by Joel Klein
- Better scholastic training for future teachers.
- A new approach to recruiting teachers- Instead of just hiring anyone with a college degree, recruit teachers out of the top 33% of their graduating class.
- Change how teachers are rewarded- The current system in place now presumes that all teachers are correspondent and, therefore, all distinctions are made on seniority. The simple solution to this is to judge teachers based on their effectiveness, rather than just their amount of experience.
- The experienced teachers ending up at better schools, leaving the less fortunate kids and schools to have inexperienced or experienced yet not effective teachers.
- Layoffs tending to go to the most recently hired teachers instead of the least effective.The solution to this, along with the problem above, is to professionalize teaching-- excellence would be the guiding hallmark. Everything within the school system will be redirected to this core principle of excellence.
Albert Shanker, one of the most influential teachers-union leaders of this century, stated this view of his about 30 years agony saying, "Unless we go beyond collective bargaining to the achievement of the teacher professionalism, we will fail...to preserve public education in the United States and to improve the status of teachers economically, socially, and politically". He believed that to create a profession, the following are recommended:
- We need to attract our best students and establish a "demanding knowledge base" to coincide with a "formal set of... peer relationships."
- There also needs to be a "national teacher examination" put in place. This will test the "mastery of pedagogy and content knowledge, akin to the entry exams now required for lawyers and doctors."
- Lastly, supervised internships, or student teaching, should be extended to one to three years to evaluate the performance of future teachers.
Shanker believed in this radical change and went even deeper in defining this ambitious transformation:
- Teachers build their own board to organize the profession, creating standards and providing means for getting rid of inadequate teachers.
- Teachers are obliged to "merit-based career ladders and would be promoted based on exams within their specialty.
- There are fewer teachers assisted by college graduates or college seniors known as teaching assistants.
- Teachers put an end to their support of kids being required to be assigned to neighborhood schools ("the greatest possible choice among public schools").
The first problem addressed calls for better academic training for teachers-to-be. I agree with this because, according studies discussed in the article, 23 states cannot contest to having a solid math preparation program when being compared to better-scoring nations and fear than 20% of teaching programs prepare their prospective teachers with the basics of reading direction. That just sounds ridiculous to me. If I am preparing myself to be a high school history teacher, then I want more than just basic training. Within the history subject, a lot reading and examining takes place and I feel that that should require more that simply basic reading skills for me to properly teach my students to read and examine for themselves.
The second problem Mr. Klein brought to our attention was needing a new approach to bringing in new teachers. The current system that has been in place for years is basically hiring anyone with a college degree in education to teach. Like Sandra Feldman said, that would be "disastrous". The solution they gave for this is to recruit out of the top third percent of a graduating class. When it cakes to not hiring just anyone with a degree, I definitely agree 100%. When it comes to only hiring out of top third percent though, I disagree in a way. Having prestige grades when graduating with a teaching degree is very important but I think it is very much possible to be a successful and effective teacher without being in the top 33% grade-wise. Going through middle school and high school, I learned many academic lessons, but I learned just as many life lessons from my teachers that still have an impact on my life today. I believe that if you are going to be a teacher, it is just as important to have that kind of impact on your students as it is an academic impact on their lives. That's not always found in the top 33% of a class. I know my grades aren't always in the top percents, but I know that I have just as much to offer to my future students as those top students do.
The next two changes he mentions kind of go hand-and-hand in my opinion. Klein says that we need to change the way teachers are rewarded. Today, teachers are presumed as correspondent and, therefore, the only way to distinguish one from another is by seniority. The easy solution to this is to judge and evaluate teachers based on their effectiveness and not just their experience. This I completely agree with, it is very possible that teachers who have less experience can be more effective than those with more experience than them, but this problem of what teachers are where.
The experienced and effective teachers are ending up at better schools, while the poor kids and schools are getting teachers that are inexperienced or experienced and not effective. Also, layoffs are commonly going to the most recently hired teacher instead of simply the least effective no matter the amount of experience. The solution proposed for this is to professionalize teaching. This means that excellence would be the "guiding hallmark" and everything within the school system will be redirected to this core principle. To this, I agree. The teaching job at any school should go to the best person for the job no matter their "tenure".
As Shanker said, these are all very ambitious goals and I think if they could all be done, then the school systems would be enormously more successful and overall better. Like he stated, "education would not be sustainable if teachers continue to be treated... as workers in an old-fashioned factory". We need to professionalize teaching and make it well-respected like other professions such as lawyers and doctors have.
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