Schools must aim for 21st century education, AFT President Randi Weingarten said.
Moving public education to a model that will better prepare students for today’s knowledge economy, and one that will strengthen teacher development and evaluation, is critical to the nation’s ability to compete on a global scale, said American Federation of Teachers (AFT) President Randi Weingarten in a Jan. 12 speech at the National Press Club.
The AFT president outlined her vision for what teachers need to help their students succeed, and she discussed how to promote productive labor-management relationships, seeking out governors, mayors, school boards, and superintendents to join in this effort. Weingarten also unveiled a reform plan to ensure superior teaching and improve systems that have been ingrained in public education for more than a decade.
“In a global knowledge economy, filling in the bubbles on a standardized test isn’t going to prepare our children to succeed in life,” she said. “If we are going to thrive in the 21st century, our entire approach to education must change—from what goes on in the classroom, to how we care for children’s well-being, to how labor and management work together.”
In her speech, called “A New Path Forward: Four Approaches to Quality Teaching and Better Schools,” Weingarten said improving schools, ensuring high-quality teaching, and raising student achievement takes a much more comprehensive approach than merely doing away with “bad teachers.”
“The problem with the so-called ‘bad teacher’ refrain isn’t just that it’s too harsh or too unforgiving, or that it obscures the fact that ineffective teachers are far outnumbered by their effective peers. The problem is that it’s too limited. It fails to recognize that we face a systems problem,” she said.
Weingarten said a comprehensive and robust evaluation system is the necessary predicate for developing high-quality teachers, and for a fair, expedient process to remove ineffective teachers from the classroom. An effective teacher development and evaluation system “is essential for a fair and efficient due-process system,” she said.
“For too long and too often, teacher evaluation—in both design and implementation—has failed to achieve what must be our goal: continuously improving and informing teaching so as to better educate all students,” Weingarten said, adding that the AFT’s proposed evaluation system is intended to inform tenure, employment decisions, and due-process proceedings.
Currently, Weingarten said, evaluations typically involve perfunctory observations and a “rating” at the end of the school year. “That’s like a football team watching game tape once the season is over,” she said.
“We need to put … time and effort into developing and evaluating teachers. And we need to ensure that the women and men who teach our children are participants in every stage of the process. That’s what we mean when we say do these things ‘with us, not to us.’”
Using meaningful data can show educators what is working and should be replicated, as well as what isn’t working and should be halted, Weingarten added.
Rigorous, periodic reviews, conducted by trained experts and peer evaluators and principals, would help lift whole schools and systems, she said: They would help promising teachers improve, enable good teachers to become great, and identify those teachers who shouldn’t be in the classroom at all.
There are many ways to measure competence in a profession, such as teaching. One way is through self assessment. Provide teachers with a good set of questions that they can ask themselves, along with access to good materials they can use for self improvement. Not all teachers will take advantage of this type of approach to self improvement. But, enough will so that the cost-benefit ratio will be very favorable.
For example, third grade teacher might self-assess using the following question: “Can I accurately explain the theory of evolution at a level appropriate to my third grade students, at a level appropriate to a discussion with parents of such students, and at a level appropriate to a “learned” discussion with my fellow teachers?
Or, take the same type of self-assessment, but substitute “explain what science is” or “explain what math is” or “explain what poetry is” or explain what the Web is” or etc.
The critical focus must centre on how to pro-actively improve teaching standards. In the UK the Ofsted inspection, which entails a similar function, are dreaded by the majority of teachers and headteachers. This state of affairs has been created by Ofsted reporting their findings in a report rather than providing resources to help improve standards. It is a question of being in the boat with the school rather than throwing rocks at the boat from the shore.
Whatever System is adopted consideration should be given to parachute any support needed to help the school and children improve.