GOOD TEACHERS? HARD TO DEFINE
November 26, 1998. The Philadelphia Inquirer.
In the fall of 1997, Judith McGonigal set out to create a classroom of scientists. First-grade scientists.
At first, she gave them group assignments: invent a game, observe a leaf, create a noise-making hat, all the while observing and analyzing.
In late September, Andrew Spinelli, a reserved, soccer-playing 6-year-old, found a tattered baseball in his father's car, promptly took it apart, and brought it to school.
Suddenly he wanted to know everything about balls. Soccer balls. Golf balls. Basketballs. This was what McGonigal had been waiting for - an inquiry initiated by a student. Soon, all the students were conducting their own inquiries - into leaves, cactus plants, beetles, fish, Styrofoam, crayons, pencils, hissing roaches.
Indeed, she had taken a room full of children who could not even read fluently and made them into junior scientists. But her real purpose had been much more important: to create a community, nudge students of varying interests and abilities to new academic heights, and give them responsibility for their learning.
Few would argue against characterizing Judith McGonigal as a "good teacher." She is creative. She feels an obligation to the individual learner. And after 30 years in the classroom, she is still on a quest to be better.
Her personal search exemplifies what is now a national preoccupation. Fifteen years after a national report called A Nation at Risk declared the nation's educational system was "on a rising tide of mediocrity," the frenzy of school reform has finally narrowed its focus to this essential: quality teaching.
Yet there is still confusion and disagreement over just what that is.
Is a good teacher one who, like McGonigal, nurtures a love of learning and broad-based curiosity? Is it one who helps students do well on standardized tests?
Is it somebody who can control a classroom, or someone who thrives on the students' freedom as they explore for themselves?
And are the answers to these questions different based on where - and whom - the teacher teaches? Does what it takes to be successful in a North Philadelphia differ from what it takes in
But whatever the answers, there is an increasing demand that good teaching be defined, identified, nurtured and rewarded.
States are tightening standards for those who want to be teachers. Colleges of education are being forced to change how they prepare young people to educate others. Some school districts are beginning to reward teachers' knowledge and skills, not course credits and longevity.
A 10-year-old effort to establish rigorous criteria for teachers to become board-certified - similar in concept to the medical and legal professions - is finally picking up steam. And a
Still, "good teaching" is maddeningly elusive. One child's inspiration could be another child's nemesis, and one principal's catalyst for improving an entire school could be another principal's troublemaker.
Some of those trying to find good teaching are turning to numbers. Research shows that teachers who score the highest on standardized tests are most likely to produce students who do well on these tests. For these analysts, the goal is to encourage high scorers to become teachers.
But for many educators, measuring effective teaching this way ignores the myriad factors that determine whether an adult helps a child grow as a learner, and it assumes that the most important thing a teacher can do is help students score well on tests.
This all raises the vexing issue of accountability - what teachers should be held responsible for. Most experts recognize a danger in simply equating teacher competence with students' test scores. But because there is no easy standard for evaluating teachers, they have long labored in classrooms insulated from responsibility over whether their students make progress.
Most who have taught, especially in an inner-city environment, know that good teachers do not always get great returns on paper, yet can still change students' lives in immeasurable ways. At the same time, schools, especially urban ones, are under increasing pressure to improve test scores, which may or may not yield real learning.
"With published standardized test results, many connect effective teaching with test results directly," said Velvet McReynolds, a middle-school English teacher near
Second-grade teacher Esther Perlman was trained to carry out other people's ideas, implement other people's decisions, and teach someone else's curriculum.
But 40 years of experience has taught her never to follow a script. That's obvious from the minute one enters
Perlman's class is a whirlwind of projects, sharing and joint activities with older students. She emphasizes the need for them to work with each other, to direct their own learning, and to communicate effectively.
In the front of her classroom is not her desk, but a small stage for the students to showcase their knowledge; when they read a story or present a report, Perlman gives them a microphone, which - in more ways than one - amplifies what they know and can do. When it comes time to assess their learning, she hands out an important-looking sheet headed, "My Self-Evaluation," in which the students are encouraged to explain their own strengths and weaknesses.
"I think all these things I do better prepare them for life," Perlman explained. "I don't focus on the tests except as a tool to improve my teaching."
Perlman, who has no intention of retiring, explains her own measures of success: not the good scores most of her students achieve, but happy, involved children.
While some teachers say an overemphasis on high test scores can counteract intellectual engagement, many policymakers, politicians and parents are losing patience with that argument. They want results, pure and simple.
Philadelphia School Superintendent David Hornbeck, who has devised an index that rewards schools, in large part, if more students score higher on a nationally standardized test, is one of them. "There has to be some accountability," he said.
It's not that Hornbeck would not applaud teachers such as McGonigal and Perlman. But his priority, he said, is to make the entire system work, rather than support the creativity of a few teachers whose positive effects on students do not last if the rest of the school is not producing results. He believes that in many schools, the use of nationally marketed curricula that have a track record of improving scores among low-income students is justified. This is so even though they often turn the classroom experience to mechanistic drills.
But others argue that such an emphasis works against excellent teaching.
Cindy Engst, who teaches eighth grade at the
"Effective teaching is not just how you're teaching," Engst said. "It requires you to have ideas of what you're looking for. What does a kid learning look like, besides a test score? What does a good reader look like besides knowing vocabulary? Are they tuned in, or are they going through the motions?"
Two different approaches to pinpointing good teaching are exemplified by the
For 10 years, the National Board has been trying to raise the stature of the profession by developing standards for what accomplished teachers should know and be able to do, recognizing this expertise in the same way that the medical profession board-certifies its specialists. The 63-member board, composed primarily of teachers, has identified principles that all good teachers have in common, plus standards in - so far - 20 fields of expertise.
Progress has been slow. But just last week, the board announced that in the last year the number of board-certified teachers has doubled, from 912 to more than 1,800. And now 13 states, including
To be board certified, teachers must submit examples of student work, reflective essays, evidence of their subject matter knowledge, videotaped lessons, and documentation of their accomplishments outside the classroom with colleagues and parents.
They then spend two days being judged by experts in the teacher's specialty. The teachers are appraised on the way they evaluate texts and teaching materials, analyze hypothetical teaching situations, and assess examples of student work. Each teacher is judged by 16 different evaluators, and more than half of those who go through the process are not awarded certification.
The board is not without its own controversy - both from critics who consider it too tied in to the unions and from some teachers who view it as elitist.
Velvet McReynolds, the teacher from
But there is little research on whether board-certified teachers are, in fact, getting better results, in part because they are scattered so widely (there are four in
And research is now showing that it is crucial for students to have a continual series of effective teachers, because even the best have a hard time undoing the effects of the worst.
Several years ago,
Those teachers whose students consistently improved or surpassed expectations were given a rating of 5. Those whose students consistently declined or performed below expectations were given a 1, with ratings in between for teachers with less clear-cut results. The researchers took into account the students' backgrounds, such as English proficiency and family income, in an effort to isolate the effect of the teacher from other factors that can affect learning.
After the teachers were rated, the researchers tracked their 17,000 new students as they went from third through fifth grades. If the students lucked out and had three consecutive years with teachers ranked "5s," their average math scores went up - from the 60th percentile to the 75th percentile. But students of similar backgrounds who were stuck twice with the lowest-rated teachers, saw their scores drop from 60th down to just below the 50th percentile, even if they had a "5" in between.
And the scores of students who got three bad teachers in a row by fifth grade had fallen, on average, to the 25th percentile.
"The effect of a good teacher vs. a poor teacher is far larger than we thought going in," said Robert Mendro, who directed the
Mendro said that poor teachers were poor in many different ways - but the good ones, while they differed in style, had four things in common: they had a better grasp of subject matter, kept abreast of student progress, gave equal weight to all aspects of the curriculum, and engaged all students in high level thinking.
Marsha Pincus, who spent nearly 20 years teaching at
A mark of a good teacher, she said, "is knowing when kids should be invited to participate in higher-level knowledge." Constant remediation, especially for older students, she said, only makes things worse.
"You always have to assume the competence of the individual you're teaching," Pincus said.
The American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association are quick to cite the
Judith McGonigal took Andrew Spinelli and his classmates on a journey that left them with a whole new concept of what school, teaching and learning could be.
And as the young scientists launched their inquiries, the excitement spread beyond the classroom. Mothers beeped fathers when beetles hatched. Parents traded information about the melting point for Styrofoam and the characteristics of fungus. And their children could not wait to go to school.
Fifteen years ago, McGonigal never imagined teaching like this. Back then, she would watch the minute hand click toward
And she never had enough pencils.
But just at the time her twin daughters hit school age, McGonigal took a course at the
Her instructor, Lynne Putnam, came to watch her teach her seventh grade. McGonigal was carefully following her lesson plan, even though it was not going well.
"I didn't know that you could stop, look, reflect, and change while teaching," she wrote recently. "In the middle of the lesson Lynne stopped me and asked me to think if I could do the lesson a different, better way. I froze. I went in the hallway and cried."
Under Putnam's guidance, she realized, for one, that for $10 she could buy enough pencils to supply her class for a whole year. What other problems could she solve?
All of them.
"That was the turning point for me," she said. "I went into school the next day and began talking to the children about problem-solving. It was the first time I ever stopped and asked students how to make their learning environment better." From this grew a daily problem-solving circle that tackled issues from playground fights to teaching fractions.
"I turned from someone who complained to someone who problem-solved," she said. "When I turned, I started to be a successful teacher."
McGonigal wants to teach again in an inner city to demonstrate that the science-inquiry model would work as well there as in Haddonfield.
"Home lives have nothing to do with the ability to have children be successful learners," said McGonigal, who believes such concerns give teachers something to hide behind.
"Class size," she said, "is a constraint. The material issue, we don't have enough pencils or books, is a constraint. Sometimes the special education label is a constraint. Teachers have to control these constraints, rather than use them as blocks."
And accountability? That's what divides the great teachers from the others.
"I think the most important thing is for the teacher to hold herself accountable for each learner," McGonigal said, "regardless of who that learner is."
Used with permission of THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER Copyright © 2007. All rights reserved.