NCTAF Featured on Connected Educators Blog!

What happens when teachers use mobile devices to connect to peers and mentors? This question is the driving force behind the Teachers Learning in Networked Communities 2.0 project that the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future (NCTAF) launched this school year as an extension of the Teachers Learning in Networked Communities (TLINC) project.

Read NCTAF's full post on the Connected Educators Blog.

Time for a Paradigm Shift

Mark Phillips’ recent post “Education Reform Paralysis – and How to Fix It” asks some provocative questions about how we can get out of the current education reform scenario that might be summarized as “If you keep doing what we’re doing, we’ll keep getting what we’re getting.” Tinkering with the schools we have won’t get us the schools we need. One problem (and Phillips admits this freely) is that most educators are too busy with immediate problems to figure out what a new vision for schools would look like.

Phillips calls on reformers and policymakers, who have the luxury of time, to consider a shift in the schooling paradigm. He envisions a learning environment for kids that is more connected to nature and not organized around artificially separated “subjects” like “English.” NCTAF has long pushed for hands-on, interdisciplinary learning. The possibilities are endless because information is there for the taking on the internet, which is ever-more accessible. Phillips imagines classrooms as “command center[s] for a learning process that involved local media, worldwide web communication, and the creation of integrated imagery and words shared with the community.”

The first step in creating this paradigm shift is to redesign the role of teachers who team up to lead these command centers.  As Phillips notes, teachers need more time to think, plan, and collaborate. But we need to go further and reinvent the job of teaching and how it’s organized.

 Likening us in our current impasse to the square in Edward Albott’s Flatland, Phillips illustrates how closed and static the current system is. A new paradigm for schools must take advantage of the multi-faceted world of the internet, global communications, and social media.  But, with the advent of the internet—the explosion of information accessible anywhere/anytime— the world has flattened in an altogether different sort of way. Information is everywhere for the taking; teachers must be empowered to reinvent themselves into teams of facilitators, guides, and curators. Students need teachers to help them consume and produce media appropriately, namely to think critically to find what’s accurate and prioritize what’s important. Only then, can we redesign schools to operate effectively in the many dimensions of information teeming in our flat, globalized world.

It is Time to Stop the Teacher Bashing

The argument that teachers are drawn from the bottom third of the workforce is just the latest version of the old saw: “Those who can, do - those who can't, teach.”  The irony is that those who make this argument understand the importance of quality teaching; but they fail to recognize that their teacher bashing undermines the profession.

In his recent blog post, "Where do Teachers Come From," Merrow demonstrates that teacher bashers base their “bottom third” argument on questionable conventional wisdom, and he encourages them to do the math. So here are some numbers to consider. The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) reports that the nation hired 388,000 new teachers in 2008 (313,000 in public schools plus 76,000 in private schools).  NCES also reports that we had 2.2 million college graduates that year (1.6 million BAs plus 650,000 MAs). This means that to hire only top tier candidates, we would have to hire at least half of the top third of the graduates from every college and university in the country – every year – year after year. The teacher bashers seem to believe that we can somehow induce half of the top tier graduates in the nation to pursue teaching in lieu of other careers, including medicine, law, finance and technology - despite their cynical drumbeat of attacks on educators. 

As Merrow points out, as college graduates, our teachers are already among the best educated of the country’s population. With over 3.6 million in classroom, teaching is the largest profession in the country. To effectively staff our schools we will always draw teachers from a broad cross-section of college graduates – just as most other professions do.  If school reform is to succeed, we need to get serious about recognizing, rewarding, and supporting teaching professionals.

Teaching is the profession that makes all other professions possible. As a nation, we say that we value teachers as the most important factor in the quality of a child’s education. But the way that we treat them sends quite a different message. A key characteristic of the high-performing countries profiled in the McKinsey Report that is cited in this debate is the very high “cultural respect accorded to teaching.” More than any other recruitment policy, the respect we give our teachers will determine the future quality of the profession.  It is time to stop the teacher bashing. 

Response to “How to Rescue Education Reform”

In “How to Rescue Education Reform” (NY Times 12/5/11), Rick Hess and Linda Darling-Hammond call on all sides to focus on what the federal government can do well, and to leave the rest to educational leaders at the state and local level. What the federal government does well is to promote a level playing field and equitable learning opportunities for all students. What it does poorly is to nurture innovation.   

The problems of compliance-driven industrial schools can’t be fixed with more factory-era thinking. Time and again, federal efforts to encourage state and local innovation are riddled with requirements that lock states and districts into tinkering with the status quo. Most recently, states called on the U.S. Department of Education to give them the lead in developing and implementing innovative reforms, by granting waivers from stifling NCLB mandates. U.S. Ed responded by announcing that it would grant waivers, but only to states that are prepared to comply with the new Race to the Top program regulations. Substituting one set of rules for another is not the way to unleash innovation. 

Secretary Duncan is committed to being “tight on the goals but loose on the means of achieving them.” We hope that he will use these waivers to provide as much flexibility for innovation as possible, while maintaining meaningful accountability for improving student outcomes and closing achievement gaps.

NCTAF in U.S. News & World Report!

NCTAF is featured in today’s online U.S. News & World Report “Debate Club” section, weighing in on whether a college education is still "worth it." Read it here and comment!