Try this: Teachers as the solution

Miller Photography

Masaki Okajima, director general of the Japanese teachers union, joins the discussion as David Edward of the National Education Association and Christine Blower of the National Union of Teachers of the United Kingdom listen.

MIller Photography

Kate Gainsfield of the New Zealand Post Primary Teachers’ Association makes a point.

“Teachers must be a central part of any effective solution and provided with the tools to lead change.”
— OECD Secretary General Angel Gurría

PISA — the international tests of what 15-year-olds know and can do — regularly shows the United States performing only about the middle of the pack of industrialized nations, well below many less wealthy and powerful nations. Our political leaders then profess “shock” and “alarm” and draw the lesson that we must double-down on teachers, drive all decisions with standardized test scores, and sideline the unions that protect teacher rights.

But a very different lesson emerged from a recent international summit on teaching, convened by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which conducts the tests. The nations with the highest-performing school systems explained that they treat their teachers with the utmost trust and reverence, and allow them wide latitude in what and how they teach.

The summit, which took place in New York City on March 16-17, “showed perhaps more clearly than ever that the United States has been pursuing an approach to teaching almost diametrically opposed to that pursued by the highest-achieving nations,” wrote Stanford education professor Linda Darling-Hammond, who was one of the invited speakers and will be the recipient of the UFT’s Dewey Award, the union’s highest honor, in May.

The OECD asked 16 nations who participate in PISA — the Program for International Student Achievement — to spend two days looking at issues of teacher recruitment, training and retention. The countries’ education chiefs came, paired with the leaders of their teacher unions, and spoke of the intensive work they do together to plan improvements.

So what exactly do the world’s highest-performing countries do to recruit, train and keep the teachers that help all their students to perform well?

Ontario, Canada — Zeroing in on what matters

In 2003, the province of Ontario embarked on a demanding campaign to raise high school graduation rates. To make it work, the province signed a four-year collective-bargaining agreement with its four major teachers unions that gave teachers a significant role in the process. The province also agreed to reduce class sizes and create extra preparation time for teachers (which led to hiring 7,000 more) so they could work more closely with students.

Forty percent of students in Ontario are English language learners, and the province wanted to ensure that teachers and school leaders reached them. A new position was created in every school called a “student success” teacher, whose sole job was to track hard-to-serve students. And that teacher did not work alone. “Really, it is a full-school initiative,” the principal of one Ontario school explained. The whole staff meets regularly to review individual students, adjust their schedules or find them social services — whatever they need to succeed.

After four years, Ontario’s graduation rate rose more than 10 points and the province is among the top ten PISA performers in reading. Immigrants and native-born do equally well on the test.

“That’s why it’s so important to have a process that is not punitive or negative but is positive and enhances professionalism,” Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty said of the teacher reforms.

Miller PhotographyBlower (left) makes a point, while Mary Lou Donnelly of the Canadian Teachers Federation looks on.

Singapore — Taking pay off the table

Singapore is the very top nation in PISA math and its teachers are paid very competitively. Singapore’s teachers get a stipend while they are in training, comparable to the monthly salary for new college grads in all other fields. Starting salaries for new teachers are adjusted to match the salaries for other professions requiring a college degree. After three years of teaching, the recruits begin to be groomed as either master teachers, curriculum specialists or school leaders, according to their interests and talents. As they advance in the profession, their compensation increases and most soon take on leadership roles in the schools.

By comparison, U.S. teacher salaries are 60 percent of the average for other college-educated workers, and many have the exact same job on their first day of work and their last.

Finland — Giving teachers the reins

Finland is consistently among the top one or two nations on PISA, and its schools have been widely studied. Visitors learn that the system is highly decentralized, that schools have a great deal of freedom and that testing is not emphasized. Such an approach requires strong teachers. “Teaching as a profession is very appreciated in Finland,” Minister of Education Henna Virhhunen explained to the conference.

Finnish teachers average about 100 fewer classroom hours a year than the OECD average of 703. Those extra hours are devoted to one-on-one work with students and collaborative work in curriculum development. As in Ontario, all Finnish schools have weekly teacher and support staff conferences. Education is highly personalized — about 40 to 50 percent of students get some intervention in Finland’s schools.

The recipe attracts and keeps great teachers. “We have been able to keep the teaching profession intellectually attractive and interesting for teachers,” said Pasi Sahlberg, a director in Finland’s Ministry of Education and Culture. “They can use the knowledge and skills they learn in teacher education fully. They have a role in curriculum planning and design; they have a very important role in assessing student performance.”

The UFT and the AFT participated in the conference and presented the union-supported Denver “ProComp” model of teacher development. But the overall lesson was a radical one for most U.S. school leaders: yes, student performance is linked to good teaching — but good teaching is linked to empowered, respected teachers.