bring back recitation

I was just reading a short article in Education Week about Bill Gates' "Gold Star teacher" plan when I came across a letter criticizing the concept.

First, here's Gates:

Bill Gates closed the National Governors Association's 2011 winter meeting last week by urging the governors to consider increasing the class sizes of the best teachers.

Under the Microsoft founder's model, a school's most effective teachers would be given an additional four or five students. Less effective teachers could then work with smaller classes and receive professional development.

A 2008 study supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation determined that 83 percent of teachers would support increasing their class sizes for additional compensation. (The foundation provides grant support to Editorial Projects in Education, which publishes Education Week.) In 2009, a Goldwater Institute report argued for tying teacher effectiveness to a higher pupil-teacher ratio and a higher salary.

The endorsement by Mr. Gates now could push the proposal further into the mainstream, given the level of support shown at the NGA meeting.


Gates to NGA: Tie Class Sizes to Teachers' Skills
Education Week
Published Online: March 8, 2011
Published in Print: March 9, 2011, as Gates to NGA: Tie Class Sizes to Teachers' Skill

And here's the reaction from a letter writer:

What makes a teacher of young learners effective is his or her ability to work with individuals in ways that are appropriate to their needs. During whole-group lessons, such teachers move around their classrooms, spotting those who are having difficulty and taking the time to give a little help and encouragement. Later, when planning future lessons, they include modifications for the range of abilities in their classrooms and figure out ways to have most students working on their own or with a partner, so they can meet with small groups.

It is only the least-competent teachers who stand in front of their classrooms and give the same instruction to all, blind to the boredom of those who already know the material, the confusion of those who aren’t ready for it, and the tuned-out state of the few who don’t care.

Although the notion of getting extra pay for taking on more students might have seemed attractive to most of the teachers responding to a survey funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2008, the situation at that time was only hypothetical.

Today thousands of teachers all over the country have classes of 30 and up. I wager that neither Bill Gates nor the governors who agree with him could keep order in such classrooms, much less teach anybody anything.

Linking Pay and Class Size Hurts Teaching Quality

And here is Doug Lemov:

[Many] to most of the top-performing urban charter schools of which I'm aware buck the otherwise orthodox belief in heterogeneous classroom grouping and solve this problem by homogeneously grouping classes.

Teach Like a Champion
p. 256

With homogeneous grouping, the teacher is always teaching to the level of the entire class because the entire class is on the same level.

Also: whole-group instruction does not mean whole-group lecture. Whole-group instruction means  "Call and Response," "Pepper," "Cold Call," "Wait Time," "Everybody Writes," etc. In the well-taught homogeneously grouped classes Lemov describes, the situation is pretty close to 100% of students learning from the teacher 100% of the time because 100% of students are directly engaged with the teacher for 100% of the class. That's the goal.

How much time are students directly engaged with the teacher in a heterogeneous class?

Not much.

Say class time is 50 minutes and you've got 20 kids.

• 12 minutes for the mini lesson

• 2 or 3 minutes for transition-time (sit on the floor to observe mini-lesson; re-group for partner-work; sit on floor again for mini-lesson; etc.)

• 35 minutes for individual time with teacher

That's maybe 3 minutes of direct instructional time with the teacher per each two-child pair and another 12 minutes of time directly engaged with the teacher during the mini-lesson if the mini-lesson happens to be pitched to the child's level.

If the mini-lesson is not pitched to the child's level, then 3 minutes max.

One of these days I'll have to write up my notes from the 5th grade writing workshop I observed. I think it's fair to say that the two boys I was sitting closest to learned nothing at all for the entire class period. Learned nothing and practiced nothing.

I don't know whether the other kids were engaged in productive partner work.

Arne Duncan supports "Gold Star" teachers

Just put up a post at the Parents Forum.

Gold Star teachers

I like this idea:

Proposals for a Cost-Conscious Era: "Gold Star Teachers"

By Rick Hess on October 13, 2010 9:30 AM

For decades, the go-to school improvement recipe has been to reduce class size. Any challenge to this status quo encounters a buzz saw of opposition from parents and teachers who like small classes. That's why national teacher-student ratios are down to 15:1 today. Yet the research backing across-the-board class reduction is thin, at best. International evidence shows no simple relationship between class size and student achievement. Some high-performing nations boast middle or high school class sizes of 40 to 50 students. Small classes are costly and the need to keep adding bodies forces school systems to be less selective and training to be less focused.

Given that 55% of K-12 spending funds teacher salaries and benefits, you can't cut costs without boosting the productivity of good teachers--which requires increasing class size. But trying to sell that argument to parents or teachers is a dead end. Hence, the Gold Star program offers teachers who are at least reasonably effective the opportunity, should they so choose, to teach more kids per class and to be rewarded for taking on a larger workload. Such a state-level program would offer a chance to reshuffle the incentives and create a productivity-enhancing dynamic.

Teachers whose students post larger-than-normal gains for at least two consecutive years would be eligible to opt into the program. While I have consistently explained that value-added data systems have real limitations, they do provide a systematic way to identify teachers whose students are at least improving in math and reading at better-than-average rates. This gives some assurance that these teachers are at least reasonably effective. Participating teachers would teach up to 50% more students than normal--say, 36 students rather than 24--and would be rewarded for their increased workload. Continued participation would depend on a teacher's students continuing to make larger-than-normal gains. Given data limitations, states would be advised to pilot such programs in grades four through eight.

While parents prefer small classes in general, small classes also frustrate parents whose children can't get seats in the class of a heralded teacher. The Gold Star program lowers these barriers by allowing access to the most effective teachers for more kids. Given the choice between a Gold Star Teacher serving more children and the alternative, many or most parents will likely prefer the larger class. But it is essential that it be a parental choice and not an administrative fiat.

Teachers and taxpayers would also win big. On average, given current teacher salaries and benefits, increasing class size by one student saves something like $3,000; so allowing a talented teacher to instruct 36 rather than 24 saves up to $36,000. Awarding the teacher half that amount yields an $18,000 productivity bonus (a 35% bump for the median teacher). The state and district would split the other $18,000. Even on a trial basis in grades four through eight, such a program could help states shave school spending by two or three percent--tallying hundreds of millions in some cases while rewarding excellent educators.

Parents have choice, teachers have choice, and spending declines.

Offhand, I don't think this approach would necessarily interfere with professional learning communities, but I don't know.