{"id":12133,"date":"2011-01-10T13:38:33","date_gmt":"2011-01-10T12:38:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pietroichino.it\/?p=12133"},"modified":"2011-01-12T11:02:31","modified_gmt":"2011-01-12T10:02:31","slug":"lessons-learned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pietroichino.it\/?p=12133","title":{"rendered":"LESSONS LEARNED"},"content":{"rendered":"

I PROGRESSI DELLA VALUTAZIONE DEGLI INSEGNANTI NEGLI USA E LA SPERIMENTAZIONE DI NUOVI METODI IN QUESTO CAMPO<\/span><\/p>\n

Editoriale pubblicato su <\/em>The Economist, il 6 gennaio 2011. In argomento leggi anche l’articolo di Andrea Ichino<\/a>, pubblicato su<\/em> il Sole 24 ore, il 12 gennaio 2011<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n


\nAt last, America may change the way it trains, recruits and rewards teachers<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

BUDGET, curriculum, class size\u2014none has a greater effect on a student than his or her teacher. Given this, politicians might be expected to do all in their power to ensure that America\u2019s teachers are good ones. For decades, they have done the opposite. The trouble begins long before a teacher enters the classroom. In Singapore, which recently came second in an international ranking of 15-year-olds\u2019 skill in maths (America was 31st), the teachertraining programme accepts only students in the top 30% of their academic cohort. In America, most teachers were mediocre students. Only 23% of new teachers were in the top third of college graduates.
\nUnion rules make it extremely hard to fire teachers who turn out to be bad at their jobs. Younger teachers are usually the first to be let go, even though seniority does not necessarily ensure quality. In 2009 Indiana and Florida fired young staff who had been nominated for \u201cteacher of the year\u201d.
\nBut the debate over bad teachers ignores an equally big problem: there has been little effort to identify good ones, let alone reward them. A survey by the New Teacher Project<\/a>, a nonprofit organisation, found that school districts labelled more than 99% of their teachers \u201csatisfactory\u201d.
\nHowever America is slowly changing its way of recruiting, training and rewarding teachers. Last year 12% of seniors at Ivy League colleges applied to Teach for America, which sends graduates to teach at tough schools for two years. The New Teacher Project has a prestigious fellows programme that recruits and certifies new teachers. The Academy of Urban School Leadership <\/a>in Chicago trains teachers in a programme modelled after a medical residency\u2014part traditional coursework, part training in a classroom. Such models may become more common; in November the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education <\/a>recommended that residency-style programmes become the norm. Eight states have already Improving teachers agreed to implement its suggestions.
\nMost difficult, however, is finding ways to evaluate teachers, rewarding the good and dismissing the bad. In 2009 Arne Duncan, Barack Obama\u2019s education secretary, outlined his reforms in a speech to the National Education Association<\/a> (NEA), America\u2019s biggest union.
\n\u201cWhen inflexible seniority and rigid tenure rules that we designed put adults ahead of children,\u201d Mr Duncan insisted, \u201cthen we are not only putting kids at risk, we\u2019re also putting the entire education system at risk.\u201d Some members of the audience booed. Mr Duncan\u2019s guidelines for Race to the Top, a $4.3 billion programme paid for with stimulus money, include rewards for states that evaluate teachers in new ways. As a result, some states have removed their ban on using test scores to judge teachers. Others have gone much further. Tennessee, which won a grant, now requires districts to create new evaluation systems, with at least half of the score based on students\u2019 progress. In Colorado, Delaware and Rhode Island, teachers rated \u201cineffective\u201d for two consecutive years can be sacked.
\nThe reforms have rankled with the NEA, as expected. The American Federation of Teachers <\/a>(AFT), the second-largest teachers union, has a more complex stance. \u201cConflict has been the status quo for all my years in education,\u201d says Randi Weingarten, the AFT\u2019s president. She insists that unions should spur change. She praised bold reforms in Colorado, while that state\u2019s NEA opposed them. But she clashed ferociously with Michelle Rhee, then the schools chief in Washington, DC. Ms Rhee\u2019s new group, StudentsFirst, aims to be a counterweight to the unions.
\nDespite this brewing battle, America has at least one model of peaceful change. In 2009 Hillsborough County, Florida, won a grant from the Gates Foundation to transform its way of evaluating, developing and rewarding teachers. Notably, the district is working productively with its union. \u201cI want to be fair to my employees,\u201d explains Mary Ellen Elia, Hillsborough\u2019s superintendent. \u201cI also want to have only good teachers in my classrooms.\u201d Teachers will be judged on their pupils\u2019 progress, as well as evaluations by a principal and by a peer. Teachers with high ratings, based on three years of data, will have higher salaries. Bad teachers will see their salaries shrink. A struggling teacher will receive further training. If he continues to be ineffective, Mrs Elia will act to remove him.
\nThe Gates Foundation hopes that further research will see such reforms replicated elsewhere. In seven districts, including Hillsborough, the foundation is testing methods for measuring a good teacher. Researchers are trying to answer teachers\u2019 questions about whether such a feat is possible\u2014are observations biased, for example, and can one isolate a teacher\u2019s effect on a students\u2019 progress?
\nThe biggest change may come with the reauthorisation of the Elementary and Secondary Education (ESEA) bill. Its most recent incarnation, No Child Left Behind, required that all teachers be \u201chighly qualified\u201d, state-certified and competent in the subjects they teach. Messrs Duncan and Obama want to value effective teachers, not \u201cqualified\u201d ones. Under their plan for ESEA, states would have to improve their evaluation systems. Grants would go to states and districts that develop innovative ways to train or reward good teachers.
\nA fight over these plans is inevitable. However John Kline, the new Republican chairman of the House education committee, has praised Mr Duncan\u2019s reforms. Mr Obama and the Republicans were remarkably productive in December. If the co-operation continues, they just might transform American education.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I PROGRESSI DELLA VALUTAZIONE DEGLI INSEGNANTI NEGLI USA E LA SPERIMENTAZIONE DI NUOVI METODI IN QUESTO CAMPO Editoriale pubblicato su The Economist, il 6 gennaio 2011. In argomento leggi anche l’articolo di Andrea Ichino, pubblicato su il Sole 24 ore, il 12 gennaio 2011<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-22-lavoro-pubblico","category-scuola"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pietroichino.it\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pietroichino.it\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pietroichino.it\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pietroichino.it\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pietroichino.it\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12133"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pietroichino.it\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12133\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pietroichino.it\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pietroichino.it\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pietroichino.it\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}