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This article originally appeared in the Birmingham News on January 4, 1998.

Soaring to New Heights
by Dr. Barnett Berry

To improve student achievement we must do what matters most: Train high-quality teachers

Over the last decade more and more parents ask the same, important questions. Who is teaching my child? Will my child's teacher inspire her? Will he look after her individual needs? Will this new teacher help her and all her different classmates learn the kinds of skills necessary to be very successful in the years ahead? (In the global economy of the year 2010, nearly 50% of all jobs will require the higher levels of knowledge and skill once reserved for the education of the few.)

Illustration by T. Brinton

More parents are coming to understand that their children will not succeed in meeting the demands of tomorrow if they do not encounter and master much more challenging work in school today. They are asking hard questions about their child's schooling, and now they are beginning to ask hard questions about the system that does not adequately support high quality teaching and teachers.

For Alabama parents who read Bailey Thomson's striking expose on the differing investments in Vance Elementary and its neighboring Mercedes-Benz plant (Birmingham News, December 14, 1997), I am sure the questions are more troubling. Thomson's words ring loudly: The state overindulges a high profile corporation with its state-of-the art training opportunities at the expense of the public school next door with its seeping sewage and gaping holes in the development of its teachers. These are indeed cold, hard facts that must be prompting hard questions from Alabama parents.

Now, it is time for all policy makers and educators to ask the very same questions. Evidence from hundreds of studies compiled by the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future shows the importance of having a qualified and well trained teacher in every classroom. It should come as no surprise that students learn more when their teachers know more -- both about their subjects and the children they teach. Strikingly, these studies show definitively that minority and poor students are far less likely to get high quality teachers; but when they do, their test scores are virtually equal to majority and more financially-abled students. Having an expert teacher makes the most important difference in whether or not a student achieves. Americans are finally waking up to these facts as more states, school districts, business leaders, and educators are paying closer to what is known about teaching and learning and what must be done to improve schools for all students and their families.

For example, nearly 25% of all newly hired US teachers have failed to meet licensing standards in their field. Additionally, one in five high school teachers has less than a minor in his or her main assignment field, with the numbers being far worse in fields like math and science. Historically, our nation has gone for the cheap when it comes to establishing, enforcing, and paying for high teacher standards teachers. With inadequate resources to recruit, prepare, and pay high quality math teachers for all schools in all communities, educational decision-makers are forced to place a social studies teacher in the Algebra classroom for which he is ill-prepared.

But, there is more. The problems of unenforced standards for teachers are exasperated by poor salaries, dismal working conditions, and almost unthinkable misassignments of teachers that place the most inexperienced and ill-prepared teachers with the students who need the most expert teaching available. In one of many studies cited by the Commission, it was found that in secondary schools which serve primarily white students, 86% of its math and science teachers were fully licensed in their field while only 54% were fully licensed in schools which serve primarily non-white students. The Commission's recent report revealed a state-by-state report card and the information should serve as a wake-up call for all in Alabama: One in four (25%) of the state's math teachers are teaching without at least an academic minor in their field while 56% of its life science and 68% of its physical science teachers are teaching without a minor as well.

Additionally, while the state invested $60 million in training for just the few hundred employees at Mercedes-Benz outside of Tuscaloosa, it last year only invested $60 per teacher per year in professional development. For public school teachers and their students, the results should not be surprising. A 1994 report revealed that 67% of Alabama teachers had zero hours of professional development in their subject; and 57% had zero hours in technology. Maybe the state would not have to spend $60 million on training for car production employees if it better prepared its teachers for the information and technology age in which their students will work.

Alabamians should offer kudos to its political and educational leaders who enacted much more rigorous student standards and higher graduation requirements, along with new testing and accountability systems. However, one does not have to think hard to imagine that a fully qualified math and science teacher would more likely to be found in schools in suburban Mountain Brook than in rural Macon County. Likewise, one does not have to stretch one's thinking to estimate which district is more likely to develop and offer high quality professional development. And, when the scores do not improve in Macon, will the state just fail the students, embarrass the community with labels of failure, or just go in and remove teachers and administrators? Or will the state look hard at the entire system of recruiting, preparing, developing, and rewarding all of its teachers -- and consequently supporting all of its students in reaching high academic standards.

The Commission, a bipartisan panel of policy makers, educators, and business leaders, has argued that without a renewed and sustained commitment to teachers' learning and professional development, the goal of dramatically enhancing school performance for all of America's children will remain unfulfilled. Since the release of its original report, What Matters Most: Teaching for America's Future , in September 1996, the Commission's message has focused like a laser beam on ensuring a competent, caring and qualified teacher for every child. With newly formed partnerships in both Republican and Democratic-led states all across America (including neighboring Georgia as well as North Carolina and Kentucky), the Commission's message has begun to resonate with policy makers, business coalitions, educators, and now parents.

The Commission has taken on many "sacred cows" in the educational establishment by posing tough-minded recommendations that provide a blueprint for a coherent set of proven approaches regarding who enters teaching, how they are prepared and hired, how their knowledge and skills are developed over time, how they are paid, and how their schools support the use of their time in ways that really work for student learning.

The Commission's recommendations call for using the most rigorous teacher standards as the benchmark for setting and enforcing licensure, evaluation, and professional development standards as well as creating new pay systems. This means licensing teachers based on demonstrated performance of ability to teach to the new standards, closing down poor schools of education, using systems of peer review to remove incompetents from the classroom, and creating pay systems that rewards teachers for knowledge and skill needed for getting the real job done. (Currently, teachers are paid for any academic degree or year of experience that they accrue).

However, at the same time, the Commission's recommendations call for greater investments in teacher education and professional development that prove successful, more authority for our best teachers to set and enforce standards, and new school organizations so that teachers' knowledge, once well developed, can be put to its best use. Most knowledge-based private sector companies invest 4-10% of their operating budgets on professional development. Most states grant their cosmetologists more authority to determine who cuts hair and what the standards of best practice must be. And, other nations who we might consider peers or competitors assign more educators to classrooms (e.g., 80% in Japan and 43% in the US), prepare them more extensively (6 years of teacher education), pay them more in relation to competing professional occupations, give them broader decision making responsibility, and provide them with 15-20 hours each week for joint planning and professional development. Studies show that US teachers have only 3-5 hours of week of primarily isolated planning and professional development time per week.

Thomson's eloquent essay reveals that education reformers just can't demand better performance from students, teachers, and the schools. Instead, there must be a coherent system of preparation, selection, development, and rewards -- just like they are at Tuscaloosa's Merecedes-Benz plant.

The good news is that everything that the Commission has recommended is being done somewhere in America now (including in Alabama). However, there is no state or school district that has put the all pieces together -- yet. Now is the time to for parents, educators, and policy makers alike to ask very important questions about teacher development and student achievement -- and begin to take action. All of our students deserve no less.

Dr. Berry serves as the Associate Director for Policy and State Relations for the National Commission on Teaching & America's Future. All studies cited in this essay are referenced in the Commission, which can be ordered at 1-888-492-1241. He is currently working with A+ as a consultant to the Task Force on Teaching and Student Achievement whose purpose is study and recommend strategies supporting higher achievement for all students.