October 2, 2007

Uncharted Waters

Posted by Aaron Tang at 6:23PM

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Bob Herbert's latest NY Times op-ed lays out a compelling case for why the results of an impending showdown between the NEA and it's traditional democratic-party constituency are so important. In his article, Herbert discusses the sheer magnitude of the problem facing America's schools--a problem that he argues one or two points worth of reading and math gains may not be sufficient to solve.

What is Herbert's case? It's a classic "incremental gains are not enough" argument. Even though student achievement in math and reading does appear to be on the rise according to recently released NAEP scores, Herbert suggests that the challenges of the 21st century, in which people will almost require a four-year college degree to sustain a middle-class standard of living, are so big that we must re-invent our schools if we want to prepare children to succeed. It's not a new argument (in fact, social commentators have likely made the same claim in every generation dating back to the 19th century), but that doesn't mean it is false. Indeed, as the pace of technological advancement quickens and other nations develop highly skilled workforces, there can be little doubt that our children will need to be smarter than we are if they want to keep up.

So what is the major solution that Herbert offers? The same idea we've talked about countless times in this space: improving teacher quality. As reseach evidence and all manner of conventional wisdom can confirm, good teachers can bring about some incredible student learning gains... just as bad teachers can have frighteningly negative effects on learning. An often-cited Tennessee study found that the difference between an elementary student who had three years in a row with an excellent teacher versus three years in a row with a poor teacher was as much as 50 percentile points!

All of which makes the inevitable showdown between the National Education Association, the country's most powerful teachers union, and a bevy of US legislators--all of them democrats--extremely important. As Education Week's David Hoff reports, the NEA is ready to call a number of proposed teacher quality reform ideas in NCLB v2.0 "deal-breakers". Many Democrats, including the chairman of the Education Committee in the House, George Milller, are ready to fight back against the NEA on this issue--and they're getting backup from prominent progressive think tanks like the Center for American Progress. Will the Dems buckle and continue to let teacher quality (and student learning) be trumped by teacher special interests? Only time will tell...