The main blog on eduwonk today (what Uri was talking about in class yesterday) actually ties together our PRP from last year focusing on teacher incentive pay and our PRP this year. It's a guest blogger and not too insightful, but he's commenting on Obama's speech and focus. Obama talked about needing to bring to scale the concept of great teachers and administrators--one of the 'levers of change', I think, for improving college readiness.
Here's the link:
http://www.eduwonk.com/2008/09/the-most-compelling-challenge.html
Most of what we studied last year taught us that teacher quality is the most important factor to students' success. Granted, that's a broad statement, but I think it's important as we look at the overall idea of high school reform. It's definitely been a focus at the elementary and middle school levels and shouldn't be neglected at the HS level. I don't know the exact number, but a lot of teachers actually end up teaching outside their education areas (i.e. a science teacher will be teaching math or English). While some of these overlap, we're doing students a disservice to be placing teachers in classrooms where they're not qualified. (This stems from other problems of teachers not wanting to go into math, for example.)
Thoughts?
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2 comments:
A few thoughts----There is no doubt that great teachers and administrators make a positive impact on student learning. Some folks have a difficult time defining what "great" looks like.
NCLB mandates that all teachers must be "highly qualified" which means they must be certified in the subject that are teaching. This has made a difference in districts making aggressive attempts to comply. Districts like AISD (Austin) do not have as much difficulty as remote or less desirable places to live. I don't know the national statistics on how many make the 100% mandate but you have motivated me to find out!
Some school districts are desperate for teachers that they will take anyone who "looks" "highly-qualified". Unfortunately, this definition of highly-qualified does not include wanting to teach students to be successful, motivating them to do their best, and loving them patiently as they struggle through the content and their lives.
There are a lot of people including teachers who still think that some students "got it" and some don't. In other words, they believe in innate ability--that some students are just born smart. These perceptions continue to create problems as teachers classify their students as "smart" and "dumb".
I think we need to dig down to define what a "great teacher/administrator" and "highly-qualified" means. We might have all sorts of different views on this issue just as the question of defining college readiness.
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