Guest writer

Teachers matter

Educating kids requires talent

I chat with roughly 100 parents and educators annually while doing research in schools. If you do that a few years, you get used to hearing stupid statements and still keeping your cool. But one time a while back, I just lost it.

In a town I will not name, while talking about teacher quality, a public official with an air of authority declared that, regarding student learning, "teachers don't matter."

"You're wrong! Teachers matter!" I snapped, wondering about the wisdom of this strange, small hamlet that has such annoying elected officials in it.

This individual was saying that my mother-in-law, who spent 30 years in the classroom, didn't matter. She might as well not have gotten up all those mornings. What was the point?

The teachers in great public schools like Grace Hill Elementary in Rogers, and KIPP in the Arkansas Delta, just don't matter. Mr. Goudy, who taught me to love literature in one of the few courses in my second-rate high school that prepared students for college work, might as well have been on welfare for all the good he did.

So for me this is an emotional issue. It is also an ideological issue that cuts across ideologies.

Some liberals declare that you can't teach kids whose parents lack education, kids like me. Some conservatives declare that you can't teach kids who lack dads, kids like a young "Barry" Obama.

Some teachers' union officials insist that all teachers are great; some on the right see all teachers as lazy. Those are often the same people who pull strings to get Ms. Smith rather than Mr. Jones for their kids.

George Orwell observed "there are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them." The notion that teachers don't matter is among them.

Certainly, different approaches work in different places. Teachers who succeed in low-income neighborhoods often have a tough style that might get you in trouble in tony suburbs. Montessori teachers can't do "No Excuses" teaching, and neither do they tend to comprehend blended learning. Individually, different teachers fit different styles; so do different kids.

Similarly, some parents welcome academically challenging teachers; others want to spare their darlings serious work and grading. And sometimes a good teacher will have a slump. But these are all just different ways of saying that teachers matter.

It is also true that the home matters. As with policing, teaching is usually more challenging in low-income communities, so we should go all out to recruit smart, energetic teachers for those locales. But again, that is so very different from saying that teachers don't matter.

If you lack a scrap of common sense and can't take my word for it, check the research. In Teachers Matter, Marcus Winters summarizes scores of quantitative studies indicating that the difference between a year of good teaching and a year of poor teaching is often a year of student learning. In other words, like members of every other profession since the dawn of civilization, teachers matter.

Those who try to "teacher proof" schools know nothing of schooling. Those who insist that "peers teach each other" so teachers don't matter encourage educated parents to segregate their kids from "bad influences." They also misstate, or at least overstate, the research.

Teachers matter more than buildings, but the latter get more attention because everyone can see the façade, while teaching is more subtle.

Good school leaders go out of their way to attract and keep talented teachers who fit their students' needs--they do not use teaching jobs as patronage. And while teachers make more than most think--$56,000 on average nationally with good benefits--I think we should pay more to get the best. We also must reassign or fire teachers who just aren't working out because this job is that important. Those tough decisions must reflect teaching children, not flattering superiors.

My own University of Arkansas at Fayetteville College of Education and Health Professions has worked to improve our teacher-preparation programs, which may be the best in this part of the country. In addition, the college's Dean Tom Smith started a very promising alternative-certification program, Arkansas Teacher Corps, to prepare teachers for low-income communities which have trouble finding teaching talent.

None of our programs advertises for interchangeable drones who want meaningless jobs that will not make a difference to anyone. That's because we know teachers matter.

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Robert Maranto ([email protected]) is the 21st Century Chair in Leadership at the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.

Editorial on 08/18/2014

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