It is heartening to see successful business moguls the likes of Broad and Gates invest their fortune and talents on improving public education, but disheartening if one looks at the bottom line. The Gates Foundation essentially concluded in 2004, after two years and millions of dollars spent, that their students’ academic performances remain unchanged. "Rigor was poor in mathematics across new and redesigned schools. ..The quality of student work across new and redesigned schools was low." (Some satisfaction was taken from "more positive learning cultures, positive climate, better attitudes by the teachers and students, more enthusiasm by parents, etc. You know, the ’soft’ intangibles.) A later review in 2005 did find student work qulaity in English improved but decreased significantly for math, But most disheartening was the recent conclusioon in 2009: "we found some success in improving (high school) graduation rates, but much more rarely did we see significant gains in academic performance or increased college readiness."
The Broad Foundation’s Broad Superintendents Academy managed to send no graduates to LAUSD, and last year, the $60 millions the two Foundations spent on an educational initiative fetched a rating of two on effort, from a scale of 1-10, by Mr. Broad ("We’re In the Venture Philanthrophy(sic) Business", The Wall Street Journal, August 31, 2009). One graduate in Arizona made headline after he cut fraudulent claims by his district’s staff, saving some money but safe to say creating no change in students’ academic performance.
It looks like huge amounts of private dollars have been poured into changing physical, fiscal and political parameters - class size, school supplies, longer school days/year, better curriculum materials, teacher training, salaries, building improvement, leadership training, voucher, etc., which resulted in peripheral changes (more positive attitudes, assigning better homework, etc.) but little hard core improvement, that is, better and sustainable test scores.
The Gates Foundation has basically come to the realization that improving teaching procedures is the real key to improve student performance. As a former administrator/programmer in public education, I used to question why reformers and conferences for better schools mostly deal with physical parameters like class size, teaching supplies, curricula, teacher credentials, but none on teaching procedures. It was obvious for any front-line administrator that the actual teaching process and parental support count the most in making students learn, be it regular or special education. Yet few focus on this. Principals of schools wash their hands off under the banner "Teachers are professionals and I respect their judgment. I am only here to facilitate not to dictate teaching procedures to my fellow colleagues."
As an administrator, I used to spend most of my energy on training teachers to learn and follow effective teaching procedures. The task was daunting, as few had even heard of, let alone learned, the techniques of successive approximation, shaping, task analysis, and last but not least, the use of extrinsic and contingent rewards to motivate students. These concepts are foreign because they are seldom taught in education courses, which shun any talk of extrinsic rewards for either students or teachers as part of teaching, or any mention of using behavioral analysis. Although backed up by research else where, these concepts are simply politically incorrect for the schools of education. I recently helped a student (a practicing 1st-grade teacher) taking her Masters degree in Educational Administration to design a research thesis on using reward to motivate learning. The disdain from her professor was undeniable, even though she was amazed how well her 1st-grade Hispanic English Language Learners suddenly excelled under the reward conditions. (It is not hard to understand why New York City has done away with credential requirements and found no deterioration in either teaching quality or student performance.)
Both Foundations have recognized the merit of pay-for-performance for teachers. I wonder if they have ever entertained the same idea for students, and making it part of effective teaching?
It is understandable why principals seldom demand teachers to adopt specific teaching procedures and evaluate them as such - there is the union whose priority by mandate is to protect jobs and the welfare of its members, there are the grievance procedures, and there is their own unfamiliarity with teaching techniques (they are administrators of physical and fiscal parameters). A reformer-administrator of teaching quality would be swimming in a sea of resistance and lethargy. Cutting down waste and fraud in the system as reported in the WSJ interview is commendable, but likely bears little relationship with improving student performance.
It is a multimillion-$ lesson to learn: that effective teaching procedures count the most and the technologies of effective teaching are mostly available. The real challenge is to prescribe, implement and maintain these procedures at the grass root level, i.e., the classroom, and the money should go towards that effort.