What’s Effective Teaching?
I demand an effective teacher in every classroom! Don’t you? Doesn’t every child deserve an effective teacher? I am outraged that there are so many teachers who are not effective!
But wait…
What do I even mean by an “effective teacher?”
Right now in this country, we are all about “effective” teachers. Here in a courtroom in Los Angeles, there is a lawsuit that hinges on students’ constitutional right to an effective teacher. Scientists are testifying to the enormous virtues of an effective teacher and how much better students fare when they have one. They are whipping out charts demonstrating the truth of this statement.
Here’s what they haven’t done: define what they mean by “effective teachers.”
Here’s what they generally mean: teachers whose students have demonstrated growth on state test scores.
Here’s why that definition of effectiveness is hugely problematic: we just threw out all of those state tests because we found that they don’t correlate with any meaningful measure of student success, including cognitive growth and 6-year college graduation rates. Students were graduating from high-performing charters with dizzyingly high test