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Don't Worry, Be Happy
02/26/09
05:16:02 am, Categories: Announcements [A] Sherman Dorn says he’s bitter.
It’s partly because he’s assumed (imagined, made up, what have you) a lot of things I wrote in yesterday’s post on teacher quality and equity with regard to the stimulus bill. I am not going to bother knocking down all the straw men he constructed.
But….regarding my characterization of his approach to education policy as too centered on consequences for adults and not enough on consequences for students: I stand by it (though, let’s be clear, I am sure he cares deeply about both). I sincerely apologize for singling Sherman out, though. He’s not alone.
Another recent example (and one appropos of yesterday’s post):
"We can say we just want more good teachers, which would be great, but that’s a policy that we just don’t know how to do yet," said Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, an education policy professor at the University of Chicago. "The nice thing about reducing class size is that it makes teachers happy in their own right and it’s the one thing that we know how to do."
Let me get this straight (note to Sherman: this isn’t about you):
A professor of education doesn’t know what makes a good teacher?
The "one thing [they] know how to do" is reduce class size?
We only know how to "make teachers happy," so that’s all we should attempt to accomplish?
Why, then, are we sending students to ed schools for teacher prep? Couldn’t we just send accountants to each school district and have them impose teacher-student ratios?
Wouldn’t "making good teachers" cause both teachers and students (not to mention parents) "happy"?
Is "happy" all we are after? (could you imagine a medical school saying: "We would like to have students practice anatomy on cadavers, but it makes many of them unhappy"? "We are thinking about removing organic chem as a prerequisite because students are very unhappy when they have to take it"…?)
Is "making teachers happy" one of the qualitative measures the "Broader, Bolder" campaign will propose when they meet today at EPI? Will report cards in the future say "the kids didn’t learn math, science or English, and didn’t make it in college, but our school made AYP because teachers were happy"?
If all you are expecting as a professional who intervenes in the lives of children and families - especially those from troubled circumstances - is "happy" then, with all due respect, you are in the wrong profession.
P.S. It occurred to me after posting that Joanne Jacobs was at least two days ahead of me on this "happy" theme. I don’t want to speak for her, but there is something to be said for synchrony.
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