by Jocelyn Huber, Director of Teacher Advocacy
Preliminary findings from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) Project indicate that students who convey positive classroom experiences and report that their teacher can control the classroom and challenge students have greater learning gains. Essentially, students know good teaching when it is standing in front of them (or more likely when it is kneeling next to their desks).
As we delve into the difficult and seemingly constant work of education reform, too often we forget that we already have the most important resource necessary to develop meaningful change: teachers. There are countless excellent educators who, like their students, can instinctually identify good teachers. Teachers know whose advice to seek when confronted by a challenging student or lesson and they know which teachers’ past students they hope not to get in their classrooms. These professionals go to work every day and prove that the goals of reform are far from impossible.
As the MET Project’s early findings highlight, many students do get to experience engaging and effective teaching. Genuine education reform demands that our level of respect and appreciation for these excellent teachers matches our urgency and outrage about those who are failing. Moreover, if we are to have any chance of system-wide success, it also means that we, just like the Gates’ MET project, must enlist these great teachers as equal partners in our efforts.