Board Games - failure of National Board for Professional Teaching Standards to accomplish objective of improving quality of teaching in the US

National Review, August 9, 1999 by Danielle Dunne Wilcox, Chester E. Finn Jr.

Business backs a losing education strategy.

Ms. Wilcox is a doctoral candidate at Teachers College, Columbia University, and Mr. Finn is director of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, which recently published Better Teachers, Better Schools.

The idea seemed so promising. A privately organized National Board for Professional Teaching Standards would identify "highly accomplished" teachers in elementary and secondary schools to be rewarded for their excellence and emulated by other teachers. Everyone knows this field needs such a standard. In fact, the country is obsessed with the question of how to get and keep better teachers. Congress is weighing a $10 billion teacher-quality bill, and almost every state is agonizing over teacher certification, testing, and pay.

But twelve years have passed, and the board has turned out to be another union-dominated, establishment outfit, steeped in "progressive" ideology, visiting new woes on our schools. That's no surprise: Two thirds of the board's 63 members are teachers, and almost all of them are leaders or hand-picked members of the two big national teacher unions, which have no serious interest in reform. What's harder to explain is why so many business leaders are going along.

The board has built up a great deal of political momentum-if President Clinton has his way, Congress will soon fork over another $18.5 million for it. North Carolina governor Jim Hunt, a Democrat who has long been a major booster of the board (and whose state is one of 13 that offer extra pay to board-certified teachers), has invited his fellow governors to an August conclave to sing its praises-and, one assumes, to press for additional federal dollars to sustain it. Otherwise tough- minded Republicans-including Wisconsin governor Tommy Thompson, Florida governor Jeb Bush, and Ohio senator George Voinovich-are also enamored.

Yet after a dozen years of R&D and the investment of $120 million, the board cannot demonstrate that its blue-ribbon winners actually produce higher-achieving students. Worse, the board actually rewards teachers for being good at the opposite of what most parents think teachers should excel at. Its idea of a great teacher is one who embraces "constructivist" pedagogy, "discovery" learning, and cultural relativism-not one who imparts to students fundamental knowledge or even has it himself.

Consider this standard for middle schools: "Accomplished teachers establish caring, inclusive, stimulating and safe school communities where students can take intellectual risks, practice democracy and work both collaboratively and independently." Nothing about mastering a subject here-or in the board's evaluations, which look at lesson plans, videotapes of classes, samples of student work, and written commentaries about teaching practice.

In its evaluations, the board pointedly ignores writing errors in essays submitted by English teachers. Why fuss, so long as those teachers are able to establish "inclusive school communities"? The board doesn't fuss about students' errors either. It praises instructors who don't correct their students' work because they're worried about the young ones' self-esteem.

Reading expert Sandra Stotsky recently reviewed the board's standards and found there a disdain for factual knowledge and "even the teaching of the curriculum that a school district has mandated." In this way, the board's approach undermines real reforms in the states. Even as several states and localities prescribe specific skills and knowledge for their students and schools, the board puts its stamp of approval on teachers who excel in the opposite. Its math standards downplay the importance of "mastering routine procedural skills."

American Express and IBM wouldn't dream of judging their own employees' performance via portfolios and videotapes. But they and other corporate sponsors have funneled a steady stream of dollars to the board. A senior executive at Procter & Gamble serves as its co-chairman. Edward B. Rust Jr. of State Farm Insurance (a million-dollar donor) recently lauded it in congressional testimony on behalf of the Business Roundtable.

Businesses are also promoting the conventional wisdom, largely formed by the education establishment, in favor of tighter regulation. According to this view, states should make all their new teachers pass through ever-longer training programs; a single nationwide standard should force teachers to study pedagogy, self-esteem, and multiculturalism still more; new teachers should be tested on their "professional knowledge," not their subject matter; and once they're on the job, they should be evaluated only by other educators-and never on how much their students are actually learning. Unfortunately, this approach is a failure. The burgeoning rules and tests that govern teacher certification in most places have little to do with true classroom performance.

Such eminent businessmen as David Rockefeller Jr. have backed this strategy of piling up requirements. Almost all the major business groups (the National Alliance of Business, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers) recently endorsed a paper on "improving the quality of teaching" that toes the establishment line. While paying lip service to teachers who are "knowledgeable in content," the strategies urged in this document mirror those being pressed by the teacher unions and ed schools.