Merit Badge

 

Happy Fourth.

What truths seem self-evident to educators in the year 2009?  Are all teachers created equal?  Which of their rights are still unalienable? Life, certainly--but who gets to pursue happiness or feel liberated, these days? It's hard to follow your bliss when unemployed, and studying the indicators that currently constitute effective teaching is the antithesis of liberty.

There were fireworks over Jonathon Alter's June 15 Newsweek column in which he declares that the key to fixing education is figuring out who can teach and who can't (and asserts that teachers are born, not made). This good teacher/bad teacher schism should be glaringly obvious and embedded in policy creation, he says, but is currently obscured by educrats who "remain fiercely committed to the status quo."

OK. Raise your hand if you know anyone, anywhere in the land of free, who's fiercely committed to bad public schools. Right. There are educators fiercely committed to improving dreadful schools, of course. Some parents are appropriately loyal to the public schools where their children thrive--and some are determined to preserve a status quo that lets them send their children to exclusive schools with individual attention and rich curriculum, while other people's children get 5 hours of reading and math, plus test prep. I don't think that's the status quo Jonathon Alter is referring to, however.

There will never be equality in outcomes, but we can pursue--relentlessly--equity of opportunity for all American students. Part of that pursuit will be a continuous improvement strategy for the coalition of willing, effective teachers (who are made, and refined in experience, not born).

I'm not writing to shake another finger at Alter, however. I'm here to praise an earlier column, on a "misplaced faith in the meritocracy"--an interesting (and kind of schizophrenic) contrast to his natural-teacher argument. In the June 1 Newsweek, Alter writes warmly of his father, a member of the Greatest Generation--the men and women whose social, economic and workplace values were also refined in experience, often during wartime and while they were very young. He contrasts these solid citizens with the whiz kids who represent the meritocracy in the 21st century, who are:

...shaped not by war, but by college. To win the battle for admissions, fellowships and the other totems of success, they needed not bravery or proven leadership, but test-taking skills and a specific kind of cunning that's come to be confused with "merit." Obamaworld is loaded with these exact types...policy wonks who have experienced little in life but sound unfailingly articulate and confident about their elegant economic models. 

Obama's faith in data and in his ability to reach the "right" policy answer will not be enough for success. That's because every expert opinion is the product of the biases and backgrounds of the experts. He needs some people around him who, in LBJ's words, have "run for sheriff."

Absolutely. Perhaps someone who's been successful on genuine battlefields in education ought to step in, and point out that a true meritocracy in teaching is earned in trial by fire in real schools. And that putting whiz kids, armed with test-taking skills and academic cunning, into classrooms, assuming that their high SAT scores and elegant policy solutions will save the day, is not a viable long-term strategy for cutting out the rotten spots in the status quo. Perhaps we should be pairing whiz-kids newbie teachers with the teacher equivalent of the local sheriff. Maybe we should pair them with educators whose biases and backgrounds resemble the those of the students in non-meritorious communities.

Malcolm Gladwell, who seems to be developing a new peripheral career as an education spokesperson, in his keynote to the National Educational Computing Conference, reiterated his "effort trumps talent"  idea. Ten thousand of hours of practice makes perfect. You can't short-cut the development of a teaching career. Made, not born.

Image: Drexer Shift-Drifter, Flickr Creative Commons

Comments

[Pamzella]

Here, here!!

[Melissa B.]

I'd like to put money on whether someone like Alter could even last in a high school classroom for a week. Probably not. He'd run screaming in pain after Day 2, I reckon. But I'm giving him too much credit, I'm sure...

[Susan Graham]

"Perhaps someone who's been successful on genuine battlefields in education ought to step in, and point out that a true meritocracy in teaching is earned in trial by fire in real schools."

Well said! While, in our current situation, it might be necessary to enlist minimally trained recruits to teach, it is capricious to send them onto the front lines as experts. The assumption they are as well or better suited to engage the problems of education than those who have both theoretic knowledge and field experience has no basis in reality.

We do not give bright young "born leaders" who have only basic training military command over seasoned soldiers. Why would we submit our most vulnerable children to well intended but unproven amateurs who are, by Alter's opinion, "born teachers"?

[Steu]

Your blog is an excellent teacher resource.

Yes, I agree that effective teachers are made and not born. And, we do need to forging student critical thinking skills (building academic and social skills) not test taking cunning. Please keep up your great work!

I have added a link to your blog here on my free teacher tool site: http://www.educationreporting.com/#blogs

.... am looking forward to networking with you,

Steu Mann, M. Ed.
twitter: cathriving

[Nancy Flanagan]

Thanks, Steu. I look forward to networking with you, too.