Those articles present some fine ideas and expand the facts, but they do not discredit the movie, in my opinion. (And to say that we are better educated now than 100 years ago is false praise. You must compare yourself to the rest of the world now. Who cares if your car is better than the Model T or you can pass Gentleman's Chemistry.)
Sure, it is a complicated realm, but the movie continually states that. And despite all the complications, there is a singular, if not simple, powerful truth in education which is pounded and pounded and pounded by the movie and its makers—good teachers make a difference.
Sure, teacher unions have aided both adults and children and Finland does have teacher unions, but there are some policies/contracts by some teacher unions that do not promote that powerful truth—good teachers make a difference.
There is nothing wrong with illustrating the complicated nature of public education, but when there is such a powerful instrument for solving the problem and it has been shown to work, why not promote it? Upper St. Clair, Bethel Park, and now Mt. Lebanon have or are building new schools. Perhaps the old schools were collapsing threatening the lives of the children. I don't know. But if they are being built to provide better education, it is a misappropriation of money. You will get much, much, much better return on your investment if you put all the resources you can into getting, making, and keeping good teachers. I know it sounds too simple, but it has been shown to be true time and time again.
20 comments:
Agreed. SeeThe Economic Value of Higher Teacher Quality
In addition, according to Nicholas Kristof (Pay Teachers More), 47 percent of America’s kindergarten through 12th-grade teachers come from the bottom one-third of their college classes. Meanwhile, in 1970, in New York City, a public school teacher earned about $2,000 less in salary than a starting lawyer at a prominent law firm. These days the newly hired lawyer takes home, including bonus, $115,000 more than the teacher.
Don't Worry, if you build it they will come. Attraction of good teachers is good pay, good facilities and parental involvement. Lebo needs a new school for education (for about the last 15 years), teachers like kick-ass facilities and speaking as a former student I hated not being allowed in my locker because asbestos fell on it.
My friend, teaching in an under served area of Pittsburgh, said it isn't the lack of good teachers (their are always young vibrant teachers who are underpaid but wishing to make a difference) or facilities (though it helps). The big difference between the top student and the bottom student is the top student gets picked up at soccer practice by his parents. My friend wants to work in Mt Lebanon (in addition to increased pay) because parents show up at parent teacher meeting. Most kids are a reflection of their parents' actions.
I know you're half joking, but this is precisely my point—scratch that, the movie's point. I could list a hundred things from parent involvement to economic resources, to family life to cultural values to facilities to software and technology to…well, you get the picture…there are many factors. Volumes and volumes have been written about them (this is academics after all and people like to do studies). And each of these factors can incrementally help. BUT, the movie is correct.
By far, the biggest measurable jump in education is going from a mediocre teacher to a good one, more than economics, parent involvement, etc.
This is why an "under served area" of Pittsburgh (See Propel schools), or NYC or Washington, D.C. (See the movie) can have one of the highest scores in the area—higher than the rich, successful parenting areas. And why huge suburban schools with facilities greater than Mt. Lebanon (see the movie) can be giving sub par education (per test scores).
Argue all you want about what can help education (home life, economics, parental pickups—they all can help), but the biggest factor, not surprisingly, is a good teachers—and they are hard to come by, and take time to develop.
Actually Pete's point a key focus of the movie. There was a time when we didn't know if disadvantaged kids from bad homes could get the same or better scores as the wealthy, concerned parent, happy home-life, picked up from soccer practice kids.
During the last 20 years, as the movie shows, we learned the answer to that question.
"Argue all you want about what can help education"
Will do.
(via Ravitch)
"Guggenheim seems to believe that teachers alone can overcome the effects of student poverty, even though there are countless studies that demonstrate the link between income and test scores.
Eric Hanushek the Paul and Jean Hanna Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University released studies showing that teacher quality accounts for about 7.5–10 percent of student test score gains.
Teachers statistically account for around 10–20 percent of achievement outcomes. Teachers are the most important factor within schools.
According to University of Washington economist Dan Goldhaber, about 60 percent of achievement is explained by nonschool factors, such as family income. So while teachers are the most important factor within schools, their effects pale in comparison with those of students’ backgrounds, families, and other factors beyond the control of schools and teachers. Teachers can have a profound effect on students, but it would be foolish to believe that teachers alone can undo the damage caused by poverty and its associated burdens."
Also side note, charter schools is not the answer to the educational problem as the movie espouses. Charter schools perform on par or worst than public schools. (Standford study). That is not to say they are without merit just not the answer.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/nov/11/myth-charter-schools/?page=1
Also, "each of these factors can incrementally help. BUT, the movie is correct."
Why exactly is the movie correct versus the hundred of academic studies? What does a Hollywood director, who went to private school (same one the president's daughters go to), know about which factor is the most important in a child's education?
FYI, no propel school made it in the top 123 schools in Pittsburgh in PSSA testing, all public except the magnet school CAPA (9) Northside Urban Pathways Charter Sch. Charter School (117) PA Learners Online Cyber Charter School Charter School (119).
"Genetics and family matter, for sure, but a good teacher can make a measurable difference in young students reading skills, according to a new study of twins by Florida State University researchers."
"But while genes might set the bar for reading potential, a new study published April 23 in Science shows that teachers play a leading role in helping kids reach it."
"When researchers ran the numbers in dozens of different studies, every factor under a school’s control produced just a tiny impact, except for one: which teacher the student had been assigned to."
"According to a new study, the answer, perhaps unsurprisingly, is both. Genes do have a strong effect on a child’s reading ability, but good teaching is vital for helping them to realise that potential"
"The (“Coleman Report”) concluded that students’ socioeconomic background was a far more influential factor. However, among the various influences that schools and policymakers can control, teacher quality was found to account for a larger portion of the variation in student test scores than all other characteristics of a school"
http://www.propelschools.org/www/propelschools/site/hosting/temp/images/high10b4.jpg
According to a news release from Johns Hopkins University, the most important factor for improving students’ math skills is teacher professional development, not new textbooks or technology.
–See "Professional Development Key to Improving Math Achievement," 2008, http://jhu.edu/news/home08/dec08/math_achieve.html
“Substantial differences in mathematics achievement of students are attributable to differences in teachers.”
National Mathematics Advisory Panel
Foundations for Success: The Final Report of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel
Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, 2008, 35
“Teachers who receive substantial professional development—an average of 49 hours in the nine [rigorous] studies—can boost their students’ achievement by about 21 percentile points.”
Kwang S. Yoon, Teresa Duncan, Silvia W.-Y. Lee, Beth Scarloss, and Kathy L. Shapley
Reviewing the Evidence on How Teacher Professional Development Affects Student Achievement (Issues & Answers Report, REL 2007–No. 033)
Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Regional Educational Laboratory Southwest, 2007, iii
“Research confirms that teachers are the single most important factor in raising student achievement.”
U.S. Department of Education
"Teacher-to-Teacher Initiative," 2007
"In terms of outcomes on traditional measures . . . , curriculum differences appear to be less consequential than instructional differences are."
Robert E. Slavin and Cynthia Lake
"Effective Programs in Elementary Mathematics: A Best-Evidence Synthesis"
Review of Educational Research 78, no. 3, 2008, 482
There is no question that "student backgrounds…and other factors beyond the control of schools and teachers" correlate, in this country, to better test scores, the point of the movie is that it has been shown that even in areas where student backgrounds should produce low test scores, that with excellent teachers and schools, all those negative factors can be overcome and scores can be as high or higher than those of the advantaged kids.
Fine change the argument, but you said "Argue all you want about what can help education (home life, economics, parental pickups—they all can help), but the biggest factor, not surprisingly, is a good teachers —and they are hard to come by, and take time to develop."
And then you say, "The (“Coleman Report”) concluded that students’ socioeconomic background was a far more influential factor." Exactly what I said (see above).
Not sure why you are talking about genetics, never once mentioned genetics.
Not one of these articles you referenced had control group for socio-economic variation, of course teachers have a large impact "in school", I said, "teachers are the most important factor within schools."
Just like good teachers are important in school, doctors are important for your health "in the hospital", day to day health hings on family, personal care dietary habits etc. Thus your health is far more dependent on other factors than your doctor.
Never talked about new textbooks or computers, what I did infer is that most teachers (good and bad) are attracted to good facilities as well as good pay and therefore a school district can choose from the best of the best thus helping students because as I said good teachers are important.
"Teacher-to-Teacher Initiative," 2007
Of course quality teachers are more important than curriculum just like a good doctor is better than what curriculum he used to learn, whether MD or OD.
My apologies for not being specific, Propel McKeesport is a k-8 school, I was referring to PSSA for 11th grade. Also, Propel Mckeesport is spending more money per student than Mt. Lebanon (7870 versus 7669). Which public school districts must foot the bill, paying 92% of propel's budget. So Pittsburgh public schools cut programs to fund really expensive schools for a handful of students. What a concept, create schools that take a select few and spend a ton of money on facilities and teachers and see if they do well versus the schools you are taking money from.
Documentary was a fluff piece that pushed for charters and good teachers, of course everyone wants good teachers, getting rid of unions and tenure and increase charters is not going to solve educational problems. Better trained administrators at determining teacher aptitude, better pay to attract a larger pool of talent, programs to help students outside of school especially those in troubled families, all of which means more money in the our already underfunded system.
Finally,
Of all the educators I have had in my life, none yet have passed my parents. Home is where is learning begins.
Disclaimer:
Grammatical errors is not a reflection of my parents.
I think the problem is: you are talking about the factors which correlate with text scores. I am, and have always, along with the movie, talking about the factors which improve test scores, i.e. what helps solves the problem of education.
I have not changed the argument at all.
I could go back and list each of my quotes, but that would be a waste of space. Look at each carefully and you will see "help" (i.e. "the biggest factor that "helps"), "better return on investment", "helps", "jumps", "help education".
I stayed focus on what the movie focuses on—if you want to allocate scarce resources to improve education, your largest return on investment is to improve teaching.
I saw the movie as not fluff at all. In fact the weakest parts, in my opinion, were the stories following the kids. The strongest points were all the facts, studies, and interviews from people who did studies and made significant improvement by not spending resources trying to change parents' economic position, or to change parents' education, or to change family social structure or to change the under developed area in which the children lived, but to change the teaching.
The big breakthrough and what makes the movie important is that is doesn't advocate making the poor like the rich—something all of us socially minded people have been fruitless trying to do for decades. It brashly doesn't advocate social programs (even though they could help). It proposes a radically new allocation of resources—to create good teachers.
Finally, if we could get your parents to raise the millions receiving poor education, all our problems would be solved. Baring that, let's try improving our teachers.
On Pete's side, I have heard it said that the two best predictors of educational success in a child is the income level of the father and the level of education achieved by the mother. I've also seen studies that show that the amount of time a child spends with both parents correlates with academic success.
However, the study that I referenced in my first comment demonstrates that teacher quality has an enormous effect on academic success, and that can easily be seen by substantial differences in achievement in different classrooms in the same school. In my earlier comment I made the link to the abstract. Here is the link to the report itself: The Economic Value of Higher Teacher Quality
On section is even named "The Central Importance of Teachers." And here's what the author says:
"The general finding about the importance of teachers comes from the fact that the average gains in learning across classrooms, even classrooms within the same school, are very different. Some teachers year after year produce bigger gains in student learning than other teachers. The magnitude of the differences is truly large, with some teachers producing 1½ years of gain in achievement in an academic year while others with equivalent students produce only ½ year of gain. In other words, two students starting at the same level of achievement can know vastly different amounts at the end of a single academic year due solely to the teacher to which they are assigned. If a bad year is compounded by other bad years, it may not be possible for the student to recover.
"No other attribute of schools comes close to having this much influence on student achievement. The available estimates for, say, class size reduction do not suggest any leverage past the earliest grades of school, and then the expected effects are small."
But here's my main point. They say that politics is the art of the possible. Well, in my view, everything is the art of the possible. Even if we acknowledge the importance of parents in education, a school superintendent cannot really change a child's parents. He can, however, change the child's teacher.
And then, even if we said, let's try to change parental attitudes toward education and get the parents to pick their kid up from soccer practice -- who is going to have the job of trying to get parents more involved? The teacher. And the better the teacher, the more influence he will have on the parents.
I rest my case.
I agree with Pete and Myk that the best predictor of education success is home life, as you say. I also agree with the movie that the best way to improve education is to get better teachers. It also seems to be the most practical. Does educational success follow economic success in all countries?
Myk, your quote from the report is shown graphically in the movie.
I enter this conversation with trepidation and one caveat: I have not yet seen the movie.
I went back and reread all the posts, and I think Jim's original point (and I guess one point of the movie) may have been lost: namely, "good teachers make a difference." This seems altogether true (and honestly, not all that profound). In other words I think this a point most people can agree on. However, the level of difference is clearly, from this conversation alone, extremely difficult to assess (and I would argue impossible). Determining causality between "good teachers" and good academic outcomes is fraught with problems, particularly all the variables we have already mentioned here.
Another point. Determining "good teachers" I think, is also close to impossible. First, you need to define good. Does it mean all your students pass? Or a majority of your students get into college? Or maybe all your students do really well on the SATs. Or perhaps you are an art teacher or a music teacher or a gym teacher. How do you judge them? Do their students produce the finest pieces of artwork or are the most fit? I'm not arguing against working to improve teachers skills in the classroom - I definitely think it is needed. But calling for "good teaching" falls far short of actually determining what makes a good teacher.
On a separate note, I am finishing up my masters (again - and looking for ideas for the next degree...). My final project is a case study in a full-service community school (I don't know if they mentioned these in the movie), but I encourage anyone interested to check out this site which provides a good amount of information on them: http://www.communityschools.org/
This type of school, working with community and family partnerships, is a somewhat "new" method for improving schools, especially in urban areas. (I say "new" because schools have always been partnering with community organizations, colleges, etc. but now there is a move to focus more energy on these partnerships as a way to provide the exact resources this blog has mentioned are often lacking in schools)
In fact, your questions are just the questions everyone is asking now—the current boost in activity may be somewhat spurred by the movie. I leave it to anyone interested to read the proposals, rebuttals, and discussions. Here is one link.
(By the way, Ted you can leave a clickable link now in comments, thanks to Pete, but you must do it yourself, i.e. "<"a href=http://www.myurl">" link text"<"/a">" (without the "'s)
I'll share one story and one interesting solution noted by the movie. At CMU our department was constantly trying to get teachers to assess their teaching—mostly by test at beginning of year and test at the end. Per our assessment, freshman English was pointedly bad in teaching anything. Added to this was that English teachers were allowed to pretty much teach anything they wanted for freshman English from comic books to classics but writing was to be involved. The English Dept.'s rebuttal, which makes some sense and makes assessment very difficult (as you alluded to in your post) was that "let's see what kind of people these students turn out to be in 20 years. We are teaching concepts that can't be immediately measured."
One approach illustrated by the movie comes at this problem in a completely different way. The schools by Geoffrey Canada in Harlem NYC follow the student all the way to college and basically guarantee the student will graduate from college. That is apparently their measuring stick for a good teacher/school.
Sorry, I mistakenly put the link to Ted's full service community school. Here is the link I meant to place.
Ted: Determining "good teachers" I think, is also close to impossible.
From the Hanushek study: The related issue is what makes for an effective or ineffective teacher. The extensive research addressing this has found little that consistently distinguishes among teachers in their classroom effectiveness. Most documented has been the finding that master’s degrees bear no consistent relationship with student achievement (See Hanushek and Rivkin 2004, 2006). But other findings are equally as interesting and important. The amount of experience in the classroom – with the exception of the first few years – also bears no relationship to performance. On average, a teacher with five years experience is as effective as a teacher with 25 years of experience. But, this general result about measured characteristics of teachers goes even deeper. When studied, most evidence indicates that conventional teacher certification, source of teacher training, or salary level are not systematically related to the amount of learning that goes on in the classroom.
I think we may be erring on the "it's too complicated" side for determining good teachers. Granted, anything involving people is not going to be precise, but we don't flinch in determining good lawyers, doctors, accountants, or athletes. Yes, even those determinations can be argued, but in general, good lawyers are singled out, as are doctors, etc. It's done by observing both their work habits and their success. The observation is done by their bosses, their peers, and the public.
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