Well now let me turn to a second question a fairly different question but I'd say equally important and this is how do you about education make a teacher great now seems like.
Tthe kind of question that people would spend a lot of time on and that we'd understand very well and the answer is really that. We don't let's start with why this is important well all of us here I'll bet had some great teachers we all had a wonderful education that's part of the reason we're here
 |
| about education |
today part of the reason we're successful. I can say that even though I'm a college dropout.
I had great teachers and in fact, in the United States the teaching system has worked fairly well there are fairly effective teachers in a narrow. Set of places so the top 20 percent of students have gotten a good. Education and those top 20 percent have been about education the best in the world. If you measure them against the other top 20 percent and they've gone on to create the revolutions in software and biotechnology and keep us at the forefront now the strength. For those top 20 percent is starting to fade on a relative basis. But even more concerning is the education that the balance of people are getting not only is that being weak it's getting weaker and if you look at the economy.
It really is only providing opportunities now to people with a better education and so we have to change this we have to change. It s that people about education have the equal opportunity we have to change it so that the country is strong and stays in the forefront of things. That are driven by advanced education like. Science and mathematics when I first learned statistics.
I was pretty stunned at how bad things are over 30% of kids never finished high school and that had been covered up for a long time because they always took the dropout rate it's the number. Who started in a senior year and then compared to the number of the finish senior year because they were tracking. Where the kids were before about education that. But most of the dropouts had taken place before that so they had to raise the state of dropout rate as soon as that tracking was done - over 30 percent of minority kids, it's over 50 percent and even.
if you graduate from high school if you're low income you have less than a 25 percent chance of ever completing a college degree if you're low income. About education united states you have a higher chance of going to jail than you do of getting a four-year degree and that you know doesn't seem entirely fair. How do you make education better our foundation? For the last nine years is invested in this there are many people.
working on it we've worked on small schools we funded scholarships we've done things and libraries. A lot of these things had a good effect but the more we looked at it the more we realized that having great teachers. Was the very key thing and. About education so we hooked up with some people studying. How much variation is there between teachers between say the top quartile very best and the bottom quartile? How much variation is there within a school or between schools and the answer is that these variations are absolutely unbelievable a top quartile teacher will increase.
The performance of their class based on test scores by over 10 percent in a single year. What does that mean well that means that the entire us about education for two years had top quartile teachers. The entire difference between us and Asia would go away and within four years.
We would be blowing everyone in the world away so it's simple all you need is those top quartile teachers and so you'd say well wow that's good we should reward those people we should retain those people we should about education find out what they're doing and transfer that skill to other people but I can tell you that absolutely is not happening today what are the characteristics of this top quartile what do they look like you might think.
well these must be very senior teachers and the answer is no once somebody is taught for three years their teaching quality does not change thereafter the variation is very very small you might think well these are people with master's degrees they've gone back and they've gotten their masters education this chart takes four different factors and says.
 |
| about education |
How much do they explain teaching quality that bottom thing which says there's no effect at all as a master's degree now the way the p system works is there are two things that are rewarded. One is seniority because. Your pay goes about education up and you vest in your pension and the second is giving extra money to people who get their master's degree but in no ways associated with being a better teach each for America slight effect for math
Teachers majoring in math is a measurable effect but overwhelmingly it's your past performance there are some people who are very good at this and we've done almost nothing to study what that is and to draw it in to replicate it to raise the about education average capability or to encourage the people with it to stay in the system you might say well do the good teachers stay in the bad teachers leave the answer is on average the slightly better teachers leave the system and it's a system.
with very high turnover now there are a few places very few where great teachers are being made a good example one is a set of charter schools called kip means knowledge is the power it's an unbelievable thing they have 66 schools mostly middle schools seven high schools and what goes on is Great teaching they take the poorest kids and over ninety-six percent of their high school graduates go to four-year colleges and the whole spirit and attitude in those schools is very different than in the normal public school they're team teaching they're constantly improving their teachers they're taking deeded the test scores and saying to a teacher Hey you caused this amount of increase and so they're deeply engaged in making teaching better.
When you actually go in and sit in one of these classrooms at first it's very bizarre I sat down and I thought what is going on the teacher was running around and the entered light energy levels hi thought well having that prep the sports about education rally or something that's going on and the teacher was constantly scanning to see which kids weren't paying attention
Which kids were bored and calling on kids rapidly putting things up on the board it was a very dynamic environment because particularly in those middle school years fit through eighth grade keeping people engaged and setting the tone that everybody in the classroom needs to pay attention nobody gets to make fun of it or have the position of you know the kid.
Who doesn't want to be there everybody needs to be involved and so Kipp is doing it how does that compare to a normal school within. About education a normal school teachers aren't told how good they are the data isn't gathered in the teacher's contract it will limit the number of times the sometimes two once per year and they principal can come into the classroom need.
Advance notice to do that so imagine running a factory we've got these workers some of them just making and the management is told hey you can only come down here once a year but you need to let us know because we might.
 |
| about education |
actually, do fool you and try and do a good job in that one brief moment even a teacher wants to improve doesn't have the tools to do it they don't have the test scores and there's a whole thing of trying to block the data for example new York passed a law that said that the
Teacher improvement data could not be made available and used in the tenure decision for the teachers and so that's sort of working in the about education opposite directions but I'm optimistic about this i think there are some clear things we can do first of all there's a lot more testing going on that's given us the picture of where
We are and that allows us to understand who's doing it well and call them out and find out what those techniques are of course the digital video is cheap now putting. A few cameras in the classroom and saying that things are being recorded on an ongoing basis is very practical in all public schools and so every few weeks teachers could sit down and say okay here's a little clip of something I thought I did well here's a little clip of something
I think i did poorly advise me when this kid acted up how should i have dealt with that and they can all sit and work together on those problems you can take the very best teachers and kind of annotate it have it so everyone sees.
who is the very best teaching this stuff you can take those great courses and make them available so that a kid could go out and watch the physics course learn from that if you have a kid who's behind you?
Would know you could assign them that video to watch and review the concept and in fact these three courses could not only be available just on the internet but you could make it so that DVDs were always available and so anybody who has access to a DVD player can have the very best teachers and so by thinking of this as a personnel system we can do it much better there's a book actually about hip the place that this is going on that Jane
Matthews a news reporter wrote called work hard be nice and i thought it was so fantastic gave you a sense of what a good teacher does I'm going to send everyone here a free copy of this book now we put a lot of money into education and
I really think that education is the most important thing to get right for the country to have as strong a futuristic should have fact we have about education in the stimulus bill it's interesting the House version actually had money in it for these data systems and was taken out in the Senate because there-there people are threatened by these things but i am optimistic.
I think people are beginning to recognize how important this is and it really can make a difference for millions of lives if we get it right.
No comments:
Post a Comment