Phil Robbins
On March 1, 2011 the Oregonian published a column written by Bill Gates entitled “Education Reform: How to Turn Our Schools Around.” In this column Gates gives his analysis of what's wrong with our educational system and makes a significant contribution to the current dialogue on this subject.
Let's take a look at his basic assertions and see how they stack up against reality. His main ideas are as follows:
1. In K-12, spending has more than doubled while student performance has been virtually flat. The same is true for higher education.
2. Our percentage of college graduates has dropped compared to other countries.
3. Now we need to raise performance without spending a lot more money.
4. “In K-12, we know more about what works.” Excellent teaching.
5. We have been expecting teachers to be effective without giving them feedback and training.
6. The Gates foundation is working with nearly 3,000 teachers in 7 urban schools to develop fair and reliable measures of teacher effectiveness. His researchers are analyzing videos of 13,000 lessons to see how teachers do it. Teachers are also looking at the videos to see how they can improve.
7. Gates says we haven't built a system and to measure and promote excellence. Instead we poured money into proxies, things that we hoped would have an impact on student achievement.
8. Gates says we spend $50 billion a year on automatic salary increases based on teacher seniority. And after a few years seniority has little or no effect on student achievement.
9. Advanced degrees have no impact on achievement, but they cost $15 billion each year.
10. I added No.10 myself since it was in the same vein as Gates' other ideas.This deals with teachers getting advanced certificates for pedagogical mastery. Colleges that design these high cost programs, paid for by the enrolled teachers and/or their school districts, grant these certificates. These super teachers are expected to go back to their schools and teach other teachers what they have learned.
11. Perhaps the most expensive assumption embedded in school budgets—and one of the most unchallenged—is the view that reducing class size is the best way to improve student achievement. This has driven increases in school budgets for 50 years. We now have almost twice as many teachers per student as we did in 1960 with student achievement being almost the same.
12. Compared with other countries, America has spent more and achieved less.
Comments
1. No one would argue that spending has more than doubled in K-12 and higher education. The problem is that approximately 85% of the education dollar is spent on salaries and benefits, and there is little relationship between money spent and academic achievement. A very small percentage is actually spent on things directly related to student study activities.
2. There are many reasons why the percentage of college graduates has dropped compared to other countries. For instance, many students cannot get the courses they need to meet degree requirements or to graduate. There is also the policy in America of sending large numbers of students to college even though they are not college material and are not likely to be successful.
3. It is possible to raise performance without spending a lot of money. But this depends upon the methods one uses to enhance performance. I don't see how one can achieve substantial savings using labor-intensive methods as we do today with the teacher at the front of every class. For this reason, Gates certainly will not achieve his goal just by making each teacher more effective. Somehow technology must play a more important role.
4. Gates tells us, "In K-12, we know more about what works.” Excellent teaching. Obviously, this is a gross oversimplification, and it engenders many questions. First, Gates freely admits that he doesn't know what it is and is making a tremendous effort to find out by videotaping nearly 3000 teachers as they teach their lessons to see how they achieve excellence. This seems to infer that a lecture and oral presentations are the most effective way for the student to learn, an idea that is widely disputed in academic circles. Second, are all teachers expected to do excellent teaching the same way, and will all students respond uniformly?
Third, Gates like many others assumes that the teacher is the most important factor in the student’s learning. Certainly, the public has been led to believe this, and if so, it would justify paying teachers even higher salaries. But who are some of the other parties with strong influence on education? To begin with we have a host of administrators and government agencies controlling what is taught and how. This includes people such as principals, superintendents, school boards, and state superintendents and their staffs, etc. Major textbook publishing companies represent another major influence on curriculum and how teachers teach it, not only through the textbook itself but through other materials such as workbooks, teacher manuals and possibly audiovisual materials. Teacher colleges are another strong influence on the teacher's career giving him or her not only pedagogical skills but also education philosophies that may last a lifetime. And these are just a few of the many influences that affect the way a teacher does his job.
5. Gates’ comment about expecting teachers to be effective without giving them feedback and training is a little confusing. No doubt teachers are trained in college at the post graduate level, during their student teaching assignments, and during their probationary period after they are hired. They are given feedback during this whole process. If Gates is referring to his idea of “excellent teaching,” it would be impossible to render an opinion because he is still trying to determine what excellent teaching is.
6. No. 6 is covered in No. 4 where Gates describes what his researchers are doing to discover how excellent teachers are accomplishing their results.
7. Nos. 7 through No. 11—In all of these points Gates does us a great service by showing how society spends tremendous amounts of money getting no return in the way of student achievement. He is absolutely correct in his assertions even though they are contrary to popular belief.
8. This informs us that we spend $50 billion a year on automatic salary increases based on seniority. After the first few years it has no effect on student achievement. This is probably true for most occupations. More money is not necessarily related to the way you do your job.
9. Gates tells us that advanced degrees have no impact on student achievement, but they cost $15 billion each year. Demanding that teachers have Master degrees or PhD's to teach lower-level courses and students makes no sense, It is a waste of the teacher's talent, time and money; it does no one any good. It is simply academic overkill.
10. The idea of having teachers go on sabbatical to obtain an advanced certificate of mastery has been around a few years but has not been widely popular. It creates another revenue stream for colleges with these programs and hopefully more money for the teachers who participate in them, but I don't know that it has ever been shown to enhance student performance.
11. Gates brings up another costly misconception. It is the idea that reducing class size is the best way to improve student achievement. For the most part, reducing class size does two things: (1) It means hiring more teachers and (2) It cuts the workload for teachers. What are the facts? The effect of class size on student achievement has been well researched. And this research has consistently shown that class size does not significantly affect student achievement except in the lower grades, generally K-2 or 3. Gates says that we now have twice as many teachers per student as we did in 1960 with student achievement being almost the same.
12. Gates concludes that compared with other countries, America has spent more than achieved less. We can also conclude that with most of the educational dollar being spent on things that do not directly affect student learning, things are not likely to improve. For example, approximately 85% is spent on salaries and benefits; 2% is spent on textbooks.
