A Vision for a New Teaching Profession - Arne Duncan vision speech

[housewolf]

it's long but it's well worth the read - Arne lays out a new blueprint for reforming education (for starters, revising teacher salary upwards). I found it very hopeful.


Working Toward "Wow": A Vision for a New Teaching Profession
Remarks of Arne Duncan, National Board of Professional Teaching Standards
July 29, 2011

...
Teachers help mold the future every day, having an impact that far outlasts any lesson plan or career. When I meet young people who want to make a difference, change a life, and leave behind a living, breathing legacy, I urge them to teach. Too often, though, bright, committed young Americans—the very people our students need in the classroom—do not answer the call to teach. Instead, they choose fields like law, medicine, and engineering—that command higher pay and often more respect.

Today, I want to talk about how we can change this trend, transform the teaching profession, and ensure that the next generation of teachers is the very best we can offer our children.

As baby boomers move towards retirement, we will have real challenges and real opportunity. We have an amazing chance to modernize the teaching profession and expand the talent pool. But it will require dramatic changes in the way we recruit, train, support, evaluate and compensate teachers. And there are important lessons from abroad. In nearly every leading country, a large majority of teachers come from the top third of college graduates. That must be our goal as well. The countries that are beating us in the classroom today will beat us in the workplace tomorrow—so this is a matter of economic security and national security.

...

Many bright and committed young people are attracted to teaching, but surveys show they are reluctant to enter the field for the long-haul. They see it as low-paying and low-prestige. They want excellence to be rewarded and meaningful feedback provided. They want a job that requires top-flight credentials and a challenging work schedule.
They want autonomy, the time and space to be creative, and they are willing to be held accountable. But they don't look at teaching the way they look at law, medicine or engineering. It requires too many sacrifices that other professions don't have to make.

...

Last year, McKinsey did a study comparing the U.S. to other countries and recommending—among other things—that we change the economics of the profession, pointing out that entry-level salary in the high 30's and an average ceiling in the high 60's will never attract and retain the top talent. We must think radically differently. We should also be asking how the teaching profession might change if salaries started at $60,000 and rose to $150,000. We must ask and answer hard questions on topics that have been off limits in the past like staffing practices and school organization, benefits packages and job security—because the answers may give us more realistic ways to afford these new professional conditions. If teachers are to be treated and compensated as the true professionals they are, the profession will need to shift away from an industrial-era blue-collar model of compensation to rewarding effectiveness and performance.

more...

http://www.ed.gov/news/speeches/working-toward-wow-vision-new-teaching-profession

[DebJ]

1. Teachers will have to be respected again before any type of

higher compensation could be considered. Sometimes I have felt embarrassed to say I'm a teacher...you feel like a leper in some circles.

I don't teach for money. Money is nice, but that has nothing to do with the reason I teach. I teach because I NEED to do it.

[flor-de-jasmim]

2. While I'm not against accountability (a word appearing frequently in his text)...

I'd like the same to be applied across the professions, and in proportion to salary earned. What about those hedge fund managers, CEOs, multinationals? Perhaps we should ALL take the Hippocratic oath to FIRST, DO NO HARM.

[bemildred]

3. What a tool. nt

[Bozita]

4. Pass the Kool-Aid, please.

[Mrs. Ted Nancy]

5. To whom is he referring?

I don't know who "they" are.

Now I also know some people believe that factors outside the classroom—like poverty and family breakdown—can minimize or negate the positive impact that teachers have on students.

They say that if a child comes from a broken home, it is unfair to expect that student to compete with classmates from more supportive environments.

They also say it is unfair to hold teachers, principals, schools, or districts accountable for the achievement levels of those low-income students.

I respect their opinion and appreciate their voice.

If "they" means teachers, principals, superintendents etc., then he is lying.

He says that "some people believe that factors outside the classroom—like poverty and family breakdown—can minimize or negate the positive impact that teachers have on students." People believe this because study after study has shown that poverty is the dominant factor in student achievement.

Then he as the gall to say, "I respect their opinion and appreciate their voice." He insults people and then says that he respects and appreciates their opinion.

He's the personification of arrogance.


Now, states will have to jump through more arbitrary hoops to get waivers from the draconian requirements of NCLB.

President Obama Rewrites the No Child Left Behind Act


Grover J. "Russ" Whitehurst, Senior Fellow, Governance Studies

The Brookings Institution

August 08, 2011 —

The White House has announced its plan to grant waivers of the provisions of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) to states that agree to put in place the education reforms favored by the administration. Thus states that agree, for example, to adopt the Common Core state standards for what students should learn and to evaluate teachers for tenure based on student test gains will be freed from the consequences facing schools that fail to meet adequate yearly progress goals under NCLB. The reforms the administration seeks as a condition of granting waivers are the same that it put forward in its Blueprint for reauthorizing NCLB, and that it advanced in its Race to the Top competition using the $5 billion in discretionary funds made available to it by Congress under the Stimulus Act.

There is no question that schools are being over-identified by NCLB as requiring intervention. Whether the proportion is the hyperbolic 80% predicted by Secretary Duncan or half that, as seems more likely, states and districts cannot handle that many schools being branded as needing improvement, either administratively or politically. Something needs to be done if the whole accountability system isn’t to be seen as a joke and its provisions widely flaunted. If Congress won’t or can’t act, then it is reasonable for the administration to indicate that it invites waiver requests. NCLB clearly grants the secretary of education the authority to grant waiver requests from states that can successfully propose alternative means of improving the quality of instruction and enhancing student achievement.

It is one thing for an administration to grant waivers to states to respond to unrealistic conditions on the ground or to allow experimentation and innovation. Similar waiver authority has been used to advance welfare and Medicaid reform going back to the Reagan administration, and to allow a few districts and states to experiment at the margins of NCLB in the Bush administration. It is quite another thing to grant state waivers conditional on compliance with a particular reform agenda that is dramatically different from existing law. The NCLB waiver authority does not grant the secretary of education the right to impose any conditions he considers appropriate on states seeking waivers, nor is there any history of such a wholesale executive branch rewrite of federal law through use of the waiver authority.

The administration is surely counting on the support of the congressional delegations of individual states to support the waiver request from their state. And with the majority of states likely to submit waiver requests, the administration may well have the political clout it needs to overcome the ire of key committee chairs whose authority to legislate has been undercut.

Some of Arne's words sound hopeful, but his actions are not. IMHO

http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2011/0808_obama_education_whitehurst.aspx

[Jefferson23]

6. I have one suggestion, consider posting this in the Education forum.

Someone there can help you decipher the code in the OP:

We must ask and answer hard questions on topics that have been off limits in the past like staffing practices and school organization, benefits packages and job security—because the answers may give us more realistic ways to afford these new professional conditions. If teachers are to be treated and compensated as the true professionals they are, the profession will need to shift away from an industrial-era blue-collar model of compensation to rewarding effectiveness and performance.

[Igel]

7. It's not a hard unpacking.

Factories tended to squelch innovation, they tended to reward a certain kind of bullheaded mediocrity. You slog away at the ol' grind, with the assumption that if you've been there 20 years you do a better job than if you've been there 10 years and you should get annual increases and job protection based on seniority.

Schools, esp. under the latest assault of collaboration-based education, also tend to produce a certain kind of mediocrity. You slog away at your classes, with the assumption that if you've been there 20 years you do a better job than if you've been there 10 years and you should get annual increases and job protection based on seniority.

Mediocrity is good in a way. If you have 5 teachers with chemistry classes, would you rather have 5 mediocre teachers or 1 great teacher, 1 above average teacher, 2 average teachers, 1 below average teacher, and 1 flop? Even if you only have the disaster for a year, that's 120 kids--and all flops are pretty much the same. Meanwhile, the "great teacher" may be great in any one of a dozen respects. Wonderful at GT kids, wonderful at getting across the math, making the kids excited about chemistry, being a whiz at assessment, presenting the material in ways that the bottom 15% can "get" quickly. Few teachers are great in all of them. To be honest, almost no teacher *has* to be gifted with special needs kids, disadvantaged/below-grade-level kids, and G&T: It's only sometimes necessary because of trends in how to "balance" classroom populations, things set by non-classroom teachers and politicians and some, but not most, parents.

It is often the case in academia that you get really good scholars who shouldn't be allowed around students. I know a few people with science PhDs from good schools that have taught high school science. Most of them suck at it. I've known people with a year of college chemistry do a much better job. It's the same in language classes: I'd rather have a decently trained instructor who's fluent in my language but not all that fluent in the language than a gifted orator with degrees and publications in the language but whose English is either nil or balanced bilingual. One understands what to teach and how to teach it; the other is wonderful in the subject, but a lousy teacher.

Again, Duncan shows that he doesn't get it. He's listening to people who have been wrong more often than not, but who claim to be right--and dazzle with the alphabet soup after their names, as though smart meant wise and college educated meant clear thinking.

[Jefferson23]

8. Again, Duncan shows that he doesn't get it.

I agree, he doesn't get it and his agenda is about ridding teachers of their union protection among other destructive
measures he wants in place. One only needs to look at Duncan's failure's in Chicago to see what happens with his approach.

There are answers, they choose not to listen to teachers, they have been ignoring them for a long time.

The Myth of Charter SchoolsNovember 11, 2010Diane Ravitch.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/nov/11/myth-charter-schools/

[roxiejules]

9. You gotta love the merits of a marketplace model for public education

We can turnaround every school in the country, and replace them with vigorous private-sector services that focus students on what really counts: test preparation!!

Remember: Our plans are to use the crisis as a way of making things better. It forces us to eliminate useless programs (like school nurses and libraries),and
sharpens and intensifies our focus on what really counts: Tests




:sarcasm:





http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2011/08/dept-of-education-reassures-public.html

[Fearless]

10. How exactly are you going to get strong teachers if you make their lives miserable?

Corporate education does not work.

[roxiejules]

12. +1 n/t

[bhikkhu]

11. You can tell he's re-selling a lot that's been sold to him pretty hard

He probably believes what he's saying, in the same way that most people will believe something if two people they know tell them. That has nothing to do with whether it will work or not...I have to defer to actual classroom teachers on that - I don't know anyone who thinks this will work any better than NCLB.

Most teachers I know want some stability and support - smaller class sizes (so more time to pay attention to students), better funding for their schools, and to not be jerked around every year by a new budget crisis.