I actually think teaching children is a really difficult and important part of society but I think many people don't value the contribution incredible teaching can make to individual students lives.
A great school and teacher obviously can change the lives of children in poverty but it's astonishingly difficult and requires immense talent to achieve. Not commenting on the quality of this study however.
I taught high school for almost 10 years and I agree with both of you. You don't have to be a genius, some of the best Algebra 1 teachers I worked with couldn't teach calculus because they didn't understand it. Getting the students to understand the material is generally the easy part, their brains are highly receptive. If a student wants to learn the subject, you can basically just sit there and answer their questions. Engaging and motivating them to want to do it is the part that takes a lifetime to master.
I didn't say it was easy, or that it wasn't hard work, or that I didn't value it.
Teaching is 'hard work', it requires educated, dedicated people, and it's very important work.
But it's not rocket science. Doing it is not risky - especially if you're teaching something that's been taught a million times before. Most well educated people I think could teach at least one subject, though they may not have the wherewithal or stamina to stick it out, or may not have the empathy/social skills to do it well.
> Doing it is not risky - especially if you're teaching something that's been taught a million times before. Most well educated people I think could teach at least one subject
I think this is something that many well educated people think, right up until they are placed alone in a class-room of 30 children who aren't desperately interested in what they have to say.
The five year teacher attrition rate is under 20% based on this study: (https://edsource.org/2015/half-of-new-teachers-quit-professi...) That's rather low and includes many who don't like teaching even if they have the skills. Which suggests most people really can do it.
Granted, that's not the first time these people have been in a classroom, but collage Education degrees don't see high attrition either. Also, "97 percent of teachers who earned more than $40,000 their first year returned the next year, compared with 87 percent who earned less than $40,000."
Being a schoolteacher is risky - kids kill themselves over things that happen at school, or they metaphorically throw their life away with other stupid actions. A good, engaged teacher can help to steer children through that minefield. It's not just about teaching a subject.
The idea that one only needs to be good at a subject to teach it well is bunkum.
It's not rocket surgery, it's potentially far more important.
Most well educated people I think could teach at least one subject
And in essence you have hit on the problem. Everybody thinks they can be a teacher. And for some value of $teacher they can, but it's hard to be really good.
You might watch LeBron James play basketball and think "I can do that," go out on the court and take a few shots, and think you're pretty good. But you're likely not.
This is why assessing teachers is soooooo important. We need reliable, verifiable ways to separate the good from the bad.
And yet, assessing teachers reliably is a very difficult task.
As a teacher, the moment that a reliable assessment method is introduced there will be significant push back; however, it will also be the key to broad improvements in the education system and the further professionalisation of teaching (and, by extension, teacher retention/compensation).
I also believe that this starts by enabling classroom teachers to assess their students with the reliability of standardized tests but within their individualized curriculum. That's not an easily ask - but it is an exciting concept that I return to every few months.
I disagree a bit here, but I do have a limited understanding of the history of education. US high schools lag significantly behind international averages [1] across almost all metrics, and are used for socializing more than other other countries.
It's so easy for us to blame teachers, or to wishfully think they could turn it around on their own, but the approach has to extend beyond the classroom. Non-school factors are estimated to have 4-8 times the impact as teacher quality. [2]
We should work on removing vocational program stigma and drop the illusion that everyone should aspire to a 4 year degree, even if in disciplines with terrible job markets, to "succeed".
I really wish there was some way of incentivizing parents to be more involved, or moving to year round all day education to mitigate their impact.
"US high schools lag significantly behind international averages"
This is a red herring - to the point where it is misleading.
A) Start with US 'students students' are behind maybe instead of schools. Because the comparison scores are PISA and they measure people not institutions.
But more importantly:
B) It's ethnicity. (And I'm not attributing anything to race here).
'European Americans' have been doing the same for the last 40 years. They are doing a little bit better than Europeans from Europe.
'Asian Americans' have been doing the same since we've measured them as a group, they do a little bit better than European Americans, and tend to do a little bit better than Asians from Asia.
African Americans fare the worst, Latino Americans fare better, but both groups have been doing a little bit better over time. They do a little bit better respectively than Latinos from South America and Africans from Africa.
Demographically, there are considerably more Latinos, and a few more Asian and African Americans in the country - which tilts the data.
So you see: any group from anywhere in the world actually fares better in America than they would in their place of origin. Which is really a different way of looking at it, no?
Because of the social and economic disparity between these groups, it lends well to the notion that it's about the students and not the schools.
Small but slightly less relevant note: the top American students tie the top UK students as being among the best in the world. The US/UK have a little bit of an elitist function going on.
So consider this: I'm Canadian, always proud that 'we fare better than the US' on PISA testing, but really, once you normalize for ethnicity (we don't have large groups of Latinos and African Americans) - then we do about the same.
And of course I should add I don't think this is racial issue at all, however I do think that the social + economic status of any group is tied to things like outlook on education, history of literacy in the family yada yada.
All of this is based on PISA scoring which is available on their site and other places.
I saw something like this years before, but have absolutely failed to come up with the source of the data. Do you know how I can get my hands on it? If it's true and honest then we need to focus on the real problems- at least the aspects that we can solve.
Other than the PISA scores comment - I agree with everything you've said. It's a multifaceted problem and, in many ways, the problems of schools are not strictly educational problems but the broad problems of society.
That said, educators are the tip of the spear - and I do believe that there is opportunity for additional technological mediation in improving the teacher's professional practice. It could also obsolete significant chunks of our multi-billion dollar standardized testing industry (a benefit to both the operating enterprise and the budgets of school districts).
My concern is that without some form of broad standardized testing, we won't have proper metrics to measure the success of programs and/or teachers against.
I agree (though I challenge the utility of current standardized testing to fulfill that job-to-be-done). My position is that we are already paying tens of thousands of teachers to assess the ability level of their students everyday while maintaining a secondary assessment industry that is able to exist because teacher's assessments are not able to be trusted. If we can make teachers' assessments trustable (for ranking/sorting/certification of skill & knowledge) then we won't need the very expensive secondary assessment industry to nearly the same degree. Likewise, many of the negative externalities of standardized testing could be mitigated by ubiquitously assessing student ability rather than relying on traditional "snapshots" as is the status quo.
I agree. If we ever get there then this will be the way that top teachers finally start making the money they deserve. The caveat, of course, is that they will be in limited supply so we'll need a way to extend their influence.
Yes - but we will actually have a tool upon which to make effective evaluations and offer individualized learning goals for teachers. Understanding my weaknesses is the first step in strengthening them (or leaving the profession if I can't).
The difficult part is being able to inspire the kids to be interested in the subject; the subject matter is fairly boilerplate. Wanting to learn a subject is much better than being forced to learn a subject.
In other words, it's much more about soft skills than hard skills. Think of a good speaker. Two people can talk about the same subject, but one leaves you with the inspiration and curiosity to learn more, the other makes you want to break for lunch.
Of course, you have to get rid of the disruptive kids. US schools are so scared of getting sued, the principles just bounce them back to the classrooms. When I was growing up, they had a school for bad kids so they wouldn't disrupt the ones that were there to learn. They closed that program down. My state is in the lower half of the school system.
Money also matters. You can't each in a classroom full of 30-40 kids at the high school level. Teachers can't be spending their money on school supplies the state won't budget for. Earning a college degree for a profession that doesn't pay very well isn't a great option, so fewer people do it.
For something so critical to our civilization, it seems many states treat education as a cost center.
Disclaimer: Both my parents were teachers as were many in the family. I am not, but if things were better, I certainly would consider it. I'm a programmer by trade.
> A great school and teacher obviously can change the lives of children in poverty but it's astonishingly difficult and requires immense talent to achieve.
Teaching children in poverty is a specialization. Teachers can excel at teaching children at upper middle class schools but fail miserably at an inner city school. People complain about privilege on teacher quality difference between inner city and good schools. The truth is that the "good" teachers at an upper middle class school wouldn't be much of an improvement over the "bad" teachers at inner city schools. The "good" teachers only know how to teach well-behaved, studious students!
That is why integration failed. The environment at good schools are good for children with familial support and low behavioral issues. It is not good for children with behavioral issues without familial support.
I actually think teaching children is a really difficult and important part of society but I think many people don't value the contribution incredible teaching can make to individual students lives.
A great school and teacher obviously can change the lives of children in poverty but it's astonishingly difficult and requires immense talent to achieve. Not commenting on the quality of this study however.