Malcolm Gladwell tackles a major education issue, the hiring of quality teachers for schools, but there are some glaring holes in his metaphors and analogies.
For instance, in the well-written article, he compares the hiring and training of teachers to a financial firm’s hiring practices. However, it comes accross to me as an apple/orange argument. The potential to make millions of dollars exists in the financial industry. In our school district, the average teacher makes $42,000 a year and tops out in the low $60,000 range. It’s just not a fair comparison.
Overall, this article makes some very interesting and relevant points, but I don’t know how helpful it actually is in identifying the real issues that public schools face.
Here is a comment I posted on BoingBoing.net’s posting of the article:
This is one of the better
articles I have read on the subject of rating teacher performance.
However, it leaves a whole lot of data out of the mix.
There are different types of intelligence, we all know that.
Standardized testing really does little else than help schools identify
what they already know, and that is the socioeconomic status of the
children that attend that school. This is because of how the tests are developed. Essentially, test developers know that students will score at a certain level based on their socio-economic status, so the questions are developed in a way that forces an average based on these results. (This probably needs more explanation, but that is another post for another time.)
Overall, I believe our public school system is very good. As a
matter of fact, when you account for socioeconomic status, public
schools actually are on par and even a little ahead of private and
parochial schools on ACT and SAT scores. That is according to a
University of Chicago - Champagne study on the subject.
The biggest problem, like for the school district that I serve on
the board for in Missouri, is that the cost of running an educational
institution has doubled since 1991, yet our funding from the state has
remained flat.
The second biggest problem is that schools as a whole, and this is a
glaring problem with standardized testing, are still teaching to 1950s
standards…or industrial/factory standards.
Subject specific critical thinking should be the
overriding educational goal for children in the 21st century, because
with the amount of data in this world doubling every nine months,
memorizing the periodic table is not going to do them much good in this
global economy. It is impossible to know everything, and for a teacher,
it is impossible to teach everything.
In the meantime, we can continue to bicker over what makes a good
teacher and how we get rid of the bad ones when they are already in short
supply.
Until we start paying teachers what they are worth, the percentage
of bad or ineffective teachers will always be high. Unlike 50 years ago
when nursing was just about the only other option for a woman, talented
women in the workforce go where the money is, just like their male
counterparts.
One of the most important tools in contemporary educational research is “value added” analysis. It uses standardized test scores to look at how much the academic performance of students in a given teacher’s classroom changes between the beginning and the end of the school year. Suppose that Mrs. Brown and Mr. Smith both teach a classroom of third graders who score at the fiftieth percentile on math and reading tests on the first day of school, in September. When the students are retested, in June, Mrs. Brown’s class scores at the seventieth percentile, while Mr. Smith’s students have fallen to the fortieth percentile. That change in the students’ rankings, value-added theory says, is a meaningful indicator of how much more effective Mrs. Brown is as a teacher than Mr. Smith.
Last night the Daily Show called out MSNBC as the new Fox News. I am not sure what took the Daily Show so long, but they finally did it. It was very obvious that MSNBC made an orchestrated move to appeal to the left in the run-up to the election. So essentially, you had two very obvious biases with MSNBC and Fox News, scrunched in the middle by CNN who goes so far out of the way to try and pretend they aren’t biased, that they are actually biased by giving weight to the other side, even if the other side is clearly wrong.
For example, lets say that two men are in a bar arguing over whether or not the sun is shining today. One says that it is so cloudy that they can not see a thing. The other says there is not a cloud in the sky and that he is going to have to wear sunblock when he leaves. This argument gets rather heated and CNN shows up on a tip. That night CNN would say, “Breaking News: Two men got in an argument over whether or not the sun was shining.”
Then, in large white letters, they would read you a quote from the anti-sunshine guy. Then they would quote the pro-sunshine guy…and never actually report whether or not the sun was actually shining outside, which could easily be observed just by stepping outside and taping it. This is out of fear that they would be accused of being biased for the pro-sunshine crowd and losing the anti-sunshine crowd in the process.
The point is, so much of the mass media is now about the bottom dollar, and not actually telling the truth, regardless of political consequences, because they have shareholders to face in the morning. On the otherhand, there is nothing wrong with MSNBC being liberally slanted and Fox News being conservatively slanted, as long as people understand that the news they are getting has their particular slant. There is a problem with an obviously biased organization saying they are “Fair and Balanced” when for the most part, they clearly are not. (Yes, the pew research organization says that Fox News reports balanced news, but they do not make value judgements on the content of the stories, just the reporting. It’s one thing to cover something, it is another thing to cover it with equal zest and zeal.)
This is what you get with corporate news programming and people getting their news on the fly. Most people will search out the type of news slant that reaffirms what they already feel politically and on personal issues. Very rarely will the average working or partying person take the time to find out what the truth is. All they know is that they heard it on T.V. so it must be true.
So what is someone supposed to do if they do want to know the truth?
1. First, and most important, know the perceived biases of the news organization you are getting your news from. CNN is so fickle that it is hardly news at all. Fox News is zestfully conservative. MSNBC is awkwardly (but working on it) liberal, NPR is generally considered liberal, but experience has proven to me that even if they are covering a liberal topic, they seek and respect opposing viewpoints, the New York Times and The Nation has a liberal, but in depth and well sourced slant, the Washington Times and National Review has a conservative, but in depth and well sourced slant.
2. Take number (1.) with a grain of salt. Each reporter and each story deserves independent consideration.
3. If you really care about the truth, you need to get your news from multiple sources. If you get all of your news from Art Bell in the middle of the night, you might not have a good read on reality.
4. Practice being a critical thinker. Look at the data presented, throw away the editorial comments, and make a value judgement on the data. Does it hold up under scrutiny? Does it make sense? What is the motivation, not just for the subject(s) of the story, but the reporter and news organization as well.
5. Do your own research. The internet is full of peer reviewed journal papers, books, and other raw data sources. Just make sure you apply step (4.) to your research.
6. Make sure you are aware of your own biases. And remember, bias isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It is O.K. to be pro-sunshine when you can look outside and see clearly that the sun is shining.
7. Be aware that most of what you see on T.V. and listen to on the radio (with a couple of exceptions for both) is no longer news. It is infotainment. It is meant to entertain, not educate. We live in a passive news society and the large media conglomerates are milking it for all it’s worth.
8. Credible bloggers are changing number (7.) Which is why number (5.) is an important part of the process. Bloggers have their biases as well, so be careful, but it is much harder for a political hack or corporate croanie to pull the wool over anybody’s eyes anymore because there is an army of citizen journalists standing by to debunk and discredit them.
9. Practice your critical thinking and discernment skills by reading and discussing everything you can get your hands on, regardless of slant. Teaching your mind to think should not finish after high school or college. Teaching your mind to think should be a life-long process.
Here are two videos to provide emphasis.
The first video is an oldie but goodie of Jon Stewart single-handedly putting Crossfire on CNN off the air, and the second is Rupert Murdoch (owner of Fox News and the Wall Street Journal) openly admitting that he uses his media to sway opinion:
quote the pro-sunshine guy…and never actually report whether or not the sun was actually shining outside, which could easily be observed just by stepping outside and taping it. This is out of fear that they would be accused of being biased for the pro-sunshine crowd and losing the anti-sunshine crowd in the process.
