[StBernard] Teaching for Success

[Westley Annis]

Friends - 

America has a moral imperative to improve our educational system.  There are
certainly many practical reasons to take action.  We have gone within a
generation from being a country that clearly ranked first in educational
achievement and attainment to one that now ranks in the middle of the pack
compared to other industrialized countries.  (Our 15-year olds rank 14th in
reading, 17th in science, and 25th in math.  "We're number 14!" doesn't
quite resonate as a rallying cry.)  We cannot maintain our economic or
security status as the world's lone superpower based on such results in a
global economy increasingly driven by technology.  Studies have also shown
that improving educational results is one of the most effective ways to
boost health outcomes, lower incarceration and crime rates, prevent welfare
spending, grow the economy, and improve our quality of life.  Indeed,
Stanford economist Eric Hanushek has equated our nation's failure to catch
up with our international competitors in academic achievement to a permanent
recession - costing our country an estimated $50 trillion in Gross Domestic
Product over 80 years.

Apart from such practical concerns, however, there is also a moral reason we
must improve our nation's educational system.  America, more than any other
country across time, is an aspirational society.  Despite President Obama's
class warfare rhetoric and politics of envy, and the Occupy Wall Street
movement's contention that you are entitled to your neighbor's property, we
have long believed that Americans are entitled to equality of opportunity
and not results.  We have long believed that a child's outcome as an adult
should not be determined by the circumstances of his birth.  A child's race,
gender, geography, socio-economic status should not determine how well he
does.  We instead embrace the idea that any child willing to work hard and
get a great education can grow up to become the next President of the United
States, entrepreneur, engineer, doctor, lawyer, teacher, nurse, mom, dad,
professional football player (that is for my older son), or whatever.  

Our children only grow up once, and they deserve the best education we can
give them.  Yet, even if we agree that we must improve America's education
system, there is little consensus on how to do so.  The Left resorts to its
usual demand of simply raising taxes and spending more money, despite the
fact that per student spending has doubled in our public schools, even after
adjusting for inflation, over the past forty years even as we have fallen
behind other countries.  If more money was the answer, we would already have
the world's best education system.  Luxembourg is the only industrialized
country that spends more per student than we do.  The coalition for the
status quo, comprised of teacher union leaders, many school board members,
and others who do not want change, either ignores the problem or opposes the
policies needed to put America back on top and give our children the
excellent education they deserve.

There are certainly many education reforms that compete for attention and
resources and have become fads over time.  Advocates argue for better
technology in the classroom, smaller class sizes, newer facilities, longer
school days and years, healthier meals, more homework, tougher discipline
standards, etc. Many of these are worthwhile goals and should be pursued.
The research, however, is clear that the variable with the greatest impact
on student achievement is the effectiveness of a child's teacher.  Nothing
else comes close.  Every one of us probably remembers that great teacher
that made an important difference in our own lives by believing in us,
taking a special interest, seeing our potential, and pushing us harder.  I
am not sure you need a study to tell you having a great teacher in every
classroom should be our top priority, but our policies seem designed to
accomplish the opposite.  We have great and dedicated teachers working in
classrooms across America today, but too often they succeed despite and not
because of our educational system. 

I cannot overstate the importance of ensuring your child has a truly
effective teacher.  A study conducted in Tennessee found that a student who
had an effective teacher three years in a row outscored his peer who had an
ineffective teacher over the same time period by as much as fifty points in
math.  Another study in Texas found that reading scores for 6th graders
would increase from the 59th percentile to the 76th percentile if they were
in the classroom of a highly effective teacher three years in a row, or
decline to the 42nd percentile after three years in the classroom of an
ineffective teacher.  The impact of an effective teacher lasts beyond the
classroom.  According to Dr. Hanushek, a student in the classroom of a
teacher that's at the 60th percentile, or moderately above average, can
expect to earn $5,300 more than a student in the classroom with an average
teacher.  But for a truly effective teacher, let's say at the 84th
percentile, a student in this classroom can expect to earn $20,000 more than
their peers in an average teacher's classroom, or $400,000 for a class size
of 20.

Having a highly effective teacher can change a kid's life.  Indeed, recent
research from Harvard and Columbia showed that an effective fourth grade
teacher increased a child's chances of going to college later in life and
decreased her chances of becoming pregnant as a teenager.  The fact that
teacher quality is so important makes sense; teachers are the backbone of
education.  Yet, too many school districts seemingly reward everything but
effectiveness.

First, schools must measure teacher effectiveness in terms of objective
evaluations of student achievement.  This seems fairly self-evident, but too
many states try to measure effectiveness through seniority, graduate
degrees, higher levels of certification, and other proxies that are not
always strong predictors of student success.  That is like trying to decide
which football team won without looking at the scoreboard.  Annual
value-added assessments measure what students are learning rather than
merely rewarding teachers for starting with students who are more
academically prepared.  A student assigned to a truly highly effective
teacher can make as much as 1.5 year's worth of progress in a single year,
while one in the classroom of an ineffective teacher will fall behind on
average by half a year.  Yet, a local union leader objected to our teacher
evaluation model by criticizing it for being too closely tied to student
achievement!  We need to worry more about the kids, and less about the
adults, when it comes to education reform efforts!

Second, schools should reward the truly excellent teachers and incentivize
others to achieve excellence.  Unfortunately, our system doesn't do this
today.  We treat all teachers the same with our one size fits all system,
and we tie the hands of districts and prevent them from making smart
personnel decisions that retain and reward the most effective educators.  We
need to reward our truly excellent teachers so they want to stay in the
classroom and act as mentors for other teachers, while helping ineffective
teachers who want to improve.  But, we must also overhaul tenure policies so
that principals can remove from the classroom ineffective teachers who are
resistant to change and want to keep using the same ineffective strategies.

Finally, we must end hiring, firing, promotion, and payment policies based
on seniority rather than effectiveness.  Teachers who show up early, stay
late, and work harder to ensure their students succeed complain when the
teacher next door isn't treated any differently for doing the bare minimum
just to get by.  No small business owner would stay in business very long if
we made it nearly impossible for him to fire his ineffective employees and
also stopped him from rewarding his effective employees, and yet that is
what our current education policies do in too many cases.  These common
sense reforms, which we are implementing in Louisiana, will help us attract
high quality candidates, keep highly effective educators, and support
struggling teachers to help them improve or move them out of the classroom.

The defenders of the status quo will reject these and other reforms, and
will simply ask for more time or more money.  We've tried that already. It
doesn't work.  President Obama missed a great opportunity to promote teacher
effectiveness and student achievement across the country.  He sent tens of
billions of dollars in federal taxpayer money to local school districts, as
part of his failed stimulus efforts, in an effort the Administration claimed
was designed to avoid layoffs.  Yet, likely due to his deference to the
national teacher unions, there was no requirement that districts use that
money to retain the most effective teachers, rather than continue to rely on
their outdated last in first out policies.

I believe all parents want the same thing for their children.  We want our
kids to have more opportunity than we did.  That's the dream of every
American.  We are fortunate to live in a country where our kids have the
opportunity to be more successful than we are.  That means we have to give
our kids the opportunity to be in the best schools and have great teachers.
It doesn't matter where they're from, what color they are, or what their
last name is - every child in America deserves a great teacher and the
opportunity to learn the skills they need to advance in school, graduate,
and get a great job.  

I will write next time on a second key educational reform, providing more
choices so that no child is trapped in a failing school.

-Bobby