The Case for a Teacher Bar Exam

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/01/the-case-for-a-teacher-bar-exam/267030/

by kevinalexbrown • 14 years ago

41 64 14 years ago

It seems like there are so few teachers now. Maybe the first problem to solve is why we as a nation don't invest more in paying good wages to our teachers.

w1ntermute7• 14 years ago

These issues with teachers are largely in school districts in poor areas. The wealthy suburban school district I attended had no issues with teacher quality, and friends I made in college from all over the country confirmed this to be true on the national level.

Since school districts are primarily funded by local taxes, poor children end up with bad teachers. I believe this is what NCLB was created to fix, but that wasn't successful for a variety of reasons, the most prominent of which was probably the tying of funding to continual yearly improvement in standardized test scores.

dragonwriter3• 14 years ago

Actually, the problem isn't just school districts being funded by local taxes -- even states that have statewide policies that equalize funding have the same problem. The thing is, poor school districts are often, comparatively, unattractive and unsafe places to work even with the same expenditures of funds (because they are often in unattractive and unsafe communities), so teachers often don't want to work there.

(And NCLB wasn't created to fix this problem, it was created to divert funding from education to private testing vendors and provide a mechanism to rate public schools as failing as a political maneuver to build support for privatization of schools.)

ktsmith9• 14 years ago

School funding often breaks down at the state level not the local level though it varies by state of course. Simply being in a wealthy suburb does not mean that your school has any more funding than a school in a poor area. In fact it's quite likely that your schools received significantly less money than schools in poorer areas due to federal funding via grants and things like Title I.

jpwagner2• 14 years ago

The article addresses this. Do you have an argument to make?

rayiner2• 14 years ago

Every article about how terrible the U.S. education system is is more or less bunk. Judge Posner on such comparisons: http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/2011/01/the-pisa-rankings-...

More numbers: http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-abou...

The solution is not to pay teachers more or have better teachers. I'm not convinced test scores are even all that sensitive to teacher quality within a wide range. The solution is to figure out a way to deal with inner city Chicago and places like it. The legacy of slavery, segregation, and white flight. A place where kids come from generations of uneducated parents and go to school fearing for their physical safety in the face of gangs, drugs, etc.

minikomi• 14 years ago

I found this episode of This American Life a pretty thought provoking discussion on the same subject, and definitely worth a listen.

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/474/t...

tokenadult• 14 years ago

Education policy is the issue that drew me to participate on Hacker News,

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4728123

and I'm glad to see that so many participants, from the founder on to the newest member, enjoy thinking about and checking facts on education issues.

I'm not convinced test scores are even all that sensitive to teacher quality within a wide range.

Eric Hanushek has produced many peer-reviewed papers on the importance of teacher quality,

http://hanushek.stanford.edu/publications/teacher-quality

and I encourage participants on Hacker News who like to discuss education policy to read them thoughtfully. Better-quality teachers matter, both for test scores in the short term and for outcomes that matter a lot more in the long term.

Every article about how terrible the U.S. education system is is more or less bunk.

"Every" such article? How many have you actually read? Have you lived in another country for any length of time, as I have?

Quite a few authors have devoted more time and effort to careful international comparisons of education than the two bloggers you recommended to back up your opinion.

http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/brown-center-chalkboard/posts...

http://educationnext.org/is-the-us-catching-up/

http://educationnext.org/teaching-math-to-the-talented/

Content analysis of the textbooks (for people who can read Japanese or Korean or Chinese or Russian--but how many Americans is that?) makes the point very clear. See

http://www.de.ufpe.br/~toom/travel/sweden05/WP-SWEDEN-NEW.pd...

(a LONG but worthwhile read I learned about from another Hacker News participant) for more about what's really missing in United States education.

from a professor of mathematics at Princeton about which students come to Princeton well prepared for the courses there.

Alex39172• 14 years ago

"Eric Hanushek has produced many peer-reviewed papers on the importance of teacher quality"

All school effects put together are smaller than non-school effects, and teacher quality is only one aspect of school effects. So while teacher quality is fairly important in terms of how much kids learn in school, it's not clear that it would be possible to improve teacher quality enough to produce meaningful improvements on those international tests.

Even if improving teacher quality were capable of improving test scores, it's not clear that it's the most cost effective method.

And the idea that federal standardized testing would improve teacher quality is completely unproven, and the idea that merit pay would improve teaching quality has been soundly disproven.

Not to mention that redesigning the school system around becoming more 'competitive' on standardized tests is extremely dubious to begin with.

kevinalexbrown• 14 years ago

I've volunteered in inner city Chicago schools. I coached a middle school debate team there. There were times when I believe I was the only non-black person in the building. This made the debate topic of racial profiling even more difficult to discuss, but the kids managed it really well. A paraphrased quotation from one student: "On the one hand I don't like racial profiling because the white police come by every half-hour, but on the other hand there are gunshots every two hours." It doesn't even matter how accurate she was, that was her perception of the current state of her life.

I thought this article was interesting, because if teaching at a nice "white" school in the suburbs isn't considered super prestigious, what will make inner-city Chicago teaching prestigious in the long term? I've heard Teach for America suggested, and I've had friends who've done it. But TFA teachers are often not in it for "the long haul" because for the "best and brightest" to stay teaching in the inner city isn't prestigious enough to counter the frustration.

So while many articles about the US education system are bunk, and this one doesn't seem to focus on the inner city, I think the principles might still apply.

EDIT: Please, I don't want anyone to get the impression I think I understand everything about the problems South Side Chicago students face. I did have the privilege of observing some of the challenges they face first-hand, but I still have very little knowledge of the actual state of mind growing up in such places really consists of.

rayiner2• 14 years ago

You can't change the situation in the south side of Chicago with some teachers. It is, unfortunately, a much deeper rooted and more systematic problem.

I'm Asian, and one of the things Asian parents tell their kids is: choose your friends very carefully. You will become the kind of person you surround yourself with. So what of a kid on the south side? Surrounded by kids with no fathers, from families with no education or belief in education? Surrounded by drug dealers and gang bangers?

These communities will never improve so long as they remain so completely segregated, economically and racially. That's the tough issue nobody wants to address.

swampthing• 14 years ago

I think most people in favor of improving our education system would assert that it's one approach of dealing with "inner city Chicago and places like it". It's also worth noting that it can be a valuable part of the solution even it's not wholly sufficient.

rdl• 14 years ago

I agree with you, but what is even possible to do to fix that kind of place?

The only way I know of anyone getting out of the ghetto and becoming basically worthwhile seems to be the military, and even that takes 1-2 decades in (the low ranking enlisted kids from the ghetto are basically criminals in uniform in a lot of cases). The most likely thing is that they're always sketch, but their kids grow up in an entirely different environment and are decent.

But, it's not like we can enlist ~10mm random people (some with physical/mental/etc. illness) into the military, keep them there for 20y, and hope that when they procreate, their kids end up better.

lhnn• 14 years ago

I think it would be interesting to see this implemented at a state level, where it belongs, rather than trying to accomplish this at the Federal level.

On one side, teachers do suffer from excess bureaucracy, underappreciation and (sometimes) lack of skills. On the other, mandatory guilds/bars are not usually something I'm a fan of, on principle.

mjmahone172• 14 years ago

Why not create a non-mandatory bar, like the ABA? This group could create high-standards teacher certifications, possibly something similar to how actuaries have a series of tests in order to get accredited at a specific level (and the amount of schooling they have isn't relevant, just the level they've managed to pass). I know a lot of states wouldn't require it, but if I'm a principle and someone's taken the time to get accredited, I think that's a good reason to hire them. Especially in more competitive areas like English and History. We wouldn't prevent people from practicing teaching without accreditation, but it should be more difficult, in the long term, as more and more teachers do get accredited.

japhyr6• 14 years ago

Teachers can earn National Board certification[0]. This is a fairly rigorous process, that demonstrates teachers have a higher level of proficiency.

[0] http://www.nbpts.org/

jpwagner2• 14 years ago

[best test takers] is unlikely to be strongly correlated with [best teachers].

mjmahone172• 14 years ago

Should we remove the qualification for med school being that you do exceptionally well on the MCAT? Should we eliminate the LSAT and Bar exams for lawyers? Because it's likely that, at the very least, the best teachers should be able to pass rigorous tests, even if they aren't the absolute best at said test.

mr_luc• 14 years ago

That's funny - I was just thinking that we need to remove all of the current certification-based requirements for teachers. This seems to go the other way.

Education needs to change drastically. It needs to be nimble. It needs to start providing value in a post-industrial economy -- i.e, it needs to train kids to do knowledge work. You'll know it's making progress when graduating from High School starts to mean something again.

No one knows what that transition will look like, or what it will take. Most people agree it'll be disruptive and messy, and the teaching profession is already being disrupted (Coursera, Codecademy, etc).

It seems as though raising the barriers to entry for teaching as a profession, by adding yet another layer of certification, is a protectionist move that could get in the way of 'good disruption.'

randomdata2• 14 years ago

I was thinking similar thoughts. You want to hire the best people possible, not those who have jumped though various hoops. Shrinking the pool of possible people you can hire is never going to raise the quality of talent available. How could it?

dragonwriter3• 14 years ago

In general, if the process that shrinks the pool is better at chopping off the low end of the distribution than the process that selects individual members from the pool to employ is at avoiding selecting from the low end of the distribution, then shrinking the pool by that method prior to selection will, in fact, raise the quality of talent actually selected.

More specifically, "jumping through hoops" selects, if nothing else, for motivation, which is a not-unimportant qualification for teaching.

learc83• 14 years ago

I'm not a fan of more certification, but I think part of the problem is that school bureaucracy doesn't treat teachers like professionals.

I have a close friend who teaches elementary school and the teachers in her school are treated almost exactly like low level retail employees.

In my opinion the rigidity with which you're managed determines whether you can be considered a "professional" or not.

frozenport2• 14 years ago

I think your criticism doesn't apply to basic competencies like learning how to read or add numbers. Kids in Chicago city schools are unable to form sentences.

Alex39172• 14 years ago

This is dumb. States already require teachers to pass standardized tests to demonstrate content mastery and pedagogical skill, and there is zero reason to think that it does anything to improve teacher quality, let alone to think that implementing it on the federal level would improve teacher quality.

And there is tons of evidence showing that merit pay not only doesn't improve teaching quality, but actually makes it worse.

The idea that the reason why Finland's kids do better on some random test is because we don't have standardized testing and merit pay for teachers is absurd. This is just another attempt at the privatization of schooling so that capitalists can gut the school system and monetize children.

vor_• 14 years ago

> And there is tons of evidence showing that merit pay not only doesn't improve teaching quality, but actually makes it worse.

Do you have links to this evidence? I'm genuinely curious; my own searching brings up evidence in favor of merit pay, such as this recent study: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/07/23/d...

pmorici• 14 years ago

There is a great documentary called "Waiting For Superman" that addresses the inner city school problem and so called achievement gap. It's on NetFlix. If you haven't seen it it is worth the time.

chrismealy• 14 years ago

You own the Pittsburgh Pirates. Your team stinks. You want to turn it into the Yankees. Do you have your players work longer hours for less pay? Add lots of testing? Go after the players' union? Or do you just do what the Yankees do, and pay more for better players?

adventured2• 14 years ago

You're already the Yankees. You pay far more than everybody else, and you're not winning enough to justify the vast expenditures. The only thing keeping your franchise afloat is a media network that pays for it all (tax payers endlessly subsidizing horrific teaching results despite the highest pay scale in the developed world).

And who in their right mind would want to be the Yankees? You pay two times too much for all your players, and almost never win a championship because of it. You've got A-Rod, a broken down disaster that you pay $30+ million per year for, that you bought because you were foolishly trying to buy a championship instead of building a real team.

The Pirates get more wins per dollars spent. The Pirates won a mere 16 less games (17% less than NYY), but paid roughly 66% less for that performance.

And if you want to talk raw winning. Let's talk the Cincinnati Reds. They won two more games than the Yankees, with 55% less payroll.

While other teams with half the payroll take home the world series title year after year, the Yankees might be lucky to eek out one title every ten years, and pay $2 billion dollars for it.

manglav3• 14 years ago

I have a question for HN. At what point do you become responsible for your own education?

Before, you may have not had a public library near you. Nowadays, there is too much information. Curation? Multiple MOOC's have taken the problem and squashed it. Internet Access? I'm not sure, but I remember reading that Comcast gives subsidized rates in poor income areas. Computers / Notebooks? This I'm not sure about at all. What access do people have?

Assuming people have access to education, at what point are "educators" defunct? I feel as though I would not have gone to high school had these MOOC's been available. However, I did have enough personal curiosity to pursue these things. In college now, I'm not "spoon fed" anymore, it is my responsibility to do well, and seek out help if I am struggling. I am just curious where people think that line is drawn, and if it's different for everyone or not. I am for the Bar exam - for goodness's sake, we still have teachers trying to teach Creationism!

One of my favorite videos on reforming education, from a very logical perspective from Sir Ken Robinson. Bonus: it's pictorially animated! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

bphogan• 14 years ago

Say you have parents who split up when you were two. Then say your mom works two jobs and doesn't help you with your homework, ever. Say you go to school on Monday and your first decent meal is the snack the teacher gives you on Monday morning.

Say this is Kindergarten.

At what point do you then even learn to become responsible for your own education?

Unfortunately I've recently been introduced to a lot of those kinds of things, and it's really hard to make that change from judging.

It was easy to see the unmotivated kid in the class as a slacker. Then we find out he wasn't eating cos it was a choice between getting food or paying for heat.

Our backgrounds shape us much more than teachers do. What goes on outside of the class does too.

You're a motivated self-learner. How much of that, truly, is because of the environment you grew up in?

I know I sling code because my dad bought a computer and let me play on it when I was 7. I was encouraged by my dad to learn on my own.

manglav3• 14 years ago

bphogan I was not saying these kids are unmotivated and should focus on school - I am very sorry for even letting my comment be unclear. Of course our children should be nurtured, and the fact that this situation exists is awful.

Everyone is different when it comes to what shapes them, for me it was a few select science teachers (not so much my environment in this case). That's why I am such a fan for Teach for America. I know four of my classmates who have elected to participate, and it has been the most rewarding experience of their lives. The thing that kids appreciate most? That they care. Really care.

One idea thing I've always wondered about was making a safe place in this cities to code. I wrote a paper on how 1. School districts can cut IT budgets instead of teaching staff by using servers and thin clients instead of full desktop computers. Then 2. after school, adding some coding classes after school (including meals, stews are healthy,cheap, and hot), with the eventual goal of becoming a self-sufficient outsourcing team. Or making mockups, or even slicing PSD's. I feel as though if Hacker Dojo's and such exist, eventually a charity version will be created as well. There could be sponsors from FB / Google / IBM, etc...

It's just a dream.

I've always been a supporter of education for all. It's just a really, really, hard problem. I can't think of doing anything that these other startups aren't doing, so I'm waiting until I can contribute a bit more. Thanks for the anecdote bphogan, it really hit home.

japhyr6• 14 years ago

"Multiple MOOC's have taken the problem and squashed it."

I have been watching some of my high school students enroll in some MOOCs recently. Most of them only do well if they have the support of at least one skilled adult around them - skilled meaning that person can help the student find the right course, get the computer working properly, help understand assignments that may require background knowledge that the student is lacking.

I am in support of MOOCs, but we can't just dump these courses online and then claim that everyone now has equal access to a high-quality education on their own time.

manglav3• 14 years ago

japhyr are you a teacher? What subject? I'm definitely not saying that. The I was describing was curation - to know the good courses from the bad. Shoot, if you don't like the Harvard course, take the MIT course.

I agree that getting the computer to work properly can be an issue sometimes, but I don't think it's that complicated? I feel as though if people know how to post to facebook/twitter and stream video, they can get by in the course...please correct me if it is more involved than that. My only experience entailed exactly that - posting in a discussion forum and streaming lessons.

For background knowledge, I used to use physicsforums.com to answer all my questions. 99% of the time the question had already been asked.

japhyr I agree that a guiding hand is always helpful. But I would count finding you and getting your help as "taking responsibility for my own education". Kudos to you and your students!

mynameishere• 14 years ago

The massive forced population transfers involved in making the US like Finland would probably be a splotch on our history.

eriksank• 14 years ago

In my opinion, the article does not address what I experience as the real problem in the field of education: total lack of freedom to choose. After confiscating ("appropriating") the budget from the pockets of the parents, the politicians add insult upon injury by deciding in the parents' stead what education should be all about. I just want a competing portfolio of education service providers of which I choose the ones I want to work with, and I pay them out of my own pocket. Why does this kind of freedom seem so impossible to achieve even in the so-called "land of the free"?

codva• 14 years ago

It's possible, but you have to opt out of the system and do it all yourself. Neither of my kids ever went to school - both killed it on the SAT and other standardized tests while spending far less time on "school" than their traditionally educated peers. Not that I think standardized test scores really prove much, but if we are going to measure the success of education by them, then both my kids were wild successes, and neither ever went to school.

Of course, that option is not practical for 90% of the population.

j2kun• 14 years ago

A scary majority of my constituent mathematics majors in undergrad told me this of linear algebra (a basic mathematics subject), "I don't care about this stupid shit. I just want to get my degree so I can go teach."

We need a bar exam to weed out these scary people.

The Case for a Teacher Bar Exam

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