So, I'm Deborah Stipek. I'm
the Dean of Graduate School of
Education at Stanford and I'm
absolutely delighted to see
you all here this evening at
the 2015 Cubberley Lecture.
This is our signature program
that's really designed to
bring the community together
with those of us who live in
the university to explore and
deepen our understanding of
some of the important
educational issues of our
time. And what more important
issue is there than teaching?
I think the topic for tonight
is particularly timely because
it is Teacher Appreciation
Week. Although-
>> [APPLAUSE]
>> I do want to say that in
the Graduate School of
Education, every week is
Teacher Appreciation Week.
>> [APPLAUSE]
>> So I,
in speaking of pre-teachers
and appreciating teachers
I'm delighted to introduce
first to you our very own
Linda Darling Hammond. I was.
>> [APPLAUSE]
>> See, there.
>> [APPLAUSE]
>> I was given explicit
direction to introduce her.
Even though, we all know,
she needs no introduction.
I really was tempted to just
say, here's Linda.
>> [LAUGH].
>> But, I was told that that
would be totally
inappropriate.
And there may be a few things
that you don't know about her
that I would like to share.
So, Linda is
the Charles E Ducommun
Professor of Education in
the G.S.E. where she founded
the Stanford Center for
Opportunity Policy in
Education, much more easily
thought of as SCOPE.
Which conducts research and
policy analysis on issues
affecting educational equity
and opportunity, including
curriculum assessment and
teacher policy and practices.
From 1994 to 2001,
Linda was Executive Director
of the National Commission on
Teaching and America's Future.
Which the, the 1996 report,
What Matters Most,
teaching for America's future,
lead to sweeping change,
policy changes affecting
teaching and schooling. And
was named one of the most
influential reports affecting
US education. In 2006, Linda
was named one of the nation's
ten most influential people
affecting educational policy
over the past decade. And in
2008 she served as the leader
of President Barack Obama's
education policy transition
team. She continues to shape
California's education policy
as the chair of the Commission
on Teacher Credentialing.
So, please join me in
welcoming Linda here tonight,
but don't come up yet,
Linda, just tell,
tell her.
>> [APPLAUSE]
>> For
the moment, we just want her
to know how happy we are that
she's here. Second,
[COUGH] I want to give a warm
welcome to Dana Goldstein.
Dana's a journalist and
the author of The New York
Time's bestseller, and
notable book of 2014,
The Teacher Wars,
A History of America's
Most Embattled Profession.
She's a staff writer at
the Marshall Project and
a contributor to Slate, The
Atlantic and other magazines.
Dana writes about education,
social science, inequality,
criminal justice,
women's issues, cities, and
public health.
I actually didn't
know that she wrote about
all of these issues, and
I was really impressed
that she could have such
breadth and yet
such a deep understanding of
the topic we are going to
be talking about tonight,
about teachers. She has been
a Spencer Foundation Fellow
in Education Journalism.
A Schwartz Fellow,
no relation to Dan Schwartz
as far as I know,
at the New America Foundation
and
a Puffin Foundation Fellow
at the Nation Institute.
She graduated from
Brown University and
attended 13 years of public
schooling in Austin,
New York. So, given that we're
talking about teachers, and
that it is Teacher
Appreciation Week we thought
we'd just mention something
about our guest teachers.
Dana's favorite teacher
was Mr. Tunney. And
the reason he was her favorite
teacher is that he taught her
how to read great literature
critically. From Toni Morrison
to Ernest Hemingway to Robert
Penn Warren, that's quite a,
a, of a broad spectrum.
And it looks to me like
this is a teacher who would
anticipating the Common Core,
because I have a feeling Dana
would have done very well on
it. Dana was kind
enough to meet with
Stanford's pre-education
society this, this afternoon.
This is a group of
students undergraduates,
who are seeking to
attract the best and
brightest Stanford
undergraduates to the teaching
profession. So we'd like to
thank you, Dana, for taking
the time to do that. So and
let's hear some applause for
Dana.
>> [APPLAUSE]
>> I can see we didn't all get
the script that I got, so. So
thirdly, I'd like to introduce
Elizabeth Green, co-fonder,
co-founder, CEO and edit,
editor-in-chief of Chalkbeat.
Otherwise, she doesn't have
very much to do with it.
This is a nonprofit news,
news organization that covers
educational change efforts
across the country. Elizabeth
was an Obi Journalism Fellow,
studying education in Japan,
and
a Spencer Fellow in
Education Journalism at
Columbia University.
She's the auth,
author of the recent
New York Times best seller,
Building a Better Teacher How
teaching works and
How To Teach It To Everyone.
Which features the work, I do,
would just like to point out
of Stanford's own Nate Gage,
Pam Grossman, Lee Schulman,
who I think is here today,
Peter Williamson, Rick
Hanushek, and probably others.
So what about Elizabeth's
teacher? Her most inspiring
teacher was John Math,
Mathwin, whose teaching was
the kind that seems invisible
at first glance, but only
achieves that invisibility
through intense craftsmanship,
which is what we know
good teachers are.
You may also have not
know that Dana and
Elizabeth are good friends.
And, we're delighted to
welcome them, so that we can
learn from them, and also to
give them an opportunity to
hang out with each other. I,
I, I just want to say one
thing about these books,
which are in the lobby, for
you to, to purchase if you're,
and I have a feeling
that there'll be a run on them
after you he, hear them speak.
I have a confession to make
which was I thought what's
really important that I sort
of be familiar with this work,
given that we're hosting
this whole thing. And so
I sat down thinking that I was
gonna spend about an hour with
each book.
I read the whole books. I had
no intention of doing that.
>> [LAUGH].
>> Seriously,
I don't have time to read
a whole book. But they're
just incredibly engaging and
insightful and thoughtful and
taught me a lot, so
I'm here to recommend them and
I want you to know I don't get
any percentage whatsoever.
So, just to get this show on
the road here's what we're
going to do this evening
Linda is gonna help us frame
the conversation.
And then Dana and
Elizabeth will each have some
remarks. And then they're
going to have a conversation
with each other lead by Linda.
And then there will be
opportunities for you to ask
questions of all three of our
panelists. If you would like
to follow the discussion on
Twitter, check out #Cubblex.
C-u-b-b-l-e-x. So, the next
thing I have to say is,
here's Linda.
>> [APPLAUSE].
>> Well,
I am delighted to welcome
these two brilliant
young analysts of
teaching here to Standford.
Their two books
have illuminated some vexing
dilemmas about teachings,
social historical position
in the United States,
which is the primary
theme of Dana's book, but
also is picked up somewhat
by Liz and about the problem
of pedagogical learning and
development,
which is Liz's major theme,
but it appears a little bit in
Dana's book as well. These
are intimately linked because
the status of teaching depends
on the knowledge base and
it's acquisition by teachers.
There's an inverse
relationship between
our ability to produce
well informed, thoughtful
effective teachers and
our intention as a society
to micromanage their work.
The more we can trust
the people in the schools,
the more we're willing to
give them the collective
professional autonomy to make
judgments about the work and
we'll get into that autonomy
question a little more. And
the more we distrust the
capacity of people in schools
the more we're pressed towards
scripted curriculum and
micro managing that work. And
in fact we've been
this way before and
that's a, a major major theme
in Dana's historical work.
Back in the early 1900s the
creation of truly professional
educators was
subversive business.
Places like Teachers College
that have been founded
to provide Masters Degrees for
trainer the teachers of
the urban poor. We're suspect
to the scientific managers who
wanted to hire low paid
relatively uneducated
women for teaching. Their
goal was make schools more
efficient with more tightly
prescribed curriculum,
more teacher proof texts,
more extensive testing,
more rules and regulations.
They consciously sought
to hire less well educated
teachers who would work for
lower wages. And, it would
go along with the regime of
prescribed lessons and pacing
schedules without protest.
In a book widely used for
teacher training at that time,
the need for
unquestioned obedience
was stressed as the first
rule of efficient service for
teachers. And recently in
California we have just gone
through that era again,
where places like Stanford's
teacher education program were
subversive, in the, face of
the scripted curriculum era
that we have just recently
emerged from. One speaker at
an NEA meeting in 1914
observed that there were so
many efficiency engineers
running hand carts through
the school houses and most
large cities that the grade
school teachers could hardly
turn around in their rooms
without butting into two or
three of them.
And they were doing time and
motion studies and all kinds
of things. During that decade,
precisely 100 years ago,
nationally distributed tests
of arithmetic, handwriting,
and English were put into use.
The results were used to
compare students, teachers,
and schools to reports of its
public and to award merit pay.
A short lived innovation
due to the many problems it
caused. Does any of
this sound familiar?
In the view of these brilliant
managerial engineers,
professionally trained
teachers were considered
troublesome because they
had their own ideas
about education and
frequently did not go along
meekly with the plan.
One teacher wrote in the
American Teacher in 1912, we
have yielded to the arrogance
of big businessmen and
have accepted their criteria
of efficiency at their own
valuation without question.
We have consented to measure
the results of educational
efforts in terms of price and
product, the terms that
prevail in the factory and
the department store.
But education,
since it deals in the first
place with human organisms and
in the second place with
individualities is not
analogous to a standardizable,
manufacturing product.
Education must measure its
efficiency not in terms of so
many promotions per dollar of
expenditure nor even in terms
of so many student hours
per dollar of salary.
It must measure its efficiency
in terms of increased
humanism, increased power
to do, increase capacity to
appreciate. We are still
having this debate, or
as Dana might put it,
we are having a war,
that continues on and
that, is really,
partly because of the struggle
between a factory model
conception of teaching as
the work of bureaucrats, and
a professional conception of
teaching as the work of people
who are well-informed about
learning and development and
about how to effectively
use strategies to support
young people in actualizing
their potential. So,
I just want to suggest that
as we think about learning
from these books and the
analyses, the very insightful
analyses they provide us. We
also, look abroad at countries
that have thought about
teaching as a profession, and
a lot of my own recent work
in, in the past years has been
international, going to places
like Singapore and Finland and
Canada and other places
where teaching is treated
much differently. Where they
have in fact built systems
that enable all teachers
to be well prepared and
to have the status that we say
we crave in the United States
but typically do not organize
our self to provide.
If you were to become
a teacher in Finland or
Singapore or Ontario Canada or
many other places you would
enter a highly regulated and
well well designed teacher
education program. You would
attend school, typically
earning a Master's degree,
completely at government
expense, with no fees
whatsoever, and usually with a
salary or a stipend while you
go to school. After you got
out, you would be inducted by,
mentor teachers who
are trained for that purpose.
Often, themselves,
prepared, and
on a, sort of a career ladder
that ensures that they have
time as well as
the opportunity and
training to support you in
your work. You would have
an opportunity to continue to
learn, usually In the vicinity
of something like 10 to 15
hours a week of time to
collaborate with lesson
planning with other teachers.
Actually research to improve
the quality of instruction,
going into each other's
classrooms to observe, and
a variety other, of other
strategies to engage in
the development of curriculum,
and much more open ended
teacher-designed and
teacher-scored assessments.
And you would have, the
opportunity to be evaluated
and supported in a context
that emphasizes and values
teacher collaboration, which
the most recent, studies,
the surveys of 100 thousand
teachers around the world
found us the single most
valued Aspect of teaching,
the opportunity to collaborate
in decision-making and
in teaching and learning,
and the one that is the most
strong predictor of
teachers' efficacy and
of later achievement.
So a key question for
us is how do we learn from the
insightful analyses of people
like Liz Green and Dana,
Dana Goldstein, and
the opportunities that
are afforded to us for
learning from other countries.
There's a saying that
a wise person learns
from his own mistakes.
A wiser person learns from
the mistakes of others. So,
I propose that we use this
opportunity to become wiser.
And now, I'd like to introduce
Dana Feldstein. Thank you.
>> [APPLAUSE]
>> Thank you.
I want to start by saying what
a deep honor and pleasure
it is to be here giving the
Cubberley lecture. Thank you
Dean Stipek for your kind
introductory remarks. When I
first got on the education
beat as a reporter in 2006,
and the whole world seemed
just totally obsessed with no
excuses charter schools and
merit pay tied to student test
scores. Linda Darling
Hammond's voice, and her work,
and her strong commitment
to equity in the system,
in addition to excellence was
something I turned to again
and again to learn the beat
of education as a journalist.
So it is just wonderful to be
here with her today, and ever
since Elizabeth and I, we, our
books came out within a month
of each other last year.
And we've been searching for
the perfect opportunity
to speak together, and
we just couldn't be more
thrilled that it's here at
Stanford. So
I want to go back in time.
Because if you think
that veteran teachers
are subjected to controversy
and unfair attacks in 2015,
you might find it interesting
to think about 1846.
1846 was the flowering of
the Common Schools Movement.
It was the state by state
effort lead by thinkers like
Horace Mann to make elementary
education universal and
free and taxpayer supported
for the first time in American
history. Now at the time,
the vast majority of teachers
were men. But reformers in the
Common Schools Movement wanted
even conservatives who oppose
raising taxes to support
the idea of universal
public education.
So they had the clever idea,
let’s feminize the teaching
profession. If we can
attract women to do this job,
we can pay them 50% as much as
men. Now, Katherine Beecher
is the sister of Harriet
Beecher Stowe, the author of
Uncle Tom's Cabin, and she was
a leader in this movement.
You know, she was an idealist.
She wanted respectable,
single, middle-class women to
have the opportunity to do
interesting work outside
the home. And as a committed
Christian, she also believed
women were purer and
more biologically and morally
appropriate to be teachers of
women. However, [LAUGH]
she was a pragmatist and
she looked for male allies
in these efforts. And
she didn't just say women
would be good teachers and
women were smart enough to
be teachers. She actually,
launched a, a vicious attack
on the male teachers of
the time. She went all across
the country giving lectures
like this one. I call her
in my book, the first media
darling school reformer.
You might think of her as
her day's Michelle Rhee.
>> [LAUGH]
>> She called male
teachers quote,
direct quote, incompetent,
intemperate, coarse, hard,
unfeeling men, too lazy and
stupid to be entrusted
with the care of children.
Now this combination of a
moral argument and a financial
argument to bring women into
the profession really worked.
And by the late 19th century,
90% of teachers in northern
cities like New York and
Chicago were women.
And surprise, surprise at
that time, reformers like
the efficiency reformers
that Linda just referred to,
determined that women were
actually the problem.
Charles William Eliot,
the president of Harvard
at the time, he wrote in
the Atlantic Magazine, quote,
women are physically
weaker than men,
more apt to be worn out by the
fatiguing work of teaching.
The average skill of the
teachers in the public schools
may be increased by raising
the present low proportion of
male teachers in the schools.
And he was very interested in
international comparisons.
He said,
quote, herein lies the great
cause of the inferiority of
the American teaching to the
French and German teaching.
And I think the rhetoric has
actually softened somewhat
today. But we are still
familiar with this idea that
to improve teaching,
we have to kind of get
rid of massive amounts of
people and bring massive
amounts of some new other type
of person to the profession.
In the late 1990s, Dave Levin
the co-founder of the KIPP
charter schools
said the following,
we need an entirely new
teaching work force,
entirely new. There are some
great teachers out there, but
they've been mixed among
a bad element. And
teaching is consistently
the only profession that is
mentioned in the State of the
Union address. For example,
in 2011, President Obama said
that he would, quote unquote,
stop making excuses for
bad teachers.
What I want to suggest is that
when we notice our education
debate has become especially
hostile to teachers, or
consumed with bad
teachers in particular,
we should be skeptical. Why?
It has to do with the scale of
the teaching profession. There
are 3.3 million public school
teachers. That's five times
as many lawyers or doctors.
Each year we hire 100,000 to
200,000 new teachers, and
in low income schools
alone in recent years,
we've sometimes hired as
many of 70,000 new teachers.
And by the way, Teach for
America provides just about
10% of the new teachers just
for low income schools.
Now one of the things I was
interested in doing when I
was reporting my book was
ask some of the folks
who believe we need a whole
class of teachers, how many
of our current teachers do
you think are ineffective or
not good at their jobs? And I
heard a range of guesstimates.
But I would estimate that
people said between 2 and
15% of our current teacher
core is ineffective.
That's 66,000 to
495,000 people.
We cannot fire our way to
the top. We cannot decide
tomorrow to get rid of 66,000
to 495,000 teachers and
make sure that the folks
are replacing them would
be better. How do we know
they would be better? So
if we can't improve teaching
by getting rid of teachers
en masse, you might hope
that we focus on building up
the skills of our current
teachers. But historically,
as Linda mentioned, that
isn't what we have chosen as
a nation to do. Instead we've
been consumed with rating
and ranking teachers in the
hope that this would allow us
to identify low performers and
root them out. Indeed there is
nothing new about the demand
for data-driven school reform,
and data-driven teacher
evaluation in particular.
It dates back again to
the mid-19th century
when Horace Mann, the nation's
first State Secretary of
Education in Massachusetts,
shifted schools from the old
way of testing students. Which
was to have students get up in
front of the class and orally
present what they've learned,
like I'm doing here now,
to written standardized tests.
Because with the written
tests, both students' and
their teachers'
productivity and
efficiency could be assessed
with numbers more easily.
Merit pay for teachers tied
to point-based evaluation
systems is likewise not new.
It dates back,
the earliest incident I could
find researching my book was
Atlanta in 1915.
Where it was instituted in
large part to cut budgets,
not out of any real true
desire to improve teaching.
And I'm sure most of us here
today are familiar with
value-added measurements. It's
been portrayed by statist,
statisticians and economists
since the 1990s as a very new
way to evaluate teachers
based on their student's
test scores. In fact,
it's not new. In the 1920s and
30s, statisticians developed
something that they called
the pupil change method. So,
today we call it value
added measurement.
Back then it was called
the pupil change method.
And they did an experiment
on college math instructors
at Iowa State College, and
they found out that the best
produced 3 points of gains for
their students on a 100 point
test. And it was a small
effect size, but it was
statistically significant,
very similar to what we're
seeing from valued-added
measurement studies today. And
districts got excited. They
wanted to actually implement
the people change method
as a way to evaluate teachers.
And this was
a well-intentioned effort to
hold teachers accountable for
student learning.
Now William Maxwell was
the superintendent of
the New York City Schools,
and when he got the job at
the turn of the century,
the turn of the 20th century,
he saw that 99.5% of teachers
were being rated good at
the end of each year. And he
thought this was ridiculous.
I mean, he felt that more than
half of 1% of teachers were
probably had some room to
improve. So looking at
the pupil change method and
the whole efficiency movement
that was popular at the time,
he created a complex new
teacher evaluation system.
Teachers would be given
grades of A, B, C,
or D from their principals and
principals
would fill out these
very complex spreadsheets
with lots of
different factors.
Now there was an initial
burst of enthusiasm,
everyone thought this was a
very clever idea. But in 1919,
the New York Times reported
that educators considered it
quote, a joke. There was so
much paperwork and
the principals were
unable to actually
put the time into this system
that they decided basically
all teachers got a B+. And
it was the same thing again,
over 90% of teachers had a B+,
just the,
just the kind of thing
we're trying to solve for.
And it's funny because if you
follow the news stories of
the value-added measurement
systems rolling out across
the country, you know that 95%
and up of teachers are doing
just very well on them.
[LAUGH] Very similar to what
happened in the 20s and 30s
when this was tried before. So
we still haven't used
these bureaucratic
tools in a magical way to
differentiate teachers. So if
mass firings and rank and yank
through complex bureaucratic
evaluation tools doesn't work,
what could? First, we
need to be driven by quality
education research. For
one thing we know teacher
working conditions really
matter. When teachers have
trusting relationships with
principals and parents, when
they feel they have adequate
supplies in their
classrooms and
support on student discipline,
test scores go up. And if
you're interested in that, I
recommend a book called Trust
in Schools by Anthony Brick
and Barbara Schneider. Another
thing we know is that teacher
career longevity also matters.
Three economists, Matthew
Ronfeldt, Susanna Loeb, and
James Wyckoff conducted an
unprecedented eight-year study
of 850,000 New York City
fourth and fifth graders.
In schools with high
teacher turnover,
students lost
significant amounts
of learning in
both reading and
math, compared to
socio-economically similar
peers at schools with low
teacher turnover. And
crucially, students at the
high turnover lost learning
even if their own teacher is
not new. So think about that.
Even if overall teacher
quality remains constant and
your own individual teacher
was not new, you were still
impacted by the results
of teacher turnover. And
this is common sense, because
schools are communities, and
we should know this is true.
Turnover means administrators
are recruiting, interviewing,
and hiring when they could
be focused on instruction.
When many teachers
resign each year,
institutional memory is lost,
and veterans are not
there to help newbies get
better at their jobs. So
we know the starting point for
improving teaching should be
an effort to replicate the
practices that can be observed
by watching good teachers work
and giving teachers the time
to watch and learn from one
another. This is especially
crucial when we know that
only 50% of currently
working teachers in the United
States have had a high quality
student teaching experience.
But our politics of
education has never
prioritized building a system
that allows teachers to learn
and lead together collabrity.
However, it is possible,
and I know that Elizabeth
is going to talk about
that today. However,
before she comes up, I would
just like to read you a quote.
It is something I heard from
Christina Jean, she's a public
school social studies teacher
in Denver, and I met her
while I was working on my
book. Christina told me a lot
of the discourse is about
getting rid of bad teachers.
Very rarely, do I perceive
teachers shown as anything
other than cogs in a machines.
But, to improve teaching,
the job must be challenging
and stimulating to adults.
I am an intelligent person
who has this love and
passion for educating kids.
So let me use what I know
to create an experience for
my students that reflects
by expertise, thanks.
[APPLAUSE].
Hi. I'm,
equally very excited to be at
Stanford with my friend Dana,
and my, person that I've
learned a lot from, Linda.
As well as many other people
that I spend reporting time
with here for
I wanna start by, I'm gonna do
two things today first we're
going to summarize my book
which I usually summari,
which is 300 pages but
don't let that deter you.
But can be summarized in 40
minutes. I'm gonna try to do
that in 6minutes, so this will
be an exercise in pacing for
any teachers. And just so
you know, I'm not a teacher so
don't hold me to it too much.
And then should we have
more time, should I succeed
at doing this feat, which you
will help me do. Then I'm
going to tell you some
questions that keep me up at
night, which I hope will spur
our discussion going forward.
So first,
40 minutes in 6 minutes. Okay.
Okay, yeah, I get it.
[LAUGH] So, I, I began this
project myself when I was
given an assignment by the New
York Times Magazine, and they
wanted someone to write about
the topic of teacher quality.
They figured that I would be a
good person to do this because
at that point, I had spent
my entire student and
professional life every
day getting up and
trying to learn as much as
I could about education,
about participating in the
national education debate. So
they figured I must know
something about teaching.
Right? No. I turned out
I didn't know anything.
I actually had wrong
ideas about teaching. So
what inspired me to take
on this book project was to
help other people
understand the process that
I went through to see teaching
differently. So to do that,
I just wanna walk through
a quick simulation with you of
my experience.
Can anyone here tell me
remember we are on a time
limit, what is 49 times 5,
just shout it out.
>> 245.
>> Okay, you're right.
Good job. Applaud yourselves.
You're gonna need it.
[LAUGH] Now why would a child
think that 49 times 5 is 405?
Remember we're under
serious time pressure.
>> [LAUGH]
>> I'm not going to tell you.
I am going to ask you
a third question and
I will tell you at the end.
Which of the following two
people is most likely
to know why a child
would think that 49 times
5 Is 405. [LAUGH] okay,
for those who don’t know
who these people are,
Hyman Bass is a decorated
mathematician.
He's won a ton of awards,
one from a president.
He invented a new
field of algebra.
I didn’t know algebra
had multiple fields.
He invented one it's called
K Theory, just so you know.
Deborah Ball is best known for
her work teaching elementary
school. So, who votes for
the mathematician?
You can vote with a plus.
Oh, hi. [LAUGH] Okay,
who votes for Deborah?
>> [APPLAUSE]
>> Yes, yes!.
In fact, it was these
two people together,
who walked me through
a similar simulation.
They helped me see that while
the average adult needs
to have a working knowledge
of many subjects, a teacher
doesn't just need to know the
right answers to questions,
she needs to know why students
are gonna get wrong answers.
And she needs to know
not just why, but
then what to do about it.
So, in summary,
teaching requires specialized
knowledge and skill.
It's not something that anyone
is born knowing how to do.
It's not a quality that we can
look through a spreadsheet and
say you have it and you don't.
It's something that is
learned. So that's point
number one. Point number two?
We do not treat teaching
that way in this country,
as we've just been discussing.
So, super quick, two ways in
which we don't do that. One
is at the pre-service level.
By and large in this country,
we treat teaching the way this
early education researcher,
who actually authored
one of the first ever research
articles about education in
the first ever Journal
of Education Research.
We think about it mostly
still the way he did.
We say, there is no such thing
as a science of teaching. So
what do we think about it? His
colleague, another old dude
with a weird name,
>> [LAUGH]
>> Said, teaching,
it only requires common sense,
common sense. So the people
whose job it was to create
the institutions that would
then prepare our country's
teachers not only did
not acknowledge that teaching
requires specialized knowledge
and skill,
they had an opposing view.
Then when these researchers
had to actually
deal with schools, they said
that was really boring and
they would really rather not
do it. They were only actually
put in education field because
they couldn't get the job in
psychology were they really
wanted to be. And then this
guy, he would fall asleep when
he watched classrooms, just
fall asleep, because he didn't
see anything worth looking at.
So, that's pre-service, we
don't treat teaching like it
requires specialized knowledge
and skill there, we also don't
treat teaching this way when
teachers enter the classroom.
This is a guy named Steven
Farr, I learned that, along
with half a dozen other people
I'm about to talk about,
he once gave this same
lecture. He told me something
about his teaching experience
that many teachers told me in
my reporting. He said that
when he first was put in his
position, he was assigned a
mentor, as many teachers are,
and she was told,
as some mentors are told,
to observe him teaching.
But she said she was so
embarrassed to observe him
teach. She really would rather
not do it because she said,
teaching is
the second most private act.
>> And you just don't
want to get caught having
someone watch you do it, and
you certainly don't want to
watch someone else do it.
>> [LAUGH]
>> So, another way to put
this, that doesn't have to
do with Victorian era sex,
is what researchers call
the Egg Crate School Model.
Teachers enter schools
where they are isolated. So
they often will not actually
see one another teach for
an entire career.
And this is called the Egg
Crate Model because it's as if
we think that teachers are
like eggs, were they to touch,
they might break. So,
we protect them from each
other and as a result,
we continue to treat teaching
like it must be something that
they're just born being able
to walk into a room and
alone figure out how to do.
Not like a craft that they
might need to learn with
peers, as everyone needs to
learn complex tasks, cognitive
and behavioral tasks. I just
wanted to give a shout-out
to Dana that there is
a historical root
to this problem.
It lies in the origins
of American schools
as a one-room schoolhouse.
That's one of the theories
put forward by Dan Lartey was
all up in Stanford, right?
A researcher I think had
something to do with Stanford.
Yes, no. Okay [LAUGH].
>> [LAUGH]
>> Anyway,
one of the arguments for
why we have this is that it's
a legacy of these one-room
school houses. We believed
then that teachers should be
isolated in cells. That was
part of the just structure
of our decision about how many
people should be educated,
and how much we should
invest in that.
And we continue to this day,
to treat classrooms like their
own little one-room
school houses. Okay, so
teaching requires specialized
knowledge and skill,
but we don't treat it that
way. And what's the result?
The result is that we approach
efforts to improve teaching in
the wrong way. So what are the
two most common approaches?
One, in the national debate,
is accountability.
Let's sweep away the bad
teachers. Let's identify how
everyone's doing with data and
then let's fire the one's who
aren't doing well. Dana
just used like the coolest
phrase to describe that.
Crack and swat or
something like that.
>> [LAUGH]
>> Wank and yank.
>> Yeah, wank and
yank, that's good.
>> [LAUGH]
>> Michele re-symbolized it
with a broom. Sweep away
the bad teachers. On the other
hand, the argument put forward
to counter those who argue for
more teach accountability
is autonomy, most often. So
folks say, we don't need to be
measured more, we don't need
to have more tests, we don't
need to have more regulations.
You need to just trust us.
We are teachers. We know best.
Give us the time and space
to figure out, on our own,
what to do. So
the problem with each of these
two arguments, I concluded,
is that they both subscribe
to the myth that I started out
with, and many of us hold,
that teaching does not require
specialized knowledge and
skill. If you don't
need to learn to teach,
surely we can just say,
you better do it,
your results will show and
then, ask them to do it and
they will. If you don't need
to learn to teach also,
we should just let
people alone to
figure out what they naturally
know how to do, on their own.
Neither of these approaches
make sense with the reality
of what teaching is.
So, what is the better
way to think about this?
Really quick, but did you
put up the two minute thing?
You did? Okay. That means that
six minutes is way behind us,
so we're in serious business
here. What could we do,
what's another way?
This is a professor of
education who became very sad,
because she thought there's
just nothing we can do.
Schools are built wrong,
schools of education
are built wrong,
she cried.
So she did what any professor
who cries I imagine would do.
She took a sabbatical.
>> [LAUGH]
>> She went to Rome.
See, Rome. And in Rome,
her plan was to drink wine,
learn Italian and not think at
all about education. So, she
enacted this plan with rigor.
She looked on the Internet for
an Italian school. And she
found one. And she signed up
for it. And she took
classes in the morning and
drank wine at night.
And it was called Italiaidea.
And she's in this school
when she has an epiphany.
She's in this,
there's a moment that
enacted her epiphany. The
teacher was giving a task, and
the students were doing
the task. And then five or so,
seven minutes way through the
task she, the teacher pauses,
and he leaves the room, and
then he comes back a minute
later with a new task. So
as I said, I am not a teacher,
I just would have not batted
an eye, kept on task,
whatever. Magdalene Lampert
is a master teacher, and
she knew a fellow master
teacher when she saw one.
She knew what this
teacher had done
was study the students' work,
and notice, di,
diagnose the underlying
misunderstanding.
Notice that misunderstanding
had nothing to do with
the task he had given them,
and then quickly give them
a new task. Long story short
it turns out all the teachers
at Italiaidea were like this.
In the US, great teaching is
often isolated, as teachers
are isolated. Not at scale.
In this school, it was totally
at scale. Every single teacher
had reliably had mastered
the craft of teaching.
So how? She thought it was
about something she called
infrastructure.
What is infrastructure?
In transportation,
it's all the invisible stuff
that makes it possible for
people and stuff to move
reliably across space and
time. It's roads, bridges,
speed limits, FAA regulations.
In, in education there's
something similar going on
at Italiaidea. At the core of
the work, was the same thing
as anywhere. There were
teachers, there were students,
and then there was the
material they needed to learn.
Three, three core ingredients,
but unlike in this
country where all of that is
pretty much left up alone
on the table at Italiaidea
teachers and materials and
students were surrounded by
an invisible infrastructure.
The systems that Linda and
Di, and
Dana mentioned that allowed
them to do this very well
at scale. I could tell you
a little bit about them, but
I want to tell you what
keeps me up at night.
So well, no, I should tell
you a little bit about
that.
>> [LAUGH]
>> So one thing, material and
technical resources.
What allowed that teacher
to leave the room and
one minute later have a new
task? Well, at this school,
Italiaidea, teachers created
a collective lesson bank.
They, so one teacher's
greatness did not need to,
as John Dewey said, be born
and die with that teacher.
Instead, one teacher
creates a good idea,
other teachers have immediate
access to it. What else?
Induction, teacher education,
and professional development.
So it turns out that
Italiaidea teachers are all
trained in one institution.
That institution does not
believe that teaching is
not a science. It actually
only works on focusing on
the science of teaching.
And they all went there,
they had good experiences and
they learned to teach. Finally
the organization of work.
We talked about
teachers' time.
In this country,
teachers spend an average of
1,000 hours a year in front
of their students teaching.
In countries that out perform
us it's almost half that.
It's more like 600 hours.
That leaves 400 plus hours
in those countries, for
teachers to spend time,
as Linda explained,
it happens in Singapore and
elsewhere, studying teaching.
Watching each other, studying
the materials, and preparing.
So, I quickly want to preview
what keeps me up at night.
What keeps me up at night are
four things. First, how do we
get there? How do build
the infrastructure? There're
competing theories that would
be fun to talk about with you.
Second how do we create
more time for learning?
Within the politics
of our country,
it's easy to say we have 1,000
hours, let's change that. But
it's much more difficult to
redo scheduling to fix this.
Third, what evidence is
warrant enough for change?
This is a huge part of our
debate. So, many folks will
say to what all three of us
are saying, I don't think you
have evidence. In fact I think
that there's more evidence
that teacher preparation
doesn't work. So what evidence
is warrant enough for change?
Do we look, do we care about,
massive, experimental type
social science research.
Or, do we also care about
political, historical, and
common-sense knowledge of
teachers in the field?
I think this is a huge debate,
and finally, where will we get
the people to do this?
We not only need to get
teachers in the classroom who
are dedicated to the belief
that teaching is a science.
We also need to create and
build more institutions like
the step program, where there,
people who work there
are believe in, teaching as
a science and, know how to
help people learn to do it.
So I didn't do it
in six minutes.
But, we went through the whole
thing together in 12.
So, thank you so
much for having me and
the three of us and now we're
going to begin our discussion.
>> [APPLAUSE]
>> What a wonderful
tour around the world and
of teaching.
We're gonna have time for
everyone to ask questions,
so start thinking them up.
And I'm gonna tell you at
the beginning that we're gonna
give you an opportunity in
a little bit to ask each other
a question, so you can be
thinking about that as well.
But first I want to talk about
the two different kind of
wars that you actually both
describe. Dana, you describe
the wars over teacher's status
and employment and you know,
all of the, ways in which the
job is structured and so on.
And Liz, you described a
different kind of war between
the images of teaching
that Maggie Lampart and
Deborah Ball represent
that's very diagnostic and
sophisticated and
Aimed at teaching for
understanding. And
sort of a more simplistic sort
of get tough, feed the facts,
spit them back kind of
approach that I think you used
Doug Lemov as
an example of that. So
both of those are tensions and
conflicts that have been
ongoing about what is
good teaching, and
how do we structure
the profession?
Are we still at war?
And if so how might we
resolve these conflicts?
>> I
have noticed a cooling of the
war over the past two years or
so. I think there's
a sense driven in large
part by frustration with
standardized testing
that we've pushed
the tough accountability,
sweep out the bad guys,
efforts a bit too far.
I think parents, middle-class
parents who have the time
to put in to complaining about
things have been driving
a lot of this, especially
recently, with their concerns
about the amount of hours
certain schools are spending.
Not just giving kids tests and
reported from districts
that are spending,
you know, 30 full days per
year on standardized testing,
but also all the hours spent
prepping for the tests.
And it has a huge impact on
kids. So, as we're starting
to see the impact on children
of all these policies,
there's been a shift
in the debate. But
one thing my study of history
has taught me is that,
even though the war might
cool down for awhile,
it's at risk of flaming back
up. So, what excites me about
this moment as what sort
of sustainable policy and
political change is necessary.
Can we learn from the excesses
of the reform movement since
No Child Left Behind, about
the last 15 years, to make
sustainable change, to focus
on replicating best practices
within the profession instead
of the blame game. If we
can do that in this moment,
I think the next decade can
be a lot more positive than
the last one was.
>> Liz?
>> Well, and
you asked me about
the pedagogical wars.
>> The pedagogical wars, yeah.
>> Yeah. I think, so, I actu,
I, I do think that
that tension will
always live in the public's
mind about teaching.
And I think it's something
that parents worry about.
Like, should I send my kid
to a progressive school,
where they're, they're gonna
have more independence. Or
should I instead send them To
a school that's more rigid and
disciplined and which,
which is better. But I,
I found that the two groups
that you described, the,
the folks in the community
that's been a long time
studying, teaching, and
teaching themselves and
are often based in
universities and have strong
academic disciplinary
backgrounds, as well as
pedagogical backgrounds versus
the entrepreneurial educators,
symbolized by Doug Lemov
who wrote the book,
Teach Like a Champion, and
as a leader at Uncommon
Schools Charter School and
other No-Excuses Schools,
where they're seen as more
rigid and are in some ways
more rigid. I think that that
debate among educators and
even among those two camps is
either always was thought or
will thought, and
I think this is symbolized
in the Common Core standards,
which both camps have
embraced. The standards
say what most teachers,
I think, know, which is that
there is no choice between
let the students
completely free or
be completely disciplined.
It's actually, the reality is
you're gonna have to some of
both. In every single moment,
are you gonna tell
a student the answer or
are you gonna let him
struggle and for how long?
That's the real question that
I think matters more and
I think the standards show
that really academic,
really rigorous teaching will
require the entrepreneurial
educators to become
more academically
rigorous in subject matter
experts and to give students
more independent time to
think, and they're moving in
that direction, or trying to.
>> Of course,
the other part of it is that
it's kinda framed as giving
students more opportunity
to do on their own and
time to think versus structure
but that kind of pedagogy done
well, like Maggie's example,
is highly structured in
it's own way.
>> Exactly.
>> The idea that there's gonna
be a top down decision
about what pedagogy to use,
and then we're gonna tell
teachers what to do ignores,
as you said, what we know
about good teachers, which is
that they do both ends. They
know how to teach decoding,
and they know how to create
literacy rich environments, or
they know how to ensure that
kids learn their math facts
while they're also learning
to think mathematically,
etc. Until teachers get
the knowledge base themselves
to make those decisions.
>> Yes.
>> We can't resolve that
particular war.
>> Exactly.
>> Yeah.
>> I completely agree. So
I wanna ask you, Liz,
about one of your keeping
you up at night thoughts and
we'll explore that a little
bit. You asked the question,
how do we get there? What do
you think is the right theory
of change and do you have one
or do you have more than one?
How should we understand
those? I think
everyone here agrees with this
concept that David Cohen,
the scholar who's now at
Harvard who theorizes this
infrastructure idea. We're all
saying we need a system for
every teacher to enter the
profession and be responsibly
supported in learning how
to teach but how do we
create that system? As I say
there's two competing theories
of change right now in
this country. One says,
the problem,
the reason that we haven't
gotten this infrastructure is
a lack of coherence, and the
root of the lack of coherence
is our governing
structure of schooling.
So we have the federal
government,
the state government,
the local government, and
then within even
local school boards,
one principal has one idea,
another principal has another,
and that's not to speak of
the textbook companies,
which are unrelated and
the assessments,
which are another thing. All
of these competing messages
come to teachers about what
they should be working on
and the result is chaos and an
inability to build a coherent
strong system to help
everyone learn what to do.
Because if we haven't decided
what we should be learning
about, and how we should be
assessing that, then all bets
are off for the helping people
learn how to teach students to
learn that stuff. So the lack
of coherence leads some people
to say we need to blow up the
existing governing structure
and this is one reason
charter schools have had,
in some small cases,
better success because they
exist outside of traditional
governing structures and
can build their own small
systems of coherence.
The downside of charter
schools is that they are not
part of the governing
structure that we care about
in American democracy that
we built for a reason. So
that's the other argument,
the other theory of change,
which says we might have
a bad governing structure and
it might be tough but we did
pass the Common Core standards
and even if they're white
labelled in some states,
they're pretty much the same,
so we can have
coherence within the construct
of the traditional structure.
I think that same debate of
whether you blow things up and
do it outside or whether you
work within the system applies
also to teacher education,
applies also to many features
of the infrastructure debate.
So I see those as the two
competing theories and
honestly, I don't know which
one is gonna be right,
I can see down sides
all around [LAUGH] but
also upsides. [LAUGH]
>> I think
we all see the down sides
all around. [LAUGH] Dana,
where would you put your bets?
>> I was really
interested in a theory that
was put forth by John Meta,
the Harvard sociologist
working in tandem with
Steve Tallis who's a political
scientist at Johns Hopkins,
>> They have a phrase that
they call communities
of practice. Now,
whatever any of us here
might love or hate about
the No-Excuses Charter Schools
that Elizabeth just mentioned,
the strict discipline,
kept tight schools,
I think they've been quite
effective at creating
a community of practice.
In that they're very able to
articulate what they're doing
pedagogically. They look for
teachers who would like to
work using those practices.
They can very clearly describe
what they're doing, and
they share from
school to school, and
from classroom to classroom
within a school. Now they've
even started some of their own
teacher education programs and
schools for the pre-service
part. Now there could be
a Montessori version of that,
there isn't right now but
there's no reason to think
that that couldn't exist.
It could work within
the traditional public system,
if we were able to let go
of this idea that mayoral
control of schools means that
individual principals can no
longer be very creative
within their schools and work
with one another within a city
or neighborhood to cooperate.
I think, when we think
about American politics and
education, we do have
to realize that our
education system is,
in the words of David Labaree,
an education scholar, we
are radically decentralized.
We like our comparisons
to Finland and to
other high performing nations
but they have very strong
national governments, they
have a national curriculum.
The Common Core is not
a national curriculum.
It is a set of standards,
and we've allowed states and
districts a lot of flexibility
in implementing them, and
they will not all
implement them well or
faithfully.
So, we are starting at
a disadvantage in a lot
of ways when we're
thinking of system wide
change because of federalism,
and the ethos of local
control, which I think if we
look at our overall politics,
not just in education, but
everything that's going on in
our country. It is hard to
imagine breaking out of that
tradition, which goes back
to our founding as a nation.
>> Hm.
Are there any Canadians in
the house? [LAUGH] Canada is
an interesting counterexample
because it is a high
performing nation. The
individual provinces, Alberta,
Ontario, and so on are high
performing internet and
there's no national role in
education whatsoever but they
do develop coherence at the
state level through the way in
which they train teachers and
adopt curriculum and so on. So
I wonder if that's
a better model for
the United States than teeny,
tiny little Finland,
which is the size of
Wisconsin. [CROSSTALK]
>> I have a question for
you that I've often been so
interested in the Canadian
model and how come we don't
talk about Canada? Cuz they're
our closest nation to us.
>> [LAUGH]
>> And, they're diverse,
they have immigrants,
they have a,
they have a native
population that deals with
intergenerational poverty. So,
how come we don't talk about
Canada?
>> I think we should.
>> What's going on?
>> I think we should talk
about Canada, I'm actually
doing some studies in Canada
right now. They would prefer
that we not pay too much
attention to them. Because
they worry about ideas coming
across the border, northward,
from the United States.
[LAUGH] So they're trying to
be under the radar scope.
Because I think they have
a much more interestingly, and
it's not. We have these
huge political swings,
when parties come into
office you know, and
we change ideologically.
We say, okay,
we were doing this, but now
we're gonna stop doing that,
now we are gonna do
the opposite thing.
Take Alberta where it's been
a conservative government for
most of the last
several decades. With
some changes here and there,
but they've maintained this
sort of the same continuity,
the same policies around
considerable investment in
teachers, teacher education.
In fact, teach for
America In Alberta, teach for
Canada has come to Canada,
and in Alberta, the teachers
there will be allowed to teach
in the aboriginal communities,
in the Inuit and
other communities,
after they finished a full
teacher education program.
Then they can get additional
preparation to go teach
in those communities. So
it's such a deep commitment to
the preparation of teachers
through one government after
another. And to a partnership
and working with teachers
that they don't have these big
pendulum swings. It might be
the Canadian temperament.
>> Mm-hm.
>> But I'm not a psychologist
so I can't really say.
>> [LAUGH]
>> I want to ask about,
the way in which both
of your books, and
I'm guilty of this as
well in work I've done,
place teachers at the center,
right? Of our dilemmas and
our possibilities and
our hopes and our dreams.
And yet, when you look at the
explanations of variance and
achievement, teachers
constitute,
generally speaking,
less than 10% depending on
the study between 2 and 14,
you know, percent of that
variance socioeconomic status,
particularly because of
the way that we pile on in
unequal school funding,
on top of poverty and
segregation accounts for
about 60% of the variance. And
then there are other school
factors that are in there and
a lot that we don't know. How
much can we really expect of
teachers and are we setting
them up to fail by paying so
much attention to them
as the change agents?
>> Yeah, this is a,
a big part of my book because
when you go through history,
you see the focus and
demands on teachers raise
as we become cynical about our
other social systems. So for
example when reconstruction
ended in the south,
It was a time of increased
controversy over teaching.
Similarly, in the late 1960s,
early 1970s as hopes for
the great society curdled,
and Brown v Board turned out
to not be implemented very
strongly, and to not be able
to solve our achievement gap.
We again looked toward
blaming veteran teachers, and
it was another sort of moment
of controversy. So, our weak
social safety net, our high
levels of socioeconomic and
equality, are intimately
twinned to the high, verging
on unrealistic expectations
we have for teachers.
And, I think it's really
important to acknowledge that,
while also acknowledging that
teachers can have an impact.
And there is research
that shows teachers
do have an impact
on student growth.
So I think the expectations
are unrealistic, but
we have to have high
expectations. Because
the alternative is worse.
>> Yeah,
yeah I think it's
actually irresponsible,
some of the discourse that has
come out of misinterpreted
research. Which gets
translated into policy papers
that deliberately
misinterpret it to say,
which causes President Obama
in the State of the Union
address to say that teachers
can close the achievement gap
or solve poverty,
effectively saying that.
Which is not actually what
the research studies he is
citing say.
>> [LAUGH]
>> And, so,
that's irresponsible
because that
raises an expectation
on teachers that,
is not realistic. I think
the reason that I get, one of
the many reasons I get kept up
at night about learning time,
time for teachers to learn,
is that this, there, there's,
when teachers are forced to
make a choice between the time
they put with their
own students and
the time that they learn, that
is a really devil's choice,
especially for teachers in the
most high need communities.
Where in these communities
you're more incentivized,
if you're a teacher who cares
about your students to spend
as much time as
you can with them because
there is no social safety
net for them to have any
other institution to go to.
I really love this moment when
Pasi Sahlberg at the, who
led the Finland renaissance in
education was asked in this
small room that I was in, what
was the single most important
thing that changed
everything in Finland? And
he said the election of more
women into political office.
Why? Because, women put in
political office will create
stronger social safety nets,
and that allows for education
to thrive. So, of course,
these two things are related.
Also, we need to honor
the impact that teachers make,
which is incredible. And it
would be foolish not to invest
in supporting teachers so
that they can do their work,
because they are the,
the delivery agents
of education.
>> And
I guess the other question
that we have as we come into
the presidential elections is,
is it also foolish not to
actually address the issues of
deep poverty [CROSSTALK] and
the lack of a safe, social
safety net because that, yeah,
are we just ignoring
that by saying oh,
the teachers can do it all?
What would you want to
advise our next presidential
candidates?
>> What would you wanna
advise our next presidential?
>> You go first.
>> [LAUGH]
>> I like that,
two journalists are being
interviewed by an adviser to
presidential candidates.
>> [LAUGH]
>> I'll, I'll,
I'll take the fade on this.
>> [LAUGH]
>> Going off of
Elizabeth's comment about the
way research is misused, and
how one of the things that
keeps her up at night is what
type of evidence do we need
before we make a change. A lot
of you here are probably
familiar with the economist
from Harvard Raj Chetty.
I just wanna tell you
briefly about two different
studies that he's conducted.
One found that an effective
teacher who raises his or
her student's test scores
contributes to that student
earning 1% more when that
student is about 25 years old.
And 1% more is a few hundred
dollars extra per year. That
got a ton of media attention
when that study came out a few
years ago. It seemed to say
that hey, using these value
added measurement statistics
we can show that teachers that
are good at raising test
scores are also great
at what we really care about,
which is upward mobility.
Now keep that in mind
with the very sort of,
what we're talking
about is quite modest.
It's a few hundred
extra dollars per year.
He just now has a new study
that you may have read about
in the New York Times, and
it was about students who
are poor who before the age of
13 move with their families to
a more integrated middle class
community. They need 30% more
money in their mid-20s.
So we're talking about
a 1% versus a 30% effect size.
Now this is just one guy,
one economist, Raj Chetty,
two different studies. What I
want to suggest to the next
president would be to look
at both of those, And
look at those different
effect sizes and wonder if we
can get where we wanna go with
what we've been doing. Because
we have not been looking at
the intense socioeconomic and
racial isolation of
our neediest kids, and
you don't just do that
through education.
You do that through
the minimum wage and
a bunch of other policies,
but it, that,
I would like them to
think about that.
>> If we could get
a President-
>> [APPLAUSE]
>> If we could get
a president who could
understand effect sizes.
[LAUGH]
>> Do you think
Jeb Bush understands?
>> [LAUGH]
>> Don't know. And
you think about that. Just to
build on that for a moment.
I'll give Liz another moment
to think about her response.
>> I thought it [CROSSTALK]
>> What's going on when you go
into that suburban community
is that you're going
to a school that is
much better funded.
>> Yep.
>> You're getting access
to a much deeper and
wider curriculum. Probably
reading specialists and,
you know, additional
resources of various kinds.
So I want to add one other
study to our list that
I'd like our next president to
have read. This is a study by
Kirabo Jackson, Rucker Johnson
over at Cal Berkeley.
I don't usually like to quote
Cal Berkeley people, but
>> [LAUGH]
>> he, there he is. And
he's a good, economist and,
Kirabo is at Northwestern.
They did a study where they
looked at across 40 years,
28 states,
that had done school finance
reforms.
>> Yes.
>> And in the places where low
income kids had 20% more spent
on them as a result of school
finance reforms, over their
K-12 education, they graduated
from high school at rates 20
percentage points higher, and
they earned, their family
income was 52% higher than
it would have been, and they
completely closed the adult
poverty gap between poor and
non-poor children by
the time they were adults.
Just by virtue of those of,
financial investments.
>> Yeah.
>> So I think all of
those are things that we
should put on the reading
list for the next president.
Good luck to us, right.
>> [LAUGH]
>> Liz?
>> Okay. Okay. So since you
guys are saying those kinds
of things, I'll say something
totally different.
>> Good.
>> Which is, I think that
there's a lot of reasons we're
skeptical about the Thrust of
the last 25 years of
educational interventions. And
that is causing people
on both the right and
the left to sort of run away
from a lot of the core,
elements of these
interventions.
But, I think that it's also
worth the next President
remembering some of the
progress that's been made. And
in these interventions like,
moving towards more coherence.
And, like even though
assessments are, broken and
damaged and making it not
a happy place to live for
teachers, still turning
the national conversation so
that we're sitting here
talking about teaching and
there's huge investments being
made in teacher education,
even, at the national,
federal level, so I think that
saying, you know, let's throw
out the whole thing that we've
done would be just as foolish
as, ignoring other pieces
of the puzzle that
are gonna be important.
>> I would love a,
a day when there is A huge
investment in teacher
education at
the federal level.
>> Err, there's more.
I think there's, I, I-
>> There's been
about ten times more
federal investment in Teach
for America in the last few
years than there has been in
the whole of teacher education
across the entire country.
>> On the other hand,
the Gates Foundation which,
was for, you know,
five years ago saying,
>> teacher preparation
doesn't matter at all, is now
giving out 25 million
dollars in grants to
teacher education, as a cause.
It doesn't mean that,
well, that long term-
>> Which is about as much as
the federal
government is putting in, so.
>> [LAUGH]
>> [LAUGH]
>> I think that there,
I think that there is more
attention. And there cou, and
more resources are going
that direction.
And I also think you know,
we, we need to reconvene
the resources we have.
>> I think,
I think that's all good.
We need to move to audience
questions, but I gave you,
an opportunity to see if you
wanted to ask each other
something. So, did you
have a question you wanted
to ask each other?
>> I
came up with one.
>> Good.
>> I was, I, so to that,
to the point that I just made
about the arc of history, what
your, your book is so, one of
the many reasons your book is
so much fun to read is these
moments of Oh my gosh, like,
we're repeating ourselves.
>> [LAUGH]
>> And I wonder, though,
as you look across
the trajectory, what are,
like what are the positives,
if any? Like have we actually
learned anything?
>> Mm-hm.
>> [LAUGH]
>> And has there been
any accumulated
forward movement?
And I already anticipated
an easy answer for
you. Which would be that
female teachers now make
the same as male teachers.
>> Yeah. [LAUGH]
>> So I'm taking that off the
table. You can't get that one.
>> Okay, you're right.
[LAUGH] I had anticipated
that answer, and
decided it would be too easy.
>> [LAUGH]
>> Yeah, there's been a lot of
positive things.
>> There are some really easy
ones which is that we no
longer allow de jure high
school segregation,
we still have de facto school
segregation, but in the south
there were actually two
separate school systems for
black and white children. And
the south remains more
integrated. The schools in
the south are more integrated
than the schools in the north
racially because the courts
never required the northern
schools to racially
desegregate. So
that is a high moment in
American education history.
Another thing I'll just
mention is that the idea of
the teacher standing in
front of the room and
speaking throughout
the whole class period and
there being very little
student driven instruction,
and very time little for
students to construct their
own learning is, is pretty
much a thing of the past.
I mean, in our big city
districts these days,
teachers have been given very
clear instruction that that is
not considered excellent
instruction anymore,
in many places. And I think
that is very encouraging on
the pedagogical level, and
it has moved the system,
you know, potentially toward
a more progressive and student
centered type of learning.
>> Great do
you have one for Liz?
>> Yeah my question for
you has to do with the time
and both you and Linda and
I have all mentioned this but
what are some of the quicker,
easier ways that you think
teachers can have more time
in their work day and
their work week to do the type
of lesson study, Japan style
collaborative learning?
Because one of the things that
I hear about all the time when
I talk about that is it just,
it's not in our contract or
even if I was here all day,
the way my school
is structured,
it's just not possible.
>> Yeah. Well.
One example, I often will find
the school leader who says
I've done that. You know, I've
done that at my school and
the, they always ask
the same question.
How much, what kind of
grant did you get to make
that possible?
>> Mm-hm.
>> Well they say, no,
I didn't get a grant
to make that possible.
I changed the schedule. Like,
I just re-changed the
schedule. Creative scheduling.
And, well, how do you do that?
Well, one tech, one way to do
that is, if they're different,
subjects that are taught,
then certain subject matter
teachers can have
half day on that day.
And the students will
still have teachers, but
the subject matter teachers
will be pulled out and
have their own time together.
So that's just one example of
creative scheduling that
Seems to be one key, but
I actually spent a lot of
time with Linda's work to
try to answer this question.
So I think you're a better
respondent than I am. [LAUGH].
>> I'll offer one fact
and I'll ask people who have
questions to come to mics cuz
we're gonna
get your questions in, so
please come to the mics.
One thing that's interesting
if you look internationally
is that in countries
like Japan and
some others of the total empl,
education employee workforce,
70 to 80% are teachers.
In the United States about
50% are teachers. We, and
only about 40% are actually
doing full-time teaching. So,
we have a lot more,
levels of government.
Here's where our levels
of government, you know,
a lot of employees at
different levels. A lot more
administrative employees.
Not necessarily principals or
administrators but
administrative staff
paraprofessionals and
other things.
So, usually, when people have
to restructure to get a lot of
time, they need to rethink
the staffing as well as the,
the time. Although, there are
a variety of ways to do it. So
let's get some other voices
in. Introduce yourself
first please.
>> Sure. I'm Katie Hammond.
I'm a graduate of the PULSE
program here at Stanford, and
one of the conversations
we had last year was about
getting teacher buy-in with
the changes that are coming on
and come back again and
their different backgrounds.
Some people have come
from traditional
teaching programs, some not.
How are you gonna get
them to go in and
not just say
the administration has said,
you know, this particular
teacher-focused instruction
versus student-centered
instruction is the way to go?
And actually get
them to sit down and
do that in their classrooms?
>> I
didn't catch the first
part of your
question, did you guys?
>> No.
>> No.
>> So I'm asking how you're
gonna get teachers to buy into
whatever theory of change,
whatever form you do,
because they've come from so
many different backgrounds and
so
many different
training programs and
seen so much come and go and
come back again.
>> Yeah.
>> That is this time just one
more thing that I have to
fake my way through for
a little longer.
>> Yeah,
yeah.
>> Okay.
>> So one of the people that I
talk to from my book was
a educator who worked at
the AFT, and she called this
the this-too-shall-pass
phenomenon. And
just why I listen, and no,
there's no wonder teachers
abdicate for more autonomy.
Like get the out
of my business.
So I think though
that when teachers
encounter experiences
that actually connect
with their real practice,
they are transformed.
So one example I saw was Pam
Grossman's PLATO professional
development project in San
Francisco. I met a veteran,
25 plus, 30 plus year
at teacher who entered,
this program not out of.
>> [COUGH]
>> And, told me in fact,
that when she showed up.
She said, her whole experience
with professional development
led her to believe that she
would get nothing out of this,
but she had to show up.
So she did and, this is
widely shared experience.
But then something happened in
the professional development
experience. Which was,
Pam Grossman happened. And she
actually knows something about
English teaching. And gave
real examples that connected
with Loraine's actual work.
And that led Loraine to say,
I wanna take this back. She
transformed her classroom. And
she I think is, a really
good example of the many,
many people who are not
getting fabulous results.
She will say herself,
you know,
a small number of students in
my classroom were excellent
writers. I didn't know it
was possible for all of them
to do excellent writing until
I had this encounter with
a deeper way to
do my practice.
>> And Debra Ball, years ago,
talked about learning to teach
in practice, learning to
practice in practice. And,
I think good teacher education
programs take that seriously
because they tie the clinical
practice to whatever they are
teaching and good professional
development programs like the
one you described you that as
well. They are not going
wha wha wha wha wha do
this do this, they're, they're
actually tying it directly to
what the practices are,
and so that's our hope.
Let's go on this side for one.
>> Hi,
I'm Jenna Watell, I'm the very
grateful graduate of the Step
program. And I would love
to hear from your opinion,
based on your research and
experiences, what do you see
as the next step we should
be taking to professionalize
early childhood education and
ensure access to high quality
for the childhood education.
>> Dana.
>> Sorry, access to
high quality what?
>> Early childhood.
>> Oh, early childhood teacher
education. I'm not the teacher
ed person up here, so
I'm gonna punt on that one.
>> I think
one of things that we're
seeing in states that
are taking up this question is
that when they. For example
in New Jersey, created early
childhood programs and
made their investments and
paid teachers the same wages
as the K 12 teachers, and
did very, strong investment
in giving the existing,
educator workforce
opportunities to learn.
They went in five years,
from 90% of those teachers
not having a Bachelor's in
Early Childhood Expertise.
Five years later,
90% had that expertise,
both because of making the
learning opportunities readily
available to them in
their schools and
in a variety of other ways,
and
making the wages comparable
to that of teachers, so that
people could see the value in
getting prepared to and to go
into and stay in that field.
>> Yeah, I see early
childhood, I, I mean, I.
>> The next,
it's the next.
>> It's underinvested in,
but it actually has tremendous
opportunity because of how new
a public investment in early
childhood education is. So, we
can create a whole new system
where there wasn't one, and,
that can be done shabbily, or
that can be done really well.
And it can be transformative.
>> Let's go back over here.
>> Hi my name is Mary Dusharm.
And I have, I want to say
thank you to Liz, for
I appreciate your comment in
regarding giving teachers,
some time to collaborate
into lesson study. And
I also would like to ask Dana,
in regards to common core it's
a new program or it's a new,
it's a revolutionary process
that we're going through and
it's working in my classroom.
I'm a second-grade teacher.
I'd like to know if
not Common Core,
then what?
>> I like the Common Core
a lot. I think the standards
themselves represent what
could be a huge step forward
for millions of children.
What I think is really
unfortunate is the fact that
they were implement side
by side simultaneously, to
use the tests tied to them in
a potentially punitive way for
educators. And what this led
to was an unraveling of what
had been the bipartisan
consensus to make this time
work. Because we've tried
to have national curriculum
standards in the past and
it hasn't worked in the past.
So my big fear right now is
that we will give up on what's
good in the common core,
because we are sort
of rightfully anxious
about the standardized tests
and accountability elements
tied to it. I think that would
be a huge, huge loss and it's
something to watch politically
over the next couple of years,
so I don't think there should
be something other than
the Common Core. I think it
should be the Common Core.
>> I will just say that
the Common Core
implementation in California
is utterly different from the
Common Core implementation in
places like New York.
Where a lot of the in fact
almost 200,000 parents have
opted out of the tests and
their kids. And here we've
disassociated the Common Core
standards. First of all
there's been a big investment
in professional development.
A couple of billion dollars
from the state. And
we've completely disassociated
them from any kind of punitive
testing. So I think the way
in which common core gets
implemented can vary and-
>> Absolutely.
>> Most teachers I think
feel the way that we
just heard in California.
>> Hi. I'm Phillip Taylor.
I'm a devel,
real estate developer.
I'm interested in building
schools and staffing schools.
And frankly,
controlling schools as a-
>> [LAUGH]
>> Benevolent dictator.
>> [LAUGH]
>> It's good to be honest.
>> [LAUGH]
>> But my question is, Liz I
was mesmerized by your book.
>> Aw. Thank you.
>> It is the most transforming
thing I've ever read in
education.
>> Aw.
>> My question is
what is the reason or
the excuse or
whatever that Stanford, Lin,
Linda is not
the Example that you
gave of the Italian school
that so well trained its
cadre of teachers. I mean I
can understand the [CROSSTALK]
>> She took her
sabbatical in Italy, and
>> [LAUGH]
>> No, no I got it.
>> They had me come to
Stanford. You could've
told a similar story.
>> No, I'm with you, and
I, and I'm really not saying
confrontationally. I, I mean
in the sense of understanding
the public school system,
to say why don't we just go do
that down the street's kinda
tough. But at Stanford, why
not? And, and in fact, why not
even carry it further, as you
were [INAUDIBLE] because we,
you're the, you're the power
in the country, Linda.
I mean, you are. [LAUGH]
>> Where are my kids?
[LAUGH] I would like them to.
>> [APPLAUSE]
>> Like them to know that.
>> But, but, but I'm thinking,
and not just for your four
year program. Why not,
why not make it six years like
the Finnish program? You know,
where they have to have a lot
of this in school mentored
training before they're out in
the world. And for someone to
get someone from Stanford they
know they have all of that,
and it becomes the petri
dish here for you doing it.
The way you all
know how to do it.
>> So I think this is
a question for me, [LAUGH]
which I will take at least
a minute on. First of all,
I will say that if you talk to
Pasi Sahlberg. I was just with
him a couple of weekends ago,
and he wrote the book
Finnish Lessons about all of
the ways in which
Finland became a high
performing country when they
didn't really intend to.
They just wanted to get
ahead of the Swedes.
That was their main goal
which they have done.
But the Finnish model of
teacher education which is
the two year master's degree
is not unlike in many respects
the the master's degree that
Stanford gives in its Stanford
teacher education program.
And he pointed out some
legislators that they actually
studied our program and
adopted many of those
features in theirs.
However there are,
differences in the context.
And one of the big differences
is that in Finland,
if you will go into
a teacher education program,
it's completely free to you.
And you get a stipend while
you're studying. And that
allows people to take the two
years that it takes in
that program. We thought
at Stanford about extending
the length of our program, but
if you look at
the Stanford tuition,
anybody looked at that lately?
[LAUGHS] And the fact that
there's absolutely no
investment In California any
longer for teacher education.
And, most of the Federal money
has also been eliminated.
People have to go into
significant debt to become a
teacher in the United States.
Where, they'll earn 60% of
what other college-educated
graduates learn. So, we have
to solve both problems.
We have to build great
programs. And I think,
based on the emails that
we get from our graduates
at Step who, every year,
write, Rachel's got,
I don't know, thousands of
them. I have maybe hundreds.
[INAUDIBLE] and they say I was
so well prepared to teach,
and I've gone on and
I've done this.
And, I was just talking to
some of our graduates who are,
you know, kind of changing
the world out there But
they do that at
great sacrifice,
at great personal sacrifice.
>> [INAUDIBLE] of that
because-
>> We need
both hands clapping.
We need the investments and
the high [INAUDIBLE]
>> I, I agree 100% and
I'm glad you got to that,
because I can't imagine
that's stopping you from
doing it at Stanford. I mean,
between Toby and Areaga and
the Cred Foundation, and
a variety of other people
you'd had on this, and
no one has told them that
story yet, about this part
of what you could build here.
>> Yeah.
>> I mean, this is
really powerful.
>> Well, and we do get good,
you know, our dean and our
president, our provost, have
helped us raise scholarship
money for our students.
But what we can do at
a wealthy place like this
to help us with that, and
what you can do nationally,
are two different things.
And we need a national agenda.
We need to be able to say,
as President Obama promised,
and I'm waiting on this one.
>> [LAUGH]
>> If you will teach,
we will pay for
your education, nationally.
>> [APPLAUSE].
>> Is our time?
>> [APPLAUSE]
>> I think it's our time,
our dean is at the podium.
>> No, I, no.
Actually, I just wanna end on
that note because it allow,
it, it couldn't be
a better opportunity for
me to share with you that the
graduate school of education
has articulated a goal, and
we have made this public, and
we are eager to have help
in spreading the word,
that we want to be the first
university to make,
the preparation of
teachers completely free.
>> [APPLAUSE]
>> That will require a little
help from our,
our donors and friends.
>> [LAUGH]
>> So share that.
I really I can't thank you
all enough for being here.
I am just absolutely
totally awed by our
incredible panel.
I do have a small
gift to help you remember this
extraordinary evening with
all of us that I'm going
to share with you.
>> Thank you. You get one too.
>> Oh, I'm so excited.
>> So let me just finish by
saying, that you're all
welcome to join our
panelists out in the foyer for
desert and coffee. And
they will be available to sign
and talk to you about their
books. I know there are still
questions. I'm gonna ask you
to wait to grab onto them
until they get seated at
their tables cuz otherwise
they'll never get there.
>> [LAUGH]
>> So, thank you very
very much.
This was absolutely fabulous.
>> [APPLAUSE]
