Monday
March 30, 2009
Please enjoy posts from Golden Apple’s own Penny Lundquist for the next few weeks. Penny is a 1986 Golden Apple Fellow. She has been on the staff of Golden Apple for 17 years, and currently serves as Golden Apple’s Director of Professional Development. Prior to working at Golden Apple, she was an English teacher with 23 years of classroom experience in grades five through twelve. Her interests include literacy and teacher professionalism.
What follows is a highly personal list of what I perceive to be 5 key education trends . . . expressed as injunctions. I would love to have readers comment on my choices and list picks of their own. These are in no particular order, just things I’m picking up surfing the internet, reading Educational Leadership, Edutopia and other education publications, and following Obama’s/Duncan’s education priorities.
Without further ado, here are the first two trends:
1. It’s the teachers, stupid!
It’s turning out that the single most important common denominator in high student achievement gains by students in high needs schools, is the quality of the teaching. Children, who have accomplished teachers, and as many in a row as possible, simply do better. Now that this is a known fact, there is an impetus to identify more such individuals, give them the training and resources they need, get them into the schools of greatest need and reward them adequately for the important work they are doing and the results they are helping their students achieve. Golden Apple has developed a Commitment to Teaching Excellence to guide and inspire teachers in their profession, and we’ve posted it as this month’s Free Resource. Find it here.
For more on the importance of high-quality teachers, check out Ed Trust, which publishes excellent studies on this topic.
2. It’s the students, stupid!
This is, of course, the corollary of #1. Secretary of Education Duncan is famously known for putting the needs of students before any other consideration – as well it should be. “My job is to fight for children, to fight for kids,” Duncan said. “When you do that, tough decisions become pretty clear in your head very quickly.” In a recent editorial, he called for “rewarding good teachers and removing bad ones” Teachers who are not highly effective either need excellent, high quality, professional development, a deepening of their content knowledge and the will and commitment to improve, or they need to make way for those who will be effective with children. From Arne Duncan to Bill Gates, the message is clear. We must focus on what is best for students, how students learn best and from whom . . . so trend #2 is a greater emphasis on students . . . kids come first!
For more on Duncan and the Obama administration’s education policy, check out this article.
Stay tuned over the next few weeks, as I post three more interesting trends in the public discourse on education.
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