Is Your Child's Teacher Well-Trained?

Mediocre Teachers?

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation released a major report in January that provided a thorough analysis of the quality and effectiveness of the nation's teachers. Over 1,000 classrooms were studied in cities such as Charlotte, Denver, Dallas and New York City. The study is believed to be the most expansive such analysis of the nation's educators.

The results were not encouraging. Teachers struggled in a variety of areas, including utilizing question and discussion techniques, communicating with students and using assessment tools. In all three of these areas, fewer than 50% of teachers were rated as proficient or better. In fact, only 30% of teachers were proficient or better at communicating with students.

Not all of the news in the report was negative. The most successful area of teaching was managing student behavior. A clear majority of teachers were proficient or better in this area. This includes keeping students engaged and well-behaved in class.

A Systemic Failure

The Obama administration has laid out an ambitious plan for remedying the teacher quality problem. As described in a report released last fall by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, the root of the problem is in the programs that educate our teachers. While there are strong teacher education programs, most are substandard.

There are myriad problems with these programs. For example, barely half of future teachers receive supervised clinical training, a critical component of their development as educators. Over 60% of education school alumni say they were unprepared for the reality of the classroom upon graduation.

Then there is the gap between what education programs produce and what schools need. The types of teachers that are most needed are in subject areas such as math, science and engineering. More than 90% of districts in high-minority areas report struggles in finding qualified teachers in these areas. Likewise, teachers skilled in working with students with disabilities or non-native English speakers are few and far between.

Ideas for Change

Over the next ten years, 1.6 million teachers will retire. As teacher education programs work to produce the next generation of educators, this turnover creates an enormous opportunity. As noted in Secretary Duncan's report, the clearest pathway to success begins with increasing analysis and accountability.

Too often, teacher education programs are evaluated on how well their aspiring teachers perform on exams or how high their grade-point averages are. Why not shift the focus to how well those teachers perform in the job market? Louisiana is leading the way with this idea. The performances of students in K-12 schools are now linked back to the education programs that trained those students' teachers. The Obama administration is proposing using the Louisiana example as a model for the rest of the nation.

There's also a need for a complete overhaul of how teacher effectiveness data is collected and reported. The Gates Foundation is a major player in this field. Their January report not only measured teacher effectiveness, it also evaluated its own evaluation techniques. More work like this will further improve and refine the ways in which we understand how well our teachers are performing.