The Best Teachers in the World Book Event Clip 2

In Education Sector's November 1 event, John Chubb discusses his book The Best Teachers in the World: Why We Don't Have Them and How We Could.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

then you could hold more of these people in place,

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

that higher caliber high school graduates were interested in,

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

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

how about the jobs themselves: you talk in some ways

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

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

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

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

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

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

to make people more productive and more successful.

And that's what technology is all about.

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

This is now an important program.

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

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

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

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

that good teaching is intellectually demanding work.

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

it requires content knowledge.

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

that could be taken off by technology

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