Education - Teachers
by: Jerry Price - Aug 1, 2005 - comment
In a 2002 study of fourth and eighth grade teachers, they were asked about their teaching philosophies, classroom teaching methods and practices, academic expectations for their students, and their opinions on other educational policy issues. The following is a part of the executive summary from that study.
“The results are revealing, fascinating and more than a little alarming. Though there is some good news here for devotees of standards-based reform, five of this study’s findings seem to me particularly vexing because of the chasm they display between the views of teachers and the expectations of reformers.
“First, a majority of teachers in both fourth and eighth grade opt for ‘student-directed learning’ rather than ‘teacher-directed learning’. No more than two teachers in five affirm a philosophy of education in which they, the adults in the classroom, are supposed to set the agenda, decide what youngsters will learn and usher their pupils toward that destination. ‘Student-directed’ learning is an old progressive-educator notion, a variation on ‘child-centered’ education, that traces back to John Dewey and his apostles. It means that children’s own interests and stages of development matter more than mastery of subject matter in shaping what teachers and pupils work on in class each day. Yet it’s nearly impossible to imagine standards-based reform succeeding in classrooms where students direct the key decisions about what will be learned. Standards-based reform presupposes that teachers will take charge of prescribing what skills and knowledge must be learned—and that they will persist until their young charges have in fact learned those things.
“Second, three quarters of teachers have embraced the college-of-education dogma that the purpose of schooling is to help youngsters ‘learn how to learn’ rather than to acquire specific information and skills. Barely one teacher in seven holds the view that educators’ core responsibility is ‘to teach students specific information and skills’. When evaluating student work, just 25 percent of fourth grade teachers (and 28 percent of eighth grade teachers) place primary emphasis on whether pupils supply the right answer or correct information. Yet standards-based reform is all about the successful acquisition of specific information and skills. Few would argue that schools ought not also assist their pupils to ‘learn how to learn’ more in the future. But standards-based reform cannot succeed where that is deemed to be the school’s chief mission. Nor can it succeed where teachers put greater stock in student creativity and effort than in accuracy.
“Third, not even two out of five teachers in fourth grade base their students’ grades primarily on a ‘single, class-wide standard’, while the majority place heavier emphasis on individual children’s abilities. In other words, they opt for a relativistic, child-centered mode of evaluating pupil achievement instead of an unchanging objective standard. (This is also the case with nearly half of eighth grade teachers.) Yet the essence of standards-based reform is judging youngsters according to their success in meeting a fixed standard of learning or reaching proficiency in particular subjects. How odd it will be, to say the least, if children grow accustomed in class to relativistic grading practices and are then hit by an unyielding standard on the statewide exam at year’s end. How confusing that will be for children and parents—and how damaging to the cause of standards-based education reform.
“Fourth, teachers do not seem to have terribly high expectations for their pupils when it comes to how much and how well they will end up learning. Despite the popular educationist mantra that ‘all children can learn’ and notwithstanding the core principle of standards-based reform that no child will be left behind and that every youngster will attain his state’s core academic standards, teachers do not quite buy that. Fewer than half of those teaching fourth grade expect their students always to spell correctly. Less than half of eighth grade math teachers expect all of their students, by year’s end, to be able to show why the angles of a triangle add to 180 degrees. (One quarter of eighth grade math teachers do not even expect this from a majority of their pupils.) Only 70 percent of eighth grade history teachers expect that, by the time they enter high school, the majority of students in their classes will know when the Civil War was fought. How can Congress enact a law mandating that every child in every state will (within twelve years) attain ‘proficiency’ on state standards if many of those children’s classroom instructors have no such expectations?
“Finally, and most bluntly, one third of fourth grade teachers and 30 percent of eighth grade teachers do not agree that ‘a teacher’s role is primarily to help students learn the things that your state or community has decided students should know.’ In other words, these instructors seemingly don’t believe in state academic standards or, at least, they don’t see helping youngsters meet such standards as the single most important mission of the school.
Christopher Barnes, What Do Teachers Teach? A Survey of America’s Fourth and Eighth Grade Teachers, (Manhattan Institute) September 2002
“Nearly half the elementary- and secondary-school principals surveyed said the curriculums at schools of education, whether graduate or undergraduate, lacked academic rigor and were outdated, at times using materials decades older than the children whom teachers are now instructing. Beyond that, more than 80 percent of principals said the education schools were too detached from what went on at local elementary and high schools, a factor that made for a rift between educational theory and practice.
“Much of the problem, the report said, stems from what Dr. Levine called ‘the consumer mentality’ dominating the nation’s education schools. All states, and nearly all public school districts within them, award higher salaries to teachers who take additional courses and earn advanced degrees. One result of this has been an ‘army of unmotivated’ educators looking for extra credits ‘in the easiest ways possible’ during their off hours, the report said.
“The universities, in turn, capitalize on this demand by viewing their education schools as ‘cash cows,’ setting low admissions standards and offering ‘quickie degrees’ instead of investing in a quality curriculum, the report said. In fact, while criticism has often focused on the questionable academic qualifications of many teachers, the report found that school administrators typically had substantially lower scores on the Graduate Record Examination than the teachers they supervise.”
Adapted from Greg Winter, “Study Finds Poor Performance by Nation’s Education Schools,” http://www.nytimes.com , March 15, 2005
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