Who is really accountable for good teaching, the teacher or the school she teaches in?
The Draft of the Model Core Teaching Standards (published July 19) suggests that accountability might be shared between the teacher and the school, by emphasizing “collaboration,” “communication,” and “using data to support learning.”
A literal reading of the document shows that every statement begins with “the teacher” as if accountability rested solely on the individual, but much of what the teacher does to achieve these standards depends on collegiality within the school. If you count up the “performances” that rely on “collaboration” or “communication,” they show 39% of teaching (25 of 64) is collaborative. Standards 9 (Reflection and Continuous Growth) and 10 (Collaboration) are particularly rife with collaborative performances.
This is a far cry from holding teachers solely accountable for their students’ performances on standardized tests and using those results for tenure or promotion decisions. In fact, regarding assessment, the document states, “The teacher uses multiple and appropriate types of assessment data to identify student learning needs and to develop differentiated learning experiences” (Standard #6e). The critical descriptors “multiple and appropriate,” applied to assessment, suggest that a single number will not be adequate to evaluate student performance and certainly insufficient to evaluate teacher performance.
If this document were taken as seriously as the Common Core State Standards for learning, it would revolutionize schooling, especially secondary schooling, in the United States. It would mean smaller classes, shared students, common planning time, and strategic and consistent professional development focusing on identified student needs. It would require a huge transfusion of funding to hire more collaborative teachers, more funding to develop effective formative assessment, more professional development to “independently and collaboratively examine test and other performance data to understand student progress and to guide planning” (6b). For most secondary schools in this country, it would be a transformation of school culture.
You can not blame the fragmented school culture on teachers, because they are indoctrinated with collaborative education in their teacher preparation, almost to the consternation of their mentor teachers when they first observe their student teachers. Collaboration is not practiced in many secondary schools as it is preached in schools of education. It is often a function of the size of classes and student load and the flexibility of the school schedule. Secondary schools tend to reinforce the Lone Ranger model of teaching.
The Coalition of Essential Schools provides good models of collaboration in secondary schools by limiting class size and giving autonomy to the principal and teachers. In their “Core Principles” (http://www.essentialschools.org/items/4), they include
Personalization Teaching and learning should be personalized to the maximum feasible extent. Efforts should be directed toward a goal that no teacher have direct responsibility for more than 80 students in the high school and middle school and no more than 20 in the elementary school.
and
Resources dedicated to teaching and learning Ultimate administrative and budget targets should include student loads that promote personalization, substantial time for collective planning by teachers, competitive salaries for staff, and an ultimate per pupil cost not to exceed that at traditional schools by more than 10 percent. To accomplish this, administrative plans may have to show the phased reduction or elimination of some services now provided students in many traditional schools.
The details of this vision are better explained on their web site < essentialschools.org>
There is much to celebrate in the Model Core Teaching Standards, especially because they promote the importance of teaching together. In this sense it is a true school reform document, one that deserves the attention of the educational foundations that place excellent teaching high on their agenda. It will require the kind of financial transfusion that foundations can supply to implement these standards one school at a time.