Steve Hsu has a nice post on teaching, following up on the Malcolm Gladwell piece that everyone is talking about. Steve took the time to track down the Brookings Institute report mentioned in the piece, and highlights two graphs:
The top figure shows that certification has no impact on teaching effectiveness. The second shows that effectiveness measured in the years 1 and 2 is predictive of effectiveness in the subsequent year. In this case effectiveness is defined by the average change in percentile ranking of students in the teacher’s class. Good teachers help their students to improve their mastery, hence percentile ranking, relative to the average student studying the same material.
The bottom figure is here:
This highlights one of the problems I have with the blogospheric response to the Gladwell article. Far too many people are taking the article as evidence that we need to enact all the favorite union-busting “reform” measures that have been proposed, starting with the elimination of tenure for teachers.
The problem is, that’s not the right message to take away from the article. The point of the article is that it’s hard to know in advance who’s going to be a good teacher. It’s actually not that hard to tell who’s good and who isn’t once they get in the classroom, though.
In addition to the quantitative test score method suggested by the graphs Steve highlights, there’s the film room method described in the actual article. The bulk of the article is based on comparing the evaluation of quarterbacks to the evaluation of teachers, describing an educational expert looking at videotape of several different teachers and identifying what they’re doing wrong, and what they’re doing right.
And this is why tenure is a red herring. Teacher tenure, contrary to myth, is not supposed to be awarded for just showing up. There’s a probationary period of several years, during which a newly hired teacher can be fired with ease. During that time, they are supposed to be evaluated on the quality of their teaching, through classroom observation and other methods.
If they’re demonstrably incompetent, they shouldn’t be given tenure. To the degree that the existing teacher tenure system has turned into a prize for regular attendance, that’s a failure of the system. Specifically, it’s a failure on the part of school administrators to do their job.
I wouldn’t be happy with using standardized test scores as the sole determinant of teacher quality– I think it leads to teaching-to-the-test distortions of the curriculum– but as the graph shows, it is a way of sorting out who’s doing a good job. As part of a package of evaluations, including classroom observation and interviews with colleagues, I think it would be a fine thing to add in to the tenure-granting process. There’s no need to eliminate tenure to institute higher standards.
Now, you can argue that the fact that school administrators have failed at their jobs for so many years has led to a large number of total incompetents in the nation’s schools, and tenure needs to be eliminated in order to fire them. This is sort of the educational administration version of the Wall Street bailout– we’ve been so incompetent for years that the only solution is to give us a lot more power to fix the problem.
But that’s not really necessary, either– most tenure systems of which I am aware allow firing for cause, and demonstrable incompetence is a valid cause. Yes, it’s a time-consuming process to document incompetence well enough to fire somebody, but that’s why you ought to do it before you grant idiots tenure.
You wouldn’t even need to go through the firing process to get rid of a lot of incompetent older teachers– most of them can probably be bought out with early retirement offers. Granted, this runs the risk of getting rid of the good older teachers, as well, but it’s an option.
Calls for the elimination of teacher tenure are less about reform than they are about union-busting. Nothing in the Gladwell article changes that.
I’ve lost the citation, but it was allegedly determined in a double blind experiment that Psychiatrists had the same mean percentage of cures of patients after 1 year of experience as they had after 20 years of experience.
It may be that teaching, like psychiatry and some other professions, is divided into those that are good at it and those who are bad at it. This subverts the main premise of Colleges of Education, which hold that non teachers can be taught to be teachers (while earning their Certification), adequate teachers can be taught by lengthy and expensive (tuition, texbooks) mountains of theory how to be good teachers, and good teachers can be taught to be great teachers.
The grad schools/professional schools in question, from my experience, are NOT based on science, but self-serving ad hoc pop science, pop psych, and pop sociology.
Fortunately, 20 Jan 2009 is the start of a pro-Science administration. We’ll see what changes under a Nobelist Secretary of Energy and an expert Secretary of Education.
What are the arguments for having tenure in non-collegiate education, though? There’s no research going on, after all.
What are the arguments for having tenure in non-collegiate education, though? There’s no research going on, after all.
1) Somebody has to teach biology in the Bible Belt.
2) Some people will trade salary for job security. If you eliminated tenure, you would need to pay a lot more to attract those people.
I’m told that the whole tenure system came out of some ridiculous political corruption, similar to what led to the civil service system. I can’t provide cites for that, though.
I have no problem if tenure is given after a rigorous review. Heck, I just turned in my own dossier in October and it feels like every single detail of my life for the past six years is in there. However, this isn’t the case in most public school systems. My sister who teaches 3rd grade in a California public school was awarded tenure after being there for two years without any review whatsoever. This strikes me as wrong. As Chad says, this rewards simply showing up, not teaching! I just don’t understand why so many teachers are so dead set against any sort of review process.
Adding on to Chad’s #3:
without tenure it is very easy to eliminate teachers who reach the top of the pay scale simply because they reach the top of the pay scale – you can always bring in new folks at the low end.
Also adding on: given the grief that people in my area gave the schools when science standards were increased (complaints about evolution, continental drift, astronomy) without the security offered by tenure, the pressure to downplay these topics in class would be close to unbearable.
if you aren’t willing to teach in public schools and put up with some of the losers that pass as parents, don’t complain about this issue.
(/me raises hand) Having learned this story at my father’s knee, and he was actually in the middle of it:
Teacher pay has been based on seniority for a long time, with and without unions. That being so, budget-strapped districts discovered that if they dismissed experienced teachers and replaced them with others of lesser seniority, they saved money.
Since the dismissed teachers had limited job alternatives, they went to another district — which got a smoking deal on an experienced teacher at entry-level pay. Lather, rinse, repeat. Apparently in some areas the administrations got together on a regular basis to arrange swaps.
The abuses were bad enough that Legislatures were moved to adopt tenure as a protection against them.
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I note that the same protection could have been accomplished by adopting Statewide seniority, much as (at least some) States adopted Statewide retirement funds. That’s not what happened, though.
I would just like to place my vote right now for getting rid of tenure for non-collegiate education. If someone could see fit to make me all powerful, I propose:
1) No more tenure.
2) No more pay scale based on years of service.
3) Pay is based on performance, as judged by observation, test scores, and other appropriate means.
4) Significant increase in average teacher salary. Off the top of my head, something like . . . 50%?
As I see it, this means that excellent teachers get paid way more than they do now (75%?), good teachers get paid more than they do now, and bad teachers get fired, regardless of how many years they’ve been there. Oh, and if teachers can expect to make 60k instead of 40k, we can get more decent ones, too.
Where I went to school. There were teachers who did not make tenure. Guess what they did? They went to poorer districts who were desperate for teachers. Tenure doesn’t mean the same thing at every school. Some districts have a harder time filling spots than others.
When buyouts came to the district, typically the deadwood weren’t the ones who took it. Good teachers who were fed up with new administrators trying yet another educational hypothesis without the necessary data to back it up.
As for why faculty need tenure; I come from a “liberal” part of the country but a small minority of parents who get upset about their children reading X have tried to push out excellent teachers because their children were challenged to actually learn. Heck without tenure I don’t think my excellent Physics teacher would have been able to do half the cool demos that he/she did.
Tenure at the primary/middle/high school levels is there to protect teachers against mob mentality born out of fear and not facts. Tenure did not prevent the firing of horrible teachers including those committing illegal/unethical activities.
Fixing education in many of the problem districts in this country means tackling poverty on a level most in this nation are willing to do (incoming administration included). You have to deal with lead exposure that too many children are being subjected to. It means tackling the fact a number of children in urban settings are showing signs of depression and post-traumatic stress, malnutrition, the effects of drugs, poor health care, etc. It is a lot easier to blame “others” than to look in the mirror as a society.
The difference between the Officially worst teachers and the Officially best teachers is one 10%-tile net student performance. Like parenting, it doesn’t make much difference what one does to the average kid within wide bounds. The efficient allocation of resources:
1) Top 10%-tile kids get top 10%-tile teachers. Those kids matter.
2) Middle 80%-tile kids get any teacher. The outcome is unchanged.
3) Bottom 10%-tile kids get bottom 10%-tile teachers. The kids can’t be harmed. Defective teachers are shunted from kids who can be harmed. Boundary impedence matching help boths sets of bottom feeders.
Optimally route the loading dock to the shipping dock. It isn’t social science, it’s engineering. BTW, who wants the product and what product do they want? Where goeth QA and QT rejects?
I’ve read the entire Brookings Institute report, and discussed its main finding with the Dean of the high school where I teach Science.
There is indeed a political problem, with the misallocation of resources to credentialing and professional development which, for the sake of proven student learning, might be better deployed in recruitment and retention of good teachers regardless of their seniority and paperwork.
In New York State, where unions are strong (I’m a Union man myself, but am trying to objective here) it is ILLEGAL to make promotion decisions about teachers based on the performance of their students. In California, not illegal, but very hard to do. To me, this flies in the face of common sense and Brookings Institute report. Good teachers are those who get good results with students, by whatever means. Pedagogical theory and (beyond a minimum) content area expertise are not the issue. Student understanding, comprehension, retention, and mastery are the issue.
Nice to know that this is not just a hunch. We have a president leaving on 20 Jan 2009 who goes “by his gut” — and see what that got us? The Brookings Institute report gives us hard data which can be used as a scientifically valid basis for new policymaking.
The problem is that within a group of people basically qualified for a position, the importance of job security is negatively correlated with performance. You’re providing incentives that have higher value to slackers than hard workers, so you get slackers.
The problem is that within a group of people basically qualified for a position, the importance of job security is negatively correlated with performance. You’re providing incentives that have higher value to slackers than hard workers, so you get slackers.
You can probably guess why I, as someone with a Ph.D. in experimental physics who is working at a small liberal arts college, might not share this opinion.
But are you and most of your colleges there because they like being professors or because they’re afraid of possibly getting laid off or fired if they worked elsewhere? The tenure issue isn’t as bad for professors since there’s lots of people who want in relative to available positions – colleges generally don’t have a hard time attracting and retaining good professors, especially for long term positions. You could take tenure away and still be able to fill them easily. K-12 doesn’t have the same degree of competition for spots, so the slacker effect is greater.
But are you and most of your colleges there because they like being professors or because they’re afraid of possibly getting laid off or fired if they worked elsewhere?
Speaking only for myself, as much as I like being a professor, they would have to pay me a whole lot more to do this without tenure. Having that combination of job security and freedom is worth a good deal to me.
Now, I happen to be in an area where I could relatively easily find a position at some high-tech company, making substantially more than I do now. I chose not to do that for a variety of reasons, but tenure was one of the big things making academia an attractive option. Take that away, and the money thing might loom larger.
Colleagues in the humanities may not have the same immediate options, but even there I think you’d see the candidate pool get a whole lot smaller pretty quickly if you got rid of tenure across the board.
Couple of points. Depending where one begins teaching tenure is awarded after only 2 years. City of Newport News Virginia is one such place.
Pay for new teachers is ridiculous. I have a 4.0 GPA, have already been an instructor for 18 year old Soldiers, and have had to develop lesson plans in classroom settings during assignments in the Army. I do not seek to equate that to being a high school teacher, just to say I have at least a passing familiarity with education settings. Yet if I was to decide to transfer to the teaching profession after retiring from the Army I will see my pay cut by something like 10-20%, and that is including receiving a retirement check from the Army.
Pay for performance. I don’t mind the idea but the problem I see is what happens to those teachers who teach in schools where the disdain for education is widespread in the community?
No-one would agree to teach the dumb kids.
I don’t mind the idea but the problem I see is what happens to those teachers who teach in schools where the disdain for education is widespread in the community?
I second that. I spent a couple years working in K-12 science classes as an undergrad, and I decided quite firmly that there’s no way I would teach high school or junior high unless I was seriously desperate.
You teach five-six classes a day and are given one hour per day for prep. You have to be there early and stay late. Chances are, you will still end up dragging grading or other things home. The pay is crap. The students can be difficult, and the parents can be worse. Dealing with administration and top-down decisions can really mess with anything novel you may want to try…assuming you had the time to even get it ready.
And then there’s the fact that student performance is, in many regards, the mercy of the district you teach in. Poverty-ridden areas don’t do as well, period. The answer now is to put the kids into school a year earlier (kindergarten is the new first grade), but the benefits of doing so seem to wear off after 2-3 years. Getting kids to read early doesn’t help much if they don’t have an environment that is conducive to academic growth.
I could never show up at a job where I felt like I was doing less than I was fully capable. Because of this, I couldn’t be a teacher. I think the people who become teachers are either the ones who realize pretty quickly they can’t do it all and give up or are gluttons for punishment/endlessly optimistic. While it’s disappointing, I honestly can’t blame a lot of people for just showing up.