Randi Weingarten's speech on the teacher's role in the age of accountability: June 7, 2007
Jun 7, 2007 5:56 PM
Teacher's Role in the Age of Accountability
Randi Weingarten
EduStat Summit 2007
Columbia University
June 7, 2007
Thank you for giving me this opportunity to talk with you about my aspirations for teaching in the age of accountability. In the hurly-burly demands of everyday events, it is rare that I have the chance to reflect on where we are and where we need to go if we are to realize our learning goals for students.
This conference is devoted to discussing the core competencies of teachers in the 21st century. Those competencies, of course, are inextricably linked to the learner outcomes we have for our students and the roles and responsibilities of teachers in helping them achieve those outcomes.
Sadly, in this respect, we have a system that is at war with itself. Too often, testing has replaced instruction; data has replaced professional judgment; compliance has replaced excellence; and so-called leadership has replaced teacher professionalism.
I would like to use this time to talk with you about my views about accountability as a tool for creating the conditions for high performance teaching and learning in every school and classroom and the union’s role in school improvement. These issues are interdependent, of course—school improvement is unlikely to be successful without accountability, and neither is likely to be successful without meaningful teacher involvement.
It is not uncommon for folks today to complain that teacher unions only care about teachers’ narrow interests, and that, if negotiation discussions go much beyond salary and working conditions, “unions just say no.” This is certainly not the case with the New York City teachers union — the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) — or its parent organization the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). From its founding we have been concerned about representing both teachers’ and children’s interests and those interests include improving schools, teachers’ instructional practices and student achievement and success.
What is really happening is that more than ever there is this industrial techno-centric view of teachers as interchangeable cogs in an education enterprise. This approach rewards their compliance above their creativity, and results in the denigration of teachers and disregard for their contributions to learning.
Consequently, and with good reason, teachers often say they feel they are the targets and not the agents of reform. Their “wisdom of practice” and real world experience with children is discounted or disregarded in policy-making deliberations and decision making.
Nonetheless, teachers’ voices must be an integral part of the conversation; they are on the ground, they know what works, they know what kids need to succeed, and we must attend to their experiences, suggestions and requests. We must make explicit their roles and responsibilities in the classroom, in the school house and in education decision making. Only then can we define the competencies they need to do the job.
When faced with dilemmas of public education the route of “least resistance” and, I might add, of least effectiveness, is the “teacher proof” road. Rather than invest in teachers, and capitalize on their knowledge, policymakers and administrators attempt to create systems that they hope will obviate the need for excellent teachers. They attempt to substitute cook book curricula, step-by-step instructional practices, computer-based instruction and bubble-in testing, instead of rich, student-centered teaching and learning. That is our current Teacher 1.0 model.
What policy makers and administrators fail to understand is the role teachers might have, and the responsibility they ought to have, in improving the quality of schooling and raising the level of the performance of students. They often arrogantly presume that teachers do not have the interest or ability to help shape a context for learning, including shaping the profession itself.
I believe that it is this failure to make teachers full participants in shaping school improvement that so limits reform efforts. In today’s 1.0 model of teaching, teachers are given the responsibility for educating children, but not the authority to influence the education policies and practices necessary to get the job done. But without harnessing their experience, judgment, expertise, and professionalism, we will not succeed.
So what does this mean for Teacher 2.0 and the “new, data driven accountability” that policymakers and more recently the public are calling for and that this conference would like to see? How do we incorporate the teacher voice? How do we create a school improvement model that values and respects teacher professionalism?
We hear a lot these days about what I call “3-D reform,”—data-driven decision making and about using tests to improve teaching and learning. NCLB has been a huge catalyst in putting these twin concepts front and center.
The law had great intentions —
- first and foremost it was meant to create an accountability system that would no longer allow districts to use the success of some children to mask the failure of others;
- second, it was to place attention on resource distribution factors, particularly the distribution of teachers, because in the past far too many poor children and children of color were taught by the least qualified teachers, and
- Finally, it was supposed to highlight the use of evidence in problem solving and school improvement.
But NCLB has had some very negative consequences, particularly in regard to the misuse of data in the name of accountability. Data has become an enemy — not an ally — a stick, not a tool.
This focus on data has all too often been defined narrowly as standardized assessments, which has led to the unintended and unfortunate result that test scores, almost exclusively standardized multiple choice tests, have become synonymous with learning; and, regrettably, in all too many places, test preparation has been substituted for teaching.
If we are to get to the data-driven decision making model of school improvement, which Teacher 2.0 requires and which I believe this conference advocates, then we must
- first understand where we are vis-a-vis the use of data;
- second, describe what a data driven system based on teacher professionalism would look like; and
- finally, discuss how we can get there with the help of the teacher union.
Where we are
Let’s examine that proposition that test scores and test preparation have become the primary vehicle for accountability and data-driven instructional practices.
Consider New York’s example. City schools are awash in testing. In 2006, in response to widespread and ongoing concerns of parents, teachers and students about the current testing regime in New York City, I formed a Task Force whose purpose was to make recommendations to policy makers about how to reduce the amount of high-stakes testing and make it useful to improving the quality of instruction on a day-to-day basis.
Teachers want their kids to succeed. They hold themselves accountable for their students’ performance. One tool that teachers need and value is reliable data about student progress and achievement. Standardized tests can provide such data, but they are not the only evidence that teachers rely on to determine student learning.
In fact, even the test-makers acknowledge that. All agree that their assessments, especially just a single one, were not designed to be the basis of high-stakes decisions that determine students’ and teachers’ futures. Although they may be good measures for aggregate groups, they are too one-dimensional and simply not reliable enough in individual instances.
And teachers teach many important things in addition to skills and facts—complex problem solving, civility, aesthetic appreciation, moral values to name a few—and these are things that cannot be delivered in canned programs or assessed on a multiple choice, machine readable test. This evidence, along with standardized test results must be part of the mix in any responsible data-driven accountability system.
But this is currently not the case, as our Task Force discovered when it surveyed teachers, held forums and took testimony regarding testing and instructional practices in New York City. What did we find?
Test preparation and paperwork related to testing has replaced a big chunk of instruction in our schools. A survey of our teachers this winter showed an average of one day a week spent on test-related work, and during the 7 or 8 weeks prior to each of the tests, a third of instructional time was devoted to test prep.
In addition to the testing that the state and NCLB require, the city has added more testing and its own accountability system. The result: a New York City school can receive an “A” from the city, yet have a designation under NCLB as “in need of improvement” and be identified by the state as a “school under registration and review.” This is unnecessarily confusing, leading to a general mistrust of the “accountability” system.
More important is that management has used the accountability systems and the data that support them in high stakes, punitive ways that demoralize children and their teachers.
It is important to stress here, that it is not testing per se that is the problem. The problem is the excessive testing and the inappropriate linking of the results to important decisions about a student’s or school’s future, without regard to other evidence that might give a more accurate picture of the situation and lead to more productive remedies.
Similar to findings from others who have investigated test-driven accountability, we found that the city’s Children First initiative with its focus on testing and test-driven accountability puts inordinate pressure on schools, teachers and students. It skews the instructional environment and replaces a “culture of learning” with a “culture of testing.” As one teacher put it “Students are being taught to take tests, to figure out what the test wants one to say and then to say it. They are not being taught to be critical thinkers.”
This constant focus on testing narrows the curriculum by concentrating only on the skills and knowledge needed to pass the tests. Our survey also revealed that many responding elementary schools spent more time on test prep than on instruction in social studies and science combined!
By substituting testing and test preparation for instructional and professional time—the test score, not learning has become the goal of education. Worse still, the ceaseless focus on the test decreases flexibility in professional decision making regarding curriculum, student placement and promotion and the like. Many teachers bristle at this lack of respect for their professional judgment regarding the education and future of the students they teach every day. They say that principals and administrators prefer to look only at student test scores on a single test when making decisions about kids, ignoring teacher input.
So at the end of the day what do teachers experience as data-driven accountability in NYC? What do they see? They see a system managed by non-educators, under the guise of a business model — who impose a massive system of management, measurement and surveillance of schools, teachers and students largely to punitive ends. As Peter Sachs, author of “Standardized Minds,” has observed, in such a system “teachers are poised to become little more than production-line functionaries…who merely feed their students the correct data to pass the next test.”
In such an environment, teachers are told to increase student test scores but they are not given the time and resources to examine the meaning behind the test scores, investigate root causes, and propose viable solutions. Instead, they are told what curriculum to use, what material to put on bulletin boards, how to arrange the desks, etc., etc., ad nauseum. Given their experiences, is it any wonder that many teachers and other educators are wary of calls for “data-driven accountability?” Is it any wonder they are reluctant to take risks and experiment with new alternatives? But it needn’t be that way.
So what do we Need?
What might an evidence-based, data-driven accountability system look like and what role must teachers play in such a system? What is the Teacher 2.0 model? What skills and knowledge do they need?
Let me say first, information is important, but alone it won’t make us free. More data does not always add up to useful data.
We do not need another hammer with which to beat educators into submission and compliance. A rigid compliance mode does not foster creativity, nor does it exploit talent in the search for solutions. Rather we need a different orientation to school reform, one that shifts from compliance to capacity building; one that encourages creativity and risk taking in lieu of obedience and intimidation; and one that increases teachers’ knowledge and skills and uses that expertise to improve achievement.
The data-driven decision making system that I envision moves school districts and schools away from continually reorganizing to solve poorly understood problems and instead causes them to deliberate collectively with teachers to identify and focus on the “right problems,” ones over which the schools have control, problems that are clearly and narrowly defined, and that have a high potential for affecting student effort and learning.
Creating such a system requires leadership, new roles and responsibilities for educators, a collegial environment focused on finding solutions. In short, it requires recognizing the professionalism and contribution teachers can make to reform. Such a system is developed with teachers, not imposed upon them.
I am not talking about an accountability system that tinkers around the edges of NCLB, but a revolution, one that requires new roles and responsibilities for principals and teachers. One that appreciates a range of outcomes in addition to student achievement on standardized tests.
I am talking about a changed mindset, one that replaces a culture of testing with a culture of inquiry where the quest to improve teaching and learning is the singular focus on all education stakeholders—students, teachers, parents, administrators and community members.
In my system, the central role of the principal is not enforcer, but rather facilitator. The principal is the individual who creates the environment in which collaborative problem solving and the hard work of teachers as researchers and instructional leaders can occur. Doing that work requires restructuring school time so teachers can analyze data, examine alternative hypotheses, explore best practices and help their colleagues improve practice and implement new instructional methods.
In such a system, teachers are not cogs in a delivery system but partners in planning and delivering instruction and improving performance through continual evaluation of data—test scores, student work, teacher, student and community attitudinal and satisfaction data, program and process data—against academic standards and organizational goals.
In my proposed accountability system, data are a means to reform; they are not the reform itself. I am not talking here about getting predigested test scores to teachers in a “timely and user friendly fashion”—although that is important. I am talking about creating an environment in which teachers routinely and collaboratively study the data, ask questions, call for different presentations of the information, look for patterns, and examine the inconsistencies and gaps in the data sets that must be understood or resolved. They need to be able to formulate hypotheses, to look behind the data and ask “why?” and they need to devise strategies to deal effectively with the “whys” when they discern them.
This model requires new skills for teachers. It requires understanding that teachers are not restricted to the box called the classroom, but rather that they must have a say in school and district decision making, and that their voice must be informed by data that they can interrogate to find causes and solutions to the problems that have plagued schooling for too long.
In the data-driven accountability system that I envision, teachers are integral to identifying the issues that can be addressed with the intelligent collection and analysis of data. They must participate in the identification of the problems that data can best address, and in the decisions as to what kinds of information—perceptual, cognitive, behavioral, etc.—must be collected and how it should be analyzed. And, most important, they must be at the table when decisions are made concerning what steps should be taken to improve teaching and learning given the data at hand.
Are teachers ready to operate in an accountability system that is data driven and requires their active engagement in problem solving and the decision making process? Yes and no. This is a change from current practice and at present many teachers are not prepared for such authority, in part because they have never seen such responsibility as integral to their profession.
Can they gain the skills they need? Absolutely. Through peer mentoring, and in partnership with others, such as our great universities, we can introduce these new teacher roles and match them with requisite expertise—it’s more a matter of finding the will than the way. The data-driven decision-making model we need does require building teacher capacity, through pre-service and in-service learning, but it is well within our reach.
But most particularly, they will need the time and opportunity to work with other teachers to address the data, formulate pilot projects to remedy problems and develop tools to further the continual monitoring of goals through data collection and evaluation. And they will need an environment that encourages innovation and risk taking.
How do we get there?
Three times since World War II the United States mobilized our greatest talents and accomplished the improbable. If we are really serious, if we are to stop talking and put our money and our talent where our mouth is, then we must do the same for our students. We need a Manhattan Project for assessment and outcomes, a Marshall Plan to fix our facilities, and a commitment comparable to the race to the Moon to transform teaching into a true profession.
Einstein said, “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.” We need to figure out what must count in education and how to measure it. What we need today is a Manhattan Project charged with two tasks:
- first, to develop a range of student outcome measures —behavioral, cognitive, civic and attitudinal—that are essential if students are to function successfully in a democratic society and in a global economy and
- second, to create valid and reliable methods for determining teacher and school contributions to that achievement.
I call upon our City — the Mayor, and the Chancellor to work jointly with the union and to bring parents, practitioners, researchers and other necessary stakeholders together to develop indicators and fair procedures for their use in a data driven system for allocating resources to students and compensation to teachers.
We need a Marshall Plan — to create the facilities and to reduce student/teacher ratios by 20 percent.
New York has a good start in the capital plan we worked on together last year, but we need to get ALL school buildings to Teacher 2.0 readiness—state of the art science and computer laboratories, sufficient classroom space, libraries and lunchrooms, up-to-date gym facilities and no crumbling structures, no non-functioning bathrooms.
It is morally reprehensible and educationally unsound to have any children in unfit and inadequate environments. It is hard for children to learn in buildings that tell them that they are not worth investing in. And teachers need the tools—telephones, internet and computers—to work together and to evaluate the data on their teaching and their students’ learning. If we could rebuild industry in post-war Europe, surely we can modernize America’s schools.
But perhaps most important and hardest of all, we need to reach for the stars and create a new partnership for teaching and learning that transforms the profession of teaching and puts student learning at its core. We must create a system where teachers are instrumental in preparing new teachers, setting standards for their entry and supporting their development to assure growth, and where experienced teachers stay in the profession in numbers far greater that what we have now. Teachers must have the authority and capacity to determine the learning environments in their schools —that is, they need to be in charge of how time, space and resources are deployed to further student learning.
To bring this about, we must have:
- rigorous standards and preparation routes to the classroom. Today, despite many efforts at reform, teacher preparation is still inadequate for the realities of urban classrooms. The fact that almost half leave within 5 years is evidence of this.
- We need meaningful induction programs that will help new teachers learn the ropes and gradually take on more classroom responsibility as they improve their practice.
- At the same time, we need to find ways to retain and use the abilities of experienced teachers so they can impart their wisdom to newer colleagues. It is time for a differentiated teaching profession, one that builds on proposals the UFT has suggested over the years regarding career ladders going from apprentice and intern to mentor and LEAD teacher.
- We need to create opportunities for teachers to work together to improve practice through imbedded professional development based on the specific needs of teachers and their students. The work of the Teacher Centers is a starting point.
- We need to revive school leadership teams, school site teaching and learning councils where teachers, along with administration and parents, advise and or decide on resource deployment, professional development needs, staff hirings, school assignments and schedules, and the comprehensive education plan.
- And finally, because money matters in transforming the system, we are willing to explore a professional differentiated compensation system, the likes of which the AFT proposed years ago, but it must presume a base salary that is competitive enough to attract and retain the best and the brightest to teaching, and to ensure that our experienced teachers stay here as a career.
As David Haselkorn, Senior Policy Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, has observed, “teaching is the essential profession, the profession that makes all other professions possible.” The problems that have prevented it from becoming a true profession and best serving the needs of students are well known, and have been decried for years. But, to paraphrase Einstein, “We cannot solve the problems of teacher education and teaching by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” And we will not solve them by creating data driven accountability systems where data becomes our enemy and not our ally — or eats up so much instructional time that teachers’ creativity and ingenuity are snuffed out. It is time to think differently and act boldly. The union is ready; will others be as well?
