Amazing Teacher Facts

Those four-year teacher qualifications are a crock. It's subject knowledge and motivation that counts

This month 3,700 recent college grads will begin Teach for America's five-week boot camp, before heading off for two-year stints at the nation's worst public schools. These young men and women were chosen from almost 25,000 applicants, hailing from our most selective colleges. Eleven per cent of Yale's senior class, 9% of Harvard's and 10% of Georgetown's applied for a job whose salary ranges from $25,000 (in rural South Dakota) to $44,000 (in New York City).

Hang on a second. Unions keep saying the best people won't go into teaching unless we pay them what doctors and lawyers and CEOs make. Not only are Teach for America salaries significantly lower than what J.P. Morgan might offer, but these individuals go to some very rough classrooms. What's going on?

It seems that Teach for America offers smart young people something even better than money - the chance to avoid the vast education bureaucracy. Participants need only pass academic muster and attend the summer training before entering a classroom. If they took the traditional route into teaching, they would have to endure years of "education" courses to be certified.

The American Federation of Teachers commonly derides Teach for America as a "band-aid." One of its arguments is that the program only lasts two years, barely enough time, they say, to get a handle on managing a classroom. However, it turns out that two-thirds of its grads stay in the education field, sometimes as teachers, but also as principals or policy makers.

More importantly, it doesn't matter that they are only in the classroom a short time, at least according to a recent Urban Institute study. Here's the gist: "On average, high school students taught by TFA corps members performed significantly better on state-required end-of-course exams, especially in math and science, than peers taught by far more experienced instructors. The TFA teachers' effect on student achievement in core classroom subjects was nearly three times the effect of teachers with three or more years of experience."

Jane Hannaway, one of the study's co-authors, says Teach for America participants may be more motivated than their traditional teacher peers. Second, they may receive better support during their experience. But, above all, Teach for America volunteers tend to have much better academic qualifications. They come from more competitive schools and they know more about the subjects they teach. Ms. Hannaway notes, "Students are better off being exposed to teachers with a high level of skill."

The strong performance in math and science seems to confirm that the more specialized the knowledge, the more important it is that teachers be well versed in it. (Imagine that.) No amount of time in front of a classroom will make you understand advanced algebra better.

Teach for America was pleased, but not exactly shocked, by these results. "We have always been a data-driven organization," says spokesman Amy Rabinowitz. "We have a selection model we've refined over the years." The organization figures out which teachers have been most successful in improving student performance and then seeks applicants with similar qualities. "It's mostly a record of high academic achievement and leadership in extracurricular activities." Sounds like the way the private sector hires. Don't tell the teachers unions.

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What schools need most is a motivated principal who is left alone by the bureaucrats

The item hardly made the morning news. [British] Government inspectors had discovered 14 "failed" schools that had suddenly become successes. Some bright spark thought it worth asking why. The answer came as a bolt of lightning: that all had benefited from something called leadership. It was the one common thread.

When stuck for an answer to a problem, I turn to the maxim known as Ockham's razor. It states: "Frustra fit per plura quod potest fieri per pauciora," or do not apply many things to a task that can be done with few. It was brilliantly "razored" by the American marines to KISS, "keep it simple, stupid".

In modern state education, Ockham's razor is tantamount to knife crime. It lacks bureaucratic complexity. Its application demands no expertise, no grand staff, no research budget, no office blocks with atriums. Its mere mention endangers thousands of nonjobs, threatening to send former teachers now screwing up the school system back where they belong, in the schools.

Not a week passes without these people inventing for ministers a new and expensive quick fix for bad schools, an academy, a foundation, a trust, a "please look at me, I'm a minister" initiative. There is not a shred of evidence that any of these upheavals work, but each has its dedicated bureaucracy, its budget and its spin doctor.

Now along comes Ofsted, the schools inspectorate, and lets the cat out of the bag. If you want a good school, get the right head. Sack bad heads and appoint good ones. Give them the money and leave them alone. If they do not work, sack them again. Good heads are not made, except in the forge of experience. Mostly they are born.

In his charming novel Mister Pip, Lloyd Jones tells of an educated man living on a Polynesian island from which civil war has driven all public servants. The islanders plead with him to teach their children, for which he has no skills, books or equipment. All he has is an old copy of Great Expectations, which becomes his sole teaching aid. He requires nothing but his own personality, and that of Dickens.

The answers to most institutional problems are that simple. Ofsted approached 14 schools that were so dysfunctional as to be under "special measures". Each had shown dramatic improvement in 2003-7, in both exam performance and pupil behaviour. There had been a calculated programme of discipline, school uniform and subdivision into houses, and a promoting of school pride and identity.

While the report's jargon was close to gibberish, the message was clear: only a highly motivated staff would deliver "a whole-school identity and sense of belonging . . . an evident pride in recognising collective achievement". Then came the sting. The inspectors found that all depended on the courage, risk-taking and autonomy of one person, the head teacher, and on that person being left alone. Indeed, "outside help can actually make things worse . . . with a potential to create more problems and slow the pace of improvement". Local councils do best to disengage or, as the report put it, "manage robust exit strategies".

This finding echoes a 2006 report that found one in five English schools did not have a permanent head at all, and one in three vacancies had to be readvertised. The reason was that targetry and crushing paperwork had greatly reduced the appeal of running a modern state school and teachers were just not interested. The chief task of an English school head is to man the battlements to fight off marauding bands of ministers and officials. As one said to me: "They make the hoodies at the school gate look like a bunch of patsies."

Hansard reported that in one year under Labour the schools ministry sent out 3,840 pages of instructions to head teachers. Back in 2005 the "head teacher of the year" publicly attributed her success to "ignoring all government strategies". In March 2006 the chief examiner, Ken Boston, confessed that at British schools the "assessment load is huge . . . far greater than in other countries and not necessary for the purpose".

The centralisation of school administration has clearly not worked. The schools secretary, Ed Balls, admitted recently that we have "gone backwards" compared with the rest of Europe. He seemed bereft of any solution, other than yet more central initiatives.

Finding good leaders and then leaving them alone runs counter to Balls's entire outlook and Treasury upbringing. As he and his schools minister, Andrew Adonis, showed last week in yet another reorganisation of secondary education, their preferred route to improvement is through targets, regulations, inspections and the humiliating threat of closure. Balls publicly listed 638 schools on his hitlist, an act of mass demoralisation worthy of the Inquisition.

Towards the end of his career as a management pundit, the late C Northcote Parkinson retreated into what many saw as his least original phase. His famous "laws" had passed into the language, but none had had any effect. Paperwork still proliferated, work expanded to fill the time available and staff hired to do half-jobs still needed assistants. The one common trait that Parkinson could detect in all management success was that will-o'-the-wisp, leadership. An inspirational and determined leader defied his laws and moved bureaucratic mountains. Nothing else could do the trick. Parkinson's fans were contemptuous. How banal, they said. The genius had met old age.

The same response was given by the BBC to the Ofsted report on failing schools. Informed that the key lay in leadership, the interviewer remarked coldly: "But isn't that a statement of the blindingly obvious?" and turned to the next item. The BBC worships at the shrine of management consultancy and gorges on complexity. It cannot handle Ockham's razor. It loathes the simple answer.

Ofsted's discovery is of wider application than just to schools. As we watch the agony that Alan Johnson and his predecessors have inflicted on the National Health Service, we see the same syndrome. When anything is wrong with a hospital or health centre, the cure lies in reorganisation. There must, to use the prime minister's motto, be "solution through change". I think not. Public services are supplied by humans led by humans.

Whenever a hospital has in some sense failed, the cry is heard, "Bring back the matron", and some eager minister promises it. He then appoints 10 administrators over her head. These administrators have to be paid "incentive bonuses" just to do their jobs, defined as not to lead but to meet an external target. Nothing works.

We eulogise the simplistic managerial skills of an Alan Sugar, yet refuse to apply the lesson to the public sector. Top-down public administration in Britain is now obsessively complex. Last week it was announced that "popular schools will be allowed to take up to 26 extra pupils a year above their official limit, ministers propose". What on earth has such a detail to do with ministers? Such meddling reflects a lack of confidence in people to do good work. It ranks with the bonus fixation and targetry as a sure way of destroying professional self-esteem.

The cult of leadership was derided in the last century by the countervailing cult of management as shrouded in ugly connotations of superiority. The managerialists implied that running a human institution was a matter of technical skill, one that could be quantified, incentivised and taught. This appealed to the control tendencies of Whitehall. It reflected a lack of faith in the ability of democrats to hold institutions to account, be they schools, hospitals, care homes, police forces or even prisons - despite such accountability operating across the rest of Europe to general public satisfaction. Not a single cabinet minister to my knowledge has ever run an institution and thus known what it is like to deal with a cabinet minister on the rampage.

Leadership is notoriously indefinable and therefore hard to ordain from above. It lies in unexpected and untutored places, possessed for instance by Tony Blair but sadly not by Gordon Brown. It is unpredictable but essential to the running of institutions, often revealed only by trial and error. Ofsted has detected it in 14 lucky schools. Will the rest get the message?

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Mass. governor plans new kind of public school

Charter-type program upsetting unions so it must be good

Governor Deval Patrick, in a potential break with the teachers unions that helped elect him, is set to propose a new form of public school that would assume unprecedented control over matters ranging from curriculum and hiring decisions to policies on school uniforms and the length of the school year.

The governor's proposal for "readiness schools," a key element of his sweeping 10-year education plan to be unveiled later this month, aims to combine features of the state's charter schools and Boston's experimental pilot schools. Governed by local boards and freed from many constraints imposed by unions, school districts, and the state, the readiness schools would adapt to community needs and offer new alternatives in school systems across the state, administration officials said yesterday. "We need to radically transform the existing system," said one official briefed on the plan who talked on condition of anonymity.

The plan is likely to be embraced by suburban parents, who have clamored for more choices, and several education groups yesterday signaled their approval. But it could meet stiff resistance from teachers unions that have fiercely protected their influence over issues such as hiring policies and could represent a significant roadblock as Patrick tries to win political support. Additionally, school districts in the past have argued against charter-type schools, saying that they suck money from regular public schools and steal the best students from the systems.

"I told the governor I thought it was a breakthrough to put this on the table," said Paul Grogan, president of the Boston Foundation, which has advocated for pilot schools in Boston. "But there's got to be a receptivity on all parties."

Patrick plans to file legislation on the readiness schools in January. If approved by the Legislature, the state could have its first such schools by the start of the 2009-2010 school year. Administration officials have an initial goal of 40 readiness schools within four years, but hope to create more after that. There are currently 1,870 public schools statewide.

Like charter schools, which have been operating in Massachusetts since 1993, readiness schools would be allowed to deviate from state curriculum guidelines and experiment with teaching practices. Unlike most charter schools, which are governed by the state, they would report to local school committees. Also unlike charter schools, readiness schools could be created from existing public schools, according to the plan. The readiness schools would be similar to Boston's pilot schools, created in 1993 when the city struck a deal with the teachers' union to create the charter-type schools that are free from School Department and collective bargaining rules.

Both pilots and charters have been hailed by advocates for offering more innovative teaching styles and curriculum. The schools typically admit students through a lottery system, and many have long waiting lists. Administration officials said readiness schools would be open to all students in a district and would have no admissions criteria.

Teachers unions have long criticized charter and pilot schools, which typically hire nonunion teachers. Union officials, who wield influence in the Legislature and with local school districts, said yesterday that they like the governor's program as a concept but want more assurances that their members' contracts are protected. "We are open to other ways of doing things," said Anne Wass, president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, which has nearly 108,000 members. "Certainly we're not negative. We're willing to work with the administration on this."

One area that may prove controversial is an aspect of the plan that would limit collective bargaining to salary and benefits and due-process dismissals. "We're open to new ideas, but we're interested in protecting collective bargaining rights," said Thomas Gosnell, president of the American Federation of Teachers Massachusetts, which has 27,000 members. He declined to comment further until the administration puts out more details.

Under the plan, there are four ways a readiness school could open: A group of educators could form a collaborative and present the local school committee with a plan to operate a school; a district could convert a school with teacher consent; a School Committee could contract with outside operators, such as charter school management companies; or the state Board of Education could convert a school deemed chronically underperforming. The schools would be held accountable through performance contracts; if student achievement lagged, the School Committee could vote to take the school back.

"As a concept, we're really intrigued," said Glenn Koocher, executive director of the Massachusetts Association of School Committees, a state advocacy group. "After years of not being included in discussions on education reform, we now feel there is going to be a really healthy dialogue."

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