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Professional reform: A path to better policy in education

Posted on September 6, 2007 by Staff

Steve Peha & Margot Charmichael Lester

For all the controversy surrounding education these days, most people agree that our schools continue to need significant improvement. This isn’t to say we haven’t been working on the problem. But after years of reform, we’re still unclear about whether our current approach is producing the results we require.

This doesn’t mean current reforms should be abandoned. Testing and standards have an important role to play. But it’s time to look beyond these measures to policies and programs that more directly affect the quality of teaching, learning and leadership in our schools.

Most current reform is structural. It seeks to change the structure of school with new curriculum, new tests, new schedules and so on. But structural reform doesn’t do much to change how children learn, how teachers teach and how administrators lead. We can develop new tests and new curriculum, put a laptop on every desk, send our kids to class from sun up to sun down 300 days a year and still fail to make great gains.

That’s the bad news. The good news is there’s another type of reform we haven’t fully tapped into. Where structural reform tinkers at the margins, professional reform goes to the heart and soul of the system: the teachers, principals and other adults who educate our kids. Shifting our focus from form to function will improve achievement for all students by improving the effectiveness of the people who squire them through their school years.

We know this is a sensitive issue. But it’s an issue we must begin to grapple with if we want to see real change.
Reforms that seek to improve educational professionalism should address three goals:
Offering meaningful pre-service and in-service training for teachers and administrators on methods of best-practice instruction and educational leadership.
Continuing and expanding programs that create new pathways for talented people to enter teaching and administration.

Researching and replicating the effectiveness of educators currently performing at high levels.

This isn’t going to be easy, but it’s possible if we agree that structural reform alone isn’t enough. Our kids, and the adults who serve them, deserve better. And the truth is, we know how to give them all what they deserve. Best practice in teaching and school leadership is well-documented. We have plenty of information about how to create a solid, sustainable culture of learning in our schools.

Education reform is its own high-stakes test with our children’s future depending on the results. To get the right answers we have to ask the right questions. Questions like “What are our test scores?” and “Who made AYP?” have their relevance. But there are other questions that get closer to the heart of the matter, like, “How can we help teachers teach more effectively?” “What can we do to help principals lead their schools to greater levels of achievement?” and “How can we improve educational training?” These are questions only professional reform can answer.

Insofar as politics is the art of the possible, structural reform often appears to be the best we can do. At least it allows us to feel we’re doing something. But it’s time to start doing something more, something that will help us transform the culture of testing that has begun to dominate our schools into a culture of teaching, learning and leadership that prepares our kids for life in the 21st century.

Steve Peha and Margot Carmichael Lester own Teaching That Makes Sense Inc., an education reform, advocacy and consulting company based in Carrboro.

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