Waiting for Super Teachers

Education is among America’s most urgent concerns now. For decades pressure has been building to reform the nation’s deplorable public schools, from kindergarten through the twelfth grade (K-12). In spite of the billions that have been poured into the system by the government and by wealthy entrepreneurs, there has been no noticeable improvement in the quality of K-12 education in the U.S. for the last four decades.

In 1971, for instance, the average score for 17-year-olds in reading test was 285; in 2008, it was 286. In 1973, 17-year-olds averaged 304 in math tests; in 2008, the average was 306. Forty years ago, the United States had the highest high school completion rate in the world. Today, it ranks 18th out of 24 industrialized nations. Among 30 developed countries, fifteen-year-old U.S. students rank 25th in math and 21st in science In just 10 years, there is expected to be more than 120 million high-paying, high-skill jobs in the U.S., but only 50 million Americans qualified for these positions.

In the global knowledge economy, an educated citizenry is the key to a nation’s success, its true source of power. All signs, however, suggest that America’s current generation will, for the first time in its history, be less educated than the previous generation. Wars and financial meltdowns do not threaten America’s national interest as much as a broken public school system that churns out large numbers of clueless adults unable to cope with the demands of the 21^st century.

The recently-released educational documentary by Oscar-winning (An Inconvenient Truth) filmmaker Davis Guggenheim called “Waiting for Superman” highlights what plagues the system. The Superman in the title refers to a student’s childhood belief that the ghetto in which he lived might one day be rescued by the Man of Steel. The movie follows the wrenching stories of 5 students and their families as they face a terrifying future. Who will rescue them from the “dropout factories” in which so many are trapped? What can be done when one despairing student after another says, “I am going nowhere and I have no interest in living?” How can incompetent teachers be purged who inform students with sadistic glee that “I get paid whether you learn or not?”

On the opening night of this somber film (not your typical Hollywood action flick) in California’s Silicon Valley, I found the theatre packed with moviegoers trying to understand the seriousness of the issue and their responsibility to change the status quo.

In the movie, “Superman” comes in the form of charter schools. These schools use public money but are independent of district bureaucracy. They have the freedom to do whatever is necessary to improve the quality of education, including firing failing teachers, a near-impossibility in regular public schools. There are two intertwined “villains”: Teachers’ unions and tenure. The main function of the first seems to be to protect teachers at any cost, particularly the incompetent ones. The second often translates into lifelong employment for bad teachers with no accountability for non-performance.

The reality is more nuanced. Teachers’ unions have become easy scapegoats although there is no doubt that they are a major contributor to perpetuating an obsolete, tenure-based system. Achievement gains in charter schools are also not uniform. While there are many high-performing charter schools among the nearly 5,000 that have sprung up in all 50 states, there are also as that are no better than problem-ridden inner-city schools. Besides, of the 56 million children in the nation’s 133,000 elementary and secondary schools, charter schools account for only 3% of the K-12 population. It is not at all clear how they can scale their success to include a larger percentage of students. The movie shows in heartbreaking detail how getting admitted to a charter school for those who need it most – the poor and the disenfranchised – depends on, believe it or not, lotteries!

However, charter schools such as the “Knowledge is Power Program” (KIPP) have achieved two feats. First, they have proven that it is possible to teach students from all ethnic and economic backgrounds for high levels of scholarly success. Second, they have introduced innovation into a public school system whose classroom format - one person lecturing captive students - has not changed since Laura Ingalls of “The Little House on the Prairie” sat in one a century ago.

So how does one go about transforming America’s K-12 public education? Given the stakes, there is no shortage of ideas: student-centered system, rigorous accountability, online classes, Web technology, abolishing tenure and teachers’ unions, common core standards, 21^st-century curricula, and so on.

While all these ideas have merit, the one constant in the calculus of school reform is teacher quality. Good teachers make good schools. They are the reason why students flourish. In unveiling his “Race to the Top” school reform agenda, President Barack Obama said as much, that the single most important factor determining whether students succeed in school is not the color of their skin or their ZIP code or even their parents' income; it is the quality of their teacher.

Given this, ‘what makes a great teacher’ has become a dominant theme in the current education debate, particularly in the context of the Internet and the changing nature of how students acquire knowledge in the 21^st century. Here are a few characteristics of life-changing teachers, in no particular order.

Good teachers are passionate about their students and subjects. They demand more and get more. They know how to use textbook facts (most of it available via Internet search anyway) – be it algebra or English or biology – to inspire independent and critical thinking. Every child starts out as an intellectual explorer. It is the rare teacher who can demonstrate that knowing why - an idea - is more important than learning what - a fact.

Good teachers know that learning occurs when they treat students not as empty vessels but as self-creators seeking expert help. Students are diamonds in the rough. As an award-winning teacher has observed, they have a certain need, an insight, a capacity, an unformed thought. If they are lucky enough to meet a teacher who can respond with a skill, a technique, a body of knowledge, a habit of mind, a sense of humor, learning grows by leaps and bounds.

Uncommon teachers keep the goals of teaching in mind. They ask themselves: what effect will we have on our students in ten or twenty years? A science teacher knows that only a small fraction of them may become scientists. An English teacher knows that only a few, if any, will become professors of literature. But they believe that science or art, if properly taught, will remain a source of pleasure in their lives. Uncommon teachers believe in the fundamental importance of what they teach, no matter what the current fads are and how uninterested some students may appear. They strive to earn their wings everyday, year after year.

Good teachers do not “teach to the test.” Testing is one tool among many to assess student progress but teaching only with the purpose of helping students pass tests is a folly, a delusional approach to education that degrades the profession. Good teachers (one reason why they are so rare) know that critical and independent thinking are traits that require infinite patience to nurture. They are able to strike a balance between the conflicting demands of short-term assessment and long-term creativity.

There is, of course, no best way to teach. If we study superstar teachers, we find that each is distinctive in her or his own way. What is common among them, however, is that they have an intuitive understanding of their students that, when combined with their passion for the subject, enable them to sow the seeds of wonder in them, the source of all insights and discoveries. Perhaps the most encouraging fact to emerge from recent studies is that committed teachers can evolve in their profession as they master the subtleties of their art. In other words, most great teachers are made, not born.

We do not need to wait for Superman to lift our public schools from mediocrity to excellence. All we need are super teachers.

The Generous Spirit of a Car Dealer

Normally we treat car dealers with suspicion. Aren't they the people who will resort to lying and exaggerating to extract the last dime from our wallet when we go shopping for a car? Most of us are no match for the fast-talking car salesman, which is why we dread running into one when buying a car becomes an imperative.

But now comes the news of a car dealer from New Jersey named Brad Benson who promised a new automobile to Florida Pastor Terry Jones if he would not burn a copy of the Quran. You may recall that Jones threatened to burn the Muslim holy book on the ninth-anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks in New York if the construction of the proposed Islamic Community Center near the World Trade Center was not scuttled.

Jones did not burn the Quran on 9/11 and we breathed a sigh of relief. It is true that winning a new car was not the reason why the pastor chose the more peaceful path. Facing criticism from President Obama, General David Petraeus, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and hundreds and thousands of ordinary Americans had undoubtedly something to do with it. But now that this story is out, we should salute Brad Benson, probably the only American in this spectacle who put his money ($14, 200 for a 2011 Huyndai Accent) where his mouth was.

Why did Benson make his offer? "I just didn't think that was (burning the Quran) a good thing for our country." There you have it, as simple and straightforward a reason on a volatile issue as you can get. The pastor is holding Benson to his word and has said that he will donate the car to an organization that helps abused Muslim women. Could anyone have predicted this magnificent turn of events?

Besides smashing stereotypes about car dealers, Benson has shown that the strength and generosity of America is to be found among its ordinary citizens, something we tend to forget in our celebrity-soaked culture. The former New York Giants offensive lineman turned car dealer is known for his radio ads that focus more on current events than on cars. This fact alone should tell us that money is not the only goal of every American businessman, that contrary to popular perception, many of them are driven by higher ideals, such as peace between peoples and nations.

If you find yourself in South Brunswick, New Jersey, stop by to say hello to Brad Benson. I know I will. Heck, if I have the money, I will also buy a car from him. A dream of mine when I came to America over three decades ago was to take a cross-country car trip. It's beginning to look like a distinct possibility now.

Jerry Brown Will be Elected Governor of California

Come November, Californians will elect Jerry Brown as the new governor of California. Why? Not because his Republican opponent, the former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, has blown it with her callous treatment of her Latino housekeeper of nine years, although that certainly is a factor, but because Brown is simply the better choice.

On every single issue, Brown has come across as the more pragmatic as well as the visionary candidate, from school reform and treatment of immigrants to putting people back to work and rebuilding the infrastructure of the Golden State undermined by fiscal mismanagement.

Whitman seems determined to buy her way into the governorship, having spent $120 million on her campaign so far. (In contrast, Brown has spent a total of $4 million, or about 3% of Whitman’s total.) This is the most any political candidate has ever spent in the United States, including presidential candidates. By November, she is expected to have spent $150 million dollars on her campaign, a monstrously arrogant proposition in a time of sky-high foreclosures and mass layoffs.

Americans are fed up with candidates who think money can substitute for ideas and action. They are sick and tired of the super-rich who use manipulative media consultants and slick technology to influence the electorate. Meg Whitman fits these labels and more. She is a political novice who hardly distinguished herself as a CEO. She amassed her wealth only because she was lucky to be at the right place at the right time, riding the fortunes of eBay during the dot-com boom to enormous personal gains. When she left eBay, shareholders were already disenchanted with her performance and the future of eBay appeared bleak. Her questionable acquisition of Skype was one of many bad judgments she displayed throughout her tenure at eBay.

Whitman targeted California’s Hispanic population with coy messages of support and sympathy but her hypocrisy was revealed when she claimed that she did not know the immigration status of her longtime housekeeper Nicandra Diaz Santillan before firing her. This turned out be an outright lie. It is now clear that Whitman knew that Santillan was an undocumented worker. (“You have never seen me and I’ve never seen you,” Whitman told Santillan at the time of firing her, after the former CEO decided that she was going to run for governor.)

Two aspects of this issue are deeply disturbing.

First, Whitman refused to appoint an immigration attorney (it would have cost her a few hundred dollars) when Santillan asked her for help. Santillan’s attorney has also accused Whitman of cheating Diaz out of years’ worth of wages. Originally hired at $28 an hour for 15 hours per week to clean her home, Whitman kept adding more duties to her job without compensating her or increasing her hours.

What is it with some billionaires that they count their pennies when it comes to paying their maids and servants, even going to the extent of cheating them?

Second, Whitman claimed that Brown and his “surrogates” were behind breaking the Santillan story, without offering a shred of evidence to support the claim. Jerry Brown denied the allegation, telling Whitman in their second gubernatorial debate: “Don’t run for governor if you can’t stand up on your own two feet and say, ‘Hey, I made a mistake.’”

Why is it that lack of character is often the hallmark of the entitled?

Whitman’s disdain for the democratic process is well-known. She did not register to vote until 2002. Her reason? She was too busy building a career and focusing on her family for 28 years to bother with voting. To which one may ask, “What about the rest of us? Don't we have careers? Don't we have families to focus on?”

Jerry Brown may not be the ideal candidate to lift California out of its present predicament but undoubtedly he is the better candidate of the two. Most Californians see it this way and that’s why Jerry Brown will be elected the Golden State’s governor in November.