It is difficult to read educational literature nowadays without confronting an article regarding how to improve teaching. In fact, just Google “How to improve teaching” and you will receive 124,000 results. Add another word, like “instruction”, “quality”, “skills”, “practice”, “strategies”, and “performance” and you can sort through more than 200,000 results. Who isn’t writing about teaching? If the quantity of responses is astounding, so is the variance in quality and relevance of the writing. Many are blogs by classroom teachers. These are balanced by the blogs of “professional commenters”. If a result is not authored by a practicing teacher or professional commenter, it is a commercial for a workshop, conference, institute or online course designed to improve one or more aspects of teaching. Everyone wants to improve teaching, yet few write about improving the structural profession of teaching as a prerequisite for improving the professional work of teachers.
I propose that, if our communities, states and nation are serious about improving the quality of student achievement, and, if these entities truly believe that improving the quality of instruction is the pathway to improved student achievement, then it is time to employ teachers for a full calendar year instead of a nine month school year. Further, it is time to adjust a teacher’s salary from an annual salary based upon nine months work to a professional salary based upon twelve months work. And, it is time to demand professional performance for such a professional employment. These three structural changes to the profession of teaching set a proper stage for the improvements mandated by government, called for by commenters and wished for by practicing teachers.
Taken separately, the current ramp up of improvements in teaching and student achievement is designed within a traditional nine-month school year calendar. The expectation that such lofty improvements will be made inside the same nine month calendar that is the very calendar producing all of the alleged educational failures is a clear demonstration of Einstein’s definition of insanity: “To do the same thing over and over again and expect different results.” In this case, the repetition of sameness is expecting that teachers can simultaneously teach, evaluate ongoing student learning, and design new instructional strategies and, at the end of the academic year, have advanced overall student achievement and closed the achievement gaps of underachievers. Insanity indeed.
This is the equation that needs to be changed.
For 180 days teach more rigorous standards that will be assessed with more complex tests
+ continuously and SIMULTANEOUSLY evaluate learning in multiple subjects
+ continuously and SIMULTANEOUSLY design re-teaching strategies for children unsuccessful with initial instruction
+ continuously and SIMULTANEOUSLY design extended learning strategies for children successful with initial instruction
= closed achievement gaps between disaggregated child populations and internationally competitive academic achievement by all children.
Interestingly, it is not the discrete tasks that are daunting. Teachers can cause children to learn more rigorous standards. Teachers can cause children to succeed on more complex educational tests of academic achievement. Teachers can design re-teaching and extended learning strategies to assure learning by all children and more learning by learning-efficient children. Teachers can close achievement gaps. Finally, teachers can cause the academic achievement of children in the United States to be internationally competitive. These discrete tasks are not the problem. The problem is SIMULTANEOUSLY in a traditional school year that used to be 180 days and now is shrinking to between 160 and 170 days for academic instruction.
Efforts to extend the school year for children have not fared well. There are break out school districts that have organized extended year instruction and year-round instruction. However, there are very few of these examples. And, those that have done so still face the same dilemma. How can teachers teach, evaluate and design in the same moment, and in the case of extended year districts, do so over even greater time?
It is much more feasible to maintain a nine-month school year for children and create a twelve-month professional employment year for teachers. Acknowledging the need for teacher vacation time, a year-round employment with a four week vacation, that should be inclusive of all school vacation time such as Christmas and spring breaks, will result in eleven months of professional work. This professional calendar will provide dedicated time for teaching (nine months or thirty-six weeks), time for a continuous, careful and collaborative evaluation of student learning, and time for the design of instruction that can advance the learning of children who were immediately successful and complete the learning of children who were less than initially successful. Time for the last two tasks, analysis of student learning and design of “next” instruction is sorely absent in today’s school year calendar for teacher work and is further abused by mandated reforms to be accomplished within the insanity of a school calendar.
To be successful with the reform mandates, teachers need time to do professional work. That time includes evaluating learning and planning next instruction to assure that all children learn. A professional year rather than a school year is a sane solution to the problem of time.
The second aspect of a new professional employment is annual salary. Money is the elephant in the dilemma of improving the profession of teaching. Local property taxes carry the “elephant’s weight” relative to teacher compensation. The debate over teachers’ salary and benefit packages and the local school’s millage in the local property tax bill has been ongoing for decades. This is why I point to the commitment of the nation and states, as well as local communities, for the improvement of educational achievement. Because the nation and each of the states have a stake in educational improvement, they also must share in the cost of the improvement. If the nation and state do not share in the cost, they should diminish their educational mandates. It is the age old commandment to “put up or shut up.” Demanding something for nothing and pointing to the lack of quality instruction is fully disingenuous when these governmental leaders know the insanity of expecting significantly different results from the age-old teaching/evaluation/instructional design dilemma.
The current federal ante of money is heavily weighted toward entitlements and incentives. Although many of the historic titles have been abandoned, there still is considerable money in the annual ESEA awards to states and through states to school districts. Earlier in Obama administration, federal economic recovery money was funneled through the states to thwart the drastic lay-off of teachers that would have occurred during the dire recession. Also, the Race To The Top funds have provided incentive grants to spotlight districts’ work on federally-inspired projects. Federal money, though important for a district’s compliance efforts, is not significant in everyday teacher compensation.
The relationship of state money to teacher compensation varies with the economic status of a local school district. In Wisconsin, state funding under the “two-thirds” funding formulas of the last century committed the state money to paying up to two-thirds of a local school district budget. The “two-thirds” promise was more political than economic as there were many school districts that received “special adjustment aid” only, often less than $10,000 on a $10,000,000 district budget.
There has not been a state commitment to establishing and maintaining a professional teacher’s salary in Wisconsin. To the contrary, teacher compensation is a political football kicked heavily when there is a state budgetary deficit and state expenditures exceed revenues.
A professional compensation should accomplish three goals. First, young professional teachers should no longer need to be engaged in non-educational summer employment in order to pay their bills. In too many communities, a beginning teacher with a family qualifies for food stamps and must hold a non-educational summer job in order to support a family. A nine-month teaching contract is a part-time contract that pays part-time wages on an annual basis. This is not professional.
Second, a professional salary should be large enough to retain the very best teachers in the profession. Too many quality instructors leave education because their salary is not competitive with the salary they can demand in another profession. Too many quality instructors leave education due to the knowledge that their salary “tops out” well below the salary of other comparable professionals. There is a belief that teachers accept a relatively lower annual salary because they are in a “helping” profession and the real rewards that satisfy a teacher are “of the heart” and not “of the wallet.” This is not true and it is not professional.
And, third, a professional compensation should pay teachers for the addition of approximately seventy working days to their professional work year. When a professional teaching calendar that approximates 255 working days is adopted it is rational to assume that additional time creates additional costs. However, there also is need for a rational discussion of instructional time with children and instructional evaluation and planning time without children and a differentiated cost of each kind of time. Professional salaries for a professional work calendar need to be competitive with comparable professions and a target annual salary should be in the neighborhood of $100,000.
How to raise the revenue for increasing professional salaries is the perplexing problem. Because the number of teachers in a state is a very large number and the number of teachers in a school district still is a proportionately large number, it may be reasonable to incrementally add employment weeks and employment salary to the profession over a schedule of time. The important accomplishment is the realization of national, state and local leaders that if they demand improvements in educational outcomes and accountability, they must supply a reasonable professional work year and a reasonable professional salary to accomplish their demands.
And, lastly, it is time for professional educators to cause professional educational results. It is time for every child to accomplish their annual curricular goals, regardless of any impediments they may face. It is time for every child to advance a grade level and be promoted with commensurate grade level knowledge, skills and working processes every school year. And, professional accountability, that supports a sustained professional employment, should be contingent upon a teacher causing all children in the teacher’s assignment to accomplish their annual curriculum.
Are these three recommendations valid? “Backward design” has been a concept in educational planning for several decades. Backward design applied to the improvement of educational outcomes starts with a consensus understanding of those outcomes. The backward design then creates valid and reliable processes that when executed faithfully and annually will cause those outcomes to be realized. So lets’ state the proposition in terms of backward design.
We want to improve the educational outcomes of all children. Or, in mandate language, all high school graduates must be college or career ready, and all children must be academically competitive with their international peers. The causal factor in this mandate is the improvement of instruction of all children. The focus in the improvement of instruction is the improvement of teaching. And, necessary to the improvement of teaching is the institution of a professional teaching work year and a professional teaching salary.
Finally, I return to Albert Einstein. “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used to create them.” Our old thinking about the profession of teaching leads us to expecting improved educational results based upon greater demands placed upon teachers working in the same work environment that produced unsatisfactory results. If educational achievement is a problem, we need to apply new thinking to its solution. It is the sane thing to do.