By Robert C. Pianta Published July 13, 2009, in The Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk, Va.)
Arne Duncan, the tough, former chief executive of Chicago's schools who is now secretary of education, is on a mission to put teeth into teacher performance assessments. Recent research from the New Teacher Project, which surveyed 16,000 educators in four states, notes the preponderance of those who said they know teachers who should be fired.
The report emphasizes the need for measures that can discriminate between poor performers and high performers so that the former can be fired and the latter rewarded. But that gets at only half the problem.
What the NTP missed is the need for an assessment system that does much more than inform decisions about hiring and firing, rewards and remediation. Our schools are desperate for a system of teacher performance assessment that is transparent, produces good teaching in all teachers and requires rigorous, objective discrimination of good and bad practice.
What would a performance assessment look like? Imagine teachers opening their doors to neutral, trained observers who score their interactions with children on a set of dimensions that all can see and describe and that can be the focus of targeted – and effective ¬– professional development. I and my colleagues called such a system CLASS, Classroom Assessment Scoring System, when we published a paper in 2007 in the journal Science. The oft-maligned Head Start program, which for years has used standardized observations of classroom quality as one of several indicators that are monitored regularly in program reviews, will roll out CLASS in its triennial monitoring system in 2010. K-12 educators could learn a lot from this.
We have observed more than 5,000 K-12 classrooms, all with certified teachers, and we see a lot of unproductive time. Using empirical criteria for the levels and types of teacher behavior that are more likely to lead to student achievement, our evidence suggests that about 25 percent of teachers should be on some form of probation or intensive professional development; another 40 percent to 50 percent make modest contributions to student learning; and about 25 percent demonstrate the focus on cognition and learning that will lead to improved student performance.
It is clear in this work that observation produces targets for performance that teachers can work toward and in some sense control – teacher preparation and professional development can be aligned with these targets and designed to produce these behaviors. Our and others’ work demonstrates that focused coaching and exposure to videos of effective teaching behavior leads (in highly controlled experiments) to improvements in the quality and level of the very teaching behaviors that predict achievement.
This can happen in every classroom, from preschool to high school.
This is not rocket science, but it is science – hard work that must be done systematically and on the basis of evidence. Sending a principal into a classroom to observe teachers when that principal and teacher don’t know the target of the observation is a complete waste of time and money, even moreso when there is no evidence that what the principal is looking for is tied to student learning. And providing coaches or mentor teachers is useless unless the targets of coaching or mentoring are those teacher behaviors that have been shown to produce achievement.
Teachers aren’t widgets, but good teaching can be produced if we approach the job more like engineers than philosophers – find good teaching, identify the key behaviors that cause student achievement, experiment with ways to produce these behaviors through professional development, and then incentivize the daylights out of teachers’ participation.
There is a science of human behavior and learning and we can start using it now to produce effective teaching in our classrooms. Just firing “bad” teachers and paying good ones won’t be enough.
***Robert C. Pianta is dean of the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia and director of the National Center for Research on Early Childhood Education, housed at U.Va.
2 comments:
Teachers are like the products that are produced in the plants or the factories. When cars or other products have problems its up to the Dealership to repair and fix said products,and in some cases we have what are known as recalls in the Automotive Industry. The Dealership will repair or fix all factory authorized recalls.But what happens to teachers,counselors,or principals who basically need fixing, fine tuning, or repairing, or on-going professional development in all the systems involved in the fine art of teaching,counseling and administering a sucessfull public educational institution ?
We can't send the teachers,and counselors or administrators back to the Educational Schools that produced them,and their Union contracts would probably prohibit such actions. So what's the answer ? If we are getting poor products from the factory;let's look at the overall operation of the factory or plant to ascertain how we can improve on the quality that is being produced in said plants(Educational-Schools). The plants or Ed. Schools must first contact said Schools to see what problems are consistently occurring with teacher performance,and what action did the school in question to take to remedy the problem or problems.
If the Ed.Schools are in tune to what is happening with teacher and student performance in all the school districts in the country,they will be in a better position to make revolutionary changes that are greatly needed in all Ed. Schools. For to long the some of the State Ed. Schools have become complacent and comfortable in doing what many have been doing for the last twenty five years with no appreciable progress in Curriculum revision or change,Methodology, or methods. Many of the heads of the these Ed.Schools have not visted or adventured into a classroom to properly,evaualte,observe what or how the teachers,principla's,or counselors are doing their respective jobs. These Ed. School heads need get out of those corporate ivory towers and halls of academia and go into the schools that are producing these poor teachers and mediocre performing students.
Who is doing the evaluating of what the Ed.Schools are doing from A to Z relative to turning out good products for our schools ?
State Education Department's,and the U.S.Dept. Of Education for the most part are top heavy with inept and marginally talented people from top to bottom who by-in large have given the Institutions of Higher Learning a free pass to do anything in reference to what and how they they conduct there business,and for the most part the various Private-and Semi-Private Accreditation Associations are in the hip pocket of most Ed. Schools;they have this type of relationship that if you scratch my back I'll scratch your back.
So the root cause of poor teacher performance is to be found in how the Ed. Schools produced their inferior products and until we have brought sytematic revolutionary change at the Ed. School level,we will continue to produce poor products,(Teachers),Counselors, and Administrators.
Some Ed. Schools such as the Uninversity of Virginia (Curry)and the Teacher's College at Columbia Uinversity,in New York do an excellent job or producing effective classroom teachers.
I suggest the following to improve our Educational system in the United States:
1. Massive comprehensive public relations compaign on behalf of the teaching profession. The teaching profession should be on a par with such as occupations as Engineering,Computer Science, Law and medicine. The Teaching profession schould have the same respectability as Engineering,Computer Science,Business,Law & Medicine,etc.
2. Beginning teachers with a BA or BS. should receive a salary comparable to a entry level Civil or Electrical Engineer.
3. Local School boards must grant pay increases based on merit only,and those Union contracts must reflect these 21IST Century realities.
4.All college students desirous of going into teaching must pass a comprehensive entrance examination before being admitted into teaching.
Obama's Sec. of Education needs to be replaced ASAP.
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