“If They’d Only Leave Me Alone and Let Me Teach,” Are Teachers Willing to Take Responsibility for Themselves and Their Colleagues?

 “If they’d only leave me alone and let me teach.”

 

I have heard that over and over again from classroom teachers. Who is the “they”?

 

The “they” are the supervisors, the bureaucrats, the chancellors and the mayor, but, also include parents and colleagues who are all measuring our work product. The summative assessment is the School Progress Report A-F grade and the State Assessments (levels 1.0 to 4.5) that can be disaggregated from school to grade to child.

 

Teachers “test” children on a daily/weekly/monthly/yearly basis: classroom assessments through questioning, homework, completing “examples” at the board or in peer groups, projects measured by rubrics, teacher designed tests, predictive assessments (ACUITY) and State designed assessments/Regents exams. Teachers adjust, modify, tweak, to use the term of art, differentiate instruction to respond to those daily assessments. Teachers are the writers, directors, actors and, hopefully, the reviewers of a play (i.e., the lesson) with a run of one day.

 

To what extent are teachers responsible for a child’s success or lack thereof?

 

Teachers say, “Of course I’m responsible for childrens’ achievements.”  When you follow up and ask, “Are you also responsible for their failures,” teachers have a difficult time responding.

 

The first response is usually to point to factors beyond the scope of the classroom teacher : poor attendance, lack of parental support, health issues, lack of proper instructional materials, class size is too large, discipline failings in the school; the pathologies of poverty (detailed discussion in Summer Edition of American Educator here)

 

In spite all these factors some teachers get their kids to outperform other classes, year after year.

 

In NYC, with the increasingly robust “data warehouses,” it is easier to make these comparisons, i. e., Teacher Data Initiative.

 

For the purposes of this blog let’s say we can identify teachers whose kids, over a period of years perform more than one standard deviation above the mean ( top 16%), and more than one standard deviation below the mean (bottom 16%).

 

What next?

 

Should we pay the top achieving outliers more? Would paying them more encourage other teachers to upgrade their skills?  Is there a downside? Would merit pay schemes discourage collaboration?  The bottom line is we don’t know. The Obama/Duncan merit pay push falls into the “seems like a good idea” compartment. The free marketeers love it and to the public it appears to make sense.

 

The “Lead Teacher” initiative in NYC was an attempt to identify exemplary teachers and use them in a modeling/coaching professional development plan. Lead teachers are paid $10,000 above their salary schedule pay. The contract provision is here  and testimony before the City Council here.The DOE has largely abandoned the program and Duncan seems disinterested.

 

What happens to teachers whose kids constantly perform below other classes over a period of years, the bottom outliers. Peer intervention and support programs, closer supervision, counseling, perhaps leading to counseling out or discharge.

 

Ultimately the question comes down to: do “carrots” and “sticks” improve teacher performance as measured by pupil achievement?

 

Will “carrots and “sticks” attract the “best and the brightest” and rid teaching of the ranks of the unsuccessful?

 

How do “carrots” and “Sticks” impact the vast middle, who are teaching and will remain as teachers?

 

Have supervisory observation reports made you a better teacher? Have principal presentations at faculty conferences impacted your instructional methodology?

 

The Klein iteration of the William Ouchi  model, in my view, has alienated not empowered teachers,

 

Every principal is an entrepreneur. Every school controls its own budget. Everyone is accountable for student performance and for budgets. Everyone delegates authority to those below. There is a burning focus on student achievement. Every school is a community of learners. And families have real choices among a variety of unique schools.

 

Decisions about teacher compensation, hiring, professional development and, yes, peer review are best made by the supervisors and teachers at the school site. The writings of Peter Senge, widely adopted on the corporate side are just as relevant within schools,

 

… learning organization practitioners … are people drawn together by the idea of a “learning organization”: an organization focused on marrying the development of every member with superior performance in service of that organization’s purpose.The more the organization’s members increase their ability to learn collaboratively, the more they can accomplish, the higher their performance, and the more effectively they can hope to change their organization, and the world, for the better.

  

Teachers, as a community, must take responsibility for their practice. The bureaucracy, whether Tweed, or the central union, or the city fathers, must provide the supports at the school level. The “they” must become the “we.” 

 

 Solutions, be it merit pay or easier dismissal or whatever, blared from claxons by the mujahadeen, will not change schools, only teachers can change schools, child by child, class by class, lesson by lesson.