“What makes a great teacher?” That’s the question Amanda Ripley posed and attempted to answer in an article in the current issue of the Atlantic magazine.
I know Ripley from our days at Washington City Paper. So, I took interest in what she had to say, especially because she used two D.C. elementary schools (Kimball and Plummer) to illustrate her points about the importance of background, teacher training, classroom demeanor and overall attitude.
She focused mostly on Teach for America, however. The nonprofit organization persuades recent college graduates to spend about two years in schools that serve low-income students and their families. It’s attempting to identify, through observation and evaluation, definitive skills and talents that predict a teacher’s potential for success. As it collects data, it’s trying to clone successful teachers to ensure marked improvements in public schools nationwide, while enhancing the achievement levels of children taught in them.
Celebrated in Ripley’s article is D.C. Public Schools math teacher William Taylor, who has an undeniable passion for his work. “Based on his students’ test scores, [he] ranks among the top 5 percent of all D.C. math teachers.” In 2008, only 40 percent of his students were performing at grade level. By the end of that school year, 90 percent were at or above grade level, she wrote.
I know test scores aren’t the only method for measuring students’ or teachers’ achievements. But they are the universally accepted barometers.
I was encouraged by what I read in Ripley’s article, until I came across an explosive nugget about one fourth-grade teacher — a 23-year veteran who earns more than $80,000.
“This teacher has a warm manner, and her classroom is bright and neat,” Ripley wrote. “But she seems to have given up on the kids’ prospects in a way that [Taylor] has not.”
Then came this earth-shattering fact: “When the students entered that fourth-grade teacher’s class last school year, 66 were scoring at or above grade-level in reading. After a year in her class, only 44 percent scored grade level, and none scored above.”
I couldn’t believe what I had read. In the late 1990s, the D.C. Financial Control Board released a report that found the longer children remained in District public schools, the worse their academic performance. That report instigated a takeover of the system.
Now, years later, District children continue to suffer.
I went ballistic. I sent a note to DCPS spokeswoman Jennifer Calloway demanding to know the teacher’s name and status. Citing personnel rules, she declined to provide any information without the teacher’s consent. When I asked whether a request might be made on my behalf, I was told, “The teacher had requested to stay anonymous.”
An instructor who, in the course of one year, either destroys children’s enthusiasm for learning or reverses the work of other teachers doesn’t deserve cover and should be fired immediately. She is a weapon of mass destruction.
Jonetta Rose Barras, host of WPFW’s “D.C. Politics With Jonetta,” can be reached at [email protected].
