I finished this interesting report a few days ago, but I haven't had a chance to blog about it.
If you're interested in actually reading it (if you're a geek like me), here is the link to the .pdf.
The report came out in September of 2007, so it's a little bit dated, but it has some interesting things to offer the US if we want to improve our education system.
The report breaks down what the world's best schools do into three separate areas:
1. Hire the right people to teach (something the US doesn't do. Our approach - mainly because the education departments are university cash cows - is not exactly that. We tend to think anyone can teach. Just pay for the credits. Who cares? You'll quite after three years anyway and there will need to be replacements, so that means more money from new recruits to ed departments).
2. Offer effective instruction. (in America this passes for professional development which means you bring someone from outside the district to come in and tell us how to teach something a certain way. This never works. We at LHS, however, have a great vehicle for this: common prep. Every two weeks we give up our prep block to sit down with everyone else who has that same prep and learns something new to become more effective).
3. Get all kids to excel. (All kids can learn. In America we are losing the bottom 1/3 as they drop out of school. Our top 1/3 are as smart as ever. The middle 1/3 is average. But we are losing the bottom 1/3 like never before.
#1 "The quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers."
Amen to this. I've called for a long time to simply make it harder to become a teacher. And I'm not talking about a more rigorous PRAXIS exam either. I mean make it like nursing or law. Make it difficult to get in. That will limit it to the top talent. The report claims that most teachers come from the bottom third of their classes.
That's scary.
The report also claims that hiring the right teacher negates the constant call for small classes. If you have an engaging teacher, they claim, class size is irrelevant.
I don't totally buy this. But a difficult class of five is still difficult. And a great class of 30 is still great. It's just harder to get the work back to the latter class as quickly as you'd like. And it's tough to get everyone to buy in and engage.
The report focuses on Finland and Singapore systems. They tend to do a great job recruiting the best and the brightest right out of high school into their education departments.
These systems do this through a couple of different ways.
The first way is to choose "people before they start their teacher training and limits places in the training program to those who are selected."
The second way is to leave "the selection process until after perspective teachers have graduated from teacher training and then selects the best graduates to become teachers."
The bulk of American education systems do neither.
They let almost anyone in to their ed departments and then they mostly turn your loose to sink or swim (hence this is why up to 40% of teachers leave the field after their first three years).
Another interesting aspect to the top performing schools is that they tend to pay their new teachers the most. That way they attract the best, pay them highly, and then keep them motivated from the beginning.
In America, when you are hired, your school district hands you a pay sheet that shows you how much you will be making in 30 years. Then it shows you how much you can boost that pay by taking graduate classes (and there's another cash cow for American education systems. There is an entire billion dollar industry that has sprung up around teaching 'classes' that teachers pay well to take that result in them getting a pay raise. Now in that system, what type of classes will fail the people that are paying through the nose for the right to fail? That's insane to me.)
The report's conclusion for this is simple: you can't improve education without "raising the quality of people who enter the teaching profession."
#2 "The only way to improve outcomes is to improve instruction."
In some ways, this can be seen as an impossible task. For example, "Teachers need tone able to assess precisely the strengths and weaknesses of each individual students they teach, select the appropriate instructional method to help them to learn, and deliver instruction in an effective and efficient manner.
That sounds great. But - in reality - that's one might tall order.
The report offers one key ingredient for accomplishing this tall order: "the challenge is broody one of finding the best educators and giving them the space to debate and create a better curriculum and pedagogy." (Personally, I think this is an excellent place for blogs and twitter to come into professional development)
That's true. But implementing that curriculum and pedagogy is far different that just creating it.
For the world's best schools, here is how they tackle this problem.
First, "Individual teachers need to become aware of specific weaknesses in their own practice."
Second, "Individual teachers need to gain understand of specific best practices."
Third, "Individual teachers need to be motivated to make the necessary improvements."
Overall, this doesn't happen enough in America.
Too often, because teachers are mostly left to sink and swim on their own, they don't have the care and tutelage or motivation to go through these three steps. Too often, they struggle to survive and whatever survival strategies they develop are the same strategies they cling to for the rest of their careers.
#3 "High performance requires every child to succeed."
Sure. Every child succeeds? This is too much like NCLB for me.
But the report clarifies this a bit. All children should have access to excellent instruction. That's vital.
The report discovers that "The best systems have produced approaches to ensure that the school can compensate for the disadvantages resulting from the student's home environment."
The problem in the US is that our best and brightest teachers usually get the best and brightest students. But is that the best approach?
I see this at the ALC, which sometimes becomes a dumping ground for remediation. I don't think that is what it was originally designed for.
I'm skeptical about some of this. The report is obsessed with testing and measurement. I contest that some of the best things about education can't be measured or tested or accurately measured by a test. I'm all for assessing. But I think a variety of assessments is key. And not just the cheap bubble or computer test we use today.
I'm really scared by this comment from an Australian 'educationalist' (whatever the hell that is!): "'What gets tested is what gets learnt, and how it is tested determines how it is learnt.'"
That scares me.
I have listened to far too many students (and I've been guilty of this time and again myself) who talk about cramming information in their heads to do well on tests and then recalling little of that information a few
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