Van Roekel (NEA.org)
The Lookout sat down with the president of the nation's largest teacher's union, Dennis Van Roekel, Monday to ask him about a hot topic in education reform right now--teacher compensation.Van Roekel is attending NBC's "Education Nation" summit in New York, which has focused on the need to boost teachers' salaries after hosting the premiere of the "American Teacher" documentary last night. Teachers and experts profiled in the documentary spoke of the need for the country's teaching force to be treated and compensated like other college-educated professionals.
Van Roekel, a former high school math teacher in Phoenix, pushed back against education reformers who say the best way to increase teacher compensation is by handing out cash bonuses to educators who lift student test scores, calling that idea "naive and shortsighted." He also defended the union's position that value-added measures of students' test scores is not a reliable way to evaluate or pay teachers.
Check out Van Roekel's views on these and other questions below. The interview has been edited and condensed.
The Lookout: Everyone's talking about teacher pay.?What do you think of the suggestions in the movie "American Teacher" on how schools could pay educators more?
Dennis Van Roekel:?Some of their solutions...how do I say this? They're a little naive and short-sighted. One of the things that's really important is first of all, Vanderbilt [University] did a study over three years. And what it says is when you offer bonuses of up to $8,000, it doesn't change student achievement. [Author] Daniel Pink's work...it says if you're doing a repetitive task, an incentive actually enhances performance. But as soon as you move into complex tasks, not only does it not enhance performance; it actually hinders it. So, with that as a background, what do we do about pay? There isn't enough money there. The pie that's available to distribute to a group of teachers, it's going to have to be [bigger].
Whatever size that pie is, [education reformers] want a new distribution system. I have no problem with creating a new one, but what you're going to have to do is decide what you're going to pay for and how to measure that. Until you can do those two things, it's going to be really hard to distribute [salaries] based on those two factors. What we have now, the single salary schedule, it came for a reason. It used to be men got [paid] more than women, high school teachers more than elementary, friends and relatives of board members more than non-friends. I mean, it was a messed up system. So they came up with a system that was based on research at the time and the fact that over 90 percent of school districts in America use it says there's something in that system that satisfies criteria of a? good compensation system. So you want to make a new one? Great. The first question is what do you want to base the pay on? And two, how are you going to measure that? As soon as you get those two answers, you're set.
As a math teacher, when they talk about, "We need to pay effective teachers more," they never say this, but I always want to ask the question, "Do you really have a number in mind that you want to pay ineffective teachers?" I don't think [ineffective teachers] should be there. So whatever system they want to design, as long as the folks that are in it are engaged in designing it, let's go for it. But I want it possible in your system that you design that everyone can be effective. I don't want a system that you can only pay 50 or 60 percent of the people right, but the rest not. Because that's a bad system. It means you want a certain percentage to be ineffective or inadequate.
The Lookout: So when people say we need to professionalize?the teaching force, treat teachers like professionals, it seems like a lot of those people are saying that goal is incompatible with a unionized workforce.
Dennis Van Roekel: I think they're totally wrong.
The Lookout:?What's a way to professionalize the teaching force within the unionized workforce that we have today?
Dennis Van Roekel: For example, in my union contract back when I was teaching we had what we called a professional day. There was no time I "reported" to school and no time I was required to stay until. I was a professional, I needed to be there to do the job. So if my school got out at 2:00 pm and the only time I could meet a parent was at 4:00 pm then I was there until 4:00. Don't tell me I have to stay until 3:00. What I so liked in the [American Teacher] movie is when they were talking about what a teacher day is. [Ed note: The film estimates that teachers work 65 hours a week during the school year.] It's not an hourly job, you have to do what you need to do until it's done.
So part of the professionalization is, teachers have to be involved in the decision-making. You can't dictate. No professional has someone on the outside of the profession telling them what to do. ... Another one that I believe is that in any profession, there has to be something that if you can't get past this test assessment, you can't get into the profession. We don't have that. So you can be unlicensed, uncertified and we'll let you in the classroom as a teacher. I think that's totally wrong.
The Lookout: You mentioned [at the 2010 NEA convention] that you felt there was an "anti-teacher" tone not just in the public sphere but also coming from the administration itself. Do you think that tone has changed since then? [You can see Van Roekel's comments at the convention?here.]
Dennis Van Roekel: Yes.
The Lookout: What's happened to make that change?
Dennis Van Roekel: Just the tone and rhetoric I think is very different now. At the time I said that I wasn't just referring to the administration because I don't think their rhetoric has ever been anti-teacher, between Obama and Secretary Duncan. I think outside of that, all of the attacks in Wisconsin and Ohio and all of these places, it is really anti-teacher. I think it's getting better because people are starting to say "Wait a minute, that's not how I view the teacher in my suburb or in the schools in my community." So that other voices are speaking up, that's why I say it's a little better.
But I don't think the administration has ever been anti-teacher, I think it's from the outside. I don't know their purpose or reason, but here, compared to last year, total difference. Last year, by starting with [the documentary "Waiting for Superman," which portrayed unions as roadblocks to reform], that just set the tone, everything emanated from that. It was all negative. Now we're talking about real things, we're talking about compensation, we're talking about what effective teachers are: How do you make them, how do you get them, how do you keep them? That demonstrates a change in the tone.
The Lookout: What if the Gates Foundation's ongoing study on teacher effectiveness comes out with a report that says student standardized test scores are the best way to measure teacher quality?
Dennis Van Roekel: I'm not worried about that at all. It won't come out that way. There's enough research that shows it's just not there. The value-added models do not predict [teacher effectiveness] on an individual basis. There is some positive uses for that, but where we always get into trouble is when we take something that was designed for a specific purpose and use it for something else. , , , We do know how to measure effectiveness in teachers through the National Board Certification, 20 years, $200 million in research from early childhood through 12th grade in all subject matters. [The research answers] how you assess whether a teacher knows what they should know and has the skills in order to do it. So we can measure teacher effectiveness, we can, but not by a test that is designed to measure student learning. . . . ? As we move down this road, I have high hopes for this new generation of assessments they're doing. I hope they do those well and they're aligned with the new common core standards, there's great potential there. Get rid of this old set we're using that are just wrong.
The Lookout: If there's a single change you could make across the whole education system what would it be?
Dennis Van Roekel: That we stop looking at the pieces and look at the system. People want to take one piece and change it and assume it will impact the whole system. But that never, ever works. I can give you all the reasons why some of the things [education reformers] are proposing are wrong, but most importantly why it's wrong is it won't change the system. And the system has to change.
Here's what I know about systems from all the study and work I've done: No system can produce anything other than what it was designed to produce. That's scary to me. So when you look at the drop out rate--it doesn't vary. It stays constant for 20 years. See that's what that theory is saying. The system is designed to do that. We have to change that whole system. So when I listen to the people in Singapore, they say compensation isn't something in and of itself, it's a undergirding. It impacts recruitment, it impacts retention, it plays into all of those. When they talk about the quality of teaching, they do a whole lot of front-door quality [control]--they aren't going to let anyone in who isn't really qualified. So it's the recruitment, it's the training, it's the investment in licensing, then it's the whole professional, career development. All of that is one big piece. You can't say, I'm only going to deal with this one thing and expect everything.
The Lookout: Are there any good examples?
Dennis Van Roekel: Montgomery County, Maryland ,is often held up, they started doing this system change long before it was cool. They have been incredibly successful. And Jerry Weast, who was the superintendent there for like 20 years, he said if I was hired as superintendent in a school district and they didn't have a union, the first thing I would do is form one. Because you can't make change in a system if you don't have the employees and their union involved.
The professionalization of teaching can be done in a union environment. In fact, not only can it be done, if you don't have it, it won't be done. If you don't have management, school board, and union involved you cannot transform the system and make lasting change. We have 30 years of experience and more that shows if you don't have that it fails. What happens too often is a new superintendent comes in and just changes directions. When you have the union, management and school board involved and they come up with either a contract or memorandum of understanding, no one group can change it arbitrarily. You still can change but you have to come back to the group and say let's do this differently. And that's the power of collaboration.
san francisco 49ers redskins boxing brian urlacher nfl scores nfl scores emmy nominations 2011
No comments:
Post a Comment