The August 2012 Scientific American carries an article by Pat Wingert, “Building a Better Science Teacher.” Much of his argument is same-old same-old: what a horrible job of teaching math and science the nation’s public schools are doing, the stock-in-trade of pundits. But he does bring up some new points worthy of comment.
Wingert laments that so few teachers are well prepared in the subjects they teach. American teachers simply know less about their subjects than their counterparts in higher-scoring countries. You can’t teach what you don’t know. A disheartening number of math and science teachers, 75%, reckons Wingert, do not have an undergraduate major or even a minor in the subjects they are teaching. Essentially, they are not “literate” in the subjects they teach. At first, this seems an exaggeration, but in my state, the requirements for a certificate endorsement are less than a minor, and the teacher in the classroom may not even carry an endorsement in the subject he is teaching. (I submit that this is a problem also in other subjects too, my field of English, for example.) Furthermore, I read that in some urban schools, classrooms are permanently staffed by an ever rotating series of “temps.” There must be reasons, political, financial, logistical, or whatever, why such practices are allowed to persist, but I can’t think of any worthy reasons. This is a serious problem that must be solved and a practice that must stop.
Instead of just saying “Fire all the teachers, and everything will be OK,” Wingert contemplates improving the quality of math and science instruction by improving the competence level of teachers. He enthuses over Teach for America and similar programs to attract “the brightest and best” to teaching. At the same time, he recognizes that all too many of these young teachers leave the profession after a few years. Programs to attract talent from the business and professional worlds run into a fundamental problem: few people are going to go deeply into debt and spend a year getting a master’s degree in order to take a cut in pay. These are touted Reformist solutions, but they are not panaceas.
Wingert recognizes links between the adequacy of preparation and job satisfaction, between job satisfaction and job performance, between job performance and student achievement. Teacher preparation in colleges needs scrutiny; some colleges turn out qualified teacher candidates, but most – not so many. What is the difference? The basic teacher training program has not changed much from what I experienced fifty years ago. It is high time for some re-thinking.
Teachers go into the profession in spite of low pay because they want to make a difference. If they are not successful, if they realize that they aren’t making a difference and aren’t likely to, they grow frustrated and leave the profession – or they stay in and become jaded and cynical; lots of bad teachers are created by the system. Good teachers are prepared coming in, and then are nurtured by the system. I have never heard any Reformist propose anything that would do either of these.
I came away from this article feeling vindicated in some of my ideas. I have always felt that there is no substitute for a teacher’s knowledge of the subject being taught, a solid grounding in the subject matter and skills of the discipline. Many years ago, a usually wise principal opined that a good teacher can teach anything; knowledge of the discipline is not necessary – after all, that is what the textbook is for. Those days are gone, if they ever existed. There is no substitute for an academic major in the teacher’s primary assigned subject, and not just in math and science. English (my subject) should be taught by hard-core English majors. I have observed enough colleagues over the years to know that there is a difference.
Reformists generally jump straight to some form of merit pay. Wingert, however, treads carefully around the issue of pay. He concedes that there are few rigorous studies of merit pay systems and little evidence to support what works and what does not. It is not necessary to trash the traditional salary schedule because there are lots of ways it can be tweaked to meet specific needs. For example, there could be a distinction, reflected in pay grade, between the teacher with the academic major and the one who meets minimum certification requirements. When the teacher has remedied his deficiencies, he moves up that step or half-step. Perhaps until this is accomplished, additional credits that do not contribute directly to the teacher’s assignment, those toward an administrative certificate, for example, would not count toward a raise in pay grade. Perhaps academic master’s degrees in the subject should weigh more and pay more than master’s degrees in Education. This is a complex subject, and the result will likely be more finely articulated and more complex salary schedules that will be negotiated into contracts district by district. We must figure out what we want teachers to know and do and reward that.
Each district, each school, each department is a community, defining and working toward common goals, potentially if not actually, and should be regarded as a community and should be encouraged to become such. It is within these collegial communities that real and lasting change will take place. Anything that pits teachers against each other and has them competing against each other for resources or rewards is antithetical to a sense of community and is to be avoided.
Some things work better in the classroom than others. The best teachers are those with the best grasp on what works. It’s not like in the movies, where all a teacher has to do is exude charisma, and the kids all learn. There are best practices, which each teacher must learn, know, and employ. It is on the use of best practices that teachers must be observed, evaluated, and rewarded. It is a lot more complicated than reviewing test scores, but truer.
Wingert cites an expert as saying that we must give our teachers better tools if we expect them to do better tools. I think that by “tools” he means not just teaching materials and technology, but knowledge, both of subject matter and pedagogy. A key component of continuous improvement of our schools is continuous staff development. Ill-prepared teachers must be remediated and brought up to speed. Accomplished teachers must find opportunities to keep intellectually engaged with their disciplines and be exposed to new ideas about pedagogy because these are the teachers who are mainsprings of change in their collegial communities. A teacher’s education must never end with the completion of their courses for certification.
Most current “Reform” is political theater. With all due respect to Congressmen and Legislators speechifying and “Educators” posing on the covers of magazines with brooms and baseball bats, it is teachers that will bring about positive and lasting change, so let them be better teachers. Pat Wingert is a journalist, not a teacher, but she seems to recognize that real “reform” must happen district by district, school by school, teacher by teacher, student by student.