Imagine you have a complex medical condition that requires the work of a top surgeon. Fortunately, you’re able to get an initial appointment, but arranging a date for surgery is more problematic.
“No, not Tuesday,” the scheduler tells you. “Dr. Welby does physicals on Tuesdays. And Wednesday he fills out insurance forms.”
No well-run medical practice would squander its most valuable asset — its physicians’ expertise — like that. But that’s what schools do all the time with their most valuable assets, according to a recent article by Frederick M. Hess, director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.
Two weeks ago, I told you about a report by The New Teacher Project called The Widget Effect (Our National Failure to Acknowledge and Act on Differences in Teacher effectiveness) , which says that most teacher evaluation systems fail in distinguishing between average (and often, below average) teachers and exceptional ones.
Hess’s article in the summer issue of Education Next is called How to Get the Teachers We Want, but it might easily be called The Widget Effect, Part II, because, he says, schools do the same thing in failing to differentiate between most teachers and those with expertise in critical areas such as reading and mentoring at-risk youth.
“…Schools and school systems casually waste scarce talent by operating on the implicit assumption that most teachers will be similarly adept at everything.” Hess writes. “In a routine day, a terrific 4th grade reading teacher might give lessons in reading for just one hour, while spending another five hours teaching other subjects in which she is less effective, filling out paperwork, and so on.”
Hess argues for more specialization in teaching, and a redeployment of human and monetary resources in a way that reflects teacher expertise. He says instructional aides could be assigned many of the routine tasks now done by reading teachers, career changers with special expertise could be encouraged to become teachers (either full or part time), and school districts could start targeting recruitment strategies to mid-career professionals rather than recent college grads.
Hess calls for pay-for-performance, but not by simply adding bonuses to an interchangeable cohort of teachers, who start at the same pay grade despite obvious differences in ability and expertise.
Such a system, if used in law or medicine, “would require a law firm to require every new J.D. to start as a paralegal and then eventually become a lawyer,” Hess writes, “or hospitals requiring every new M.D. to begin as a nurse, then become a general practitioner, and eventually a specialist.”
Controversial stuff? In law and medicine: not really. In teaching? Definitely yes.
In September’s ASBJ Senior Editor Naomi Dillon and I will be writing about teacher specialization and pay issues as part of a special package on teacher quality. In the meantime, take a look at Naomi’s article from April 2008 on the promises and pitfalls of merit pay.
Lawrence Hardy, Senior Editor
