[Vision2020] How to Fix the Schools

[Art Deco]

  [image: The New York Times] <http://www.nytimes.com/>

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September 17, 2012
How to Fix the Schools By JOE NOCERA

No matter how quickly the Chicago teachers’ strike ends, whether it is this
afternoon or two months from now, it’s not going to end well for the city’s
public school students. Yes, I know; that’s the hoariest of clichés. But
that doesn’t mean it’s not true.

It’s not just the school days that are being lost. Far more important, the
animosity between the Chicago Teachers Union <http://www.ctunet.com/> and
Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his administration will undoubtedly linger long
after the strike ends. The battle will end, but the war between education
reformers and urban public schoolteachers will go on.

Teachers — many of them — will continue to resent efforts to use
standardized tests to measure their ability to teach. Their leaders — some
of them — will denounce the “billionaire hedge fund
managers<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/24/michelle-rhees-backers-in_n_1300146.html>”
who are financing many of the reform efforts. Reformers will continue to
view teachers’ unions as the greatest roadblock to higher student
achievement. How can such a poisonous atmosphere *not* affect what goes on
in the classroom? Alienated labor is never a good thing. “It is not
possible to make progress with your students if you are at war with your
teachers,” says Marc Tucker.

Tucker, 72, a former senior education official in Washington, is the
president of the National Center on Education and the
Economy<http://www.ncee.org/about-ncee/our-people/leadership/marc-s-tucker/>,
which he founded in 1988. Since then he has focused much of his
research<http://ebookbrowse.com/marc-tucker-standing-on-the-shoulders-of-giants-an-american-agenda-for-education-reform-pdf-d381288002>on
comparing public education in the United States with that of places
that
have far better
results<http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/sep/11/education-compared-oecd-country-pisa>than
we do — places like Finland, Japan, Shanghai and Ontario, Canada. His
essential conclusion is that the best education systems share common traits
— almost none of which are embodied in either the current American system
or in the reform ideas that have gained sway over the last decade or so. He
can sound frustrated when he talks about it.

“We have to find a way to work with teachers and unions while at the same
time working to greatly raise the quality of teachers,” he told me
recently. He has some clear ideas about how to go about that. His starting
point is not the public schools themselves but the universities that
educate teachers. Teacher education in America is vastly inferior to many
other countries; we neither emphasize pedagogy — i.e., how to teach — nor
demand mastery of the subject matter. Both are a given in the
top-performing countries. (Indeed, it is striking how many nonprofit
education programs in the U.S. are aimed at helping working teachers do a
better job — because they’ve never learned the right techniques.)

What is also a given in other countries is that teaching has a status equal
to other white-collar professionals. That was once true in America, but
Tucker believes that a quarter-century of income inequality saw teachers
lose out at the expense of lawyers and other well-paid professionals. That
is a large part of the reason that teachers’ unions have become so
obstreperous: It is not just that they feel underpaid, but they feel
undervalued. Tucker believes that teachers should be paid more — though not
exorbitantly. But making teacher education more rigorous — and imbuing the
profession with more status — is just as important. “Other countries have
raised their standards for getting into teachers’ colleges,” he told me.
“We need to do the same.”

Second, he believes that it makes no sense to demonize unions. “If you look
at the countries with the highest performance, many of them have very
strong unions. There is no correlation between the strength of the unions
and student achievement,” he says.

Instead, he points to the example of Ontario, where a decade ago, a new
government decided to embrace the teachers’ unions — to treat them as
partners instead of as adversaries. The result? Ontario now has some of the
best student achievement in the world. (Alas, relations between teachers
and the government have recently deteriorated after a two-year wage freeze
was imposed.)

High-performing countries don’t abandon teacher standards. On the contrary.
Teachers who feel part of a collaborative effort are far more willing to be
evaluated for their job performance — just like any other professional. It
should also be noted that none of the best-performing countries rely as
heavily as the U.S. does on the blunt instrument of standardized tests.
That is yet another lesson we have failed to learn.

The Chicago teachers’ strike exemplifies, in stark terms, how misguided the
battle over education has become. The teachers are fighting for the things
industrial unions have always fought for: seniority, favorable work rules
and fierce resistance to performance measures. City Hall is fighting to
institute reforms no top-performing country has ever seen fit to use, and
which probably won’t make much difference if they are instituted.

The answer lies elsewhere — in a different approach to teaching education
and to dealing with the unions. It won’t be easy, but it is not impossible.
It’s the way forward.


-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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