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Sunday, April 03, 2011
Best Teachers Produce Best Students
By Celia Merrill
Executive director, Golden Apple Foundation of New Mexico
Columnist Esther Cepeda is spot on in her clarion call for better prepared, higher-quality teachers as vital to our nation's economic future. As she noted, the mediocre performance of our students compares to that of countries with the highest educational outcomes that "recruit only the very best aspirants and train them with specific, rigorous national educational standards."
Michelle Rhee, the former chancellor for the District of Columbia's Public Schools and now leader of a bipartisan mix of support with the organization StudentsFirst, put the message simply in a recent New York article. When asked for the five factors most essential to a child's education, Rhee responded that there was just one thing: "Have a good teacher three years in a row."
Rhee is right. Research consistently indicates the No. 1 factor in a student's academic performance is the quality of the classroom teacher. And the quality of the teacher is dependent upon high-quality preparation in both knowledge of the subject to be taught and skill in instruction based on knowing how children learn and how to engage them as learners.
New Mexico has systems in place that should ensure our students have good teachers. We have a teacher licensure system that won national recognition when implemented in 2004. That system requires our teachers to demonstrate competencies aligned with the well-accepted authority of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.
New Mexico's system requires a professional dossier to demonstrate readiness for level advancement and an annual evaluation of each teacher according to those competencies.
So our state is not subject to Cepeda's criticism that "Once you're a teacher, your pay goes up every year whether you're a superstar overachiever or completely ineffective. You keep your job unless you seriously screw up or get caught untenured during budget cutbacks."
In theory.
In fact, though New Mexico has no tenure assurances for experienced teachers, a teacher with more than three years in the classroom will likely have an annual contract renewed, even with an annual evaluation that finds borderline competence.
So it is unfortunate that the recent legislative attempt to beef up New Mexico's teacher evaluation, which had strong bipartisan report, failed to make it out of the session. The reform initiative deserves continued attention.
A resource for that continued attention is available in the selection system used by Golden Apple Foundation of New Mexico since 1996. This process is used to carefully evaluate and then select teachers for the Golden Apple Award for Excellence in Teaching.
Teachers who apply for the Golden Apple Award often liken the extent and content of the application to the kind of reflection required to achieve National Board certification. The process is more structured and intensive than what most principals allocate for each teacher's annual evaluation.
Golden Apple Award winners are selected in part for their passion for the profession and their commitment to helping others improve teaching practice. Many invest themselves in the preparation of our Golden Apple Scholars, college students preparing for teaching careers through summer institutes providing teaching experience and seminars.
New Mexico students deserve and need high-quality teachers. The teacher evaluation reform bill that died in session can help to strengthen the quality of those currently in the classroom. The Golden Apple Scholars program previously supported by state funding can be an important component to improve the quality of our next generation of teachers.
Both deserve continued state support.
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