Someone always stands at the pinnacle. You name the endeavor and a ranking will exist somewhere and someone is at the top of that ranking. Call it human nature to always seek out the best or at least what we think is the best. Or, call it a flaw in our character that causes us to give everything an ordinal number. But, we do it. Afterwards, if we stand back and reexamine the ranks, what is it that distinguishes the very best from the very good and these from the rest? And, as this is a blog about teaching, what is it that distinguishes the best teachers?
We gain insights about the very best from the mechanisms that are used to create rankings. Sorting through data and making a simple analysis is okay, but not very discerning. We can rank by wins and losses or successes and failure. This is easy to do when competition is involved, but more difficult to do in complex endeavors. College sports teams are ranked nationally by games won and lost in a sports season. These are simple and objective numbers. Colleges are ranked as educational institutions by measures of their academic rigor and the prestige the world conveys to their graduates. These are complex and subjective values.
Let’s consider a non-educational ranking system. US News and World Reports annually ranks almost everything of significant importance to the American consumer. Their evaluative techniques are honed over time. For instance, their evaluation of “The Best Hospitals” considers four areas of interest – structure of hospital resources, processes for delivering care, outcomes as measured by risk-adjusted mortality, and patient safety. They combine these four criteria with the professional reputation of the hospital as judged by physicians to create a national ranking.
http://www.usnews.com/pubfiles/BH_2014_Methodology_Report_Final_Jul14.pdf
Placing a value on the work of a teacher also is a complex and subjective determination. Few organizations rank teachers publicly. One of the few rankers, the University of Illinois, reduces its valuation to consumer/student ratings. The University of Illinois uses student ratings to create a “List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent By Their Students” at the close of each academic term. Students rate the overall teaching effectiveness of the instructor as well as the overall quality of the course. This combination recognizes that effective teaching is pedagogical and curricular – know how to teach and know how to make what is taught important to the student.
http://cte.illinois.edu/teacheval/ices/pdf/Summer14List.pdf
US News and the University of Illinois want their consumers to use their ratings as a basis for making future decisions.
Often it is easy to perceive that someone is very good at something but not as easy to discern who is better than others, especially when being a professional in that occupation already is the result of a highly selective process. People don’t get to be professional athletes or acclaimed surgeons or nationally-known lawyers or award-winning architects by just showing up. Professionals are already exceptions to the general population. Being one of the best in their profession means that they have demonstrated that their work is superior to the usual work of others in their field.
This is an important concept – work that is superior to the usual in their field. As most things that people do can be measured, I like measurements that indicate an added value due to personal performance. I like the baseball statistic “on base percentage plus slugging percentage” or OPS+ to understand which players make the fewest outs when at bat and reach the most extra bases for each hit they make. The higher the OPS+ ranking, the greater an individual is separated from the average. I like strokes gained by putting to identify golfers who are most efficient on the green, the place where a high percentage of all strokes taken is needed to get the ball in the hole. This stat separates great professional golfers from the rank and file of the PGA. And, I like QBRAT or the quarterback rating system to understand which passers are most efficient in gaining yards and scoring points against the inevitable incompletions and interceptions. In Wisconsin, we certainly like Aaron Rogers, as his QBRAT is often the best in the NFL. These statistics provide a qualitative analysis of a professional based upon how their personal performance differentiates them from an average baseball player or PGA golfer or NFL quarterback. Using these statistics, one can differentiate the best from the rest based upon professional work.
http://www.sportingcharts.com/dictionary/nfl/quarterback-rating-qbrat.aspx
http://www.golf.com/tour-and-news/strokes-gained-putting-behind-newest-pga-tour-stat
To date, education has not generated much comparative data. US News and World Reports annually publishes its “Best High Schools in the US” based upon standardized school data, often found in each state’s department of public education or on school web sites. When these reports become public, schools that are acclaimed attach the “Best” recognition to their web sites and school publications and schools that aren’t recognized proclaim that such rankings do not capture the essence of good schooling.
http://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools
Education is, perhaps, a softer, gentler profession that does not seek ranking or want to single out the best. Perhaps it is because education is about children and we do not want to market a school using the qualities of its student learning. Perhaps it is educator’s normally humble countenance. Or, that a local school is a reflection of its community, especially the community’s socio-economic status, and this is not a basis for discerning the relative quality of a school.
More likely, ranking teachers is difficult because successful student is not as cleanly defined as a batter hitting a triple or a touchdown pass or a 27 foot putt that finds the cup. The mind of a child and the dynamics of a school classroom are two very messy places for discerning the differences in teachers.
The one exception in the desert of teacher recognitions is the national Teacher of the Year Award. Each year one teacher is named as their state’s Teacher of the Year in each state TOY is a candidate for the national Teacher of the Year.
Is it fair to say that teachers in a school that is highly ranked by US News are by their employment in that school superior teachers? Yes, once we accept two pieces of educational research. First, parenting and home conditions make a difference. Teaching in school must both take advantage of these differences and more quickly overcome the deficits of disadvantageous homes. Second, “…the research does show a strong rela-tionship between parental influences and children’s educational outcomes, from school readiness to college completion. Two compelling parental factors emerge:
1. Family structure, i.e., the number of parents living in the student’s home and their relationships to the child, and
2. Parents’ involvement in their children’s schoolwork.
Consequently, the solution to improving educa¬tional outcomes begins at home, by strengthening marriage and promoting stable family formation and parental involvement.”
Once we account for the child’s readiness or lack of readiness for learning given their out of school backgrounds, we can point at the relationships between good teaching and success learning. “Research consistently shows that teacher quality—whether measured by content knowledge, experience, training and credentials, or general intellectual skills—is strongly related to student achievement: Simply, skilled teachers produce better student results.”
The Center for Public Education’s listing of effective teacher qualities, however, resembles an assemblage of neutral data, like at bats, runs scored, runs-batted-in, games played, years in professional baseball that appears on the back of most professional athletes bubble gum/collector cards. These data do not reflect the essential value added information like OPS+, strokes gained, or QBRAT.
I propose that the best of the best do the following on a regular and constant basis and these seven criteria can be used to identify value added teaching. Teachers everywhere approximate these measures now and again. The best of the best do these constantly, almost intuitively and certainly with both a knowledge that good teaching is not a fluke but a sustained use of best practices.
1. Advance their own teaching skills and content mastery to the point that they are experts. By law, teachers must engage in professional development for re-licensure. Some do so because they must and others because they enjoy professional learning. The best are constantly engaged in the study of and experimentation with pedagogy that reaches the hardest to teach children and advances the learning of the most talented. They are constantly building their own academic expertise in the curriculum they teach.
2. Cause student academic growth measurements greater than 1.0 per year. Most children do not achieve a full academic year’s growth as measured on standardized tests. On the 2013 NAEP reading test, 80% of fourth graders were below grade level and 74% of 8th graders were below grade level. That does not mean all children were below grade level, some were at or above grade level. So who were the teachers of children who were at or above grade level? After we discount for the home differences of children, what did these teachers do to cause at least a 1.0 annual growth in measured growth in reading?
https://www.studentsfirst.org/pages/the-stats
3. Regularly use sustained active engagement of children in extend learning outcomes beyond the usual. “Teaching that emphasizes active engagement helps students process and retain information. It leads to self-questioning, deeper thinking, and problem solving. Engagement strategies like repetition, trial and error, and posing questions move the brain into active and constructive learning. And such activities can lead to higher student achievement.” A teacher’s extended engagement with a student is what raises the achievement of a student who has been an underachiever as well as a student who has been an outstanding achiever. Extended engagement is the “push” that makes a difference. Ironically, the presence of engagement is as readily observable as the lack of engagement and the latter is to frequently observed, especially by children.
http://www.nea.org/tools/16708.htm
4. Constantly instill persistence and growth mind-sets in student instruction. Talent and favorable conditions are not enough. “Children must be taught to persist over time to overcome challenges and achieve big goals.” This is preparing children for success in life, not just school. Children can be taught that problems and challenges are part of a life and that they can forecast and plan how they will meet these. They can be taught a mind-set of goal setting and perseverance. Children who do so achieve higher grade points than children who do not. Persistence is not the result of the academic push that is associated with engagement. Persistence is the pull of a constant encouragement.
5. Regularly pose significant problems and help children to create unique and creative solutions. Problem solving “presupposes that students can take on some of the responsibility for their own learning and can take personal action to solve problems, resolve conflicts, discuss alternatives, and focus on thinking as a vital element of the curriculum. It provides students with opportunities to use their newly acquired knowledge in meaningful, real-life activities and assists them in working at higher levels of thinking.”
https://www.teachervision.com/problem-solving/teaching-methods/48451.html
6. Provide an accurate and provocative modeling at the right time to raise a child’s performance. This characteristic is pronounced in the teaching of art, music, dance and technical education. It also appears in the teaching of writing, math problem solving and science. Some of the greatest instructors are in the arts where, as they sit beside a student, they are able to model the fingering of a clarinet or the brush stroke on a canvas or the pace for pushing an arc weld. But, it is not just their presence or their personal skills. It is their sense of the right modeling at the right time that causes significant learning.
7. Create a permissive opportunity for creativity in which the child is her own best judge of successful learning. Creativity is a process and product that is greatly desired. In most instances is not taught, but nurtured in a setting that overtly permits creativity and covertly dissuades non-productive criticism. The best teachers know how to structure and sustain this opportunity and not let it become instructional anarchy.
These characteristics of best teaching are found in schools recognized by US News and in schools well outside of that recognition. They are characteristics that children know and love, usually after the fact. They are characteristics that parents appreciate in their children’s teachers without being able to label what exactly it is the teacher does. These are characteristics that principals and supervisors do identify and label, but seldom acclaim publicly. And, these are characteristics that teachers quietly recognize within their peers. However, recognition of the best teachers has not become professionally, economically or politically compelling. So, today we do not publicly rank teachers.
Teacher ranking is more covert. In almost every school, assertive children and parents press their counselor and principal for placement in their preferred teacher’s classes. Informal parent networks know that students taught by certain teachers score better on PSAT/NMSQT, ACT and SAT tests that students taught by other teachers. One school’s choral program is better than another and another school’s math department is the best in the county. These distinctions are not published; they are just known and in the knowing represent an informal ranking of teachers.
Someday the best teachers will be publicly recognized for the excellence of their ability to all cause children to achieve exceptional learning. Wouldn’t it be something if children posted photos of All-Star teachers next to their photos of All-Star athletes, big name rock stars, and the other adults that children admire and esteem. Until then, pay attention to the flurry of activity when children are annually assigned to teachers and when high stakes test results are published when class reunions are held. Names of the best teachers won’t be shouted but they will be spoken.