Teacher Quality

“Your good teaher,” was the statement written underneath a picture drawn by an English language student I had tutored the summer before I joined the New York City Teaching Fellows program. I was proud of the gift—glad that in two months, Kiwon had learned some English. But I wondered if I could have perhaps have done better.
Teacher quality, how to gauge it and maintain it in our schools has been a hot topic for a long time, and will probably continue to be so for many years, if not forever. The public, government officials, administrators, teachers, and teachers’ unions all have a vested interest in deciding how teacher quality is judged. The process to become a teachers has been incrementally professionalized over the years. However, as research shows and many can intuit, it is not what happens before a person becomes a teacher but after they get into the classroom that is the real judge of their skills in that profession.
A 1987 article in The New York Times spoke of a “new wave” of education in which colleges such as the City College of New York were eliminating undergraduate education programs and moving education degrees to the graduate level, similar to medical and law degrees (Fiske, 1987, p. 1). Also during that same year, the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards began the move toward national certification that they hoped would, “not only set new and higher standards for teachers but also put pressure on schools of education to turn out graduates who can qualify for the new credentials” (Fiske, 1987, p.1). Another change that has yet to happen.
As one can see, changes in education are slow to happen, some of the big questions, such as how we train and gauge qualified teachers, are still looming decades have movements of reform have set in place. This is perhaps due to the push and pull of all the groups concerned with the issue. The public, whose money is being spent, worries about the state of education and whether or not qualified teachers and being hired (or non-qualified teachers are being fired). Government officials and administrators wonder how to gauge teaching candidates to discover just who will be effective in the classroom, and desire to have the authority to get rid of those who are not. Teachers and their unions worry that teaching quality will be misjudged and that good teachers will be passed by, and that new policies in judging teacher quality will eliminate good teachers, experienced teachers and lower teacher moral.
Each groups’ concerns are valid, yet it is typical of policy-makers to sacrifice one for the other and create an all or nothing policy that causes a divide and eventually becomes ineffective. Standards for student to teacher-ratio, English language learners and students with special needs can all be circumvented in one way or another, if schools are not capable of making these changes, they will find ways to get around them. In the same way, teacher education programs and standardized pedagogy and subject tests are often watered down enough to include almost anyone who aspires to be a teacher, and have thus lost their effectiveness for those who need to gauge a candidates potential.
Not to say, a standardized test or certification program would ever be a good way of evaluating candidates. For how can a test reveal a person’s ability to work with people, to inspire, to empathize, or to come up with original ideas? In fact, “according to recent evidence, certification of teachers bears little relationship to teacher effectiveness (measured by impacts on student achievement). There are effective certified teachers and there are ineffective certified teachers; similarly, there are effective uncertified teachers and ineffective uncertified teachers (Gordon, Kane, and Staiger, 2006, p. 7).”
The Brooking Institute study from which that statement is taken suggests that student achievement based on test scores, especially “value added” scores (meaning showing number improvement corresponding to the student’s time in a particular teacher’s classroom), and administrator and parent evaluation should the be the criteria for teacher tenure (Gordon, 2006, p. 4).
Conducting a scientific study, the researchers naturally placed the most emphasis on the quantifiable test numbers. A fact that likely strikes controversy for those who do not agree with the testing process—another “hot topic.” The Brookings’ study tracked student test scores during the first two years of a teacher’s classroom time. According to their numbers, teachers whose students’ scores rose after the second year would likely help future students increase test scores by an average of 10 percentile points. They compared this to the scores of teachers with certification and those without, which revealed little to no difference in student performance. Based on these figures, the study makes a suggestion for, “grants to help states that link student performance with the effectiveness of individual teachers over time (Gordon, 2006, p. 8).”
A current educator, Anthony Lombardi of PS 49 in Queens, who has seen success rates at the school rise dramatically in reading and math since became principal is also in favor of focusing teacher evaluation after the teacher has been in the classroom in order to decide their professional status. “Lombardi suggests replacing this system with an apprenticeship program. Rather than requiring teaching degrees (which don't seem to improve value-added all that much), new recruits would have a couple of years of in-school training. There would then come a day of reckoning, when teachers-to-be would face a serious evaluation before securing union membership and a job for life (Fisman, 2009, p. 1).” Lombardi’s tough-on-teachers stance is not popular with everyone, especially union officials. Allegedly, Randi Weingarten, president of the United Federation of Teachers, has called him a "tyrant." However, parents express happiness with the school, and the independent school review, InsideSchools.org gave the school five stars in both math and reading (InsideSchools.org).
Certainly changes need to be made in the public school system, and the ways in which teachers are hired and maintained and evaluated for performance and quality needs to be a part of those changes. No hard-working, qualified teacher wants to receive the same pay and title as a lazy, unqualified teacher, and no parent or administrator wants to send children into classrooms where they will not learn. However, I’ll wager, the ways in which education will change will not be done without an ideological fight from many sides. I think putting less emphasis on paper certifications that mean nothing will save money and time and ultimately bring more respect to the teaching profession. Additionally, I agree with the movement that never got started, of 1987 to do away with undergraduate education degrees. A minimum average in the discipline a candidate will teach, and a bachelor’s degree from an accredited university reveals more than a standardized test can, and will create more knowledgeable and well-rounded educators. Despite what the Brookings’ study suggests, I feel based on my own experience, that teaching candidates should have some pedagogy instruction and pass either a state or national test to reveal their competency in that area before entering the classroom. However, I agree with Lombardi that in-school training is the most valuable kind of experience one can receive in this field. Potential teachers can study text books all they want, but nothing can prepare them for teaching more than being in the actual classroom, and that is ultimately what they should be evaluated. That fact that this is a point of contention, reveals a breakdown in the system in my opinion. In essence this is the process that is now in place. I feel that idea of a teacher-for-life is a false one, because teachers get fired every year. Not every new teacher receives tenure. Yet some do fall through the cracks. Some teachers go years without really being evaluated, they languish in the system with a file full of “satisfactory” evaluations and a tenured spot, and if administrators are lazy, the evidence of good teaching (true or false) does make it difficult to fire them. It falls on the administrators to enforce the structures already in place, just like it falls on the teacher to enforce the standards of his or her classroom.


Reference List

Fiske, E. (1987, Oct. 19). Teacher quality becomes top school issue. The New York Time, http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE5DA163FF93AA25753C1 A961948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1.
Gordon, R., Kane, T. J., Staiger, D. O. (2006). The Hamilton project: identifying effective teachers using performance on the job discussion paper. The Brookings Institution, 2006-01.
InsideSchools.org (2008). Retrieved July 15, 2008, from http://www.insideschools.org/fs/school_profile.php?id=694
Ray, F. (2008, July 11). Hot for the wrong teacher: why are public schools so bad at hiring good instructors. Slate Magazine, http://www.slate.com/id/2195147.