Search Institute

If you’re like me, you read a lot about what people outside the field of education have to say about education. And much like me weighing in on my personal views of NASA’s next shuttle launch, there is inevitably a disconnect between the writer’s perspective and what really happens inside a school. Unless you’ve taught, you just don’t “get it.”

But I recently came across an article by Malcolm Gladwell in The New Yorker titled “Most Likely to Succeed: How Do We Hire When We Can’t Tell Who’s Right for the Job?” You probably know Gladwell from his books The Tipping Point and Blink. He has raised himself to the sort of writer/thinker that when he speaks, people listen. In his article, he explores the myriad issues that are involved in recruiting, rewarding, and retaining quality educators. As opposed to most articles written about teachers, this one is utterly compelling and a worthy read.

Over the next couple of posts, I’m going to respond to some of his key points, and I encourage you to join the discussion. I’m going to break these into a few posts because his commentary has a lot of meat on its bones!

The posts will be as follows:
1. The Value Added Analysis
2. The complexity of a great teacher
3. Patiently raising good teachers (+ the “missing piece”)

The Value Added Analysis:
In this section of his article, Gladwell explores how it is that we link individual teachers to student success. Here is a passage:
Teacher effects dwarf school effects: your child is actually better off in a “bad” school with an excellent teacher than in an excellent school with a bad teacher. Teacher effects are also much stronger than class-size effects. You’d have to cut the average class almost in half to get the same boost that you’d get if you switched from an average teacher to a teacher in the eighty-fifth percentile.

There’s tremendous promise in these findings, but also a daunting reality for educators, districts, and unions to face. The empowering aspect, of course, is the validation of the worth of an educator. A good teacher trumps almost all else in the academic arena. That means that a good teacher is more valuable than textbooks, technology, class size, and any other measure we might explore to “teacher-proof” education.

But that also means that not all teachers are “good.” There’s the rub.

If you read further in Gladwell’s article, another element becomes resoundingly clear: the quality of the teacher in the classroom is tantamount to the relationships the teacher has created with the students. You’ll notice that what is cited as effective classroom management is not reliant on a system (like PBIS) or school policies; rather, the examples of gifted teaching illustrate educators who know and appreciate the students. Subtract that trait from the practices of the educator and little else stands a chance.

Certainly from Search Institute’s perspective, we would argue that until the relationships adults have with students are positive, supportive, and empowering, then all other strategies and practices are rendered moot. The resultant formula for school improvement becomes a simple one:

If you want to improve your school, you’ll need to improve your teacher force, and if you want to improve your teacher force, you’ll need to increase the number of teachers who understand how to relate to children.

In this season of political change, I’m reminded of the oft repeated mantra of Clinton’s 1992 campaign: “It’s the economy, stupid!” For school reform, we might as well replace “economy” with “relationship” and carry on from there.