David Berliner and Pasi Sahlberg

I'm in Calgary at the Calgary Teachers' Convention and I am listening to David Berliner and Pasi Sahlberg talk about The Roots of Success for All Children: It's in the context of their lives, not just in their classroom experiences.

David Berliner

• Despite what you might hear, teachers do not affect standardized test scores very much
• Teachers do affect student's lives but not their scores
• Standardized test are influenced by socio-economic circumstances and less by classroom instruction.
• Want to improve scores? Improve children's lives outside of school.
• As the context of children's lives changes, so do their standardized test scores.
• Children who live in chaos tend to be chaotic. Remove the chaos --  
• Societies affect on children's performance is intense.
• The Problem is Poverty.
• There are many school variables that teachers can't control: class size, administrators, collective empathy of the faculty, teacher turn over, students coming and going.
• We can not trust standardized tests to tell us what we want to know about our schools.
• Want to find the school with the highest test scores? Buy an expensive house.
• When governments cut education, they make inequality and inequity worse, and the poorest people pay the most.
• There is a huge difference in the number of books in the richest homes and the poorest homes.
• Affluent parents tend to speak more with their children than the poorest parents who are struggling to make ends meet.
• The best education systems care as much about what happens outside of the classroom as what happens inside.
• Standardized tests are insensitive to teacher instruction.
• Alberta needs to pay closer attention to the research on school improvement
• Here are all of my posts on David Berliner

Pasi Sahlberg

• In 2000, many school systems thought that they had found the secret elixir to fix all schools: Accountability through standardized tests. PISA's influence was born.
• Since 2000, the focus of school improvement has been focused intensely on teachers.
• The United States is a good example of how not to improve education.
• Finland's reaction to school improvement and PISA is unique and paradoxical.
• Finland did not react or allow PISA to affect their system until 2008. 8 years after they were lauded as the best in the world. Finland was reluctant to share their story.
• Two Global Paths of Inquiry: What makes education systems perform well? What prevents system-wide improvement?
• Traditional Policy Logic: Should we focus on quality or equity? We know that we don't have to choose.
• Canada does very well with high quality and equity, but we are going in the wrong direction.
• While Canada and Alberta has traditionally compared well with their equity and equality, they are going in the wrong direction.
• Finland has had an inclusive education system for two decades.

Five things to learn from Finland:

1. Resourcing Policy: Schools with more needs, need more resources.
2. Early Childhood Care: This isn't really about education -- it's about childcare. 
3. Health and Wellbeing: Universal healthcare inside and outside of school. In the US, the number 1 reason why students miss school is because of problems with their teeth.
4. Special Education: A system that is proactive and preventative with students with special needs. Prevention is always cheaper than repair. 
5. Balanced Curriculum: Children need to learn about the arts and physical education as much as numeracy and literacy.

3 big ideas about teacher workload

Andrea Sands wrote a great piece in the Edmonton Journal about Alberta teachers who are taking part in a massive workload study. (I've written about teacher workload here).

As a classroom teacher, I have 15 years of experience actually teaching in public schools. I don't just write and talk about teaching -- I'm actually teaching. I don't just have something to say, I'm doing the work and I have something to say about it.

During my interview with Andrea, I tried to emphasize that it is not simply the quantity of my work that is problematic -- the problems I face in my classroom can be best found in the complexity of teaching. Simply put, I am expected to teach too many children who have too many needs.

Let me explain.

This is my 15th year of teaching.

I've mostly taught middle school, but I've also taught some special education.

At home, I am a father where I have a class size of two: Kayley is 7 and Sawyer is 2. While Kayley wants to play a farming board game where we plant, harvest and sell crops for cash that involves adding and multiplying, Sawyer wants to run around and throw the game pieces. You can imagine how different their needs are.

At school, I teach 126 students every day. I have thirty-three grade 6 students that I teach language arts and social studies, and thirty-three grade 8 students that I teach social studies. I see the grade 6s twice a day and the grade 8s once a day. Each class is forty-nine minutes.

At home I get pulled in 2 different directions while at school there are over 30 different students every 49 minutes, 6 times a day.

To be clear, these are not 126 similar children.

Some of these children:

• are living in poverty
• are abused and neglected
• have Fetal Alcohol Syndrome
• are reluctant learners
• are learning English as a second language
• are behaviourally challenged
• suffer from mental health issues
• come to school a couple times a month, or not at all
• are academically challenged
• are immature
• are not loved
• are uninspired

And yet some of these children:

• love school
• love to read
• are loved
• are curious
• are inspired
• attend regularly

Too many of my students draw from the first list -- not enough are described by the second. While all of my students are in middle school, some would fit well in elementary and some are ready for high school.

Individually, I feel confident and competent working with children from either list, but when faced with 30+ every class and 126 of them everyday, I am overwhelmed. 

Here are 3 big ideas I would like people to understand about teacher workload:

1. I meet all my students' needs only if some children don't show up. Many Albertans work hard, and some may work more hours in a week than teachers. My issue is not that I average 45 to 50 hours a week. My issue is that I'm expected to teach too many students with too many needs. My expectations for my students are only surpassed by the expectations I have for myself. Everyday I go to work hoping to get to every child only to go home knowing that I can't. Alberta parents should be upset about this as much as Alberta teachers are.

2. My working conditions are my students' learning conditions. Too many people want to frame this teacher workload discussion around how much teachers get paid and how much time they get off. I'm not asking for more pay or time off, although these are important, I am saying that because of the current deteriorating conditions in Alberta schools, quality and quantity of student learning is suffering. When we play politics with education by framing this as a labour debate (instead of an education debate), children lose. 

3. Teachers are so busy teaching they don't have time and effort to learn how to be better teachers. School has looked, tasted, smelled and felt like school for too long. In order for things to improve, things have to change, and sustainable change needs to be led by teachers who are supported through inspiring professional development. I know too many teachers who are so overwhelmed by their teaching assignment that they don't have the time or effort to learn how to change and improve their teaching.

In our cars, we have instruments that tell us when our fuel is low and engine temperature is high. 

In education, we have teachers who have their fingers on the pulse of their classrooms.

We ignore our car's instruments and teachers at our own peril. It should be no surprise that those who are comfortable with the way things are become angered by those who wish to influence change. Labelling these gauges as whiny allows us to criticize, distort or dismiss inconvenient information in favour of our existing beliefs while ensuring that things get worse for our children.

In the real world, we wouldn't judge a teacher by their students' test scores

My family has farmed for over 100 years in the Red Deer, Alberta, area. I'm the first teacher in my farming family, and I'm in my 15th year of teaching.

Here's a post I wrote about the effects of poverty on learning with a farming metaphor.

Teachers who are proud of their high scores and ashamed of their poor scores are a part of the problem. Here's my article on Telling Time with a Broken Clock: the trouble with standardized tests.

John Oliver on the Wealth Gap and Inequality

Here are a couple key points on inequality and education from my article Telling Time with a Broken Clock: the trouble with standardized testing:

• The strongest predictor of student performance on achievement tests is socio-economic status, which is why it is a mistake to believe that the scores tell us about school quality when really they are reflecting affluence or poverty.

• No school or school system has ever become great without great teachers, but what can an excellent teacher do about a child who needs glasses or is hungry? To say that teacher or school quality is the most important variable in education is at best naive. Education historian Diane Ravitch writes, “Reformers tell us that teachers are the most important influence within the school on student scores, and that is right. But the teacher contribution to scores is dwarfed by the influence of family and other out-of-school factors.”

• Ultimately, great teachers make great schools, but great teachers can’t do it alone – they require the support of an equitable society. If we are not careful, we risk misinterpreting the scores, and instead of waging war on poverty and inequity, we end up waging war on teachers and schools.

Here are a couple posts I've written on inequality and education:

• The problem is poverty
• Is poverty an excuse?
• Education excellence requires equity (two great videos)

Shameful blog from Teach for America

As I came out of my summer social media hibernation, I came across a Teach for America blog post titled Changing Conversations For Unhoused Students. Actually, it wasn't the title that got my attention. It was this excerpt from a tweet:

What if our schools could see the trying time of homelessness as an asset of experience and knowledge that a child brings to school?

Here are 3 thoughts:

1. This attitude can only come from a position of privilege. If being homeless is such an asset, then Teach For America will waste no time making homelessness a part of their 5 week training program. Of course this is almost as absurd as spinning homelessness as an asset.

People who like to say "when life gives you lemons, make lemonade" need to remember that lemonade requires a lot of sugar and sugar is expensive. They also need to remember that it's easier to pull up your socks when you own socks.

Homeless people don't sit around talking about how being homeless is an asset. The only people who can afford to to talk like this are those who have a home with a twisted view of the world.

2. Words reveal agendas. Used cars are also pre-owned but they are only called pre-owned by those who have an agenda -- people who have a car that they don't want anymore have a used car -- those who want to sell you that car, call it pre-owned. Only those with an agenda re-label used to pre-owned, homeless to unhoused and hungry to food insecure.

3. When bad things happen to children, they are not assets to be romanticized -- they are problems to be solved. I'm all for rethinking problems and changing the conversation when that means we solve old problems with new solutions, but we should all object when rethinking problems and changing the conversation become code for seeing problems as assets that we don't need to fix.

Here's what I mean:

I taught four years in a children's inpatient psychiatric assessment unit where students were admitted by a psychiatrist for many unfortunate reasons.Too many of these children had very bad things happen to them -- some had no parents, some were sexually abused and some were psychotic (these are just three examples).

Can you imagine changing the conversation and asking how being sexually abused or psychotic could be seen as an asset for a child?

Neither can I.

Being sexually abused, psychotic or homeless are problems to be solved. Spinning these awful things as assets is an abdication of our responsibility to make things more equitable for children. These children don't need spin (and they don't need grit) -- they need their basic needs met.

New York principal Carol Burris gets the last word on all this:

Shameful. Work to fight homelessness, not celebrate it.

This will be my last year teaching in the hospital -- here are 3 things I learned

This will be my last year teaching in a children's psychiatric assessment unit. Next school year, I will be moving to a middle school where I will be teaching grade 6 language arts, grade 6 social studies and grade 8 social studies.

I've spent almost four years teaching in the hospital, and I know that I am a better teacher for it -- I think I'm a better husband and father, too. Teaching in a children's psychiatric assessment unit has forever changed my perspective on what matters most.

Here are three things I have learned from teaching in the hospital:

1. Children who are loved at home, come to school to learn -- children who are not loved at home, come to school be loved. Too many of the children I taught over the last 4 years were suffering from a toxic combination of abuse and neglect. These children are not stupid or lazy, and they are not bad, but they are lost -- and our job is to help them find themselves.

These children are struggling with a wide range of problems from anger to depression to eating disorders to addictions, and yet there was a common denominator among almost everyone of the more than 500 children I taught in the last four years: Almost every single child I have worked with in the last four years thinks very little of themselves. Too many of these children hated themselves, wanted to hurt themselves and actively tried to kill themselves.

Over the last four years, we read a lot and we wrote a lot about topics that truly mattered to them, but not before I worked tirelessly to nurture a relationship with each of my students. This is why the best teachers understand that students will never care what you know until they know you care about them.

2. Children don't give adults a hard time -- they are just having a hard time. I can't tell you how many times I had to remind myself that the children who are the hardest to like, need us the most. When we understand that hurt people, hurt people, it's easier to see our students' struggles not as problems to be punished but as opportunities to be taught. This is why my teaching philosophy is defined by a purposeful shift away from doing things to students and a move towards working with them. This is why I proudly hang Thomas Gordon's words in my classroom:

The more you use power to try and control people, the less real influence you’ll have on their lives. 

3. Great teachers can do a lot -- overcoming poverty or inequity is not one of them. I've worked hard over my 15 years of teaching to become pretty darn good at it. I'm not great everyday, but I'm great more days than I'm not and I was humbled daily by factors that are completely out of my control such as poverty, abuse, neglect and mental health problems.

When I say that poverty and inequity matters, I am not making excuses, and I am not saying that poor children can't learn. What I am saying is that poverty and inequity stunts potential growth and explains why so many children struggle to learn and teachers struggle to teach.

Great teachers make great schools, but great teachers can’t do it alone – they require the support of an equitable society.

Place equity at forefront in education debate

This was written by my friend and colleague J-C Couture who is an executive staff officer with the Alberta Teachers' Association. While I wish he did blog and tweet, he does not. I'll let you know if I ever convince him otherwise. This post was originally found here.

by J-C Couture

In recent weeks, there has been much hyperventilating concerning government efforts to fundamentally redesign Alberta's K-12 curriculum based on the five year-old promises of Inspiring Education.

A small but vocal segment of this province has been gathering the tinder for what could become a season of wildfires. Calls for "back to the basics" and a return to more testing are being countered by those who question Alberta's overloaded curriculum while calling for more local flexibility for schools. Adding potential fuel for a firestorm is the exit of Alison Redford as premier, leaving Education Minister Jeff Johnson with an orphaned mandate and an image in some people's eyes as advancing an ambiguous agenda of "21stcentury learning" hatched by an inner circle of advisers.

Whether it is the competitive energy expended over international rankings, the current hand-wringing over memorizing multiplication tables or bemoaning the decline of phonics instruction - Albertans' deeply rooted anxieties over what counts as learning (remember the existential threat from the Japanese in the 1980s?) perpetuate our collective inability to address the systemic barriers to student learning.

According to Joel Westheimer, one of Canada's pre-eminent educational researchers, these interminable curriculum debates obscure larger social problems that stand in the way of a great education. Rather than polarizing debates over content versus competencies or traditional versus progressive education, the greatest impact on student learning is support for students in the early years of development and provision for optimal conditions of learning throughout schooling. Renowned scholar David Berliner and his team take Westheimer's point further. In their recent book, 50 Myths and Lies That Threaten America's Public Schools, Berliner concludes the impact of the quality of teaching on student learning contributes 10 per cent of the variation in outcomes. Student background, community characteristics and other variables shape 60 per cent. Further, his team found that no credible researcher disputes the claim that teacher and school programming combined determines more than 30 per cent of student learning outcomes.

This is all not to say teaching, curriculum and what goes on in schools do not make a difference. But Albertans cannot lose sight of the fact with family and community characteristics determining more than 50 per cent of the chances for students to succeed in school, equity ought to be our strategic priority. Unfortunately, the current curriculum flare-ups distract us from the reality that among peer countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, Alberta along with the rest of Canada ranks 17th out of 20 in terms of income

inequality, with one in seven children living in poverty in the province.

In a two-year national study involving more than 600 principals from across Canada that we undertook with the Canadian Association of Principals, school leaders report that rather than being able to focus on instructional leadership and supporting their teachers, they are increasingly struggling to mitigate the negative impacts of growing income inequality, the brittleness of families and increasing psychosocial problems of children and youth.

B.C., Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia and other far less economically advantaged provinces than Alberta have made huge strides in their education systems by focusing on the systemic barriers to learning. Quebec's comprehensive daycare system is yet one more example of how addressing the readiness to learn can lead to huge gains in learning. While we are materially some of the richest people of the planet, Alberta remains at the bottom of the 25 economically advanced jurisdictions with respect to children's readiness to learn by age six.

Alberta teachers are mindful that literacy and numeracy will always be part of the eternal golden braid of learning. In a recent visit as part of the three-year-old educational partnership, Krista Kiuru, Finland's minister of education and science, remarked that as with her country, Alberta remains among the select few "education superpowers." With our Finnish colleagues and other international partners, Alberta teachers understand that the goal of creating a great school for all students will not be achieved through a preoccupation with finetuning government-mandated curriculum documents, obsessively testing students on the so-called basics or aggressively chasing competitive rankings.

Our schools are constantly renewing and recreating themselves. The 19,000 new students expected to enter next year and the 144 babies born every day in this province deserve more than the current curriculum brush fires - they deserve our sustained commitment to equity. This will ensure a great school for all students and our province's vibrant future.

Alberta needs to be healthy and wealthy

I attended a Wildrose meet and greet event in Red Deer where leader of the Wildrose Danielle Smith gave a talk and took questions. I went because I wanted to see and hear what the Wildrose are doing and what the people who would attend a Wildrose event are saying and thinking.

I was there to learn.

Danielle Smith talked about the ridiculous wages that some government administrators make like the head of Alberta Health Services or Redford's chief of staff.

Talking about income inequality is often a great way to get labelled a communist or a socialist, but when Danielle Smith and the Wildrose talk about government employees who make a ridiculous salary, they get head nods and hell-yeahs from Wildrose and NDP alike. 

Albertans who don't make six figures have a problem with public-sector employees who do.

Danielle Smith elicited gasps from the crowd when she said that the Alberta Union of Public Employees (AUPE) reported that many of their frontline members don't make $45,000 in an entire year -- which happens to be the cost of Alison Redford's flights to Nelson Mandela's funeral.

This hit home big time amongst the room of people in Red Deer -- I saw heads nodding everywhere. The tension in the room was escalating. If Smith was trying to elicit an emotional response, she hit everyone, including me, between the eyes.

Smith also talked about making Alberta's Heritage Fund a priority and pointed to Norway's Oil Savings Fund that now sits at over $900 Billion, compared to Alberta's $17 Billion.

That's some of what Danielle Smith and the Wildrose talk about.

Here's some of what Danielle Smith and the Wildrose don't talk about.

Like Smith and the Wildrose, I too am interested in what Alberta can learn from Norway. It turns out that Norway does a better job of saving money in the bank and keeping kids off the street. Smith and the Wildrose make a point to be envious over Norway's bank account, while ignoring their superior skills in keeping children out of poverty. I think Albertans care about both, and so should any political party worthy of governance.

The whole point of being fiscally responsible is born out of the idea that responsible adults don't run up a tab and then throw the bill at our next generation of children. If this matters, and it really does, then so does ensuring that our present generation of children don't live in poverty.

It is disingenuous to talk about government cronyism and then ignore Alberta's growing income gap and children living in poverty. (Did you know that the top Canadian CEOs earn average workers' salary in a day and a half?)

Anyone who wants to talk about fiscal responsibility or education without talking about reducing poverty has an agenda and should be challenged, and anyone who talks about social responsibility and reducing poverty without talking about balancing the books is irresponsible and should be challenged.

If we care about children, then we need to talk about fiscal and social responsibilities. For too long, Alberta political parties have been marinated in ideology that prioritizes one at the expense of the other. The ancient tug o' war between left and right over fiscal and social responsibilities is an old and tired political model that have many people angry, cynical or apathetic.

If you are a fiscally responsible and socially conscious Albertan who is looking for a different way of doing politics, then I invite you to check out Greg Clark and the Alberta Party.

Greg Clark and the Alberta Party believes, "we can have a strong economy. We can have a strong commitment to the environment. A strong balance sheet and a strong social conscience."

The Alberta Party understands that it is easier and cheaper to build strong children than to repair broken people. Their social policies reflect an understanding for the idea that an ounce of prevention can be worth a pound of cure.

The Alberta Party is a breath of fresh air that Alberta desperately needs.

Winston Churchill once said:

Show me a young Conservative and I'll show you someone with no heart. Show me an old Liberal and I'll show you someone with no brains.

While I give Churchill full credit for being pithy, this kind of black and white thinking holds us back. If Alberta is going to be healthy and wealthy, we have to stop choosing between having a brain or a heart.

Alberta needs both.

Alberta needs the Alberta Party.

Here's what learning how to read looks like

Free voluntary reading. We learn to read by reading. Self-selected reading for pleasure (0:53) is a major factor in literacy development. No book reports. No chapter quizzes. No vocabulary lists. The best teachers find their students interests and then they help their students find books that match those interests. Did you see the look on that old man's face (0:18) when he looked up at his son's poster in the book store's window? That's the look teachers look for. Where there is interest, achievement follows. The best teachers look for that look on their students' faces and then artfully guide them to books that they might never have found on their own.

Phonics for a purpose. All wars are ultimately destructive and the war between phonics and whole language is no exception. A child who is good at phonics is good at decoding symbols and their sounds. In my daughter's grade 1 class, I remember when a little girl announced to the class that the T-H brothers are bad boys because they make you stick out your tongue like this, and then she showed us. It's true that you cannot read an alphabetic language without using and learning phonics, but reading is more than decoding. Phonics is a means to an end -- the end being reading. Did you notice that while the old man was learning the alphabet (0:20) that he simultaneously began to use the alphabet in a game of scrabble (0:30) with his peers, played a practical joke (1:01) and hit on his wife (1:12)? Stephen Krashen reminds us: "I am not saying, 'If it feels good, it’s good for you', but if we’re doing it right, it should feel good. If we’re doing literacy and language development right, teachers and students should be having a pretty good time. If there's pain, something's really wrong." Krashen reminds us that "There is a difference between extensive systematic phonics (teaching all rules to all children in a strict order) and basic phonics, teaching the rules that are straightforward and that actually help make texts more comprehensible." For more on this check out Stephen Krashen's website.

Belonging to a literacy club. When children aspire to be members of the literacy club, we can learn to read and write. The best way to inspire children to join the literacy club is for them to see the people they think the most of in their life reading and writing. The old man wants to join the literacy club because his son is a member -- their relationship inspires an interest. When teachers and parents allow reading and writing to needlessly sour our relationships with students, we convince children that they are not members of the literacy club. Children will reject us before we can reject them which leads them to say "I'm not a member of the literacy club, but that's okay, I wouldn't want to be a member anyways".

Just-in-time feedback. Students should experience their successes and failures not as reward and punishment but as information. Students need their teachers and parents to be less like referees and more like coaches. They don't need to be ranked and sorted -- they need feedback that will help them learn. What if we mostly taught grammar and spelling to children while they are editing and revising their own writing? Assessment is not a spreadsheet -- it's a conversation that needs to happen between the student and the teacher. The old man gets feedback (0:33, 0:35, 0:40, 0:46) he needs from his teachers and his peers so that he can learn to read. No testsandgrades required.

Reading to, for and with children. In his wonderful book The Book of Learning and Forgetting, Frank Smith writes: "Reading to children usually goes through three clear stages... First you are reading for the child, who is perhaps sitting in front of you, looking at your mouth as the words come out. Then the child is beside you, sitting in your lap or looking over your shoulder, looking at the book, not at you. You're no longer reading to or for the child but reading with the child. And finally comes that most frustrating moment in many parents' lives when they haven't got to the end of the page and the child turns it over. As British educator Margaret Meek would say, children at that point are no longer relying on a nearby adult for reading; they have trusted themselves to authors. And as Margaret Meek has also commented, it is a tragedy when many "reading teachers" stand between children and the authors who will teach them to read."

Poverty Matters. We shouldn't need research to tell us that poverty places children at a disadvantage in the classroom but if you were unsure, that is exactly what the research confirms. We know that children living in poverty have fewer books at home. They have fewer libraries and bookstores in their communities and their schools often have inferior libraries. The old man had to make a number of visits to the library (0:35, 0:42, 0:57 and 1:03)  and purchases at bookstores (0:05 and 1:08). Literacy requires affluence and opportunity and poor children get less of both.

Behind SAT numbers

I found this in the Wall Street Journal here.

On average, high school seniors’ SAT scores increase as students’ household income increases, according to 2012 data released by the College Board. Read related article.

Let them eat grit: 4 reasons why grit is garbage

It is tempting to see education as the great equalizer that will allow children to overcome differences in background, culture and privilege. It would be convenient if poverty was not an explanation for poor academic achievement.

We all want children to be resilient and persistent in the face of challenges. However, as a teacher who already teaches children to develop a growth-mindset and resiliency, I am uninspired by pundits claims we just need more grit from students.

We know that affluent children who have opportunities and support to learn tend to out-score their less privileged peers. While there are outliers and exceptions, this is not up for debate.

Education systems around the world are being challenged to provide a more equitable system that allows all children, regardless of their background, culture or privilege, to be educated at a very high level.

When pundits call for more grit and resiliency, they aren't talking about all children. No one is demanding that high-scoring students show more grit. When people call for more grit they are talking about the low scorers -- and we know the low scorers tend to be children who are English language learners, special needs, living in poverty, suffering from mental health problems or are for complex reasons generally difficult to educate.

When we say that students need more grit and resiliency, we are really saying to these disadvantaged children that they just need to try harder. This is asinine for a couple reasons:

Firstly, children in poverty are often the ones facing the most challenges and are already exhibiting impressive amounts of resiliency. I teach in a children's inpatient psychiatric assessment unit, so I work with these kids daily. It's easier for children to "pull up their socks" if they own socks. These children don't need grit -- they need their basic needs met.

Secondly, too often the argument for more grit in children is an abdication of the system's responsibility to make things more equitable. I'm all for growth-mindset and resiliency, I teach it everyday, but they are not systemic solutions to inequality and inequity. Systems thinking tells us that improving education has less to do with characteristics of individual teachers and students and more to do with priorities of schools and school systems.

Thirdly, children who are a challenge to educate, whether they be English language learners, special needs, mentally ill, easily frustrated or chronically irritable, don't need to be reminded of our expectations or told to try harder. If we resign ourselves to thinking children just need more grit, we might be tempted to frame this as a motivation problem that can be solved with rewards and punishments. We need to move away from the mindset that says children will be successful if they want to and move towards the mindset that says children will be successful when they can. 

Lastly, for every time we encourage kids to not throw in the towel or to get back on the horse when they fall off, we need to reflect on the environments children are living and learning in and the tasks they are required to do. Sometimes the child's environment is abusive and neglectful, and sometimes the tasks required of them are developmentally inappropriate or simply unengaging and irrelevant -- either way, more grit might teach kids how to play a game stacked against their favour without teaching them how to change the game.

I've also found that the people who call for more grit from students tend to also be the people who claim we need to go back to basics -- to which I ask, "when did we leave?" Alfie Kohn writes:

The notion that our schools have strayed from the old-fashioned teaching that used to be successful is dead wrong on two counts. First, old-fashioned methods weren’t all that successful in the past either. It may not be easy for us to admit, but those methods caused countless people to give up on school and think of themselves as stupid. Even people who used to be successful students often don’t show much depth of understanding, much capacity for critical reflection, or a lifelong love of learning.

People who call for more grit and a back to basics approach tend to suffer from what Jamie Vollmer describes as Nostesia which "is a hallucinogenic mixture of 50% nostalgia and 50% amnesia that distorts rational thinking."

It's easy to call for more grit.

It's easy to cry that we need to go back to basics.

It's easy to blame the kids and the schools.

It's easy because it means we don't have to reflect inward - rather we just have to look outward. Challenging one's own practices and system priorities can be tough but nothing will ever change and schools will never improve as long as we place all the responsibility for change and improvement on students and schools.

Canada's income inequality

The Globe and Mail: Income inequality affects
every Canadian.

Income inequality is not just a made-in-America problem.

The Globe and Mail ran a piece featuring how income inequality hurts every Canadian's chance of building a better life.

This must-read is a part of The Globe and Mail's Wealth Paradox series which takes a look into how the income gap and inequality is shaping Canada. The question: How income in income inequality affects you? The answers are broken down into four categories: the wage gap, healthcare, education, recreation.

Here are a couple highlights:

WAGE GAP

• Canada's top earners have been getting richer with increasing speed while average incomes remain stagnant.
• In 2002, the average CEO-to-worker pay ration was 84:1. In 2012, its 122:1
• What if more companies ensured that the highest-paid worker never makes more than 10 times the wage of the lowest-paid worker?
• What if more companies engaged in profit-sharing with it's employees?

HEALTH CARE

• Inequality is linked to poorer health outcomes. 
• The income gap is perhaps the most pronounced in mental health care. An estimated 1.2 million young Canadians are affected by mental illness. Only 1 in 4 gets appropriate treatment.
• "What we have today in Canada is a two-tier mental health system in which kids are the victim." Michael Kirby

EDUCATION

• High income areas are primarily home to high-achieving schools while lower income areas have a higher number of lower-scoring schools.
• We need to stop pretending that education can lift people out of poverty on its own.
• Great teachers make great schools, but great teachers can't do it alone - they require the support of an equitable society.
• If we are not careful, we risk misinterpreting standardized test scores, and instead of waging war on poverty and inequity, we end up waging war on teachers and schools.
• Highly-educated and affluent parents can give their kids opportunities their lower-income peers simply don't have. 

RECREATION

• Median incomes haven't budged in 30 years, but leisure activities, the pleasure in life, some of which have become too expensive for the majority of Canadians.
• Parents of current minor hockey players spent an average of $2,898 on hockey-related items during the 2011/2012 season. The parents surveyed earned 15% more than the Canadian average. 

INCOME GAP SOLUTIONS

At the end of the Globe and Mail's piece is a poll that asks Which solution would best reduce the effects of income inequality in Canada? The options include:

Restore Fairness in our Tax System

Enhance Early Childhood Education

Emulate Germany's Approach to Skills Training

Create a New "Social Contract"

Boost Support for the Working Poor

Do Nothing - There's No Major Problem

Check it out here

Ignoring poverty

Poverty is a problem.

You can't have an authentic and meaningful conversation about education without addressing poverty. One of the first things I learned in teacher college was that a child's basic needs must be met before learning can take place.

Anyone who has spent five seconds in a classroom trying to teach a child who has not had their basic needs met understands how the utter futility of such an exercise.

And yet, I am disheartened by how many so-called education reformers write poverty off with their no excuses mantra. I see poverty less as an excuse and more like an explanation for why some people have such difficulties navigating their lives.

Too often I hear the argument that some people choose to live in poverty. Let's pretend for a moment that some adults choose to live in poverty -- even if this was true, it's important to remember that no child ever chooses to live in poverty.

Some shrug at poverty and say that you can't help people that can't help themselves. I disagree. In fact, I believe we have public education and public health care because people sometimes have a hard time helping themselves. This is why the highest performing countries understand that excellence requires equity.

Let's also stop pretending that education can lift people out of poverty on its own. The best teachers can do a lot of really cool things but overcoming poverty is not one of them. Yes, great teachers make great schools, but great teachers can't do it alone – they require the support of an equitable society. If we are not careful, we risk misinterpreting standardized test scores, and instead of waging war on poverty and inequity, we end up waging war on teachers and schools.

I'm not saying addressing poverty will be easy -- but I am saying that it will be worth it. After all, if we think addressing poverty is expensive, we should pay closer attention to how expensive ignoring it can be.

Ultimately, saying poverty is no excuse is to make excuses for doing nothing about poverty.

Grant Wiggins responds to my take on his open letter to Diane Ravitch

This was written by Grant Wiggins and is a response to my response to Grant's open letter to Diane Ravitch. You can find Grant's open letter here and my response here. 

by Grant Wiggins

Thanks for your considered reply to my post. I am delighted that people have responded so thoughtfully to it, which was the main point: thoughtful dialogue.

The entire focus of my piece was the pressing need for school change and that it is in our control. To turn it around and say that I think poverty is not in our control is not really what I was driving at. Growing inequality is a terrible problem; poverty is a blight on society. But to say that educators should focus directly on it instead of what they can do to make schools better immediately is kicking the can down the road. It makes a nice excuse for keeping schools as they are.

The best thing we can do as educators to eliminate poverty is to improve education, as all the data show. That's where I think you are misrepresenting my ideas somewhat. I am a progressive democrat, having never voted republican in my life. But like President Obama and the New York Times - hardly conservatives - I am calling for serious reform of what is in our control: how teachers teach and how schools are run. What I greatly resent is having you or Diane or anyone else lump all of us reformers in one bunch as anti-teacher, anti-social welfare, anti-public-education. I am none of those things, and I think my record of 30 years of trying to improve public education shows it.

I think Diane is hurting, not helping, the process by such crude categorization and harsh polemics. I agree with her fears; I strongly disagree with her tactics. And I must say, I disagree with your last sentence. I don't see much of a clear, explicit, and comprehensive reform plan from Diane. Her focus is almost totally on how to save schools from greedy and mean-spirited privatizers. And if my email is any barometer a lot of people agree with me.

Thanks for the dialogue, as always.

You may print this if you wish.

Cheers, Grant

My response to Grant Wiggins and his open letter to Diane Ravitch (and like minded educators)

Grant Wiggins wrote an open letter to Diane Ravitch titled Is significant school reform needed or not?: an open letter to Diane Ravitch (and like minded educators).

Wiggins takes issue with Ravitch's stance against privatization and poverty because he thinks she is avoiding "the elephant in the room" which is "to what extent today's teachers are doing an adequate job." Wiggins goes on to make the argument that "merely undoing harmful privatization is thus nowhere near sufficient to make schools serve our students properly." Wiggins punches home the point that, "we face a complete lack of quality control in teaching in most schools, in most districts. Unlike poverty, this is in our control as educators."

Is there common ground?

Even though I am a staunch supporter of Public Education, I am very aware of the problems that plague traditional schooling. I believe that school needs to look a lot less like school.

Like Wiggins, I am very critical of traditional-formal education that makes school something done to children while they play a passive role, and compliance and obedience are the gold-standard. Like Wiggins, I object to the idea that if a child can sit quietly through a morning's worth of lecture followed up with an afternoon of filling in worksheets, then students are receiving a good education and teachers are doing their jobs.

Which kind of school do you want for your child?
Which kind of school is good enough for other
people's children?

For too many people, the game of school sounds all too familiar. It's like the learners and teachers exchange winks that say: I will pretend to teach and you will pretend to learn; it won't be all that enjoyable, but it will be easy.

While I agree that undoing privatization is not sufficient in improving our schools, it is necessary.

Where do we differ?

After I read Grant's open letter, I tweeted him:

If Wiggins believes that Ravitch's fight against privatization is distracting us from improving school, might it be said that Wiggins' fight to improve schools is blinding us from the dangers of privatization and poverty?

No where in Wiggins' open letter does he address privatization -- instead he focuses with laser like proficiency on teacher quality. (For the record, the book I co-edited on De-Testing and De-Grading Schools is strong evidence that I agree with some of what Wiggins writes about.)

I'm the first to criticize elements of traditional schooling but you don't fix public education by destroying it, abandoning it or throwing it to the free market.

Wiggins wants teachers to focus less on things he perceives as out of our control (poverty and privatization) and more on things that are in our control (teacher quality). But who benefits from encouraging teachers to see poverty and privatization as things outside of their locus of control? Do we really want one of public education's greatest advocates, teachers, to see poverty and privatization as none of their business or a distraction to be avoided?

It's important not to talk ourselves into believing that poverty and privatization are out of our control. Poverty and privatization are no more or less out of our control than teacher quality. Inequality is a choice and our social policy choices have an indelible mark on our school's successes and failures. (I consider addressing inequality and poverty more like the civil rights issue of the 60s than choice)

The good news is that we don't need to choose between addressing poverty, reversing privatization and improving our schools, and I think this is why Diane Ravitch's most recent work is so important. She's helping us understand that we must stop going in the wrong direction before we can go in the right direction.

I see Diane Ravitch as someone leading the charge on all three fronts: address poverty, reverse privatization and improve our schools.

Education excellence requires equity

Take 6 minutes and watch this video.



I'm all for improving our public schools. I want my children's teachers to be better than me.

But what if our focus on reforming our schools is a distraction from addressing income inequity and poverty?

Poverty isn't an excuse -- but it does explain why so many families and schools are struggling to set children up for success.

The most important problem facing American children today is not bad teachers -- it's poverty. 

Canadians, and more specifically Albertans, are not immune to this. Take 9 minutes and watch this video to see how two schools in Calgary can be so very different.



I could care less about the achievement gap. If we want to set all children up for success then we have to care far more about the opportunity gap.

The good news is that we don't have to choose between improving our schools and addressing poverty -- but let's not pretend that education can lift people out of poverty.

Without equity, excellence is a pipe dream. 

My favourite excerpt from Reign of Error

Here is one of my favourite excerpts from Diane Ravitch's new book Reign of Error. Ravitch nails it by identifying the problems that are plaguing public education (and our democracy), while providing clear solutions:

In this book, I will show why the reform agenda does not work, who is behind it, and how it is promoting the privatization of public education. I will then put forward my solutions, none of which is cheap or easy, none of which offers a quick fix to complicated problems. I have no silver bullets -- because none exist -- but I have proposals based on evidence and experience. 

We know what works. What works are the very opportunities that advantaged families provide for their children. In homes with adequate resources, children get advantages that enable them to arrive in school healthy and ready to learn. Discerning, affluent parents demand schools with full curricula, experienced staffs, rich programs in the arts, libraries, well-maintained campuses, and small classes. As a society, we must do whatever is necessary to extend the same advantages to children who do not have them. Doing so will improve their ability to learn, enhance their chances for a good life, and strengthen our society. 

So that readers don't have to wait until the later chapters of this book, here is a summary of my solutions to improve both schools and society. School and society are intertwined. The supporting research comes later in the book. Every one of these solutions works to improve the lives and academic outcomes of young people. 

Pregnant women should see a doctor early in their pregnancies and have regular care and good nutrition. Poor women who do not receive early and regular medical care are likely to have babies with developmental and cognitive problems. 

Children need prekindergarten classes that teach them how to socialize with others, how to listen and learn, how to communicate well, and how to care for themselves, while engaging in the joyful pursuit of play and learning that is appropriate to their age and development and that builds their background knowledge and vocabulary. 

Children in the early elementary grades need teachers who set age appropriate goals. They should learn to read, write, calculate, and explore nature, and they should have plenty of time to sing and dance and draw and play and giggle. Classes in these grades should be small enough -- ideally fewer than twenty -- so that students get the individual attention they need. Testing in the early grades should be used sparingly, not to rank students, but diagnostically, to help determine what they know and what they still need to learn. Test scores should remain a private matter between parents and teachers, not shared with the district or the state for any individual student. The district or state may aggregate scores for entire schools but should not judge teaches or schools on the basis of these scores.
As students enter the upper elementary grades and middle school and high school, they should have a balanced curriculum that includes not only reading, writing and mathematics but the science, literature, history, geography, civics, and foreign languages. Their school should have a rich arts program, where students learn to sing, dance, play an instrument, join an orchestra or a band, perform in a play, sculpt, or use technology to design structures, conduct research, or create artworks. Every student should have time for physical education every day. Every school should have a library with librarians and media specialists. Every school should have a nurse, a psychologist, a guidance councelor and a social worker. And every school should have after-school programs where students may explore their interests, whether in athletics, chess, robotics, history club, dramatics, science club, nature study, Scouting, or other activities. Teachers should write their own tests and use standardized tests only for diagnostic purposes. Classes should be small enough to ensure that every teacher knows his or her students and can provide the sort of feedback to strengthen their ability to write, their noncognitive skills, their critical thinking, and their mathematical and scientific acumen. 

Our society should commit to building a strong education profession. Public policy should aim to raise the standards for entry into teaching. Teachers should be well-educated and well-prepared for their profession. Principals and superintendents should be experienced educators. 

Schools should have the resources they need for the students they enroll. 

As a society, we must establish goals, strategies, and programs to reduce poverty and racial segregation. Only by eliminating opportunity gaps can we eliminate achievement gaps. Poor and immigrant children need the same sorts of schools the wealthy children have, only more so. Those who start life with the fewest advantages need even smaller classes, even more art, science, and music to engage them, to spark their creativity, and to fulfill their potential.

There is solid research base for my recommendations. If you want a society organized to promote the survival of the fittest and the triumph of the most advantaged, then you will prefer the current course of action, where children and teachers and schools are "racing to the top." But if you believe the goal of our society should be equality of opportunity for all children and that we should seek to reduce the alarming inequalities children now experience, then my program should win your support. 

My premise is straightforward: you can't do the right things until you stop doing the wrong things. If you insist on driving that train right over the cliff, you will never reach your hoped-for destination of excellence for all. Instead, you will inflict harm on millions of children and reduce the quality of their educations. You will squander billions of dollars on failed schemes that should have been spent on realistic, evidence-based ways of improving our public schools, our society, and the lives of children. 

Stop doing the wrong things. Stop promoting competition, and choice as answers to the very inequality that was created by competition and choice. Stop the mindless attacks on the education profession. A good society requires both a vibrant private sector and a responsible public sector. We must not permit the public sector to be privatized and eviscerated. In a democracy, important social goals require social collaboration. We must work to establish programs that improve the lives of children and families. To build a strong educational system, we need to build a strong and respected education profession. The federal government and states must develop policies that recruit, support, and retain career educators, both in the classroom and in positions of leadership. If we mean to conquer educational inequity, we must recognize that the root cause of poor academic performance are segregation and poverty, along with equitably resourced schools. We must act decisively to reduce the causes of inequity. We must bring good schools to every district and neighbourhood of our nation. Public education is a basic public responsibility: we must not be persuaded by a false crisis narrative to privatize it. It is time for parents, educators, and other concerned citizens to join together to strengthen our public schools and preserve them for future generations. The future of our democracy depends on it.

Three Decades of Lies

This was written by David Berliner who is Regents' Professor Emeritus at the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College of Arizona State University. His interests are in the study of teaching and general educational policy. He is the author, with Bruce J. Biddle, of The Manufactured Crisis: Myths, Fraud, and the Attack on America's Public Schools. This post was originally found here.

by David Berliner

We have endured 30 years of lies, half-truths, and myths. Bruce Biddle and I debunked many of these untruths in our book, The Manufactured Crisis, in 1995. But more falsehoods continue to surface all the time. The most recent nonsense was "U. S. Education Reform and National Security," a report presented to us last year by Joel Klein and Condoleezza Rice. A Nation at Risk had us losing the political and economic races to the Soviet Union and Japan. Did we? No. Our economy took off, the Soviet political system collapsed, and Japan's economy has retreated for two decades. So much for the predictions of A Nation at Risk.

The newest version of this genre by Klein/Rice has us losing the military and economic races to China and others. But this odd couple seems to forget that militarily we spend more than Turkey, China, Britain, France, Russia, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Germany, India, Italy, Brazil, South Korea, Australia, and Canada combined. If we are in any danger now, or in the foreseeable future, we must have the most incompetent military in the world.

As for economic subjugation? Not likely. The Chinese are still stealing our patents. They still manufacture things for us. More important, they still have around 300 million of their population in remarkably deep poverty and millions more in near-poverty. They need to bring a population about the same size as the United States out of poverty. They must provide enough food, drinkable water, clean energy, breathable air, and employment for an urban population that is expected to reach nearly 1 billion people in coming decades.

Will China be competing with us, or will they be so deeply involved in trying to satisfy these pressing internal needs that we are of only secondary concern to them? None of us is smart enough to know, but Klein/Rice, like the authors of A Nation at Risk, like to create devils. Be afraid! Be very afraid! Then, as part of the exorcism, these writers promote destroying the evil public schools, which then brings to us a new age of national success though vouchers, charters, tax credits, and online schooling. What a crock.

These critics never blame our economic woes on, say, Jack Welch, America's most admired CEO. Welch is quoted as saying he wishes he could put every factory GE had on a barge and tow it to wherever in the world labor was cheapest. Could such leadership affect our economic problems? None of these school critics ever blame GE for the neglected neighborhoods and family poverty that hampers success in many of our schools. Yet it has been reported that GE, led by patriots like Welch, earned profits of more than $14.2 billion in 2010, and paid no federal taxes that year. In addition, GE received $3.2 billion in tax benefits that year. (GE disputes such reporting.) Is it possible that the health of our economy and military are related to factors like these? Nah, blame the schools. In A Nation at Risk and the Klein/Rice report, it is not Welch and his ilk that endanger the United States, it is our teachers and their unions; it is lazy parents and incompetent administrators.

Condoleezza Rice must be quite trustworthy as an educational critic since I once read a column of hers titled "Why We Know Iraq is Lying." Joel Klein is a trustworthy critic since he gained experience failing to help the New York City schools improve, and was linked in the press to what some people regard as educational fraud. He now works at a for profit educational company.

And Bill Bennett, who promoted A Nation at Risk and was first author on "A Nation Still at Risk," is also not to be taken seriously. He made a lot of money from speeches that promoted morality and attacked the public schools. But at the same time he was losing money gambling, and went into the "for profit" ed business. So Bennett and Klein gain much by badmouthing public schools and promoting privatization plans.

Frankly, it looks to me like our nation is more at risk from critics like these than it is from the hard-working teachers and administrators trying to help poor kids and their families get ahead in a nation that is increasingly stacking the deck against the poor. It really is not an achievement gap between the United States and other nations that is our problem. We actually do quite well for a large and a diverse nation. It's really the opportunity gap, not the achievement gap that could destroy us. If only the wealthy have the opportunity to acquire the knowledge and skills needed for a post-industrial economy we are, indeed, a nation at risk.

The most important problem facing American children today

If we don't properly identify the real problems that plague our schools, and more generally our society, we risk implementing solutions that actually make the problems worse.

If we misinterpret standardized test scores as our window into the quality of our schools, rather than as a reflection for affluence and opportunity, we risk waging war on teachers and schools when we should be waging war on poverty.

Here is a graphic that I first saw on Valerie Strauss's blog the Answer Sheet where she asks the question, "What is the most important problem facing American children?" She writes:

According to the Academic Pediatric Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, it is the effects of poverty on the health and well being of young people. But, they concede, there is no sustained focus on childhood poverty, or a unified pediatric voice speaking on the problem, or a comprehensive approach to solving it.

Inevitably when we discuss poverty and education, a couple of questions come up:

Does this mean poor people can't learn? No, this does not mean poor people can't learn. All people can learn and people living in poverty are people, too. What this means is that children suffering from the affects of poverty have their potential growth and health stunted. To say that poverty matters for children who are trying to learn is not to make excuses -- it's acknowledging the truth. 

Does this mean we have to choose between providing good schools and waging war on poverty? No, we do not have to choose between good schools and an equitable society, but let's not pretend we are doing enough to reduce the number of children in poverty. (1 in 5 in United States; 1 in 10 in Alberta; 1 in 25 in Finland) And let's not pretend that education alone can lift people out of poverty.

People who say poverty is no excuse are making excuses about doing nothing about poverty.

What if Finland’s great teachers taught in U.S. schools?

This was written by Pasi Sahlberg who is the author of “ Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn About Educational Change in Finland? You can follow Pasi Sahlbeg on Twitter here and read his blog here. This post first appeared here.

by Pasi Sahlberg

Many governments are under political and economic pressure to turn around their school systems for higher rankings in the international league tables. Education reforms often promise quick fixes within one political term. Canada, South Korea, Singapore and Finland are commonly used models for the nations that hope to improve teaching and learning in their schools. In search of a silver bullet, reformers now turn their eyes on teachers, believing that if only they could attract “the best and the brightest” into the teaching profession, the quality of education would improve.

“Teacher effectiveness” is a commonly used term that refers to how much student performance on standardized tests is determined by the teacher. This concept hence applies only to those teachers who teach subjects on which students are tested.Teacher effectiveness plays a particular role in education policies of nations where alternative pathways exist to the teaching profession.

In the United States, for example, there are more than 1,500 different teacher-preparation programs. The range in quality is wide. In Singapore and Finland only one academically rigorous teacher education program is available for those who desire to become teachers. Likewise, neither Canada nor South Korea has fast-track options into teaching, such as Teach for America or Teach First in Europe. Teacher quality in high-performing countries is a result of careful quality control at entry into teaching rather than measuring teacher effectiveness in service.

In recent years the “no excuses”’ argument has been particularly persistent in the education debate. There are those who argue that poverty is only an excuse not to insist that all schools should reach higher standards. Solution: better teachers. Then there are those who claim that schools and teachers alone cannot overcome the negative impact that poverty causes in many children’s learning in school. Solution: Elevate children out of poverty by other public policies.

For me the latter is right. In the United States today, 23 percent of children live in poor homes. In Finland, the same way to calculate child poverty would show that figure to be almost five times smaller. The United States ranked in the bottom four in the recent United Nations review on child well-being. Among 29 wealthy countries, the United States landed second from the last in child poverty and held a similarly poor position in “child life satisfaction.” Teachers alone, regardless of how effective they are, will not be able to overcome the challenges that poor children bring with them to schools everyday.

Finland is not a fan of standardization in education. However, teacher education in Finland is carefully standardized. All teachers must earn a master’s degree at one of the country’s research universities. Competition to get into these teacher education programs is tough; only “the best and the brightest” are accepted. As a consequence, teaching is regarded as an esteemed profession, on par with medicine, law or engineering. There is another “teacher quality” checkpoint at graduation from School of Education in Finland. Students are not allowed to earn degrees to teach unless they demonstrate that they possess knowledge, skills and morals necessary to be a successful teacher.

But education policies in Finland concentrate more on school effectiveness than on teacher effectiveness. This indicates that what schools are expected to do is an effort of everyone in a school, working together, rather than teachers working individually.

In many under-performing nations, I notice, three fallacies of teacher effectiveness prevail.

The first belief is that “the quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers.” This statement became known in education policies through the influential McKinsey & Company report titled “How the world’s best performing school systems come out on top”. Although the report takes a broader view on enhancing the status of teachers by better pay and careful recruitment this statement implies that the quality of an education system is defined by its teachers. By doing this, the report assumes that teachers work independently from one another. But teachers in most schools today, in the United States and elsewhere, work as teams when the end result of their work is their joint effort.

The role of an individual teacher in a school is like a player on a football team: all teachers are vital, but the culture of the school is even more important for the quality of the school. Team sports offer numerous examples of teams that have performed beyond expectations because of leadership, commitment and spirit. Take the U.S. ice hockey team in the 1980 Winter Olympics, when a team of college kids beat both Soviets and Finland in the final round and won the gold medal. The quality of Team USA certainly exceeded the quality of its players. So can an education system.

The second fallacy is that “the most important single factor in improving quality of education is teachers.” This is the driving principle of former D.C. schools chancellor Michele Rhee and many other “reformers” today. This false belief is central to the “no excuses” school of thought. If a teacher was the most important single factor in improving quality of education, then the power of a school would indeed be stronger than children’s family background or peer influences in explaining student achievement in school.

Research on what explains students’ measured performance in school remains mixed. A commonly used conclusion is that 10% to 20% of the variance in measured student achievement belongs to the classroom, i.e., teachers and teaching, and a similar amount is attributable to schools, i.e., school climate, facilities and leadership. In other words, up to two-thirds of what explains student achievement is beyond the control of schools, i.e., family background and motivation to learn.

Over thirty years of systematic research on school effectiveness and school improvement reveals a number of characteristics that are typical of more effective schools. Most scholars agree that effective leadership is among the most important characteristics of effective schools, equally important to effective teaching. Effective leadership includes leader qualities, such as being firm and purposeful, having shared vision and goals, promoting teamwork and collegiality and frequent personal monitoring and feedback. Several other characteristics of more effective schools include features that are also linked to the culture of the school and leadership: Maintaining focus on learning, producing a positive school climate, setting high expectations for all, developing staff skills, and involving parents. In other words, school leadership matters as much as teacher quality.

The third fallacy is that “If any children had three or four great teachers in a row, they would soar academically, regardless of their racial or economic background, while those who have a sequence of weak teachers will fall further and further behind”. This theoretical assumption is included in influential policy recommendations, for instance in “Essential Elements of Teacher Policy in ESEA: Effectiveness, Fairness and Evaluation” by the Center for American Progress to the U.S. Congress. Teaching is measured by the growth of student test scores on standardized exams.

This assumption presents a view that education reform alone could overcome the powerful influence of family and social environment mentioned earlier. It insists that schools should get rid of low-performing teachers and then only hire great ones. This fallacy has the most practical difficulties. The first one is about what it means to be a great teacher. Even if this were clear, it would be difficult to know exactly who is a great teacher at the time of recruitment. The second one is, that becoming a great teacher normally takes five to ten years of systematic practice. And determining the reliably of ‘effectiveness’ of any teacher would require at least five years of reliable data. This would be practically impossible.

Everybody agrees that the quality of teaching in contributing to learning outcomes is beyond question. It is therefore understandable that teacher quality is often cited as the most important in-school variable influencing student achievement. But just having better teachers in schools will not automatically improve students’ learning outcomes.

Lessons from high-performing school systems, including Finland, suggest that we must reconsider how we think about teaching as a profession and what is the role of the school in our society.

First, standardization should focus more on teacher education and less on teaching and learning in schools. Singapore, Canada and Finland all set high standards for their teacher-preparation programs in academic universities. There is no Teach for Finland or other alternative pathways into teaching that wouldn’t include thoroughly studying theories of pedagogy and undergo clinical practice. These countries set the priority to have strict quality control before anybody will be allowed to teach – or even study teaching! This is why in these countries teacher effectiveness and teacher evaluation are not such controversial topics as they are in the U.S. today.

Second, the toxic use of accountability for schools should be abandoned. Current practices in many countries that judge the quality of teachers by counting their students’ measured achievement only is in many ways inaccurate and unfair. It is inaccurate because most schools’ goals are broader than good performance in a few academic subjects. It is unfair because most of the variation of student achievement in standardized tests can be explained by out-of-school factors. Most teachers understand that what students learn in school is because the whole school has made an effort, not just some individual teachers. In the education systems that are high in international rankings, teachers feel that they are empowered by their leaders and their fellow teachers. In Finland, half of surveyed teachers responded that they would consider leaving their job if their performance would be determined by their student’s standardized test results.

Third, other school policies must be changed before teaching becomes attractive to more young talents. In many countries where teachers fight for their rights, their main demand is not more money but better working conditions in schools. Again, experiences from those countries that do well in international rankings suggest that teachers should have autonomy in planning their work, freedom to run their lessons the way that leads to best results, and authority to influence the assessment of the outcomes of their work. Schools should also be trusted in these key areas of the teaching profession.

To finish up, let’s do one theoretical experiment. We transport highly trained Finnish teachers to work in, say, Indiana in the United States (and Indiana teachers would go to Finland). After five years—assuming that the Finnish teachers showed up fluent in English and that education policies in Indiana would continue as planned—we would check whether these teachers have been able to improve test scores in state-mandated student assessments.

I argue that if there were any gains in student achievement they would be marginal. Why? Education policies in Indiana and many other states in the United States create a context for teaching that limits (Finnish) teachers to use their skills, wisdom and shared knowledge for the good of their students’ learning. Actually, I have met some experienced Finnish-trained teachers in the United States who confirm this hypothesis. Based on what I have heard from them, it is also probable that many of those transported Finnish teachers would be already doing something else than teach by the end of their fifth year – quite like their American peers.

Conversely, the teachers from Indiana working in Finland—assuming they showed up fluent in Finnish—stand to flourish on account of the freedom to teach without the constraints of standardized curricula and the pressure of standardized testing; strong leadership from principals who know the classroom from years of experience as teachers; a professional culture of collaboration; and support from homes unchallenged by poverty.



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UNICEF, 2013. Child well-being in rich countries. A comparative overview. Innocenti Report Card 11. Florence: UNICEF.

McKinsey & Company (2010). “How the world’s best performing school systems come out on top”. London: McKinsey & Co.

Teddlie, C. (2010). The Legacy of the School Effectiveness Research Tradition, in A. Hargreaves, A. Lieberman, M. Fullan & D. Hopkins (Eds.). The Second International Handbook of Educational Change. Dordrecht: Springer.