Today's Washington Post includes a guest column from Marion Brady. It's probably a bad idea to engage this sort of thing at all, but it's distressing to think that this column can run in a prominent newspaper and give passing readers the impression that this is "what teachers think." I can't help but take it on here, and I hope you'll consider doing so as well.
Here we go:
False Assumption 1: America’s teachers deserve most of the blame for decades of flat school performance. Other factors affecting learning—language problems, hunger, stress, mass media exposure, transience, cultural differences, a sense of hopelessness, and so on and on—are minor and can be overcome by well-qualified teachers. To teacher protests that they’re scapegoats taking the blame for broader social ills, the proper response is, "No excuses!" While it’s true teachers can’t choose their students, textbooks, working conditions, curricula, tests, or the bureaucracies that circumscribe and limit their autonomy, they should be held fully accountable for poor student test scores.
This is baloney. The driving force behind the focus (including at Hope Street Group) on teacher effectiveness is the conviction that we must overcome the barriers to learning our children face and close the achievement gap, and that the cornerstone of any effort to do so is a great teacher.
False Assumption 2: Professional educators are responsible for bringing education to crisis, so they can’t be trusted. School systems should instead be headed by business CEOs, mayors, ex-military officers, and others accustomed to running a "tight ship." Their managerial expertise more than compensates for how little they know about educating.
Great leaders come from all sectors, including education.
False Assumption 3: "Rigor"—doing longer and harder what we’ve always done—will cure education’s ills. If the young can’t clear arbitrary statistical bars put in place by politicians, it makes good sense to raise those bars. Because learning is neither natural nor a source of joy, externally imposed discipline and "tough love" are necessary.
This is sort of funny, because the Race to the Top pushes for so much change. But what I really want to know is, if the young can't clear tests of basic skill so simplisitic that we continue to slip internationally and students graduate with degrees but not prepared for college and work, what does Mr. Brady propose to do instead of working tirelessly to change the system? Lower the standards? Reaching high academic standards and natural, joyful learning are not mutually exclusive. I don't think anyone seriously believes that.
False Assumption 4: Teaching is just a matter of distributing information. Indeed, the process is so simple that recent college graduates, fresh from "covering" that information, should be encouraged to join "Teach For America" for a couple of years before moving on to more intellectually demanding professions. Experienced teachers may argue that, as Socrates demonstrated, nothing is more intellectually demanding than figuring out what’s going on in another person’s head, then getting that person herself or himself to examine and change it, but they’re just blowing smoke.
You know, if one is going to rail against TFA, it would be nice to trot out an argument not quite so outdated and obviously false. Whatever you think of it, it is undeniable that Teach For America has pursued its own improvement tirelessly, produced great teachers, principals and other education leaders who stay in education, and proven that you can attract the nation's top college graduates to teaching if you appeal to their passion for closing the achievement gap.
False Assumption 5: Notwithstanding the failure of vast experiments such as those conducted in eastern Europe under Communism, and the evidence from ordinary experience, history proves that top-down reforms such as No Child Left Behind work well. Centralized control doesn’t stifle creativity, imply teacher incompetence, limit strategy options, discourage innovation, or block the flow of information and insight to policymakers from those actually doing the work.
I think this is critically important, because I suspect the "local control" rallying cry will be at the center of the fight when the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (NCLB) is up for reauthorization. And some of the overly prescriptive parts of that law should make way for innovative states and be flexible for district-specific scenarios. But we should not forget the reason the federal government is involved in education at all, which is that local control was a system where inequity ran rampant. Until we've closed the achievement gap, you'll find me squarely behind the law.
False Assumption 6: Standardized tests are free of cultural, social class, language, experiential, and other biases, so test-taker ability to infer, hypothesize, generalize, relate, synthesize, and engage in all other "higher order" thought processes can be precisely measured and meaningful numbers attached. It’s also a fact that test-prep programs don’t unfairly advantage those who can afford them, that strategies to improve the reliability of guessing correct answers can’t be taught, and that test results can’t be manipulated to support political or ideological agendas. For these reasons, test scores are reliable, and should be the primary drivers of education policy.
This one is tricky, because I can't tell whether he's upset about state level accountability tests or high-stakes entrance exams like the SATs (I don't think I've ever heard of 3rd-8th grade students paying for test-prep programs for state tests, which have no penalty for individual students). Those tests are not used to judge the worth or intelligence of individual students. They do shine an important light on just how badly we fail some of our kids.
False Assumption 7: Notwithstanding the evidence from research and decades of failed efforts, forcing merit pay schemes on teachers will revitalize America’s schools. This is because the desire to compete is the most powerful of all human drives (more powerful even than the satisfactions of doing work one loves). The effectiveness of, say, band directors and biology teachers, or of history teachers and math teachers, can be easily measured and dollar amounts attached to their relative skill. Merit pay also has no adverse effect on collegiality, teacher-team dynamics, morale, or school politics.
Nobody making a serious argument for merit pay thinks about it this simplicistically. It is unfair for our best teachers to go unrecognized and unrewarded. We can figure out how to do this well. Join us.
False Assumption 8: Required courses, course distribution requirements, Carnegie Units, and other bureaucratic demands and devices that standardize the curriculum and limit teacher and learner options are products of America’s best thinkers about what the young need to know. Those requirements should, then, override individual learner interests, talents, abilities, and all other factors affecting freedom of choice.
Curriculum decisions are tough. But setting standards outlining what a student needs to know to be successful is not. Too often, leaving curriculum in the hands of failing schools leads to the choice to teach "not enough."
False Assumption 9: Notwithstanding charter schools’ present high rates of teacher turnover, their growing standardization by profit-seeking corporations, or their failure to demonstrate that they can do things all public schools couldn’t do if freed from bureaucratic constraints, charters attract the most highly qualified and experienced teachers and are hotbeds of innovation.
Here we go again with the outdated arguments. You don't have to believe charter schools are a magic bullet to recognize that our nation's best charters have proven they can close the achievement gap, have challenged the status quo, and have attracted great teachers. Good charters are part of the landscape of success in education reform.
False Assumption 10: The familiar, traditional "core curriculum" in near-universal use in America’s classrooms since 1893 is the best-possible tool for preparing the young for an unknown, unpredictable, increasingly complex and dangerous future.
Would any historians like to chime in on this one?
