Outside Resources
Are teachers more like doctors or used-car salesmen?
Dana Goldstein‘s piece in the American Prospect, “The Test Generation,” presents a fascinating and disturbing juxtaposition. On one side is Harrison School District 2, a Colorado Springs-area district of about 17,000 students. School officials there recently set up a pay-for-performance scheme where “performance” means improved test scores, even for subjects like art and P.E. Godstein opens the story with a description of such an art test.
The test asked the first-graders to look at “Weeping Woman” and “write three colors Picasso used to show feeling or emotion.” (Acceptable answers: blue, green, purple, and yellow.) Another question asked, “In each box below, draw three different shapes that Picasso used to show feeling or emotion.” (Acceptable drawings: triangles, ovals, and rectangles.)
A reader cannot help but imagine the unfortunate child who mentions periwinkle or gold and draws a parallelogram or semicircle. These students who are deprived of time to try their own hands at Cubism will later in the week be forced to take a pencil and paper test for gym class. Perhaps the questions will drill down into the rules of dodgeball.
On the other hand, there is Denver’s Math and Science Leadership Academy, which is organized around teams of teachers that are responsible for one another’s improvement.
When I visited MSLA in November, the halls were bright and orderly, the students warm and polite, and the teachers enthusiastic — in other words, MSLA has many of the characteristics of high-performing schools around the world. What sets MSLA apart is its commitment to teaching as a shared endeavor to raise student achievement — not a competition.
MSLA’s approach, which Goldstein compares to a team of doctors determining the best course of treatment for each student, resembles professional learning communities, a concept that has become all the rage at principals’ conventions in the past few years. These models are very popular with teachers, and perhaps that is because they appreciate being treated as professionals.
The standard salary scale for teachers, which is based on years of service and level of education, does seem outdated. After all, most professionals’ annual raises are determined at least in part by their performance evaluations. But a merit pay system that rewards teachers for raising test scores treats teachers less like doctors and more like salesmen or bond traders, who are rewarded with commissions for every widget sold or deal signed.
Harrison 2′s superintendent, Mike Miles, is a proponent of the salesman approach, which, after all, has a pretty successful track record in corporate America. And it comes as no surprise that Miles is a 2011 graduate of the Broad Academy, which is working hard to put corporate thinkers just like him in superintendents’ offices across America.
The test asked the first-graders to look at “Weeping Woman” and “write three colors Picasso used to show feeling or emotion.” (Acceptable answers: blue, green, purple, and yellow.) Another question asked, “In each box below, draw three different shapes that Picasso used to show feeling or emotion.” (Acceptable drawings: triangles, ovals, and rectangles.)
A reader cannot help but imagine the unfortunate child who mentions periwinkle or gold and draws a parallelogram or semicircle. These students who are deprived of time to try their own hands at Cubism will later in the week be forced to take a pencil and paper test for gym class. Perhaps the questions will drill down into the rules of dodgeball.
On the other hand, there is Denver’s Math and Science Leadership Academy, which is organized around teams of teachers that are responsible for one another’s improvement.
When I visited MSLA in November, the halls were bright and orderly, the students warm and polite, and the teachers enthusiastic — in other words, MSLA has many of the characteristics of high-performing schools around the world. What sets MSLA apart is its commitment to teaching as a shared endeavor to raise student achievement — not a competition.
MSLA’s approach, which Goldstein compares to a team of doctors determining the best course of treatment for each student, resembles professional learning communities, a concept that has become all the rage at principals’ conventions in the past few years. These models are very popular with teachers, and perhaps that is because they appreciate being treated as professionals.
The standard salary scale for teachers, which is based on years of service and level of education, does seem outdated. After all, most professionals’ annual raises are determined at least in part by their performance evaluations. But a merit pay system that rewards teachers for raising test scores treats teachers less like doctors and more like salesmen or bond traders, who are rewarded with commissions for every widget sold or deal signed.
Harrison 2′s superintendent, Mike Miles, is a proponent of the salesman approach, which, after all, has a pretty successful track record in corporate America. And it comes as no surprise that Miles is a 2011 graduate of the Broad Academy, which is working hard to put corporate thinkers just like him in superintendents’ offices across America.
