Another Example Why Teaching Must Become a Team Effort
The research of Robert Pianta and others indicates that as few as 25% of teachers "provide a level of instructional or emotional support consistent with the production of learning gains." I can believe it, at least in places with the challenges that my old high school faced.
I think school reformers were wrong, but I can understand why some of them (to borrow historian Larry Cuban's words) tried to "deputize" teachers as the agents to defeat poverty. If we could somehow "build a better teacher," so that 100% of us had the ability to overcome the legacies of poverty, the so-called "teacher quality" experiment would have been the ultimate quick fix - with a simple lever moving an incredibly complex world.
I wouldn't have bet the farm on the idea that better teacher quality could drive a victory over the educational legacies of extreme poverty. But, an attempt to focus on improved instruction within the four walls of the classroom in order to improve inner city schools was not necessarily irrational. The key to improving high-challenge schools might have been a heavy investment in teaching teachers how to offer more engaging instruction and, especially, to better tend to students' emotional needs. It sure would have been cheaper and easier than implementing comprehensive whole school improvements.
By now, however, it should be clear that there are no shortcuts. It takes a team effort to improve student performance in schools serving intense concentrations of children from generational poverty who have often survived extreme trauma.
The Tulsa Public schools has an excellent record of starting down the path to high-quality early education and full-service community schools. So, it might have made sense for Tulsa to accept a Gates Foundation grant to improve teacher quality, as long as it was seen as a supplement to more holistic approaches. But, even if money was no object, there are only so many hours in the day, and we must prioritize the tasks we impose on educators.
In retrospect, even the best of the high-dollar Gates efforts look like a mistake if they Another Example Why Teaching Must Become a Team Effort | John Thompson:
