Hey John,

A couple of weeks back, a few of us on Twitter had a conversation about the comparison between teachers and athletes (everyone does it, including me). The always poignant John Spencer (@johntspencer) echoes sentiments I’ve heard friends like Stephen Lazar make before: “I’d rather pay teachers a living age and ‘reward’ them with creative control and autonomy.” In baseball terms, that’s a fastball right down the middle, with the batter striking out looking. As a corollary, I would also add that I might be influenced to take on merit pay if I knew that every teacher got paid the way professional athletes do, and the way they’re represented in their unions, the media, and our society as a whole.

I have nothing against athletes getting their six to eight figure salaries because that’s their slice of the multi-million (often billion) dollar pie of their sport. So what does that say about the way our society pays teachers (and many other public servants) for the value they add to our civilization as a whole?

Barnett Berry made me think of this conversation after his piece on some economists’ flawed studies on education. He writes:

Would it be outrageous for economists to have to pay back part of their salaries if their theories don’t improve the economy? What if education economists had to return consulting fees to the think tanks that paid them if their methods were flawed? Or if their conclusions ignored other research findings and the realities of teaching?

If you think this would be a good idea, then Harvard professor and MacArthur Genius Grant winner Roland Fryer and Freakonomics co-author and University of Chicago professor Steven Levitt (and colleagues John List and Sally Sadoff) might just have to cancel their vacations this fall. They would have to return the pay they received for their recent paper and recommendation that teachers must return salary bonuses (paid up front) when their students’ test scores do not improve sufficiently from one year to the next.

This dude abides.

Not sure why economists would suggest taking away monies from teachers here when we barely make a living wage, even with a masters’. To further complicate their argument, they use Chinese factory workers as a a model, implying that teachers here are the equivalent of factory workers there. Are teachers just assembly workers or real professionals? If people view us in the former, that would explain the erroneous policies levied on teachers now, but if we’re the latter, then we have a huge challenge ahead of us.

Let’s face it: even those of us in the middle of the line-up have to do extra hours of outside of classroom time getting ready for the school year. The harder we work at our craft, the better we become as teachers, and the easier we make it look. Good teaching isn’t easy, though. It’s hours upon hours of arduous, focused practice for a few hours of showtime. Even in the off-season, we have to stay abreast of the latest happenings before we lose ground in our performance. Study after study shows that merit-based systems based on what economists think (even the Broad- and Gates-funded studies) don’t work. I try hard enough as is, as I’m sure those teachers did.

But I don’t expect to get paid the way our athletes do right now; I just hope we can get paid enough so we can keep doing our jobs properly, as the experts we are.

Yell

John,

Last week, I had the pleasure of participating in a panel discussion with teacher leader (and Teaching 2030 co-author) Ariel Sacks, CTQ President Barnett Berry, and Dean of the College of Bank Street Jon Synder, moderated by Ronald Thorpe of WNET. The discussion on the future of teacher preparation interested members, held at The Ford Foundation headquarters, touched upon the issues with the current teacher preparation system. Even after re-reading the book we helped co-author, I didn’t know what to expect. Would the audience receive our messages of current teacher preparation well? How do the audience members’ own interest mesh or clash with our thoughts about the future of education, wrought with enough mixed emotions that it’s truly hard to predict?

Having said that, I’d say it went very well.

While Dr. Snyder and Dr. Berry definitely had their pieces to share, including our beautifully done video from Sunni Brown, the audience took particular interest in the teachers’ thoughts on teacher preparation. They hummed when Ariel described her vision for teacherpreneurship, in light of her own experiences as a teacher leader in her school. They paid close attention as I described my own thoughts about alternative certification, particularly with my experience as an NYC Teaching Fellow. For a second there, Ariel and I felt that we were being heard.

Now, if only we can spread that throughout the nation to some of the most vested citizens in education we have.

Teacher voice is critical in any discussion about education. Whether we’re in our schools or in think tanks, the progress we make as educators depends highly on whether the experts within the classroom can determine the parameters of their professionalism individually and collectively. Some people fear this, wondering whether too much teacher voice will elicit petulant jabber or nonsensical “union” talk. They ignore teachers en masse when they step out of the superhero / surrogate parent stereotypes. They pinpoint the one “bad” teacher they had in their lives even when they owe much of their present successes to the plethora of average to terrific teachers who outnumbered their one or two bad experiences.

Interestingly, they treat teachers like politicians in that they love the ones close to them, but detest the whole body of people who consider themselves politicians, even when they’re simply serving their constituency. Unlike politicians, however, teachers lean more towards collaboration and reflection because it’s part of their profession. They see themselves as crucial pieces to the Jenga puzzle that is a school building, and if teachers can’t voice their opinions, then the pieces continue to rumble against the players’ fingers.

There is hope, though. Representatives from all walks of life want to hear teacher leaders speak on how to improve their section of the education world. Principals want to get involved with better preparation for the principals, who are in essence the teacher of teachers. Education thought leaders want to hear what teachers think about how their research and policies might work in practicum. Colleges want to hear how they can improve their programs to better prepare teachers for the realities of the classroom and giving every teacher the opportunity to assume a teacher leader position, and infuse a bit of initiative and spirit into school staff.

As Barnett Berry mentioned in the panel, there’s evidence of our models for teacher leadership right in our schools, pointing to the couple of co-panelists who currently work in the classroom and assist in pushing their schools further. If the evidence is there, we should push for further professionalization, with the ability to discuss our concerns on an equal footing with other allies (and contrarians).

Judging from the conversations at the panel, the teacher voice is something we can all endorse.