Minnesota Teaching Quality Found To Be Poor

Articles like these are what shape America's public perception of teachers and teacher quality.

I'll have to go and look at the actual article in Education Week and see what kind of issues and factors figured into the rankings, but regardless of how poorly constructed was the study, or how little control over these factors teachers actually have, the thing that people will remember out there in the public is that "Our state's teachers are not doing their job."

And they will be indignant about it, too.  It won't be long before bitching ensues about paying too much in taxes and getting too little in results.

Funny thing about this particular study.  As poor of a job as teachers are apparently doing in Minnesota, our students are doing unusually well:  in terms of college acceptance, ACT scores, attendance, AP classes, etcetera.

Now, how do students do extremely well (top ten in the country), but then the teachers are found to be doing well below average?  Are the kids just getting lucky?  Is it happening by osmosis?  Or, are the parents of all these above average kids somehow able to work double-time at night to undo all the damage that teachers are wreaking during the day?

Look, this is absurd.  The quality of teaching in Minnesota is not well below average.  Rankings like these that purport to compare different states are nothing more than a way to sell newspapers.  I call bullshit on this whole enterprise:  school rankings, teacher rankings, state rankings.  None of them actually help children to grow and develop, and, in fact, do exactly the opposite by whipping the public into a state of frenzy about the quality of their schools and teachers.

 Education is a human endeavor.  It is not perfect, nor will it ever be.  And the idea that it can be perfected, contained as an assumption in NCLB, does far more harm than good.  We have teaching standards in Minnesota, very well developed, highly professional, and completely comprehensive.  Teachers shoot to master them, take courses and staff development spiraled around them and are evaluated based upon classroom observations by qualified administrators.  Any new teachers who do not measure up are not required to be rehired.  Any system-wide deficits can be corrected through training or staff-development.

Trying to put numbers, rankings and grades to these efforts may sell newspapers, exorcise business interest demons  or make legislators feel as if they are doing their jobs--but, and this is the ultimate but,  they are not fundamentally improving the education of children.

The sooner we realize that and get our attention back to improving teachers--as this very website's mission proposes--the sooner we improve the education for our kids. 

And for the teachers out there who are continually badgered, belittled and disrespected as a result of studies such as these:  Do not accept these as being anywhere close to the truth.  It is time to fight back against a campaign that is trying to fundamentally restructure American public education.  Now is not the time to go gently into that good night.

Get involved, learn the issues, take a stand and speak up for this profession.