“Some might say” the United Way doesn’t know what it is talking about

he United Way recently finished a two-year study about improving teacher effectiveness. They reasoned that highly effective teachers are the number one in-school factor in determining a student’s success. I don’t disagree with that but I would like to add effectiveness should include more than just a teacher’s ability, but it should also include the curriculum they are supposed to teach and the support they receive. An effective teacher can only do so much if those two things are lacking. You will have to take my word for it however as the United Way didn’t do a study on those two things, instead ganging up on everybody’s education whipping boy (and girl) the public school teacher.

I really took issue with parts of their report.

First there were only three classroom teachers in the 45-member body brought together to come up with solutions to improve education. Three, stop for a second and let that sink in. Can you imagine a law enforcement conference where only 3 of the attendees were cops? What about a study to improve medical practices and only three doctors were asked to participate? Now there were other people involved in education, a dozen or so but the vast majority of the group came from the community. Now I think the community should help come up with solutions but at the end of the day the group was woefully and embarrassingly short on teachers and that’s probably why some of their solutions were lacking.

Next when they were talking about Delivering Well Prepared Teachers they wrote:
The turnover of failure/quitter teachers costs the public schools $2.6 billion each year. (Alliance for Education, 2004)

Some say part of the cause is out-dated traditional teacher preparation programs in colleges and universities that don’t focus on urban and rural education (where most of the teaching vacancies are today).

This is not necessarily a problem in Duval. Florida requires teachers who are applying for the professional certificate to pass its Professional Education test, a pedagogy test that is part of the Florida Teacher Certification Examinations.

Okay let’s look at above. There is an extremely high cost in the turnover of teachers and I wonder why we didn’t do that study. Wouldn’t it make sense to find out why we are wasting billions of dollars a year and try and fix that?

Then whenever I hear “some say” I know what is to follow is somebody’s opinion and most likely has very little to do with reality. It would be like me saying, some people say this study was hijacked by former Teach for America teachers and since they only serve a two year commitment they play a role in all that teacher leakage and turnover; want-a-be erudites looking to put their name on something so they can feel better about themselves and over all the study has absolutely no validity whatsoever. Some could say that.

Finally if it is not necessarily a problem in Duval then why are we talking about it?

Then later when talking about dismissing ineffective teachers, the study said: Data from the U.S. Department of Education’s 2007-2008 Schools and Staffing Survey reveal that, on average, districts dismissed or declined to renew 2.1 percent of teachers (tenured and nontenured) for poor performance each year.

Is that 2.1% to low? Is that what they are trying to say? I wonder how many police officers or firemen or nurses are dismissed each year? My guess is the figures are comparable. Wait make that, some say the figures are comparable. The figure is also misleading because we know a lot of teachers leave the field voluntarily each year, (see above) and some of them probably weren’t our best. Forty percent of teachers don’t last 5 years this means each year we replace about a sixth of our teachers and friends that’s way to high of a figure.

A few things you should know about teachers. There is no epidemic of bad teachers but still people like the Gates fund study after study about teacher quality. Nobody wants bad teachers in the classroom. Not teacher’s unions and certainly not other teachers and this might not be popular but teachers are also a coalition of the willing. A few years back we were recruiting in India, Canada and the business world because we couldn’t find enough teachers to staff our classes. The bad economy rectified that a bit but what are we going to do after the economy turns around? With the blame the teacher, give them all the authority and none of the responsibility culture that our legislature has developed, we will once again have to roll the dice on people we might other wise not. Finally some people are just a bad fit where they are at or need the time to develop, time the United Way study doesn’t seem to want to give.

I could literally pick apart the report and the place I would start with is their suggestion that students be allowed to evaluate their teachers, which is perhaps the worse idea ever. We have already stripped kids of most of their responsibilities, we don’t worry about instilling a work ethic or discipline in them and giving them more ammo to hold over teacher’s heads seems like a really bad idea.

But I am not going to and just ask that people take the report for what it was, a bunch of big shots and want-a-be big shots sitting around brainstorming about education. Some of their ideas are okay some are really bad and some are in between. Their methodology is questionable at best but that’s what happens when people go with their guts rather than taking the time to find out what the real problems are and to me a lack of support, finding out and fixing why teachers leave and bad programs are a bit higher on the list than finding effective teachers.

But hey what do I know I have only been in the classroom for over a decade and travel 10 deep with teachers. Sadly its not like anybody wants to know what I know either.