Three
in 10 public school students fail to finish high school
Graduation
rates for students in some minority groups are especially dismal,
with just over half of Hispanics (55.5 percent) and African Americans
(53.7 percent) graduating with their class.1
only 26
percent of US high school students are proficient in math.
The accountability
models increasingly in fashion find their roots in the discipline
of economics rather than education, and they are exemplified in the
value-added metrics now gathered by large urban school districts
Value-added modeling is one example of a larger approach to improving
public schools that is aimed at enhancing what economists
label “human capital”—factors such as teacher experience, subject
knowledge, and pedagogical skills.
enhancing teacher human capital should not
be the sole or even primary focus of school reform
if students
are to show measurable and sustained improvement, schools
must also foster what sociologists label “social capital”—the patterns
of interactions among teachers.4
In addition to targeting teacher human capital, many believe that a
key to improving public schools lies in bringing in people outside the
school, or even the school district, to solve problems
A natural extension of the belief in the power of outsiders is the
notion that teacher tenure is the enemy of effective public education.
In many reform
efforts, the principal is cast as the “instructional leader” who is responsible
for developing and managing pedagogical practice.
These three beliefs—in the power of teacher human capital, the
value of outsiders, and the centrality of the principal in instructional
practice—form the implicit or explicit core of many reform efforts
today
Unfortunately, all three beliefs are rooted more in conventional
wisdom and political sloganeering than in strong empirical research.
results provide much support for the centrality of social capital—the
relationships among teachers—for improving public schools.
our findings strongly
suggest that in trying to improve public schools we are overselling
the role of human capital and innovation from the top, while greatly
undervaluing the benefits of social capital and stability at the bottom.
teacher tenure can have significant
positive effects on student achievement.
In the context of schools, human capital is a teacher’s cumulative
abilities, knowledge, and skills developed through formal
education and on-the-job experience.
several studies
conducted largely by economists have shown little relationship
between a teacher’s accumulation of formal education and actual
student learning
Social capital, by comparison, is not a characteristic of the individual
teacher but instead resides in the relationships among teachers.
ideology of school reform
When a teacher needs information or advice about how to do her job
more effectively, she goes to other teachers.
when the relationships among teachers in a school are characterized
by high trust and frequent interaction—that is, when social capital is
strong—student achievement scores improve.
Teachers
were almost twice as likely to turn to their peers as to the experts
designated by the school district, and four times more likely to seek
advice from one another than from the principal.
We found that
the students of high-ability teachers outperformed
those of low-ability teachers, as
proponents of human capital approaches to
school improvement would predict.
Students whose
teachers were more able (high human
capital) and also had stronger ties with
their peers (strong social capital) showed the highest gains in math
achievement.
Conversely, students of teachers with lower teaching
ability (low human capital) and weaker ties with their peers (weak
social capital) showed the lowest achievement gains
even low-ability teachers can perform as well as teachers of average
ability if they have strong social capital
According to Ms. Rhee, “cooperation, collaboration, and
consensus building are way overrated.”7
When teacher turnover
resulted in high losses of either human or social capital, student
achievement declined. But when turnover resulted in high losses of
both human and social capital, students were particularly disadvantaged.
A social
capital perspective would answer the same question by looking not
just at what a teacher knows, but also where she gets that knowledge
But it is this latter class of activities—which can
be conceived of as building external social capital—that made the
difference both for teachers and for students.
When principals spent more time building external social capital,
the quality of instruction in the school was higher and students’
scores on standardized tests in both reading and math were higher.
The more effective principals were those who defined
their roles as facilitators of teacher success rather than instructional
leaders.
the current focus on
building teacher human capital—and the paper credentials
often associated with it—will not yield the qualified teaching
staff so desperately needed in urban districts.
olicymakers
must also invest in measures that enhance collaboration and information
sharing among teachers.
there is not enough emphasis
on the value of teacher stability
We found direct, positive relationships
between student achievement gains in mathematics and teacher
tenure at grade level and teacher social capital.
principals who spent more of their time
on collaborating with people and organizations outside the school
delivered gains to teachers and students alike.