February 2, 2007

print icon

A Blindspot On The Teacher Quality Question

Filed under: Education Teaching by Leo Casey @ 5:25 pm

Extra Credit, the blog of James Forman Jr. [the founder of Washington DC's Maya Angelou Charter School] , takes up a discussion of teacher quality by James’ step-dad, Terry Weber. Terry, UFT Chapter Leader at Urban Academy and a master teacher of Math, makes a compelling case for the importance of exemplary teacher education in the promotion of teaching quality. In this regard, Terry cites his own experience with Urban Academy’s School Based Teacher Education Program [STEP]. What is interesting about Urban’s STEP is that it apprentices novice teachers to skilled, accomplished teachers, allowing the novices to gradually assume the full responsibilities of teaching as their mastery of the teaching craft improves. [Personal disclosure: I was personally involved in the establishment of the STEP program.]

Forman comments:

There is no question that if every school trained and mentored its teachers as Urban does, teaching and learning would improve. So I support it. But how does a system scale the Urban model? And how does a school with teacher retention issues implement it? The model works well in a school that only has to hire one new teacher every few years. But in a school where one-third of the teachers every year are new–and this is unfortunately commonplace–how in the world can the school afford to have one-third of this teaching staff spending most of the day learning from the more senior ones?

It’s interesting that Forman, who on many counts is a radical critic of established power relations, accepts as fixed and given the very terms of the problem charter schools face in developing and retaining quality teaching. Teaching is an extraordinarily demanding craft. Under optimum conditions of solid preparation, quality mentoring, good professional development and an safe, secure school in which to learn, it takes a novice teacher a minimum of three years to master the fundamental skills of teaching. If a school is turning over its staff every three years, it simply can not develop a meaningful cohort of educational professionals who know their craft well. Accept that state of affairs, and you accept that the school will not have quality educators. Fixing the retention crisis is a pre-condition for the promotion of teacher quality. This axiom is true for district public schools, where one in every two new teachers is gone by the fifth year of teaching, and it is doubly true for charter schools, which have a much higher rate of turnover.

Extra Credit is a new interesting blog worth reading, and James Forman Jr. is an interesting thinker worth engaging, but there clearly is a major blindspot in his understanding of teacher quality. He understands that the results of dismantling the New Orleans public school system have been disastrous, but can’t face up to the fact that the experiment in “diverse providers” was flawed in its conception, so he ends up blaming the quality of the teachers in the charter schools, in a way that suggests it were some sort of personal flaw, rather than the function of systemic problems, bad public policies and misdirected priorities. Forman might consider that if experienced, accomplished teachers had not been driven from New Orleans by the thousands, as their schools were closed down, their union disenfranchised and their own professional and labor rights abrogated, and if the charter schools which replaced them were not based on an organizational model of permanent teacher turnover, the situation would not now be so dire.

Speaking truth to power about teacher quality begins in New Orleans.

2 Comments

Comments are open for registered users and do not reflect the views of the UFT. Please read our general rules for commenters.

  • I appreciate this response to my initial comments on teacher quality. I have revised my view in response. I agree with you that fixing the retention crisis is a pre-condition for reform, so anything that fails to do that simply won’t work in the long term.

    One issue that I am also struggling with is the question of merit pay. I was at a panel yesterday on this topic that included the AFT’s Nancy Van Meter. Although the general tone of the event was pro-merit pay, I came away convinced that the evidentiary basis for this approach is quite limited. Nancy also made some terrific points about the difficulty of implementing high-quality merit pay schemes in the absence of fair, experienced, high-quality principals. I would love to hear your thoughts.

    I have more to say about both these issues in recent posts at http://extracredit.wordpress.com

    Comment by jamesformanjr — February 7, 2007 @ 5:19 am

  • James’ blog is a real class act, and a welcome respite in a section of the blogosphere were name calling often replaces engagement. Edwize readers will find it quite refreshing.

    Comment by Leo Casey — February 11, 2007 @ 9:12 pm

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.