Building Great Teachers
March 6, 2010 8:21 PM Subscribe
Building a Better Teacher. Among the factors that do not predict whether a teacher will succeed: a graduate-school degree, a high score on the SAT, an extroverted personality, politeness, confidence, warmth, enthusiasm and having passed the teacher-certification exam on the first try. But there's hope. Two teacher-training approaches show promise. One is Doug Lemov's Taxonomy, a collection of 49 classroom management techniques. The other, specifically aimed at math teachers, is Harvard professor Heather Hill's MKT( Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching).
Students whose teacher got an above-average M.K.T. score learned about three more weeks of material over the course of a year than those whose teacher had an average score, a boost equivalent to that of coming from a middle-class family rather than a working-class one.
This post was deleted for the following reason: Looks like we were talking about Lemov a few days ago. -- cortex
a graduate-school degree, a high score on the SAT, an extroverted personality, politeness, confidence, warmth, enthusiasm
Is this one of those 'Einstein dropped out of college and he was successful' things? All of my favourite teachers have had these qualities. Further, they've been lacking in my least favourite teachers.
posted by Sutekh at 8:29 PM on March 6, 2010
Is this one of those 'Einstein dropped out of college and he was successful' things? All of my favourite teachers have had these qualities. Further, they've been lacking in my least favourite teachers.
posted by Sutekh at 8:29 PM on March 6, 2010
Oh, yeah. Teachers' unions are really fucking things up.
posted by John of Michigan at 8:30 PM on March 6, 2010 [1 favorite]
posted by John of Michigan at 8:30 PM on March 6, 2010 [1 favorite]
It's wonderful to open up a major publication and find in it a concise description of the problems you want to devote your life to fixing.
For reference, the article is written by Colubmia University education journalism fellow Elizabeth Green who, when she's not on sabbatical, runs GothamSchools.org, which is both one of the best education news outlets out there, but also proves once and for all that blogs can do real journalism.
posted by l33tpolicywonk at 8:34 PM on March 6, 2010
For reference, the article is written by Colubmia University education journalism fellow Elizabeth Green who, when she's not on sabbatical, runs GothamSchools.org, which is both one of the best education news outlets out there, but also proves once and for all that blogs can do real journalism.
posted by l33tpolicywonk at 8:34 PM on March 6, 2010
All of my favourite teachers have had these qualities. Further, they've been lacking in my least favourite teachers.
Your experience != empirical data.
posted by l33tpolicywonk at 8:36 PM on March 6, 2010
Your experience != empirical data.
posted by l33tpolicywonk at 8:36 PM on March 6, 2010
America will be fine so long as long as smart people from around the world want to immigrate here.
Unfortunately in the "post-9/11" hysteria the immigration system became a huge mess too, so we're probably fucked in the long run.
Also this is a dupe. As far as the "it's all the teachers union's fault!" argument, I don't know how much of that is real and is driven by conservatives who just want to blame unions for everything. A lot of times, critics will grab the most outrageous anecdotes, regardless of how common they are.
posted by delmoi at 8:48 PM on March 6, 2010
Unfortunately in the "post-9/11" hysteria the immigration system became a huge mess too, so we're probably fucked in the long run.
Also this is a dupe. As far as the "it's all the teachers union's fault!" argument, I don't know how much of that is real and is driven by conservatives who just want to blame unions for everything. A lot of times, critics will grab the most outrageous anecdotes, regardless of how common they are.
posted by delmoi at 8:48 PM on March 6, 2010
Delmoi, that article was in Newsweek, which isn't exactly a hotbed of conservative opinion.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 8:53 PM on March 6, 2010
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 8:53 PM on March 6, 2010
Building a Better Teacher
We can rebuild them, faster stonger.
posted by nola at 8:54 PM on March 6, 2010
We can rebuild them, faster stonger.
posted by nola at 8:54 PM on March 6, 2010
Chocolate Pickle, that article is propaganda that has almost no relation with reality. Even if anything in there were remotely true, consider this:
if you're a good teacher, you can pretty much choose where you want to work. If teachers in "underperforming" schools can be fired at any time for any reason (which is the current trend), why on earth would you ever choose to work at one, given that you can just go work somewhere else with a reasonable level of job security?
This whole "blame the teachers and their unions" movement doesn't even understand the basics of incentives, especially since their answer of "merit pay" totally misses the point that--on average--teachers rank higher pay about halfway down their list of priorities. Making it easier to fire teachers will only guarantee that the good teachers go elsewhere.
posted by Dr.Enormous at 8:55 PM on March 6, 2010 [2 favorites]
if you're a good teacher, you can pretty much choose where you want to work. If teachers in "underperforming" schools can be fired at any time for any reason (which is the current trend), why on earth would you ever choose to work at one, given that you can just go work somewhere else with a reasonable level of job security?
This whole "blame the teachers and their unions" movement doesn't even understand the basics of incentives, especially since their answer of "merit pay" totally misses the point that--on average--teachers rank higher pay about halfway down their list of priorities. Making it easier to fire teachers will only guarantee that the good teachers go elsewhere.
posted by Dr.Enormous at 8:55 PM on March 6, 2010 [2 favorites]
And the problem with the "Lets just fire the crappy teachers" mindset is that, well, who are you going to replace them with? Teachers fired from other schools? There are something like 3.4 million teachers out there, right now. That's a lot of people in one industry (If you're curious, here's some BLS data that shows how many people work in different industry sectors. They don't break down education by job type, but 2.5 million work in state governments in education, and 8.5 work for 'local governments' in education)
posted by delmoi at 8:59 PM on March 6, 2010
posted by delmoi at 8:59 PM on March 6, 2010
I teach cultural dynamics at a state university. I was woefully unaware of the uncommon schools program until now - I'm impressed by what was in this post and look forward to exploring it in greater detail. Primarily because it demos teachers working in a conventional classroom, rather than your typical "teacher scenario" - a room full of smiley white kids.
Excellent post - thanks for this.
posted by Baby_Balrog at 9:00 PM on March 6, 2010
Excellent post - thanks for this.
posted by Baby_Balrog at 9:00 PM on March 6, 2010
And the problem with the "Lets just fire the crappy teachers" mindset is that, well, who are you going to replace them with?
Nobody. It has long been a conservative goal to dismantle public education in America. Firing the bottom 50% of teachers and having nobody to replace them with is a feature, not a bug, of their plan.
posted by Avenger at 9:02 PM on March 6, 2010 [6 favorites]
Nobody. It has long been a conservative goal to dismantle public education in America. Firing the bottom 50% of teachers and having nobody to replace them with is a feature, not a bug, of their plan.
posted by Avenger at 9:02 PM on March 6, 2010 [6 favorites]
You know a high M.K.T. score sounds suspiciously like "numerate" which is an incredibly expensive property of an employee.
I agree that we're stupid for recycling failed liberal arts teachers as math & science teachers, but if you want people who could become engineers then you'll need to pay closer to engineer salaries.
posted by jeffburdges at 9:04 PM on March 6, 2010
I agree that we're stupid for recycling failed liberal arts teachers as math & science teachers, but if you want people who could become engineers then you'll need to pay closer to engineer salaries.
posted by jeffburdges at 9:04 PM on March 6, 2010
Delmoi, that article was in Newsweek, which isn't exactly a hotbed of conservative opinion.
Time and Newsweek often seem to be written at a 6th grade level, consequently I haven't spent much time reading them since I was in middle school. I don't know if they're very accurate in general or not.
But part of the problem with articles like this is that they are generally done by consulting "experts" who may or may not be pushing an agenda. In this case, it looks like they're pushing charter schools. They highlight a couple of charter schools, and talk about New Orleans, ignoring the fact that a huge number of the poorest residents never returned. Ignoring the failure of Edison schools, etc. There's no actual across the board comparison and so on.
posted by delmoi at 9:11 PM on March 6, 2010 [2 favorites]
Time and Newsweek often seem to be written at a 6th grade level, consequently I haven't spent much time reading them since I was in middle school. I don't know if they're very accurate in general or not.
But part of the problem with articles like this is that they are generally done by consulting "experts" who may or may not be pushing an agenda. In this case, it looks like they're pushing charter schools. They highlight a couple of charter schools, and talk about New Orleans, ignoring the fact that a huge number of the poorest residents never returned. Ignoring the failure of Edison schools, etc. There's no actual across the board comparison and so on.
posted by delmoi at 9:11 PM on March 6, 2010 [2 favorites]
You know a high M.K.T. score sounds suspiciously like "numerate" which is an incredibly expensive property of an employee.
Exactly. Not to rip on their work at all, but it seems that the real bottleneck in this part of society is not in "how to teach well", but in "why be a teacher".
posted by polymodus at 9:17 PM on March 6, 2010
Exactly. Not to rip on their work at all, but it seems that the real bottleneck in this part of society is not in "how to teach well", but in "why be a teacher".
posted by polymodus at 9:17 PM on March 6, 2010
I think the real questions are:
1. Is it possible to make a bad teacher into a good teacher (if they really want to succeed) or are some people just going to be better at this? Or both?
2. How on earth do you measure if someone is a good teacher?
posted by bluedaisy at 9:21 PM on March 6, 2010
1. Is it possible to make a bad teacher into a good teacher (if they really want to succeed) or are some people just going to be better at this? Or both?
2. How on earth do you measure if someone is a good teacher?
posted by bluedaisy at 9:21 PM on March 6, 2010
but if you want people who could become engineers then you'll need to pay closer to engineer salaries.
The problem with this meme is that it misses a few points:
1. Many of the top scientific minds in this country are freaking terrible teachers. Spend a few years in graduate school in a hard science, and you'll see them fumble through their professorial or TA duties without a clue.
2. Do we really want people to become teachers for the money? You can say that you'll have better screening, but some number of money-grubbers will get through. And even one year of a bad teacher hurts students.
3. On the other hand, many of the good teachers currently in the system gave up well-paying careers elsewhere to teach, because it turns out that for a lot of people money is simply not a motivating factor (assuming you make enough to live on, which is not true in every school system).
Point number three, especially, is why every single "we should run schools like a business" ninny should be immediately barred from ever having any input on school policy. They just can't understand that not everybody cares about money. This becomes even more true when the money gets linked to things like standardized tests: the bad teachers will teach to the test to get their "merit pay", while the good teachers will accept lower pay to make sure their students really learn.
The other recent fad has been charter schools. Hilariously, some of the "underperforming" schools being replaced by charter schools around here are pilot schools. Nobody has yet been able to tell me what the real difference is. There also was that charter school which just got caught blatantly cheating on the tests because they desperately needed to get their numbers up...
Of course, if somebody wants to give me a 100% pay raise, it's not like I'd object.
posted by Dr.Enormous at 9:24 PM on March 6, 2010 [2 favorites]
The problem with this meme is that it misses a few points:
1. Many of the top scientific minds in this country are freaking terrible teachers. Spend a few years in graduate school in a hard science, and you'll see them fumble through their professorial or TA duties without a clue.
2. Do we really want people to become teachers for the money? You can say that you'll have better screening, but some number of money-grubbers will get through. And even one year of a bad teacher hurts students.
3. On the other hand, many of the good teachers currently in the system gave up well-paying careers elsewhere to teach, because it turns out that for a lot of people money is simply not a motivating factor (assuming you make enough to live on, which is not true in every school system).
Point number three, especially, is why every single "we should run schools like a business" ninny should be immediately barred from ever having any input on school policy. They just can't understand that not everybody cares about money. This becomes even more true when the money gets linked to things like standardized tests: the bad teachers will teach to the test to get their "merit pay", while the good teachers will accept lower pay to make sure their students really learn.
The other recent fad has been charter schools. Hilariously, some of the "underperforming" schools being replaced by charter schools around here are pilot schools. Nobody has yet been able to tell me what the real difference is. There also was that charter school which just got caught blatantly cheating on the tests because they desperately needed to get their numbers up...
Of course, if somebody wants to give me a 100% pay raise, it's not like I'd object.
posted by Dr.Enormous at 9:24 PM on March 6, 2010 [2 favorites]
Addendum: I am interested in reading this guy's book when it comes out; anybody who has actually spent real time teaching and put this much effort into learning what makes a good teacher is worth listening to.
posted by Dr.Enormous at 9:31 PM on March 6, 2010
posted by Dr.Enormous at 9:31 PM on March 6, 2010
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posted by Chocolate Pickle at 8:26 PM on March 6, 2010