Transcript

Improving Education | Beth Lange | TEDxWabashCollege

[Music] as a high school English teacher I spend a great deal of time working with my student writers on the art of the introduction in class we examine models of effective introductions we scrutinize and critique their own essays first paragraphs and extensively revise and edit to ensure their introductions are compelling enough to lure in readers learning that my remarks tonight must be limited to 18 minutes has forced me to dispense with my own sparkling introduction and so I will simply state my purpose I am here to talk with you tonight about an issue that is of vital importance to me to our society indeed it is integral to American civilization and our way of life education and less do you think I am using hyperbole let's look at an alarming graph by all accounts America is becoming more polarized less than 1% of our citizenry is responsible for almost half of our nation's wealth now I've taught Dickens A Tale of Two Cities enough years to know that this situation is a breeding ground for revolution and in order to avert to another round of bloody mobs with pitchforks cheering around a guillotine have nots clearly must be transitioned into halves and I am honored that as a teacher I can bring about this transformation from the worst of times to the best of times because study after study has shown education is the one consistent reliable means of mitigating economic disparity by giving opportunity to all individuals who in our post-industrial society must be educated to gather and process information accurately communicate effectively and think critically unfortunately many Americans think our schools are not up to this task so calls for education reform constantly rebound yet virtually all past and present efforts to reform education have simply consisted of repackaging the curriculum shifting its emphasis and then coming up with new requirements for how it should be tested our most recent reform efforts have taken what students should know divided them into benchmarks these are to be pre tested post tested results are entered into computer programs that generate mountains of data at various points throughout the school year students are assessed with standardized tests to determine their growth and mastery and skills like citing evidence or applying the remainder theorem yet if schools are to become agents of inquiry problem-solving active learning don't we have to acknowledge the role of teachers the curriculum and data alone cannot encourage inspire counsel like high quality teachers can so why are teachers not at the heart of the reform movement a nationally board certified teacher I know recalls sitting at a conference listening to applause for ideas proposed by people who had never taught children and classroom a day in their lives furthermore while he was invited to attend the conference he was not invited to speak or even share his reaction to the proposals that he had heard this dismissive attitude toward teachers is unacceptable so here is what I propose in order to genuinely revitalize our nation's classrooms we must concede that teachers are the experts about what happens there and second if we became more selective about who is admitted into teacher education programs and licensed we could entrust them with the autonomy that could transform American schools into institutions of excellence the unwillingness to give teachers this level of control probably traces back to an unwillingness to regard teaching as a bona fide profession after all there is no equivalent to the bar exam for teachers an exam so difficult that in some states almost a quarter of law school students do not pass medical residences for aspiring physicians are far more grueling and intensive than 18 weeks of student teaching and if we add to that the oft cited statistic about teachers who graduate in the bottom third of their college classes it becomes at least understandable why so many outside experts feel entitled to expound ex cathedra on what mandates are needed to improve education this means that even decisions like how to write out lesson plans have been removed from some teachers control recently Colorado teacher Rick young who has been cited by his former students as the most effective teaching teacher of writing they have ever encountered chose to retire early because of the backward design lessons he was required to submit he found them incredibly time-consuming not productive because they didn't help students and they limited the freedom of a teacher to really freely teach this willingness to give outsider such control traces back though to a time when the United States was embarrassed by the Soviet launch of Sputnik during the Cold War and American government leaders and industry leaders blamed the lack of rigor in our schools for falling behind in the space race so in 1958 Congress passed the National Defense Education Act and almost immediately the National Academy of Engineering the National Academy of scientists the American Mathematical Society took over the redesign of math textbooks assuring in an infamous approach known as a new math yet at the time Frances couple the US commissioner of education stated that education is too important to be left to the teachers so in 1983 almost 20 years later a report called a nation at risk is still decrying the abysmal state of education in our country stating that if an unfriendly foreign power had imposed upon American education the same level of mediocrity that exists we would have regarded it as an act of war another 20 years 2001 what came to be known as a nation at risk are we what came to be known as No Child Left Behind required 100 percent of American schoolchildren to be proficient in math and reading by 2014 yet in 2013 there was more anguish when American 15 year olds placed 36th out of 65 countries on the program of international student assessment the Pisa as this brief history of education reform in our country shows Americans dissatisfaction with student learning and critical thinking only seems to spawn more and more intervention by outsiders who are determined to fix goals with curriculum testing and dismissing the role of teachers it strikes me as a variation of what London Business School professor Donald Saul calls active inertia in changing times companies that fail are doing more of the same just faster tweaked at the edges but essentially the same old same old and while we may be skeptical about applying business models to education what dr. Saul is describing is more human behavior not a phenomenon associated with business in fact its presence in education would argue that active inertia is ubiquitous now I will freely concede one need not spend often in 60 hours a week planning delivering lessons commenting on and evaluating student work communicating with parents conferring with colleagues in order to have a voice in education business and industry do need educated workers with certain skill sets our founding fathers understood that the vitality of our democracy is dependent on an electorate that can inform itself and think about the issues but Outsiders intervention in education has not yielded the desired results for years so why are teachers not front and center of the education reform movement imagine General Motors trying to improve its autos without paying any attention to the engine or a computer upgrade that never factors in exactly how much memory is available in the hard drive education reform efforts must acknowledge that the quality of teaching matters which then argues that the best way to improve American education is to improve the quality of our teachers and this will require a simultaneous paradigm shift because we can't expect the brightest and best to go into education when the most common remark made about this teachers graduate degree from Harvard is if he went to Harvard what are you doing teaching I became so disheartened by that remark I no longer display my diplomas in my classroom as I once did trying to emulate the practice of pediatricians who display their diplomas in their offices to assure parents they are qualified to treat diagnosed children much like AIA perhaps the foremost priority of our education associations should be an intense media campaign to convince the American public that teachers are hardworking and to push back against a portrayal of teachers as less skilled less knowledgeable than their counterparts in other professions we need to showcase the Phi Beta Kappa who choose to become teachers because they are passionate about children young people their subjects we need to communicate that elementary teachers knowledge of esoteric reading theory is really pretty impressive as is their skill at managing a diverse group of two dozen or so youngsters as they work with math manipulatives and then becomes so excited because they've all understood the mathematical principle we need to let students speak about teachers who have thoroughly engaged them by requiring them to think like historians as they analyze primary sources or realize the relevance of those novels that enshrine our cultural traditions during Socratic seminars and discussions each year the Intel competition features the experiments and findings of these brilliant young people who at some point credit their teachers with their ability to think like scientists these are all examples of teachers whose students do not need to be assessed multiple times each year or drilled so that they can spit back the answers on the state test the goal of education reform cannot simply be on increasing the test scores those increasing test scores need to be a reflection of authentic learning that can only go on in classrooms that are filled with a talented teacher now in practical terms this means that school administrators must become far more proactive about using processes already in place to terminate contracts for small but overly visible number of incompetent but more importantly those entering the teaching profession need more time time to be mentored time to receive feedback no bar exam style test is ever going to measure teacher readiness because teaching is more than a knowledge base more than a science it is an art and neophyte teachers cannot master that artistry in one semester of student teaching furthermore a truly collaborative intense residency period could prevent the high number of potentially very talented teachers from leaving the profession to for five years because they become so frustrated with their isolation and lack of affirmation but most significantly we must dramatically increase the qualifications to be accepted into a teacher training program and now is the time to do it because many baby boomer teachers will be retiring in the next decade raising the bar for entrance to the profession was one of the key practices that catapulted Finland whose education programs in the 1980s were about as denigrated as those in the united states to the top performing nation on the PISA in 2000 even though that wasn't their goal in Finland only 10 to 15 percent of applicants to a very limited number of teacher education programs are actually selected to become teachers those candidates who are successful must possess impressive academic accomplishments relative to those of their peers and they are also observed in classroom settings before they are accepted to ensure that they already possess those necessary interpersonal skills to relate to and manage children and adolescents because of these stringent admission requirements no one in Finland regards teaching as a career for the also-rans so teachers enjoy a high level of prestige and respect and are given the control to run their classrooms as professionals this is why standardized testing to measure teacher and student performance does not exist in Finland there is only one rigorous exam at the end of their equivalent to high school that will help students matriculate to the next level of schooling hours are also built into teachers schedules each week so that teachers can continue to refine their classroom performance and their lessons and it is this level of professional autonomy plus the ethos that teaching is a service to the public good that have made teaching the most desired job in Finland today even though salaries for teachers are commensurate to the national average so we don't need to look far to find examples of other countries that have effectively reformed their schools by increasing the status and quality of their teachers and we also don't need to look far to find examples of other countries and companies that were once world leaders who has since floundered as a result of active inertia Spain pre-eminent during the Age of Discovery now is facing double-digit unemployment and near bankruptcy once dominant US manufacturers like Mae Tech that was profitable during the Great Depression have closed and shuttered plants that once employed thousands we must not let our schools suffer the same fate because we continually look to outsiders to fix them American education will not be reformed in corporate offices or the boardrooms of philanthropists or the halls of state legislators education will be reformed one classroom at a time by ensuring that an exemplary teacher is working in it and these polarize times that is the revolution we can embrace you [Music]