Tier I research universities such as Harvard and Stanford are notorious for having mega-sized undergraduate classes and also for having relatively untrained graduate students carry too much of the teaching load. Even so, Harvard, Stanford, Duke, the University of Chicago and the other top 50 or so research universities continue to turn out top-notch graduates.
Why is that?
If great teachers are vital to the learning process, how is it that schools with abysmally large class sizes and horrendously under-trained teachers continue to provide top-notch educations?
Could it be that great teachers, however defined, are not nearly as vital to the university learning process as we have been led to believe? Can I extend this reasoning down the line to high schools and elementary schools? I think I can.
But first, don't get me wrong: The better the teacher, the better the outcome, all other things equal.
A recent study published in the summer 2010 issue of The Journal of Human Resources has been much touted by NEA-Alaska and other teachers' unions. It strongly affirms that teacher quality is important.
In that study, teacher quality was defined by certain objectively measurable inputs, including specific training in subject areas, level of education and the academic standing of the university at which the teacher received his or her education. But it did not say or even suggest that teacher quality was the most important determinant of student success.
Good teachers can make a meaningful difference if at least two prior conditions are met. The first is that the environment must be conducive to learning. In an interview published in the Oct. 24 issue of Parade magazine, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates Jr. was asked the following question: "As a student, did you have one teacher who really influenced you?"
In response he tossed this pearl of wisdom into the debate. "I went to a public school through sixth grade, and being good at tests wasn't cool. Then my parents switched me to (a private school)." He went on to praise the teacher at his new school who "was pairing people up by ability." I read into that the conclusion that through sixth grade the environment was not conducive to learning but that it became so after he switched to a private school. Were the teachers better at his new school? Maybe. Were the students in his ability group more ready to learn? Almost certainly.
Therein lies a key insight that our politically correct public school system will not allow us to fully act on. What really makes a good school are students who want to learn and an environment that makes it "cool" to do so. Good teachers can make a major contribution but, and here is my second prior condition: only if the first condition is satisfied. The private school that turned Gates onto learning separated its students according to ability. That, folks, is called tracking, a dirty word in most education circles but one that I believe has to be scrubbed up and reconsidered.
Public school teachers complain that the reason that private schools do better on standardized tests is that the private schools skim off the better students. Of course they do. That is a form of voluntary tracking, voluntary because parents and students know what they are getting into when they choose private schools.
When potentially good students like Gates show up at public schools and find that what's cool is determined by kids whose primary concern is how best to wear their pants at half-mast or skirts at mid-thigh, very few have the self-confidence to buck the tide. They're kids, for goodness sake.
Of course, not all parents of potentially good students can afford private schools. So why should the subset of students who view public school as a distraction be allowed to prevent other students from enjoying a genuine learning experience? Maybe we cannot get away with calling it tracking. Maybe we have to find some other name for it. Maybe "magnet schools" and "advanced placement" are better terms.
But whatever we call it and however we do it, it seems clear to me that our public schools are not going to greatly improve until we buy into it much more fully than we have.
David M. Reaume holds a doctoral degree in economics. He lived and worked in Alaska for 22 years before moving to Washington state in 1999. His opinion column appears every month in the Anchorage Daily News.
DAVID REAUME
COMMENT