Suggesting that great schooling is all about teachers is like suggesting that great restaurants are all about waiters. If the food is lousy, the service doesn’t matter. And make no mistake, the food is lousy. We continue to put thin, tasteless gruel on the menu, and blame the waiters when the customers leave hungry.
I must be not very bright, because I still can’t get my head around how we can create measures of teacher effectiveness without agreeing on what they’re supposed to teach first.
I wonder if the effective teachers that Melissa Gates crows about are effective, in part, because they have the makings of a good curriculum built in to their long-term memories that supplement and bring-to-life the weak official curriculum of the school.
Comment by Ben F — February 24, 2010 @ 10:17 am
I wonder if TFA has a way to disaggregate that kind of question from their data.
Maybe: “Does having a liberal arts degree rather than a technical degree make a difference in testing?”
Some other marker for good curriculum background?
Comment by Tyler S — February 24, 2010 @ 11:21 am
Great schooling _does_ require great teachers, but I totally agree that it is also dependent on core curriculum. The problem is that as America gets lazier and lazier, and more and more prone to coddling their children, the core curriculum is progressively “dumbed down”. This is the polar opposite of what _should_ be done to solve the problems in our education system
Comment by Glenn H — February 24, 2010 @ 11:53 am
No one disputes that great teachers matter. It’s obvious in fact. But as long as we define it so narrowly (test scores) and pay no attention to what they teach, it’s an exercise in futility. It’s like trying to define who’s the best athlete by who can throw a ball the furthest. Yes, a good athlete (a pitcher or quarterback) might win such a contest. But a lot of good athletes (sprinters, skiers, boxers and weightlifters) will lose.
Comment by Robert Pondiscio — February 24, 2010 @ 12:12 pm
I agree that we’re often putting the cart before the horse, but…
If the chef throws together an awesome meal and the waiter drops it on the floor on the way to serving it, you end up with similar results. You need good food AND good servers.
All kidding aside, we do have to agree upon what teachers should teach, but unless that is coupled with reforming the quality of teacher training I don’t believe it is going to be effective.
Comment by AJGuzzaldo — February 24, 2010 @ 12:21 pm
Of course, AJ. It’s all of a piece. Teachers must be well trained, there should be some generally agreed upon standards and definitions of what constitutes good and rigorous professional practice (just like every other profession) and clear understanding of what instruction is to be delivered. If these things are in place, measuring effectivveness makes sense. Without it, you’re trying to nail Jello to the wall.
Comment by Robert Pondiscio — February 24, 2010 @ 12:30 pm
I completely agree!
Mostly, I was trying to have fun with your restaurant analogy!
Comment by AJGuzzaldo — February 24, 2010 @ 12:37 pm
Bad analogy. Teachers are more analogous to the cooks than to waiters. A decent chef can absolutely have his/her results ruined by poor quality ingredients. But a bad chef can ruin a meal even if his/her ingredients are fine.
We need good chefs (teachers) AND good ingredients (curricula).
Comment by Crimson Wife — February 24, 2010 @ 2:45 pm
So — all in good fun — I think the restaurant analogy is an interesting one, but I don’t see teachers as waiters. (Note that I’ve been a teacher for 2 years and I waited tables for 3.) I see teachers as the cooks. They put together the food (content) in a way that’s palatable for diners (students). Maybe teachers are waiters and cooks?
Maybe we’re picturing different restaurants. The restaurant I worked in, let’s just say the cooks were not … “content creators.” They put together “pre-made content.”
Care to keep going on your analogy, Robert?
Comment by Russ Goerend — February 24, 2010 @ 5:04 pm
Cooks or waiters, the analogy is less important than to hold any one function up as THE one does violence to what it actually takes to achieve a good outcome. Schools, as those who have worked in one know, are enormously complicated places. The idea that we can identify the characteristics of a good teacher absent of all other factors, strikes me as the fever dream of those who don’t understand schools very well. Actually, let me not paint with too broad a brush. It’s probably possible to identify the characteristics of a good teacher, provide your focus is narrow and the bar set very low. My concern is that Teacher Quality is achieving critical mass as the next Magic Bullet.
Comment by Robert Pondiscio — February 24, 2010 @ 6:15 pm
Robert,
I could not agree more with your assessment. When I attended the new teacher orientation for my first teaching position, the superintendant told us all that teacher quality is the most important determinant of student achievement.
I might have been a first year teacher, but even then it seemed a simplistic recipe for success.
You could have an army of superhero teachers in our schools, but without the other factors you mentioned (i.e., standards for professional practice, etc.) it is, indeed, like trying to nail jello to a wall (I look forward to using that phrase in the future).
Comment by AJGuzzaldo — February 24, 2010 @ 10:01 pm
Actually, teachers are chefs (we creatively devise approaches to curriculum); prep cooks (we prepare materials to accompany instruction); waiters (we serve the curriculum); maitre d (we create a welcome atmosphere, and group accordingly); restaurant managers (we attend to data and spend money on equipment & supplies), and of course, we are the bus persons (we do lots and lots of clean-up).
Ergo, I think the restaurant analogy is quite apt. Though one might argue that the “ingredients” are actually the students, whose quality can also affect the outcome of the meal.
Comment by California Teacher — February 25, 2010 @ 12:36 am
Re: analogy continues
What if the chef (teacher) is required to use certain recipes (mandatory requirements) but it does not fit the dietary needs of the patrons? The dietitians (researchers) are clamoring for what has been shown to be effective yet the recipe cannot get past the restaurant owner (legislature)?
Being a professional educator with an advanced degree does not guarantee not being usurped by outdated required mandates or curriculum for the nonthinking. [Pity the educators in certain southern states required to teach a certain amount of minutes per day of ineffective character traits instead of a meaningful ethics class].
Comment by Jelane — February 25, 2010 @ 2:38 am
… and what happens if the customers refuse to eat?
Comment by AJGuzzaldo — February 25, 2010 @ 12:22 pm
The waiter gets fired. Because we *know* that a good waiter feeds every diner. Geez, didn’t you go to ed school?
Comment by Robert Pondiscio — February 25, 2010 @ 12:33 pm
Such a delicious thread!
Comment by TFT — February 25, 2010 @ 8:24 pm
I spent almost 25 years in the restaurant biz before becoming a teacher and I hate to tell you this, but in most restaurants the service is far more important than the food. Lousy service is the biggest reason restaurants at all levels fail, and doubly so for high-end places.
All that aside, I agree that its almost impossible to measure teacher effectiveness until we look at administrative and superintendent effectiveness.
When schools are bad it is most often a failure of leadership, not of teaching.
Comment by Deven Black — February 25, 2010 @ 10:48 pm
I like the food analogy a lot too. We are currently nourishing our kids’ minds with microwave meals (tidy textbook-based lessons clearly linked to standards), which the superintendents love because all the nutritional value (however dubious) is written on the box where he can read it and plug it in his databases and print out nice reports for the school board. God forbid you should bring in a basket of locally-grown organic vegetables, chop and saute them to create an unboxed meal. Never mind that the latter is far more nourishing (and tasty) than the former; if it cannot be easily measured and labeled, it doesn’t count.
Comment by Ben F — February 25, 2010 @ 11:58 pm
Deven,
As Robert keeps reiterating, to suggest one component of school success is THE magic bullet is to oversimplify what it takes to create an effective school.
You suggested we look at administrative and superintendent effectiveness, but without good teachers it doesn’t matter how effective the leadership is.
Just like without good curriculum it doesn’t matter how effective the teachers are… and without good teachers it doesn’t matter how good the curriculum is… and so on.
I also disagree with your assertion that bad schools are most often the result of a failure in leadership. I have seen outstanding administrators try to make changes for the better only to find themselves totally entangled in a web of teacher resistance and union grievances.
Comment by AJGuzzaldo — February 26, 2010 @ 9:36 am
Teachers aren’t the waiters. They’re the chefs….
Comment by Jon Ryker — March 5, 2010 @ 2:40 pm
Don’t forget the commitment of the food buyers to quality ingredients, farmers, the quaility of the soil, the climate, the quality of the water, you get my picture…
most of all, the inspiration and commitment… the value of the restaurant and its food to the community
Comment by claudia — March 7, 2010 @ 10:02 am
I love all these comments! Shows we have hunger for real nourishment. And I agree, teachers are chefs (and waiters and certainly bus persons) and the administration does prefer awful microwave meals with their measurable outcomes than organic vegetables stir fried on the spot.
Now if we could only get them on this thread, thinking this way!
Comment by Liat — March 9, 2010 @ 12:34 pm