It's Neither America's Students nor the Teachers That are the Problem

The Conundrum Facing American Education

Is it possible that the problem when comparing American students to Asian students that Asian kids' teachers are pulled from the cream of the crop in societies where women and other cultural minorities do not have professional options that bring them prestige the way teaching does? 

In Asia, teachers are revered, but women's cultural status is devalued. Today, if you were an Asian Madeleine Albright, you'd be teaching kids; not leading the country. I guess if I were taught by Asia's Madeleine Albright, I'd be acing my history exams too. (An interesting examination of K12 teacher preparedness by Friedman...read on).

I attended JebFest (National Summit on Education Reform) in Boston last month, and a pair of conversations, two articles, and the results of Massachusetts' students on a cross-national test got me thinking. 

Turns out Massachusetts has students competitive with Asian students:

Average math scores, 8th grade (57 countries and education systems)

• Korea, Republic of 613
• Singapore 611
• Chinese Taipei 609
• Hong Kong 586
• Japan 570
• Massachusetts 561

But ultimately, it remained unclear why. Is it that Massachusetts kids have better teachers? Better parents? There's zero doubt in my mind that its the parents and the teachers that are the problem that can solve the conundrum.

But there may be an insurmountable challenge too. America's business profession landscape has changed, specifically for women. At JebFest, I heard from Kate Walsh from the National Center for Teacher Quality. She was convincing. Exceptional people in American school systems were teaching us kids in the 1970s. That's because according to Walsh, American women (and most minorities) didn't have excellent professional options in the 1930s, '40s, '50s, and even '60s when they were in college. By the time they graduated college, it was back to K12 for them, because full-tenured professorships and high-paying jobs in the private sector were culturally off limits and/or really, really hard to come by without connections.

Now women of all backgrounds are fighting for high-paid corporate jobs, and bypassing a life in the K12 teaching profession. So whereas I was taught be brilliant minds like Ms. Haggerty, Ms. Beebe, Ms. Meysenberg, my niece has been taught by some who got degrees from junior colleges, some who were tenured after only 18 months according to an agreement the unions made with the state and put into the state code, and those who are not graduates from the most prestigious institutions in the country.

Then Clayton

These ideas were gelling, when out came two key articles that got me thinking about how to create success in students: 

Correa and Student

First was Wired magazine's article on "How a Radical new Teaching Method Could Unleash a Generation of geniuses." In this piece, the author profiles Sergio Juárez Correa, 31, who comes from a hopeless place and has few options. But teaching gives him a way to use the brain god gave him. And he develops brains in the children he teaches. He lives in a culture that makes it impossible, both financially and social-mobility-wise, to achieve at a "higher" level outside the classroom. Teaching is his only viable path, given the poverty of his community.

Next came Thomas Friedman's article on "The Shanghai Secret" about teaching and learning in China. What's compelling isn't Friedman's take on the Chinese school system's focus on the basics. That's neither here nor there. By coalescing the "learnings" from JebFest and then reading this article, I feel that I'm seeing a problem that others aren't:

Exceptional people who live in societies that do not enable them to succeed (rural Mexico, anti-feminist societies of all stripes) make teaching the go-to profession for its intellectual elite.
One of Friedman's highlights showing how the teachers can see through the cultural morass that might otherwise limit children's ability to learn and succeed:

Christina Bao, 29, who also teaches English, said she tries to chat either by phone or online with the parents of each student two or three times a week to keep them abreast of their child’s progress. 

“I will talk to them about what the students are doing at school.” She then alluded matter-of-factly to a big cultural difference here, “I tell them not to beat them if they are not doing well.”

I find it illuminating that the state licensure program in California makes it possible for tenure after only 18 months. What on earth has anyone learned on the job in 18 months out of college? Sheesh, these students go directly into the teaching profession, and are nearly immediately protected in their jobs, even though they could be disasters for teachers. At Stanford, a professor can only get tenure after 7 years, and tons of peer review. In California K12 schools, it's 18 months. 

Someone's protecting someone, but no one's helping California kids in the process.

Ultimately, what's worse is that it's a challenge that our universities and colleges of education refuse to confront or help alleviate. A review by Walsh's group shows as few as 95 schools in the entire country meeting her organization's standards for preparing teachers to enter the workforce. 

If you exit ed school unprepared to teach, that is simply not the schools problem. That's the teacher's problem, and ultimately, the students.

It's a sorry story that's all too real across the country.