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Explore the various changes in educational reform, including teacher evaluations, accountability, and the role of standards, and understand how these reforms affect teaching and student learning.
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CHAPTER 12: Educational Reform and You Introduction to Teaching: Becoming a Professional
Educational Reform • Changes in teachers, students, classrooms, and schools all designed to increase the amount students learn • Examples of reform include: • Licensure exam, before you enter the profession • Evaluations include your students’ performance • Mastery of performance standards before they are promoted from one grade to another, or graduate from high school • Providing parents with choices about where they send their children to school • The creation of standards, holding students accountable for meeting the standards, and making teachers responsible for students meeting the standards is at the heart of the reform movement.
Influences on Student Learning • Standards • NCLB • AYP • You—their teacher • The quality of a school is determined by the quality of its teachers. • You, you will be the most important factor influencing your students’ learning!
The Importance of Teachers • . . . What really makes a difference, is the quality of the teacher (Thomas & Wingert, 2010, p. 25). • ……Americans singled out improving the quality of teachers as the most important action education can take to improve learning (Bushaw & Lopez, 2010, p. 15).
Teacher Evaluation • Reform: Focus on the Teacher • Teacher Evaluation • Pay for Performance • Merit Pay • Value-added models of teacher evaluation: • The process of assessing the amount students learn—as measured by their performance on standardized tests—while in a particular teacher’s classroom and using that information as part of a teacher’s evaluation
Pay for Performance • Currently: • “Steps” increase for number of years and credits obtained • If you receive bonuses for extra responsibilities, serving as team leader, do your students perform better on standardized tests? • Do you support these moves? • What is your rational for your opinion?
Merit Pay and Arguments Supporting Merit Pay • Merit pay • A supplement to a teacher’s base salary used to reward exemplary performance • Arguments supporting merit pay: • Rewarding exemplary teaching performance -provides incentives for teacher excellence. • Encourage more competent people to consider teaching as a career and encourage the best and brightest teachers to remain in the profession.
Arguments Critical of Merit Pay • Merit pay is divisive, damages morale, and makes teachers less likely to cooperate with each other • To believe that teachers will try harder if offered a financial incentive is to assume that they aren’t trying hard now, that they know what to do, but simply aren’t doing it, and that they are motivated more by money than by their students’ needs. These are unlikely and unsupported conclusions, which teachers find insulting rather than motivating. (Gratz, 2009, p. 40) • Do you, or do you not support merit pay? • What is the rationale for your opinion?
Reform: Focus on the Curriculum • Standards, Testing, & Accountability • National Standards • Controversies of the Standards Movement • Each is a standard, a statement describing what students should know or be able to do after a prescribed period of study.
Interpreting and Teaching Standards • First, • you will need to decide what [exactly] the standard means. For instance what does …..“know that these motions explain such phenomena as the day, the year . . .” mean? • This decision is yours—alone—to make. • Second, • you will need to decide how you will teach the topic(s) so that your students will reach the standard. • As an example, you will likely 1) teach your students that a year represents one full revolution of the Earth around the Sun, and you 2)will illustrate it with models of the Earth and Sun. At the same time you will use the tilt of the Earth on its axis 3) to help your students understand the four seasons.
Accountability and High-Stakes Testing • Accountability • Demonstrate that they’ve met standards and make teachers responsible for ensuring that they do. • High-stakes tests • Used to determine whether students can advance from one grade to another, graduate from high school, or have access to specific fields of study, such as advanced math. • All states have created standards, and all states hold students and teachers accountable for meeting the standards. • They will be a part of your life when you begin teaching.
Reform: Focus on Schools • Race to The Top • School Choice • Charter Schools • Vouchers • Homeschooling
Race to the Top • Obama administration school reform effort, 2009 goals: • Improve teacher and principal effectiveness through performance-based assessments (student test scores) • Encourage the adoption of Common Core Standards and develop corresponding assessment systems • Target low-performing schools and either improve them, or convert to charters or privately managed schools • Improve existing data management systems to provide better information to teachers and decision-makers. • States compete for federal funds to support their reforms initiatives.
Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSSI) • The CCSSI is a reform effort, launched in 2009, that is designed to establish a single set of clear educational standards for all states in English-language arts and mathematics • Different state’s standards vary widely in quality • The common core state standards are very similar in format to existing state standards, so applying them in your classroom should be no more difficult than applying your state standards.
School-Level Reforms • Charter Schools: • Alternative schools that are publicly funded (i.e., public schools) but independently operated. • KIPP Schools (Knowledge Is Power Program) • A national network of free, open-enrollment charter schools that has the goal of preparing students in underserved communities for success in college and in life. • Vouchers • Checks or written documents that parents can use to purchase educational services at schools other than the ones their children are assigned to attend based on their geographical location. • Homeschooling • The process of parents educating their children at home. • Each—are forms of school choice.
Discussion Questions 1-3 • 1. Has the “standards movement” had a positive or a negative effect on students’ learning in this country? • 2. Is merit pay for teachers a good idea? Would you like to work in a school that has a merit pay system? What can you do right now to ensure your success in such a system? • 3. Are value-added models of teacher evaluation a good idea? How would they affect you as a teacher? What would you have to do or change to make sure you scored well on these systems?
Discussion Questions 4-6 • 4. Will reforms that emphasize choice, such as the use of school vouchers and enrollment in magnet schools, likely increase or decrease in the future? Why do you think so? • 5. Will school choice be a positive or negative development in education? Why? • 6. Should vouchers be made available to private religious schools? Why or why not?
