New Lessons for Our Classrooms

From kindergarten to 12th grade, Will Thomas never had a black male teacher and only once had a black female teacher. “I felt like we weren’t represented in the classroom, and it bothered me throughout my school experience,” says Thomas, referring to his years growing up in Ellenville, New York, a relatively diverse community.

Now a teacher in Prince George’s County Public Schools system in Maryland, Thomas, who has a bachelor of arts in social studies from the State University of New York at Albany and a master of arts in reading education from Bowie State University, took it upon himself to turn the tables.

He hasn’t limited his goal of being a role model to the classroom. Thomas, the 2008—2009 Prince George’s County Teacher of the Year, aims to teach students to perform at a higher level and prepare them for college. And he has made progress.

When he first started teaching Advanced Placement government at Dr. Henry A. Wise Junior High School in 2007–where 90% of the student body is African American–not one of his students attained an acceptable score of 3, 4, or 5 on the AP exam. His initial reaction was to blame the students, but he realized that would be taking the easy way out.

So he raised the bar for himself. In 2010, 23 of his 88 students passed the exam with acceptable scores; and he’s seen a marked increase among the young black men. That improvement could be attributed to a number of things: the tutoring time he added during and after school; the workshops he attended to improve his teaching strategies; his requirement that parents attend field trips with students; or the political activities he engaged in himself.

But Thomas, a national board certified teacher, didn’t stop there. He worked during evenings and summers to assist with curriculum writing for the PGCPS social studies office, and each day, including weekends, he spends an additional two to three hours above the contracted workday grading and preparing lesson plans. In addition to his classroom obligations, Thomas volunteers after school as a mock trial coach, and he runs an online investment club for students.

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Yet, Thomas is quick to assert that all the teachers at Wise, a 6-year-old school, named after the first practicing black physician in Prince George’s County, work just as hard as he does. This is why Thomas is defensive about the outpouring of negative sentiment toward teachers and teachers unions.

“I know teachers who are doing far more than what I’m doing. They’ve committed far more hours and seen far more progress in their students than I’ve seen,” says Thomas, a veteran teacher of 13 years. “What I’ve seen in the media are teachers who are putting their feet up, doing whatever, and not caring … that is not the norm. It is frustrating to see such stories, know it is not true, but I know that is the perception that the public has been given by the media.”

In Parts 1 and 2 of Black America’s Education Crisis, Black Enterprise focused on programs and strategies that federal, state, and local governments have enacted to improve K—12 public education as well as the philanthropic efforts of Bill Gates. The third part of our four-part series drills in on teachers and parents, and what they can do to improve the state of education for our children.

Do Teachers Unions Advance Education?

Three in four Americans have “trust and confidence in public school teachers,” but do not think much of teachers unions or the government when it comes to the current quality of education, according to the 43rd annual Gallup and Phi Delta Kappa Poll of the Public’s Attitudes Toward their Public Schools.

Of those who think teachers unions are failing America’s students, Steve Perry, Ph.D., principal and founder of Capital Preparatory Magnet School, is probably the most vocal. Established in Hartford, Connecticut’s lowest performing district, accommodating a student population that was estimated to be 86% black and 70% low-income during the 2010—2011 school year, Capital Prep has since its inception in 2004 sent 100% of its graduates to four-year colleges.

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Perry believes that type of achievement is missing in most public schools because teachers lack accountability.  While Perry and the teachers at Capital Prep are union members (which is required in Connecticut), he resents the standards the union requires of him and his staff. For example, he says he cannot call a mandatory staff meeting more than once a month, a stipulation that prevents his teachers from working collaboratively.

“The children, the people who schools are designed to actually support, are the ones getting the shortest end of the stick. The adults are getting the most,” says Perry, who says “Teachers unions [are] the worst thing that ever happened to public education,” a statement he used as the title of a chapter in his new book, Push Has Come to Shove (Crown; $25).

Perry and those who wish to minimize or eliminate union power in school districts believe unions keep principals from firing ineffective teachers, prevent teachers from working extended school days and school years, provide some teachers with salaries and benefits that exceed the value of their workload, and deter professionals who don’t have an education degree from entering the field.

“The recession is the best thing to happen to public education in a long time,” says Perry, suggesting that the budget crisis is forcing state and local governments to take a critical look at how money is being wasted in public schools.

This year, national debate about teachers unions has centered on collective bargaining, the process by which teachers collectively negotiate salary, work hours, benefits, vacation time, and grievances.

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To teachers like Thomas, collective bargaining means unions can fight for smaller class sizes, more prep time, and, of course, more pay in order to attract the strongest people to the profession. But Perry says collective bargaining is holding our community over the barrel and running the cost of education through the roof. The fact that it has been dismantled in Indiana, Wisconsin, Tennessee, and several other states this year is a “great and necessary step” toward school districts being able to “run a leaner and more effective academic experience,” he says.  “Teachers unions were good at one time, but I don’t know when that time was, because good to me means improving the quality of education, not guaranteeing jobs and not guaranteeing benefits.”

Marco Petruzzi agrees with Perry that principals need more hiring and firing authority over their staffs, and that the system should be built around kids’ success and not job security for teachers, but he doesn’t agree that all unions are bad. Petruzzi is president and CEO of Green Dot Public Schools, a Los Angeles-based organization that uses a charter-like model to transform low-performing schools. One difference: Principals and teachers at Green Dot schools own critical decisions related to budgeting, hiring, and curriculum customization. This model enables Green Dot schools to consistently outperform comparable schools on nearly every academic performance measure.

“Not all unions are created equal. I think a good union should embrace professionalism and accountability,” says Petruzzi. “To be a professional, you need to not have a 400-page union contract that tells you what to do every minute of the day. That’s actually good for a manufacturing company or a farming community, but you don’t see doctors and lawyers–who are professionals–walking around with 400 pages of how they’re supposed to spend every hour of the day.”  National Education Association President Dennis Van Roekel says that it puts student learning first, and it has made huge investments in developing high standards to ensure teacher success  in the classroom.

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Tenure and Teacher Performance
While pro-union teachers like Thomas may find union condemnation misplaced, he does believe that the criteria for receiving teacher tenure needs to be changed. He is not alone. Only 10% of teachers say that tenure is a very accurate measure of teacher performance, while 42% say it is not at all accurate, according to teachers surveyed in a report released last year by Scholastic Inc. and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

In some states, teachers can receive tenure after only two years on the job and with minimal to no evaluation of their job performance. Nine states do not require any evaluations of new teachers, while 23 states require only that new teachers be evaluated more than once each year, according to the Campaign for High School Equity, a coalition of leading civil rights organizations representing communities of color aimed at addressing the unequal American public education system. Only 16 states require that new teachers be evaluated early in the school year, even though studies show that early evaluation improves performance throughout the year. In some states, tenured teachers are required to undergo evaluations only twice in 10 years.

According to the Gallup/Phi Delta Kappa poll most teachers would actually prefer that they were held more accountable– 60% and 55% of teachers, in the Gates Foundation survey view student engagement and year-over-year progress of students as the most accurate indicators of measuring teacher performance. They also agree that their salaries should be tied to the quality of their job performance. Yet most still do not believe that financial compensation should be tied to student achievement.

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On the other hand, 75% of parents of public school students say teachers’ salaries should be somewhat or very closely tied to their own students’ academic achievement, according to the Gallup/Phi Delta Kappa poll. When calculating a teacher’s salary, parents agree that multiple factors should be considered, including the principal’s evaluation, advanced degrees, and experience.

Getting Paid
While Perry argues that the average teacher is overpaid, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development reports that teachers in the U.S. generally spend more time teaching but without an equivalent advantage in pay compared with other developed countries whose students are outperforming American students. A brief from the Alliance for Excellent Education states that half of all teachers who enter the field leave within five years, and the best and brightest are often the first to leave, and not necessarily because of poor compensation.

More teachers say it is more important to have supportive leadership, time to collaborate, and quality curriculum, according to the Gates Foundation’s survey.

If the ability of schools to hire and retain high-quality teachers has the potential to influence student academic outcomes and significantly reduce student dropout rates as studies have shown, then efforts should be concentrated on not just developing high-quality teachers but on retaining them as well. U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan agrees, saying that raising the bar for prospective students to enter schools of education and increasing starting salaries to $60,000 a year, topping out at around $150,000, will incentivize “top graduates to flock to a profession that demands high standards and credentials.”

Implementing merit pay is one solution that is often touted by many education reform advocates including President Barack Obama, but research is inconclusive about whether it actually works. One Harvard study, conducted by economist Roland Fryer, found that it didn’t make a difference in student achievement in New York schools.

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Says Thomas: “I believe we need to be cautious with merit pay because the educational process is a continuum and you cannot isolate one year or one subject to measure student growth  and attribute that growth to one teacher. Students can achieve more when teachers work together.” He also wonders if merit pay could produce a competitive environment in which teachers are discouraged from collaborating and sharing their best practices.

For teachers in the trenches, nine studies indicate that quality professional development can improve both teacher practice and student achievement, reports the New Teacher Center, a group focused on assisting teacher and administrator induction and retention. For black students specifically, the Campaign for High School Equity and the College Board recommend that teachers and school leaders need to be trained in cultural competency, and ongoing research should be adjusted to the needs of communities of color.

Teach for America
One organization that has focused on the power of teaching to effect change in a student’s life is Teach for America. Started 20 years ago by Wendy Kopp, the organization takes recent college graduates and puts them in high poverty, low-achieving urban and rural schools for two years. More than 9,000 corps members–Teach for America instructors–will be teaching 600,000 students this year, more than 50% of whom are African American. Twelve percent of the 5,200 teachers that entered Teach for America for the 2011—2012 school year are African American. Twenty-seven percent of Spelman seniors applied to Teach for America, as did 10% of seniors at Howard; one in five African American seniors at Ivy League schools applied as well.

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Though it is not without its detractors, the organization is convinced that it knows what works, and that its teachers and leaders are willing to do whatever it takes. And research supports it: According to Kopp, Teach for America is the most studied teacher education program in the country, and studies have shown that its teachers positively affect student achievement. A study in Tennessee found that Teach for America was the most effective of the state’s 42 teacher preparation programs, and that its teachers demonstrated a greater effect on students in every evaluated subject area. “Our greatest challenge,” says Kopp, “is the inequities that persist in outcomes along socioeconomic and racial lines.” (For more about educational inequities, see Part 1, “Black America’s Education Crisis,” September 2011).

Yet Kopp says there’s plenty of evidence that all kids can be

provided with an excellent education. “Twenty years ago the prevailing view was that socioeconomic levels determined kids’ educational ability and outcomes,” she says, but it’s now clear that poverty does not determine ability and never did. Yet, according to Kopp, only 8% of low-income kids graduate from college; 80% of high-income kids do. Although she’s quick to say that there’s no silver bullet to solving this crisis, she does propose one essential aspect: effective school leadership.

Kopp says that strong school leaders go after their goals with the same level of energy and discipline and use the same strategies that effective leaders use to achieve any ambitious outcome. “Good leaders obsess about building strong teams; they work hard to build a powerful culture; they manage their teachers effectively; they do whatever it takes to reach their goal.

Parents: A Crucial Role
But teachers are only part of the equation. Parents must work with teachers to develop academic achievers.  Parental support promotes student engagement. One charter school network, the Richard Allen Schools in Ohio, even uses a parent report card to evaluate parental involvement in their student’s academic lives.

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What parenting approaches are most consistent with this goal? In Part 1 of this series, it was noted that the achievement gap between black and white students shows up before they enter school. What can parents and other caregivers do to maximize preschoolers cognitive development and best prepare them for school?

“A lot of what is valued in the black community regarding child rearing turns out to be not very valuable in developing young minds,” says Geoffrey Canada, president and CEO of the renowned Harlem Children’s Zone, which now offers a Baby College for children age zero to 3. “The science about how children learn says they should have a voice, they should have opinions. We should talk seriously and use very complex language with them from birth.” Canada says that using rich vocabulary with young children enriches their world experience and communication skills, which serves as “the precursor to all the writing, reading, and other areas we really care about.”

Canada also stresses exposing children to new concepts, ideas, and words every day, and reading the best children’s literature to them, which, “puts a child at a huge advantage when they enter school.” He also opposes the use of corporal punishment. “Violence teaches our children that pain and fear get folk to do what you want.” Instead, he insists that timeouts and explaining to children what is and is not acceptable works better at managing their behavior, and says explanations also teach them how to use language and persuasion. (See the Parent Resources box for information about supporting school-age children.)

Perry of Capital Prep emphasizes reading to young children as well, even if it’s in a language other than English. He also encourages parents to expose young children to do counting and simple arithmetic. “Parents develop academic courage in their kids when they make it safe for them to ask questions,” says Perry, whose two young sons attend Capital Prep. “There’s a style of parenting that we’ve carried up to the middle class where we think kids are supposed to be seen and not heard. We often stifle questions because we want our kids to shut up. But asking questions is not talking back.”