Class Act - how to get better teachers

Washington Monthly, May, 2000 by Alexander Nguyen

The drama of good teaching

IT'S FOURTH PERIOD AT HARTFORD PUBLIC High in Connecticut, and it's clear that good teaching is hard to define, but easy to see. In Room 338, for example, it doesn't matter that most students will eat a subsidized lunch today or that over half the student body will eventually drop out. What matters is what Susan Matthews says matters.

"We're going to talk about eyes today; we all have two," she says--no, decrees--to 22 students watching her from behind laboratory benches. "Why?" A small pause, short enough to escape conscious notice but long enough to underline the question's significance. And when Matthews launches into her introduction, she paces and gestures, delivering lab instructions in a short, clear, urgent, almost theatrical fashion. "At the end of the period," she commands, "this is what you should be able to answer."

The class breaks into groups, and Matthews, a 29-year teaching veteran who studied opera in college, is darting from group to group. "Does it matter if you have glasses?" she repeats a student's question. "You tell me. The exercise is about why you need two eyes. Does the fact that you have glasses change the fact that you have two eyes?" The student shakes his head no. "That's right," exclaims Matthews, smiling, arms thrown up, and eyes wide open. "See? You answered your own question!" Principal Joseph Wall considers Matthews one of the school's best teachers.

Upstairs, Cynthia Avezzie's English class has a decidedly mellow tone, because students are contemplating great literature. They have read canonical works like George Orwell's Animal Farm and less traditional texts like Amy Tans The Joy Luck Club. "So what is good literature?" Avezzie muses, as much to her students as to herself. A girl offers that literature is good when it gives life to a universal feeling, such as loneliness. "That's very good," says Avezzie, picking up a pink ball and throwing it to her. "When have you felt lonely?" The student catches and cradles it as if it were made of crystal. "When someone forgets to pick me up," she says finally, tossing the ball to a classmate to give another example. Principal Wall considers Avezzie also one of the school's best teachers.

Yet where Matthews is fierce and almost dictatorial, Avezzie is mild and almost maternal. Where Matthews demands, Avezzie coaxes. Where Matthews relies on passion, Avezzie relies on care. But both are good. "They teach from the heart," says Principal Wall, and that makes the fundamental and national question of what constitutes a good teacher fiendishly frustrating for school administrators around the country.

For Common Things

Consensus in education is hard to find. But it was found in the 1960s, after the Russian launch of Sputnik highlighted the importance of math and science, and it is being found again, today, in teacher quality. Education Week noted recently that "pressure to improve the quality of the teaching force has never been greater," and everybody--politicians, academics, media, and teachers--has declared that better teachers are the cure to America's educational woes and the key to continued global leadership. They are the "next big thing in education reform" according to National Journal, an "educational birthright" according to the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, and more important than class size or vouchers, according to a 1998 Harris poll and empirical research such as a 1996 University of Tennessee study. "Fine buildings, equipment, and textbooks are important," argued Eugene Hickok, Pennsylvania's secretary of education, in 1998. "But it is the skill and dedication of the teacher that creates a place of learning."

The trouble with this consensus is finding a clear formulation of what constitutes good teaching. "It's a Holy Grail," said Eric Hanushek, a professor at the University of Rochester who studies education. "There are many different ways to teach, many different ways to make a good teacher.... All we know is: Some people are better at teaching than others" Last year, a report on teacher quality by the National Center for Education Statistics noted that "[t]eacher quality is a complex phenomenon, and there is little consensus on what it is or how to measure it." Indeed, good teaching is a complicated issue precisely because it is both elusive and obvious at the same time. It seems to defy definition--how would one, for example, characterize it without falling prey either to the Scylla of the all-too-narrow or the Charybdis of the all-too-vague?--but it also responds to the "I-know-it-when-I-see-it" principle, as spending fourth period with Matthews or Avezzie will make clear. Yet if this is the case, then the key to finding good teachers for American schools may not lie in trying to agree on what good teaching is or attempting to measure it, but in actually watching teachers in action. The key may be to evaluate their performance in real classrooms, in authentic settings, in front of students. We do know good teaching when we see it.