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.

Students Missing From Education Reform

Education has attained the status of weather: Everyone talks about it but no one does anything about it.

Well, not exactly. President Obama made education a centerpiece of his campaign. He talked about the central role of education in his life to get to where he was. He promised to follow up on his educational vision if he became the president.

In an address to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce today, the president fleshed out his vision. He called for more charter schools ("laboratories of innovations"), merit-based pay for teachers while holding them more accountable, emphasis on early education, tougher curriculum standards, and renewing commitment to learning from cradle to adulthood. “It is time to give all Americans a complete and competitive education from the cradle up through a career,” said Obama. “We have accepted failure for too long. America’s entire education system must once more be the envy of the world.”

The president had done his homework on teachers. He is determined to push the same methods used in Finland and Singapore, two countries with the finest public education systems in the world today, to treat “teachers like the professionals they are .... New teachers will be mentored by experienced ones. Good teachers will be rewarded with more money for improved student achievement, and asked to accept more responsibilities for lifting up their schools.”

The president made a compelling case for raising the quality of education in America. Where it fell short was in his lack of emphasis on the responsibility of the students themselves. “It is time to expect more from our students,” the president declared. We have known that for years, but how? We talk about teachers, teachers' unions, administrators, parents, communities and school districts but leave out the most important element in the ecology of education: students.

Teachers and schools can never take over the job of educating a child completely. And they are not meant to! It may take a village to raise a child, an awfully nice-sounding idea, but it is a partial remedy at best. The critical question to ask is, why do so many of our kids suffer from lack of motivation? It’s a phenomenon that cuts across race, gender, income and social standings. You can blame lack of parental guidance, high-tech distractions, a noxious culture, whatever, but ultimately the mystery remains. If you are the parent of a school student whose only aim in life seems to be entertainment and hanging out with friends, how do you instill in him or her discipline, motivation, hunger for knowledge?

All across America, parents and teachers who dutifully offer everything asked of them to educate their wards are asking: “What are we doing that’s not right?” Who will tell them that they are doing the best they can, that it is most often the kids who have to shape up, who have to shun the path of ignorance and get on the road to knowledge?

I hope President Obama focuses exclusively on students next time he talks about education. He is an inspiration to kids. His life story evokes wonder. He can be more persuasive on our children than perhaps any parent or teacher at this particular juncture of history. He can use his talent, eloquence and his own story to energize and motivate them to acquire knowledge. If he can pull off this feat, there is a chance that our educational system will once again become the envy of the world.

Cutting the Gordian Knot of America's Public Education System

In a recent opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal (12/1/08), Lou Gerstner, the former CEO of IBM and chairman of the Teaching Commission from 2003-2006, summarized his ideas for rescuing the nation’s failing public school system. They are forceful and provocative and merit attention from Obama and his education secretary.

Gerstner disarms his critics by putting America’s school reformation movement in context. “Despite decade after decade of reform efforts, our public K-12 schools have not improved.” That surely includes the efforts of the Teaching Commission that he led for 4 years. “Why,” he asks, “after millions of pages, in thousands of reports, from hundreds of commissions and task forces, financed by billions of dollars, have we failed to achieve any significant progress?”

As Gerstner notes, the problem isn't "what to do," nor is it a failure of commitment. Instead, he believes that “the problem lies with the structure and corporate governance of our public schools. We have over 15,000 school districts in America; each of them, in its own way, is involved in standards, curriculum, teacher selection, classroom rules and so on. This unbelievably unwieldy structure is incapable of executing a program of fundamental change. While we have islands of excellence as a result of great reform programs, we continually fail to scale up systemic change.”

To transform the school system, he identifies four key elements: 1) Set high academic standards for all of our kids, supported by a rigorous curriculum. 2) Greatly improve the quality of teaching in our classrooms, supported by substantially higher compensation for our best teachers. 3) Measure student and teacher performance on a systematic basis, supported by tests and assessments. 4) Increase "time on task" for all students; this means more time in school each day, and a longer school year.

(Italics are mine to indicate the enormous political challenge these requirements will pose for the Obama administration, even if only a subset is considered).

Who can quarrel with these suggestions? In one form or another, they have been proposed several times over the years, only to die on the vine, as Gerstner himself concedes.

So what can Barack Obama and Arne Duncan do to ensure that it's different this time? As Gerstner sees it, the particular solution he proposes is challenging but doable: a) Abolish all local school districts, saving only 70 from the 20 largest cities in 50 states. b) Establish a set of national standards for a core curriculum comprising, for a start, reading, math, science and social studies. c) Establish a National Skills Day to test every third, sixth, ninth and 12th-grader against the national standards and publish the result. d) Establish national standards for teacher certification and require regular re-evaluations of teacher skills. Teacher skills are to be judged against one criterion only: advances in student learning. Those who succeed must be able to earn well in excess of $100,000 per year while underperforming teachers must be purged. e) Extend the school day and the school year to effectively add 20 more days of schooling for all K-12 students.

Can such a solution, or variations thereof, be implemented? Local school districts will undoubtedly put up bitter fights. There will certainly be the inevitable, debilitating clash between Teachers’ Union and the “progressives.”

But the students themselves are hungry for change and parents and concerned citizens are supportive of overhauling the nation’s public school system. They have given Obama the mandate to do so. The 44th president must make it a priority of his administration to cut the Gordian Knot of America’s public education system and transform it into a source of creativity. America's future depends on it.