THE PROBLEM OF THAT BOTTOM 6%-10%

 I am still chewing on the New Yorker article we received on March 23, and it is almost a month later. The “Most Likely to Succeed” article from the Annals of Education by Malcom Gladwell draws parallels between football quarterbacks and teachers in the classroom. His main point seems to be that just like promising quarterbacks in the scouting process for the NFL, we can’t be certain which promising teachers will really deliver in the classroom.

Most shocking to me was economist Hanushek’s calculation that the US could close the academic performance gap between a group of relatively high performing countries and us by replacing the bottom performing 6%-10% of public school teachers with teachers of AVERAGE quality. Yikes! If that’s all it takes, what is stopping us?

Lots of questions are still churning on this topic:

Gladwell points to the corporate recruiting model that the financial industry uses as a potential system that works. Could it work for teaching? What about the pay differential between the financial industry and teaching? Does it matter? Who would do the recruiting? How are we measuring teacher performance?

Researchers from Dartmouth and Harvard point out that advanced degrees in teaching do nothing to ensure excellent teachers. What do the highest performing teachers say about what makes a good teacher and the value of graduate degrees? Is it a case of teachers protecting their turf, or are we really looking to collectively improve the profession, and the state of American education?

Can “withitness” be learned or taught? If so, how?

Left out of the discussion in the article is the educational leadership piece, specifically, administration. We know that principals can set the tone for collaboration, school culture, collegial support, social standards, communication, and so much more, within schools.

So what’s the answer? Stronger mentoring? Changing how teachers are trained in the art of teaching? More and longer practicum work to ensure the highest level of teacher competency? And how are we going to move that entrenched bottom 6%-10% of public school teachers?

Jeanne Larsen