CER’s recent monograph, Mandate for Change, pinpoints teacher quality as one in a five-part prescription for what ails public education in America today. Richard Whitmire’s essay lays out a compelling argument for addressing the way teachers are evaluated, cautioning “Effective teachers make a difference and the current system does next to nothing to reward effective teaching.”
Here are three examples of teaching/teachers at work for students:
1) The new paternalism
David Whitman spoke last Thursday at a CER event about his book Sweating the Small Stuff: Inner-City Schools and the New Paternalism. Whitman dedicated a section of both his talk and the book to a discussion focused on the aspects of a paternalistic teaching/learning environment. Here are but three examples:
- Provide teachers with more on-site training and new opportunities to review student progress and discipline problems, and to observe other teachers’ classrooms.
- Principals, with assistance from teachers, need to create a sense of mission and concern for student character. They should enlist all staff in attaining their goals, including the secretaries and janitors.
Finally, hire principals and teachers who like — and celebrate — their students.
2) Intervention (via ProJo)
“Education Commissioner Peter McWalters has ordered the city schools to begin filling teacher vacancies based on qualifications rather than seniority, an order that could fly in the face of the teachers’ contract.
McWalters, in a no-nonsense letter yesterday to Supt. Tom Brady, said the district hasn’t been moving fast enough to improve student achievement and that it was time to intervene in a much more aggressive fashion.
The order should come as no surprise to the district. Over the last two years the commissioner has issued a series of “corrective action” orders that spelled out
Guadalupe Sandoval, a junior at Serra High School in San Diego, CA has had a lot of time to think about teachers and the impact they have on her and other students. Her parents have chosen to send her to a school outside of her neighborhood based on teacher quality (or lack there of). Her hour and a half bus commute each day has 
District superintendents around the country – who will be the first port of call for the education stimulus funds – seem to want more than what is already a pretty substantial influx of money.
