. “The teacher never explains anything. He just scribbles furiously on the board. The other day he drew many graphs and many equations on demand and supply theory. When a student asked him to explain the theory in simpler terms, he humiliated him in front of the whole class. None of us are learning any economics. Do you have any advice for me?”

“Is he full-time?”

“Yes, and tenured.”

Well, that probably explains it. All I could tell him was to team up with a few like-minded students and see if learning from each other helps. I am a big believer in peer-to-peer learning. I have encouraged this among my own students. When a student has difficulty, for instance, looking up the binomial probability distribution table, I ask another student who has mastered the task to help him. It works beautifully.

But the larger issue is what to do with the rogue teachers who are blind to the needs of their students and fear no consequences. They are untouchable. The underlying “principle” is that the Teachers’ Union will defend them against any threat to their job security. Everyone knows it. The dean of the department knows it. The rogue teacher’s peers know it. Yet nothing happens and students continue to suffer year after year, at a terrible cost to them and to society.

Another student who took an elementary algebra class from me had to sign up for intermediate algebra in the summer from another teacher. She told me about the hell she had to endure from this tenured professor.

Each chapter in the algebra text has about 7-8 sections. I had barely enough time to cover a single section in an hour. This teacher (summer classes are usually 3hours long in this college) bulldozed his way through almost two full chapters per class. That’s about 14-16 sections in one sitting!

“I lost weight,” the student told me. “I was so stressed and exhausted that I became a machine. That’s how I survived. I learned nothing. He never entertained any question. Our homework and tests were graded by the publisher’s online setup. He never checked our homework or tests or quizzes himself. He always seemed angry and gave the impression that we were wasting his time. I never had such a miserable experience in my life.”

A recent cover story in Newsweek (March 15, 2010) boldly claimed that the key to saving American education was startlingly simple: “We must fire bad teachers.” Almost all recent data and educational reports suggest that teacher quality is the most important factor in the success of our education system. A talented teacher can unlock the potential of a student while a bad teacher can stifle it and even doom the student’s future. Parents will happily go along with a class of 40 students taught by a great teacher than a class of 10 taught by a bad one. The influence of an inspiring and demanding teacher can last a lifetime. Unfortunately, so can the influence of a mediocre and unimaginative one.

Charter schools like KIPP and Teach for America use rigorous methods for selecting their teachers and subject them to frequent evaluations. The success of teachers in these schools is entwined with the success of their students. If students do not show improvement, the failing teachers are replaced. But charter schools represent only 3% of America’s public school students. It is not clear that charter schools can scale well.

At the community college level, firing bad teachers often lead to legal battles that can drag on for years. It can also lead to trouble for students who dare to report. Yet I have found in private conversations that many teachers themselves strongly support firing the incompetent ones among them. They also seem to know who they are. These rogue teachers tarnish the image of the teaching profession and bring bad name to entire departments. It is the case of one rotten apple spoiling the whole barrel.

What compounds the problem is that when a budget crisis forces layoffs, and California is now going through its severest budget crisis in decades, it is often the young teachers who are laid off first. Yet they are the ones who are often best able to connect with students because of their facility with technology and current issues and their passion for teaching. In reality, though, the longer a teacher has worked in the school system, the more secure he is, no matter how atrocious he may be as a teacher. This quality-blind law and last-in, first-out model has been a disaster for our schools. Seniority can never be the basis for who gets to shape the minds of our students.

Teachers themselves have suggested three criteria to judge their own effectiveness: classroom management skills, attendance and a rigorous, objective annual performance evaluation rating. The three add up to one final criterion: the performance of students.

The sooner this type of quality-based system is put into practice, the better off we will be as a nation. While such practices are the norm in schools such as KIPP and Teach for America, public schools and colleges are still mired in politics and endless debates about repealing quality-blind laws. But the status quo cannot continue because the future of our nation is at stake.

About my statistics student, I have decided that I will personally take him to my dean and together, we will make a formal protest against the economics professor. If necessary, I will add other students who will be willing to stick their necks out. It is likely that I will be relieved of my teaching duties for being a “troublemaker.” That’s okay. The satisfaction that my students have already given me over the years with their evaluations will last me a lifetime. But perhaps this protest will have a ripple effect and at least a few of the teachers who are no longer passionate about their craft will retire voluntarily, to make room for those with a gift for teaching. If that happens, there is nothing I can think of that will bring me more happiness.

D-Day for Health Care Reform in America

The D-Day (as in “Defining-Day”) for health care reform in America arrives tomorrow, Sunday, March 21, 2010. Barack Obama has staked his young presidency on this bill. He will not become a lame-duck president if the bill fails to pass but there is no doubt that his image and effectiveness, at least in the short-term, will take a major hit.

Even among his die-hard supporters are those who feel that the president’s “obsession” with health care has diverted attention from the foremost problem facing America today: loss and lack of jobs. When Americans worry about having a roof over their heads or putting food on the table, seeing a physician becomes a luxury that can temporarily be dispensed with.

Yet there is also no denying that universal health care coverage is a right, not a privilege. Sure, the cost to the economy will be in hundreds of billions of dollars but can we, as a civilized and humane society, allow money and politics to trump what is fundamentally an ethical and moral issue? What kind of society will ours be if insurance companies continue to deny or revoke with impunity (the case of Jerome Mitchell, a 17-year old college freshman from rural South Carolina, is one of thousands of such cases) the coverage of Americans when they are afflicted with life-threatening conditions?

The idea underlying insurance companies is: Grab as much premium as possible from the healthy but exclude those who are sick. This macabre 'survival of the fittest' business model is unacceptable in any civilized society.

Obama’s administration has to bear responsibility for the cliffhanger that the health care bill has become. We Americans abhor serpentine language. We believe that if anything is worth fighting or dying for, we should be able to understand it without having to master the language of lawyers. Yet there has been no coherent explanation by the president or the democrats about why and how the heath care bill makes sense economically, socially and politically. Simply evoking the moral principle has played into the hands of Republicans. Their shrill warning that American capitalism, as we have known it for two hundred years, will die if the health care bill were to pass, has resonated with many fence-sitters simply because Democrats have not matched them in the “easy-to-understand” department. This is particularly ironic given the president’s reputation as a wordsmith and his facility in distilling an issue to its essence in words that can capture the imagination of Americans, as we saw repeatedly during his presidential campaign.

The American most passionate about health care reform was the “Liberal Lion of the Senate,” the late Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts. That his seat is now occupied by a Republican who is against health care reform shows how far the fortune of the Democrats has fallen in a single year.

Yet I believe that tomorrow House Democratic leaders will find 216 votes to make the health care bill the law of the land. Like most Americans, I am a prisoner of hope (especially today, the first day of spring!) and I cannot accept the fact that 216 of our representatives will miss out on this historic milestone that will affirm the right of every American access to health care. It is almost as historic a milestone as the election of an African-American to the highest office in the land, and there will be enough, just enough, votes to see the bill through.

Nicholas Kristof: Citizen of the World

No one has done more to motivate Americans to engage with people from other countries and cultures in the last two decades than Nicholas Kristof. The New York Times columnist is unique among his peers in inspiring us to look beyond America’s border and our own interests to seek justice, promote peace, help entrepreneurs, empower women, save children and build schools to transform not only ourselves but our foreign policy as well.

Kristof won a Pulitzer Prize in 2006 for his reporting on the genocide in Darfur. His graphic description of how the armed Janjaweed militia, backed by the government of Sudan’s president Omar al-Bashir, were ‘killing, burning villages and farms, terrorizing people, confiscating property from members of African tribes and forcing them from Darfur,' compelled us to act. Thanks in part to his reporting, American schoolchildren raised money for building schools in Darfur and wrote impassioned letters to their congressmen and senators to stop the genocide. It’s from a Kristof column (Dec. 17, 2009) that many of us learned about Valentino Deng, one of Sudan’s “lost boys,” who built a school in his hometown of Marial Bai (www.valentinoachakdeng.org), after suffering unimaginable horrors in his young life.

Kristof has often written about women because of his conviction that unless they have free and easy access to education and entrepreneurship, particularly in developing countries, there will be neither peace nor progress in the world. (In his latest book, “Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide,” co-written with his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, Kristof expands on his argument that developing countries can best fight poverty and promote democracy by helping women achieve personal and financial independence.)

“Religions derive their power and popularity in part from the ethical compass they offer,” he wrote in a column. “So why do so many faiths help perpetuate something that most of us regard as profoundly unethical: the oppression of women? It is not that warlords in Congo cite Scripture to justify their mass rapes. It’s not that brides are burned in India as part of a Hindu ritual. And there’s no verse in the Quran that instructs Afghan thugs to throw acid in the faces of girls who dare to go to school.” Kristof concludes that “any person’s human rights should be sacred, and not depend on something as earthly as their genitals.” His story on Mukhtaran Bibi, a Pakistani woman who was gang-raped in her village but who set an example by testifying against her attackers, moved many readers to raise more than $133,000 for her. With the money, Mukhtaran built a school for girls in her tribal village. Her memoir, "In the Name of Honor," became an international best-seller. Although her troubles are far from over, she now has a global audience that the Pakistani government will have to contend with if anything bad happens to her.

His column on “Bead for Life” (http://www.beadforlife.org/) was another inspiring story about the vision and generosity of ordinary Americans. Torkin Wakefield and Devin Hibbard, a mother-daughter team from Colorado, set up the “Bead for Life” organization after stumbling upon a Ugandan woman in the slums of Kampala making beautiful jewelry from garbage. One thing led to another and now the nonprofit recruits hard-working entrepreneurial women from Uganda earning $1 a day or less who get training in “how to cut strips of scrap paper, roll them tightly, glue them and seal them and, presto, a beautiful bead!” The beads are marketed mostly in America through Tupperware-like parties. In 2009 alone, there were 3,000 parties attended by about 100,000 Americans. Annual jewelry sale runs at $4 million. How can you not become curious about Ugandan beaders whose products you are wearing?

I wonder how many Americans were inspired to act by Kristof’s column on the Salwen family of Atlanta but I suspect that there were many. The family discovered “the power of half” by cutting down on everything they owned or consumed (house, car, everything) and channeling the savings (about $800,000) through the Hunger Project (http://www.thp.org/) to sponsor health, micro-financing, food and other programs for about 40 villages in, get this, Ghana.

Since 2007, Kristof has been sponsoring a “win-a-trip” contest for American university students. The winner goes on a reporting trip with him to Africa to cover issues of global poverty and come up with solutions. The number of participating students has been increasing dramatically each year. It goes to show how passionate many young Americans are to do something with their lives that will make a difference in the lives of those for whom everyday is an existential battle.

The columns cited here offer only a glimpse into the global humanitarian work that Nicholas Kristof promotes through his powerful and persuasive pen. Americans ask him for suggestions as to which charities around the world they should contribute to, without worrying about tax breaks. He has written about Greg Mortenson, the Montana native who started from scratch but built hundreds of schools in the remotest areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan. He has written unflinchingly about male domination in Muslim societies and its terrible social, economic and political costs. At the same time, he has also written about how easily and unjustly many Americans stereotype Muslims and attack the religion of Islam. He has written heartbreaking stories about children forced into prostitution and the flesh trade. His writings on the Palestinian-Israeli issue, in its historical context and complexities, have probably been fairer than the writings of any other American journalist.

Not all of Kristof’s columns are noteworthy. He has missed his mark on occasions. Some of his pieces are predictable. But what distinguishes him from his peers is his desire to make the world a better place. He does this not by wearing rose-colored glasses but by describing what he sees with clear and direct prose and offering solutions that manage to be both practical and altruistic. It is a tribute to his humanity – and his status as a global citizen - that more Americans ask him, rather than any other journalists, that most telling of questions: “What can I do?”

Oscar Math for Best Picture

A course I am teaching – Mathematics for General Education – at a college in Northern California deals with various voting methods. The students are as excited as any movie buff about the 82nd Annual Academy Awards this year (3/7/2010) but they have an additional reason: they are curious to see how the new voting system for Best Picture plays out. They have been learning about the Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) method in my class.

The number of pictures that could nominated for the Best Picture award, from 1946 until last year, was 5. This year the number has been increased to 10 (Avatar, The Blind Side, District 9, An Education, The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds, Precious, A Serious Man, Up and Up in the Air.)

Suppose there are 100 voters to pick a winner. If Up in the Air were to win 51 votes, the contest would be over because it had won a majority of the votes. This is as straightforward as it can get. However, it is rare that in a field of 10, one picture will get a majority of votes in the first round.

Let’s consider a more complicated (some would say, pathological) case. Suppose Up in the Air won 11 votes, eight other pictures won 10 votes each and the remaining picture won 9 votes. According to the old system, Up in the Air would still win because it had the most first-place votes (plurality, as opposed to majority), even though it did not reflect the choice of a whopping 89 voters!

How can a picture rejected by 89% of the voters still win the Oscar? It is precisely to remedy such situations that the IRV method is being used. It is fairer than the Plurality method it is replacing and isn’t that complicated either.

In IRV, voters identify not only their first choice, but second, third and fourth choices, all the way down to tenth in this year’s Best Picture category. In other words, a voter whose first choice is Avatar may identify The Hurt Locker as her second choice, Up in the Air the third, An Education the fourth, and so on. (There are around fifty-eight hundred Academy members who will cast their votes for Best Picture among the nominated 10.)

For simplicity, consider 4 pictures and only two choices to illustrate how IRV method works. Suppose this is how the 100 votes are cast:

Number of voters	33	26	23	18
1st choice	Avatar	Hurt Locker	The Blind Side	Up
2nd choice	Up in the Air	District 9	Avatar	Hurt Locker

None of the pictures won a majority of votes. Since Up has the fewest first-place votes in this example, it gets bumped from the list. The second-place Hurt Locker moves up and takes over its 18 votes. The table now looks like this:

Number of voters	33	26+18 = 44	23
1st choice	Avatar	Hurt Locker	The Blind Side
2nd choice	Up in the Air	District 9	Avatar

But Hurt Locker isn’t the winner yet because still there is no majority (at least 51 in this case). In the second round, eliminate The Blind Side because now it has the fewest first-place votes. Avatar moves up and grabs its 23 votes. The table now looks like this:

Number of voters	33 +23 = 56	26+18 = 44
1st choice	Avatar	Hurt Locker
2nd choice	Up in the Air	District 9

Now there’s a majority winner (56 out of 100) and it’s Avatar!

So how did the students cast their “votes” for The Best Picture? Of the 40 students, one chose District 9 as his first choice, another chose The Hurt Locker and the rest, all 38 of them, chose Avatar!

If Community College math students had their say, it would appear that Avatar would win by an overwhelming majority in the very first round. If only life were that simple!