Defining Effective Teachers
The administration's blueprint for reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the law that governs K-12 education, calls for states to develop definitions of "effective teachers" and "effective principals." Student growth and classroom observations, according to the blueprint, should be included in the definition.
What do you think should define an effective teacher or principal? Will these definitions lead to systems with better educators?
What do you think should define an effective teacher or principal? Will these definitions lead to systems with better educators?
Chad Wick responded to Defining Effective Teachers on July 15, 2010 02:46 PM
A team of Jedi masters If all of us would think about the best teachers in our lives, common characteristics would surely emerge. The most passionate teachers set themselves apart. They were excited about their craft. They celebrated when students finally grasped a concept or subject. They challenged students to do their best and chided students when they did not. They knew which students came to school hungry and, in some cases, fed them. The really good principals were strong leaders who seemed to have earned the respect of their staff, their peers and their students. The things we associate...
Gina Burkhardt responded to Defining Effective Teachers on July 15, 2010 02:19 PM
Resist Narrow Definitions If we are to treat this solely on semantics, "effectiveness" is about outcomes and producing a desired effect. We all know that the current and most easily drawn measures of outcomes are standardized student achievement test scores. Many of us also strongly agree that these are a weak single measure of a world-class education, and of teaching more specifically. The field is tying itself up in knots right now trying to come up with a comprehensive, consensus-based definition of the desired outcomes of teaching. The Common Core standards focus primarily on important academic outcomes and are a...
Dennis Van Roekel responded to Defining Effective Teachers on July 14, 2010 05:54 PM
On The Path Toward Professionalization The impact on student learning in broad and comprehensive ways is a key element of teacher effectiveness. Yet we should reject the silver-bullet approaches that reduce the complexities of teaching to a numerical score that does nothing to inform practice or contribute to improvements in teaching standards. Instead, we should promote a systemic approach to defining, measuring and supporting teaching excellence. Teachers should be assessed by how they practice the craft of teaching according to a respected, comprehensive set of professional standards. These standards should strengthen the processes we use to prepare, license, induct, develop...
Kati Haycock responded to Defining Effective Teachers on July 14, 2010 11:23 AM
Kids Deserve Teachers Who Foster Growth During his talk at last week’s Aspen Ideas Festival, “Precious” screenwriter Geoffrey Fletcher took my breath away by illustrating the importance of teachers with a quote from the Talmud. The passage, which begins the novel on which the movie was based, reads: “Every blade of grass has its angel that bends over it and whispers, ‘Grow, grow.’” Fletcher aptly described effective teachers as people whose spirits stay with us for the rest of our lives, quietly offering nudges of encouragement. Even after their students leave school, the voices of these teachers linger in their...
Eliza Krigman responded to Defining Effective Teachers on July 14, 2010 10:28 AM
Kate Walsh Responds: The Bottom Line Kate Walsh, president, National Council on Teacher Quality, submitted the following in response to this week's question: An effective teacher, to go back to the original question, is someone who can move students successfully from one grade to the next. A highly effective teacher is someone who can make incredible progress closing big gaps in student learning. Unfortunately, those teachers of superstar status who are so critical in our battle with the achievement gap are a relative rarity, roughly one in seven teachers. Teachers who are this effective generally display a host of...
Monty Neill responded to Defining Effective Teachers on July 13, 2010 04:06 PM
Other than Diane’s, the responses thus far minimize the problems of both the definition and the measures. The new national standards that may be adopted by most states might be partially adequate definitions of 'what' for two subjects. Even then, the standards will be of limited use. For example there will be no mandated curriculum and students presumably will read a great many different things and write with equal diversity across schools and districts, meaning a great deal of what is important is not in the ELA standards. We don't have them for other subjects, other than voluntary...
Ariela Rozman responded to Defining Effective Teachers on July 13, 2010 02:03 AM
Effective Teaching Means Academic Growth Checker is right that defining effective teaching is the easy part. Hopefully we can all agree that effective teaching means helping students learn what they’re supposed to learn—a teacher’s most important responsibility. So, student academic growth should be the predominant factor in determining effectiveness (although not the only one). Measuring teacher effectiveness is harder, but it’s absolutely critical. If we don’t know how effective our teachers are, how can we help them improve or ensure that we’re retaining the best? Fortunately, measuring effectiveness is also eminently doable. It requires combining data from many different sources,...
Sandy Kress responded to Defining Effective Teachers on July 12, 2010 03:10 PM
Professionalism I have little to add to Checker's fine comment. I would point out, however, that, as hard as we work at it, there will never be foolproof metrics or "decision rules" for all teachers and schools. There are no such foolproof metrics for doctors or lawyers or accountants or small business men and women or even journalists at the National Journal or staffers at the Fordham Institute! Yet, most enterprises in our society make an effort at judging the effectiveness of their people. And those efforts typically have a great deal to do with the results their people achieve....
Tom Vander Ark responded to Defining Effective Teachers on July 12, 2010 10:09 AM
Build a Flexible Framework Great opening Checker. Teachers rightly worry about using a single source of data to judge performance but we'll soon have a vast array of content-embedded assessment as well as teacher-scored assessment that we'll be able to consider when judging student growth and teacher performance. That's why I'm a fan of Terry Grier's approach in Houston which seeks to use "all available information" when making performance judgements. We'll need to build flexible frameworks that year after year incorporate new data elements into increasingly more well rounded pictures of performance. ...
Diane Ravitch responded to Defining Effective Teachers on July 12, 2010 10:03 AM
A Matter of Professionalism Which teachers are "effective" and which are not? And what is meant by "effectiveness"? At present, most policymakers and foundations define effectiveness as the ability to produce higher test scores. But this is a very limited and ultimately not helpful definition. For one, most teachers do not have annual test scores by which they can be judged. For another, very bad teachers may produce higher test scores by drilling students on the questions likely to appear on state tests. Thus, the scores may misidentify effective teachers while not being available for the majority of teachers. Many...
Chester E. Finn, Jr. responded to Defining Effective Teachers on July 12, 2010 09:39 AM
Half Brainer The easy part of this question is the definition. An effective teacher is one whose pupils learn what they should while under his/her tutelage. An effective principal is one whose school attains state standards, pupils learn what they should, etc. In both cases, it's a results-based definition. The hard part is developing and fairly applying a reliable set of metrics by which to gauge success, hence effectiveness. All sorts of experiments and pilot programs are under way along these lines (e.g. the Gates Foundation's "deep dive" districts) and America needs plenty more such. We obviously don't yet have...