School Based Day Care: Improving Teaching and Learning
Improving teaching and learning by doing
something for teachers rather than tothem.
Much of the talk we hear from the corporate education reformers is about what we can do to teachers to make them teach better. Here is a quick list of what has been suggested and in many cases tried to improve teacher performance:
1. Evaluate teachers using student standardized test score data (Value Added Measures or VAMs).
2. Eliminate teacher job protections like tenure and seniority (see California’s Vergara case).
3. Do away with traditional experience and educational level salary advancement and use a system of merit pay designed to reward high performers and punish low performers.
Every one of these ideas is flawed in application and none has been shown to improve instruction. Maybe instead of focusing on what we need to do toteachers we might want to focus on what we can do for teachers to make their very difficult jobs easier. After all, as any good teacher knows, we do not get children to learn well by doing things to them, but by doing things forthem (providing the needed instruction, providing feedback on their progress, providing needed resources, re-teaching when necessary, providing the needed guidance or direction, setting achievable goals, helping them organize for learning, establishing routines, etc.)
One thing we could do that would help many teachers would be to provide on-site, professionally run, school district managed and state regulated day care for teachers who are working parents. Everyday tens of thousands of Russ on Reading: School Based Day Care: Improving Teaching and Learning: