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(ESTV - The Best teachers in the World Clip 2)

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[Jeff Selingo] Alright, let's go back to Tennessee for a second.

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You talk a little bit of - obviously, you focus a lot on Vanderbilt there in Tennessee -

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and you talk a little bit about how Vanderbilt and Teach For America

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are essentially the only two intitutions or providers in Tennessee producing high quality teachers.

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What should happen to all those other providers in Tennessee? Should we shut them down?

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Hem, how do we raise them up to be as good as Vanderbild and Teach for America?

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And then a related question: Teach for America - here you talked earlier about how the -

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how the lead institutions in this country have essentially abdicated their role in training teachers,

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but yet Teach for America is this incredibly high-profile program

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that students at some of the best institutions in our country clamour to get into every year, right?

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Why are they not clamouring to get into teachers traditional programs?

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[John Chubb] There are a lot of questions there.

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First, I don't think a regulatory approach to training institutions is the right way to - I mean

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the states have the power now to close down programs that they, you know, if they want to.

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But they've never had the political will to do that

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and you can count on them (?) not having a political will

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I think a better approach is to use transparency, to use information.

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So, you know, if their performance - if the performance of training programs at education schools

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were better known, I think that would be a great incentive for them to improve,

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you know, rather than close down somebody who is actually trying to improve.

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I also - so I think there needs be a lot more information.

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I think that there should be a more open market in training.

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So, yeah, there is an alternative certification now in a lot of places,

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but that's more often than not an alternative route (?), but through an Ed school.

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But I think that there should be other kinds of training institutions that are allowed into the market

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and if we can now (?) get information about their performance,

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then I think that the competition for students, the competition .... (2:12)

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But the Teach For America example, I think, is a great one.

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It shows that there is interest on the part - intense interest -

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on the part of high-aptitude young people to go into teaching, right?

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But Teach For America has become ever more selective, right?

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It is - I think that is actually harder to get into Teach For America

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[Selingo] than it is .... Harvard
[Chubb] than into Harvard, right?

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So there is something wrong with that too, because we're looking for bright people to become teachers -

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[Selingo] - We're also looking for bright people to ..... and then move on to

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[Chubb] Exactly. So the - exactly - so the problem I have with Teach for America is that

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it's not accompanied by an adequate training and support program.

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So, if you are able to attract as many people into teaching,

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if you provided better support for them, and if the profession were to change,

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were to be better compensated, were to recognize merit, all the things that, you know, professions do,

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then you could hold more of these people in place,

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and also, if it were a better compensated profession, if it were a better ...... profession,

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that higher caliber high school graduates were interested in,

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more of the top universities would be interested in preparing them.

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[Selingo] Yeah, but .........

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how about the jobs themselves: you talk in some ways

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that part of teaching is drudgery, right, it's like hourly (?) work in some cases, right?

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And so, is part of improving the actual experience, as well, so that students want to enter into it?

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[Chubb] Yeah - I worked with, you know, hundreds of schools, thousands and thousands of teachers.

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And you know, it's unbelievably noble work, there's no work that is more important,

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but it's much harder than it has to be.

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And - and every industry in the planet is looking for ways

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to make people more productive and more successful.

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And that's what technology is all about.

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And if they can do that, then there will be fewer teachers, like, so what? You know.

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This is now an important program.

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This is an effort to provide great education to our kids, right?

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So, whatever that looks like is what we ..... should be trying to do.

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And yes, when a profession becomes more attractive, it does - it becomes more intellectual work.

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I mean, that is one of the arguments that I make in the book,

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that good teaching is intellectually demanding work.

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It's not repetitive: it requires lots and lots of decisions, it requires intellect,

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it requires content knowledge.

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And we could get there if we would take some of the load of the backs of teachers

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that could be taken off by technology

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(This has been a production of EducationSector Independant Analysis. Innovative Ideas
www.educationsector.org)