Firing Teachers? That'll Change Everything.

Newsweek's cover article argues for firing bad teachers. I'm sure that will change everything. Just like voting out all the bad politicians will change Washington.

We used to burn witches because we didn't understand disease and bad weather. Today we vote out politicians and fire people because we don't understand systems.

Are there bad teachers who should not teach? Probably. Can some of them be rescued themselves by better education about how to teach? Probably. Will more rigorously firing more teachers help? Probably not.

Keep this in mind. We have no more populous profession. How many teachers do we have in this country? 3.7 million, more even than lawyers (952,000), engineers (1.3 million), waiters (1.8 million), janitors, maids and household cleaners (3.3 million), and secretaries (3.6 million).

I am going to assume that we can't afford to pay enough to compete for the engineers or lawyers (and it is not obvious how many would have the personality and skills to deal with and manage kids anyway.) I am also going to assume that very few of the waiters and maids have the background to educate kids. So, assuming that we fire the bad half of teachers, where are we going to find nearly 2 million "good" teachers? (The Gates Foundation is researching what makes for good teachers and one thing that they can report with confidence is that current certification is no predictor of "good.")

We have an educational system. If we want a different output, we have to change the system, not the people working in the system. If you don't like the way the movie ends, you don't hire new actors: you change the script. (And I will agree that changing the system may change who gets through the system to become teachers. I don't deny that there are bad teachers. I just deny that they constitute a big enough problem to change outcomes much given how much we can now afford to pay teachers and the technology we currently use for teaching.)

And I would say that a measure of how well the system performs should begin with accurate measures. The Newsweek article suggests that the US performs about on par with Lithuania, ranking about 10th in the world. I think it would be more telling to know how first generation immigrants from Mexico or China (or Lithuania even) do on standardized tests compared to kids who are still in Mexico, China, or Lithuania. (And even this would not be apples to apples given that English as Second Language kids aren't given provision for learning a new language in most American school systems.) By that measure, I'd be willing to bet that we do pretty well.

No other country in the world brings in more immigrants from more countries. I feel confident that third and fourth-generation American kids would hold their own against kids from any country.

Does this mean that we ought not to change the educational system? I would never say that. I've argued for changing the system numerous times in this blog. (40 posts not counting this one.)

But succeeding at improving the current system would be the booby prize (and I don't mean booby in a good way). It would be like making a better turn table or horse carriage in a world of CD players and cars. If we could find a market for standardized tests, emphasizing them would make sense. We have not and they do not.

If we begin to pay some teachers $130,000 and fire others, we'll just raise the cost of an already costly educational system by increasing turnover, teacher training costs, and raise wages. Paying some teachers far more while firing others sort of reminds me of giving some kids A's and flunking others. If that kind of system gave us results that made people happy, we wouldn't be talking about firing teachers.

Facts Just Aren't News Any More

I used to rely on Newsweek for a recap of the week. A way to make sense of the headlines I'd seen in passing. Newsweek has apparently fired their reporters and hired columnists.

Don't get me wrong. The columnists are great - Fareed Zakaria is insightful and Sharon Begley is the kind of science writer who makes us laymen feel a little smarter by the end of her piece.

The good news is that these columnists seem to have opinions that they generally subordinate to facts. The bad news is that it is no longer clear where those facts come from. Apparently investigative journalism is now too boring or expensive or risky. Their opinions may be more balanced and nuanced than that of Rush Limbaugh or Keith Olbermann, but it is still opinion.

In retrospect, this may have been inevitable. Our generation has grown up with the same main stories. Unrest in the Middle East. Celebrity scandal. Questionable American military involvement in [fill in the blank]. Fiscal recklessness. Lots of health care debate but little health care policy. Global competition eroding American industries. The facts, apparently, change little from news cycle to news cycle. Opinions, it would seem, are less constrained by events and easier to tailor for consumption. But even so, once you've taken the news out of Newsweek, it seems a little weak.

Anticipatory Journalism

Events are moving fast enough, we need journalism that reports the future.

Commentary is useful because it goes beyond what is happening to report on what should or could happen. Done well, it is more thoughtful than mere reporting. Before saying what could be, I'd like to point out what seems to be the problem with most commentary.

I've wearied of Keith Olbermann. He's become like Rush Limbaugh - rushing to point out all that is wrong about the right. Someone like Fareed Zakaria, a Newsweek regular, shows himself more thoughtful, global, and insightful, but he's merely doing with less venom what Olbermann does - making judgments about policy and politicians.

What seems missing is a vision of the future. What if journalism transcended reporting on past events - looking in the rear view mirror - and instead projected news into the future? Better yet, what if it actually compared this with some vision of the future?

This would more firmly take us into the region of partisan journalism. But it would force journalism into a really valuable role. Two things are true of today's world: events are rapidly developing and the stakes for getting policy right or wrong are huge.

If we had different periodicals or TV stations or newspapers offer different coherent views of the future, they be more readily able to interpret events. Christian fundamentalist news outlets do this best, of course - judging events by end time prophecies and warnings of immorality. But it is time to do this for more secular views.

What if one periodical predicted a future of environmental sustainability with an emphasis on change in lifestyle? Local produce, use of alternative energy, and living close to work could be among the solutions seen as instrumental to a vibrant and healthy future and policies and events could be interpreted through this view of the future. Another periodical might predict a future of sustainability through technological solutions, another (the one Dick Cheney might edit) would predict a future of scarcity and the need for the haves to protect themselves from the clamoring have nots, etc.

Such an emphasis would do at least two things. One, it would give us a good filter through which to judge policy. We'd have a consistent basis for judgment. Two, it would force different communities to elaborate on and defend the desirability and reasonableness of their view of the future. Because in truth, if you don't have some sense of the future, you have no basis for judging current events.

For too long, journalism has pretended to be objective, as if the context for reporting and judging events doesn't determine everything from the tone in which it'll be reported to even deciding what should be reported.

But most importantly, we need to create a nationwide conversation about the future we're creating and the future we ought to create. As different news outlets compete for market share using this model, they would essentially be competing for visions of the future. The winner in this competition would not just win market share: it would gain influence over policy and vision and become the forum through which we define our future. Now that would be valuable journalism.