Are the four million women and men in K–12 classrooms in the U.S. professional educators or working teachers? Paul E. Peterson, the Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Government and director of the Program on Education Policy and Governance at Harvard University, takes on that question in an article in Education Next.
The Education Futures Council recently released a report stating “[O]nly teachers and principals have . . . the local knowledge of their students . . . and the ability to shape the classroom experience to create learning. . . Most teachers and principals today are highly committed to their roles.” If given necessary resources and recognition, it will enhance “the occupations’ professional status” and produce “outcomes our students and our nation desire.”
Scholar Eric Hanushek points to the teacher as the school’s single most important resource. Variation in teacher quality, more than any other school factor, affects what happens to a young person’s future in the job market and their social life.
Patrick Kelly, a teacher from South Carolina, recalls two of his high school teachers who “were artists, not robots. And their ability to exercise their artistic license in their classrooms created rich, engaging, and transformative learning experiences.” Kelly objects to the claim that “all schools can achieve outstanding results if educators simply follow, with fidelity, the precise steps necessary to implement the latest . . . ‘research-based’ curriculum.” He says, “The only thing my best teachers followed with ‘fidelity’ was their commitment to meeting their student where they were to help them get to where they wanted to go.”
But there is a contrasting philosophy. Mike Miles, superintendent of the Houston school system, has doubts about handing control over to teachers and principals. Houston’s school system has been deemed a failure by the state, which is controlling the system until every Houston school reaches state expectations in math and reading.
Miles has instituted the “New Education System (NES)” for failing schools. The central office tells teachers and principals at each grade level what is to be taught in reading and math and what pedagogical techniques are to be faithfully followed. The pace of instruction is tightly managed. The first 45 minutes of an NES lesson is teacher-led direct instruction, followed by a 10-minute mini-assessment, or ‘demonstration of learning’.”
Most teachers endorse NES, according to Miles, and the practice is spreading to classrooms not under NES prescriptions. Working teachers like to know what is expected of them each morning when they pick up the day’s lesson plan; they appreciate knowing their work is done when they head home, says Peterson.
Houston is not the only big-city school district turning toward scripted instruction. In New York City, the chancellor is asking teachers and principals to provide instruction according to the “science of reading,” an updated variation of the traditional phonics approach.
How long Miles will survive as Houston’s superintendent remains a question. The working teacher model is not an easy political sell, especially when a system has been taken over by the state. Locally elected school board members find fault with innovations after they have been stripped of their authority. Local media sympathize with those who have lost power. Outsider superintendents are not given second chances.
The worker vs. professional question is critical to reformers. Should schools raise the performance of working teachers by giving them clear guidelines? Or should they give teachers autonomy and rewards that will attract a large cadre of great teachers to the profession? Peterson would like to think nation’s schools can be designed in ways that could attract four million Patrick Kellys to the profession. He says, “I certainly had such an educator when I took two years of Latin from Mrs. Brown, but then there was my not-so-hard-working history teacher (cum basketball coach) who left the room at the beginning of the period to smoke in the basement with the janitors.”
The debate is far from over.
Education Next
