In his edweek.org blog, Marc Tucker argues that success in improving teacher quality should be measured by our country’s ability to transform teaching from a blue-collar occupation to a high-status profession.
Tucker was encouraged to write this particular blog post by a new report, “Genuine Progress, Greater Challenges: A Decade of Teacher Effectiveness Reforms”, penned by Andrew J. Rotherham and Ashley LiBetti Mitchel. This report offers the alternative position that success in improving teacher quality should be measured by the level of accountability that holds teachers responsible for student performance, particularly through various means of teacher evaluation.
Tucker, a veteran of American education policy wars and no far-left winger himself, hopes to remind readers that the accountability version of the story is not the only one.
Tucker’s model, which called for (and still advocates) a National Board for Professional Teaching Standards as well as a more rigorous process of teacher preparation, believes that if it is a more challenging process to become and remain a teacher, better teachers will join the profession who demand and deserve respect. This general position has also been supported, since the 1986 A Nation Prepared: Teachers for the 21st Century by education figures such as Linda Darling-Hammond, heads of national teachers unions, and countless other high level state education officials.
For more on why Tucker does not believe in Rotherham and Mitchel’s model, see this post, but the questions for now are first, who gets to talk the loudest when explaining the narrative of reform of teacher quality, and second, how can the two camps can find enough common ground to work together for what surely is the common goal of making teachers better, bringing teachers more respect, and ultimately helping students achieve better success?
For more information, please visit:
