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In the U.S., public educational systems select teacher candidates based on test scores, credentials, and university degrees. But those, says Malcolm Gladwell in a recent New Yorker article, are not good predictors of teacher success. In fact, he writes, there may be no good predictors at all.
Gladwell frames his argument with stories about how two other industries, the National Football League and elite financial advising companies, recruit their professionals. He points out that there may be absolutely no way to tell if a college quarterback will succeed in the NFL--short of letting him play quarterback for an NFL team--because playing college ball barely resembles playing for the NFL. Only time in the league will demonstrate whether a quarterback will succeed.
Gladwell argues that selecting teachers is similarly difficult, that there appears to be little connection between formal teacher preparation regimes (e.g. teaching credential programs, Master's of Education degrees) and the ability to reach all learners in a classroom.
Gladwell says one solution is to change the way teachers are recruited, and he recommends a model embraced by financial advising firm North Star Resource Group. For every thousand people recruiters from North Star interview, they find fewer than 50 they think might succeed. These semifinalists attend a four-month, intensive training camp. Fewer than half of those who were invited to the training camp were then hired as apprentice advisers. Three to four years later, North Star retains 30 to 40 percent of those hired as apprentices.
This model goes against the typical teacher recruitment proceedings, which require little beyond a college degree, a teaching credential, and a passing score on one or more state-mandated teacher certification tests. As Dave Saba points out, "most state teacher tests have pass rates over 95%" and schools of education don't exactly have the reputation of being the most rigorous of our nation's professional training grounds. And Will Wilkinson is wondering why teachers even need college degrees.
Gladwell writes that there is a characteristic that the best teachers demonstrate, what he terms "withitness": the ability to understand and respond to classroom dynamics while still promoting a learning agenda. Teachers who have "withitness" know almost intuitively, in Gladwell's examples, when to let young kids squirm (because it may actually be a marker of learning) and how to shut down student-generated distractions before they snowball and affect the entire class.
The education blogosphere has been broad and mostly supportive of Gladwell's analysis, although there are a few points with which some bloggers take umbrage. For example, Laura Vanderkam presents some interesting data on teachers and standardized tests:
other things being equal, a teacher who scores a 700 on the SAT math section is going to be a more effective teacher than one who scores a 500. The higher score tends to indicate that the teacher is better able to figure things out quickly. This ability to solve problems quickly is a key component of the "withitness" that Gladwell notes is a common attribute with good teachers.
Christopher Sessums wonders how we would fund Gladwell's model of teacher selection:
While I have regularly enjoyed Gladwell's contributions, he seems to gloss over the overall costs associated with his plan. Training all comers will cost more money than the system has. Even if we switched to an apprentice-based pay scale (i.e., paying apprentices a smaller salary while compensating top-tier educators appropriately), finding the money to do so will more than likely outstrip our current salary systems. This is not to say such systems could not be constructed. Instead, I am suggesting further studies need to be considered before we can realistically consider such a move.
Greg Anrig has similar concerns, and offers an alternative model of teacher training:
[T]here are only a few dozen professional quarterbacking jobs in contrast to some 7 million public school teachers, with significant shortages in many cities and subjects. Whatever your position on the appropriate credentialing of teachers, most urban school administrators don't have the luxury of selecting 25 percent of applicants after some sort of closely monitored trial period.
Much more germane to the teaching profession is developing a far more effective, teamwork approach so that instead of relying entirely on the talents of individual teachers to instruct their students in isolation, they can learn from each other on an ongoing basis how to better connect with their students.
J M Holland highlights the differences in salary incentives between football and education. In football, players tend to
