In listening to the trio of Gingrich, Sharpton and Duncan on Meet The Press today, one of the things that struck me was this videotaped piece from Bruce Stewart, formerly the head of the private Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C.:

MR. BRUCE STEWART: When I began teaching in the ’60s, we had that population of people. And since then, because greater opportunities have opened up for young women and for minorities, there’s been a great brain drain from American schools. I think we want to get those people back. If you look at Singapore, look at Finland, the reason they consistently are testing their population of students in the top levels of international exams, it’s the quality of their teaching force. They all come from the top third of their colleges, universities. In the United States, our tendency today is to have that pool of teachers coming from the bottom third of college and universities and from the bottom third of those classes. That’s something we need to reverse and to change.

I’ve heard this kind of statistic about teachers coming from the bottom third of something or other before (though never about the bottom third of classes — I don’t know where he got that bizarre statistic from), and just ignored it. But hearing it on Meet The Press, from the director of a private school, got “my dander up” and I decided to look into where those numbers came from and how valid and reliable they were. It was quite a ride on a Sunday afternoon….

Here is what I found…

Tons of people use a McKinsey report as the reference for the statistic of teachers coming from the bottom third of colleges.  That report just uses a quote saying that:

“We are now recruiting our teachers from the bottom third of high school students going to college…” (p. 19)

It uses as its citation “Tough Choices Or Tough Times” , a report issued by The New Commission On The Skills Of The American Workforce in 2007.

So I went there. The link in the preceding paragraph only leads to a downloadable summary, which just stated the same statistic with no citation of a source. So, I went to Amazon, downloaded a Kindle Reader for my PC, and purchased the whole report.

That report uses as its source a “Report From The Department Of Education, National Center For Education Statistics, The Condition Of Education 2002.” It quotes the report as saying:

“A report by the National Council on Teacher Quality in 2004 said that the profession attracts a ‘disproportionately high number of candidates from the lower end of the distribution of academic ability.’ And, college graduates whose SAT or ACT scores were in the bottom quartile were more than twice as likely as those in the top quartile to have majored in education.”

Well, I couldn’t find that exact quote (but admittedly, I was getting a bit punch drunk by that time and might just have missed it) in the Condition of Education 2002, though page 91 has a lot of mathematical discussions of this topic, little of which I could understand (perhaps a math teacher can take a look?). I also found it interesting that I couldn’t find any other Condition of Education reports (they’re issued every year) that examine that topic.

However, I did find information on the National Council on Teacher Quality report that was quoted (which also based its critique on SAT and ACT scores), including criticism of its methodology – it apparently only included a portion of people who were going to be teachers.  In fact, it excluded that portion who typically score the highest on SAT (the link takes to you a NY Times article about it that gives details). Also, ironically, in the same year, the same National Council on Teacher Quality came out with another report basically dismissing SAT scores as a valid and reliable predictor of teacher effectiveness, saying:

“…measurable teacher attributes like SAT scores…account for only a small portion of why some teachers are more effective than others.” (p. 10)

So, after all that, what are my conclusions?

First, I’d love to find out where the Sidwell guy came-up with his numbers, since they seem to be flat-out wrong.

Second, I’d love for a math person to examine the numbers on page 91 of the report on the Condition of Education 2002 to tell me what it really says in plain English.

Third, based on what I read of the criticism of the National Council of Teacher Quality report, this “bottom one-third” number also appears to be flat-out wrong.

And fourth, even if their numbers were right (which they don’t appear to be), it’s all much ado about nothing because they themselves say it’s not a reliable predictor of teacher effectiveness.

In other words, this bottom-third thing does seem to me to be a bunch of baloney.

What do you think? Let me know if I’m right or wrong, please!

On Meet The Press today, Newt Gingrich shared what I thought was an excellent description of what students should leave with when they graduate from high school:

GREGORY: Newt Gingrich, what is the knowledge most worth having in 2010 if you are a high school graduate? What do you need to know? What should the end product look like?

REP. GINGRICH: Well, Jefferson said that religion, morality and knowledge being important, we need schools. That’s the Northwest Ordinance. So I’d say the first thing you need to know is about yourself and your own values and your own concerns. The second thing you have to know is a good work ethic and a ability to be honest. And the third thing you have to know is how to learn whatever you’re going to need to be successful.

Now, can he tell us how those qualities are assessed by the standardized tests  used to evaluate schools now and would be used to determine the teacher merit-pay he supports?

I just wrote a post in my other blog titled What Might Aesop’s Fables Say About Glitzy Media Parent Involvement Campaigns?

It’s obviously geared toward some parent involvement efforts, but can also be applicable to any efforts or programs that emphasize style over substance. I’m sure we’ve all seen a few of those in education circles.

You might want to check out that post…

Wordle is a free and easy web application that lets you paste text into it and then produces a “word cloud” illustrating the words that are used most with their size showing their frequency of use.

It’s pretty neat.

Here is the link to the Wordle for our book, “Building Parent Engagement In Schools.” I was having some difficulty resizing it to fit in this blog, which is why I’m just posting the link to it.

It certainly gives an accurate representation of what the book is all about.

Since the final edits are now completed for my next book, Teaching English Language Learners: Strategies That Work, I’ll be posting a Wordle of that one in the near future, too — presumably after I figure out how to display it in the blog