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Deron Durflinger

What if Finland's great teachers taught in U.S. schools? - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...u-s-schools-not-what-you-think

finland education teaching teacher evaluation edreform teachers teacher learning transformation reform vanmeter van meter

shared by Deron Durflinger on 22 May 13 - No Cached
  • The role of an individual teacher in a school is like a player on a football team: all teachers are vital, but the culture of the school is even more important for the quality of the school
  • If  a teacher was the most important single factor in improving quality of education, then the power of a school would indeed be stronger than children’s family background or peer influences in explaining student achievement in school.
  • Most scholars agree that effective leadership is among the most important characteristics of effective schools, equally important to effective teaching. Effective leadership includes leader qualities, such as being firm and purposeful, having shared vision and goals, promoting teamwork and collegiality and frequent personal monitoring and feedback. Several other characteristics of more effective schools include features that are also linked to the culture of the school and leadership: Maintaining focus on learning, producing a positive school climate, setting high expectations for all, developing staff skills, and involving parents. In other words, school leadership matters as much as teacher quality.
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  • It insists that schools should get rid of low-performing teachers and then only hire great ones. This fallacy has the most practical difficulties. The first one is about what it means to be a great teacher. Even if this were clear, it would be difficult to know exactly who is a great teacher at the time of recruitment. The second one is, that becoming a great teacher normally takes five to ten years of systematic practice. And determining the reliably of ‘effectiveness’ of any teacher would require at least five years of reliable data. This would be practically impossible.
  • But just having better teachers in schools will not automatically improve students’ learning outcomes.
  • First, standardization should focus more on teacher education and less on teaching and learning in schools
  • the toxic use of accountability for schools should be abandoned. Current practices in many countries that judge the quality of teachers by counting their students’ measured achievement only is in many ways inaccurate and unfair.
  • In Finland, half of surveyed teachers responded that they would consider leaving their job if their performance would be determined by their student’s standardized test results
  • Third, other school policies must be changed before teaching becomes attractive to more young talents. In many countries where teachers fight for their rights, their main demand is not more money but better working conditions in schools.
  • I argue that if there were any gains in student achievement they would be marginal. Why? Education policies in Indiana and many other states in the United States create a context for teaching that limits (Finnish) teachers to use their skills, wisdom and shared knowledge for the good of their students’ learning.
  • onversely, the teachers from Indiana working in Finland—assuming they showed up fluent in Finnish—stand to flourish on account of the freedom to teach without the constraints of standardized curricula and the pressure of standardized testing; strong leadership from principals who know the classroom from years of experience as teachers; a professional culture of collaboration; and support from homes unchallenged by poverty.
Deron Durflinger

What the NFL Scouting Combine Can Teach Us About Teacher Evaluation | Edutopia - 0 views

www.edutopia.org/...teacher-evaluation-jose-vilson

competency-based competency based learning evaluation teacher transformation vanmeter

shared by Deron Durflinger on 30 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • Characteristics like temperament, persistence and resilience matter more than test scores, especially in schools, because it's here that collaboration, not competitiveness, reigns supreme.
    • Deron Durflinger
      Deron Durflinger on 30 Apr 13
       
      Sounds a lot like Grit to me;)
Deron Durflinger

7 Habits of Highly Effective Tech-leading Principals -- THE Journal - 0 views

thejournal.com/...e-tech-leading-principals.aspx

21st-century effectiveness vanmeter van meter transformation learning leadership

shared by Deron Durflinger on 11 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • Principals must effectively and consistently model the use of the same technology tools they expect teachers to use in their classrooms with the students. Principals must be consistent in their decisions and expectations about integrating learning technology in the school. The principal's communication about the pace and process of integrating learning technology needs to be clear and reasonable. The principal must provide appropriate professional development time and resources to support effective classroom implementation of technology. The principal must support early adopters and risk takers. The principal must do whatever it takes to ensure that all staff has early access to the very same digital tools that students will be using in their classrooms. As the educational leader, the principal must make it clear to the technology leader that all decisions relating to learning technology will be made by the educational leaders with input from the technology leaders, not the other way around. The principal must set and support the expectation that student work will be done and stored using technology. Principals must ensure that families and the public are kept informed about the school's goals and progress relating to its use of technology as a learning resource. The principal must be an active and public champion for all students, staff members, and the school in moving the vision of fully integrating learning technology for the second decade of the 21st century.
    • Deron Durflinger
      Deron Durflinger on 14 Feb 13
       
      How does this translate into leadership characteristics?
Deron Durflinger

Schools: The Disaster Movie - 0 views

nymag.com/print

learning transformation teaching teacher-pay finland vanmeter van meter

shared by Deron Durflinger on 06 Sep 10 - No Cached
  • Whereas the best public-school systems in the world—Finland, Singapore, South Korea—recruit all of their teachers from the top third or better of their college graduates, in America the majority come from the bottom two-thirds, with just 14 percent of those entering teaching each year in high-needs schools coming from the upper third. And the numbers may be getting worse. According to a recent survey conducted by McKinsey, a meager 9 percent of top-third graduates have any interest in teaching whatsoever.
    • Deron Durflinger
      Deron Durflinger on 06 Sep 10
       
      What needs to change to get more of the top-level college students interested in teaching?
  • teacher quality is a national priority: Educators are paid competitively; education schools are highly selective; jobs are guaranteed for those credentialed; and professional development is ample and subsidized.
    • Deron Durflinger
      Deron Durflinger on 06 Sep 10
       
      What are we doing at Van Meter to make these characteristics part of the culture?
  • “If you want to change public education, you have to do something that feels like a threat to the status quo,” says Canada. “If we don’t fight about this, if we can shake and be friends, we ain’t going to change. And if we don’t change, huge numbers of kids ain’t going to make it. There is no Superman coming to save them. All they have is us.”
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