Gov. Deval Patrick tells the story of being educated in a dismal public school on the South Side of Chicago – too many cops in the hallways, too many kids in each classroom and not enough books.
But then, he escaped to a private prep school in New England, and all was well. His point: Transform hideous urban public schools into something akin to the prep schools.
Personal anecdotes tend to make terrible public policy, but as long as Deval is in the mood, let’s have at it.
Cohen the Columnist was also educated in public schools on the South Side of Chicago – including a giant, 4,000-student high school from which no one escaped to attend a prep school in New England.
My educational autobiography is different than the governor’s story – and the reasons are instructive, not only to explain the diversity of Chicago back then, but also as a warning that “school reform” is nightmarishly complex.
From the second grade through high school, my “urban” schools were almost exclusively white – a reflection of a vast neighborhood somewhat invented to house Jews who owned small businesses and Eastern European and Russian immigrants who worked at the giant U.S. Steel plant nearby.
The steel-mill kids were earnest and hardworking, if not exceptional, when it came to academic chores. The Jewish kids, true to the stereotype, were dorky and academically gifted.
The bottom line: Everyone with a teaching certificate and/or supervisory certification wanted to perform at our schools. No angst about class size or whether we had enough books. Long before test-mania and “No Child Left Behind,” folks in the know recognized that if you wanted to strut your stuff on the South Side of Chicago, our little corner of paradise was the place to be.
Over time, the neighborhoods became increasingly “diverse,” the white families moved on, and the schools lost much of their luster.
Take an educational achievement snapshot of those schools before and after the migration of the white folks and you could see identical teachers and staff go from being extraordinary to unsuccessful.
As the Massachusetts school reformers and the teachers’ unions continue to bicker and barter and negotiate new techniques to evaluate and reward and dismiss teachers of varying effectiveness, the lesson of my South Side experience might have something to offer.
Due to union shortsightedness and political indifference, we tend to treat teachers as one-size-fits-all drones, with salaries and job protection and classroom assignments based on little more than tenure.
Round Hole, Square Peg
The teacher evaluation/student test score movement is better than nothing, but what of the teachers who are quite good at teaching a particular kind of student in a particular kind of setting?
Just as every lawyer isn’t necessarily equipped to handle a capital-murder case, or process a home closing, some teachers who are fine with preparing the top kids for Harvard may be miserable at shoveling the struggling kids into community college.
With the range of students and family backgrounds strewn across a state such as Massachusetts, there should be a true market for teachers; that is, entrepreneurial teachers free to wander the state, demanding compensation for specific skills that may or may not include the ability to magically raise test scores in the aggregate for every child. No tenure. No guaranteed raises. A real job, in the real world.
Deval Patrick’s prep school is free to choose exactly which teachers it wants and needs. The public schools and the teachers’ unions are doomed to a system that chooses to treat teachers like so many identical union coal miners or truck drivers – one not much different than the next.
The test-score evaluation tool is supposed to solve all that, but it’s a crude tool to identify idiosyncratic teachers who are very, very good at certain kinds of chores, with certain kinds of kids.
The governor chants the “best and brightest” mantra when it comes to recruiting teachers, but what if “Teacher X” is best and brightest at teaching some kids some things – but not so hot at raising aggregate test scores at an “underperforming” school? Is he fired as a failure – or “rewarded” with a job that best fits his skills?
