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A Reply
to Bill Gates' First Annual Letter
- the U. S. Education Section - Published January 28, 2009
From Steven W. Gilbert, TLT Group, February 3, 2009
Email message text -
Intro from Steve Gilbert 2/3/2009
Main
Points & Some Excerpts from Letter
I'm worried about Bill
Gates' commitment to "learn why some teachers are so much
more effective than others." I'm not worried about the
value of his effort, but about some of the expectations that
may be raised.
I worry that this
initiative may be limited only to the kinds of admirable
teaching that can be most easily detected or confirmed, and
that there are only a very few "great" teachers.
I also worry that Gates'
letter may raise, once again,
exaggerated hopes and fears that by using some new
technology we can record and disseminate "the best lectures"
in ways that will improve almost everything about higher
education.
Finally, I believe it is not as useful to focus on
"great" teachers as it is to support the work of the vast
majority of teachers who are eager and willing to improve
their own teaching and their students' learning. So,
I hope that when
Gates identifies teachers to provide "model[s] for other
teachers and as a resource for students," he will include
great, or even good, teachers from BOTH these categories:
A. Teachers who are
willing and able to describe successful elements of their
own teaching and to help colleagues make similar
improvements.
B. Teachers who are good
or great in ways that cannot be so easily described - even
by themselves - or emulated by others.
Of course, I'm grateful that Bill Gates will extend his
efforts to improve education. Both his company and his
foundation have already improved many lives. He is
extremely intelligent and extraordinarily successful in
business and philanthropy and very powerful. So, the
"U.S. Education" section of his first annual letter is
too likely to be influential to go unread or unanswered.
However, in his letter,
Gates lumps together too closely these goals:
and these strategies:
-
Replicate school models that worked
the best
-
Develop better tools so teachers can
measure their own improvement
-
Spread best practices throughout the
education system
-
Learn why some teachers are so much
more effective than others
-
"Work with some of the best teachers
to put their lectures online as a model for other
teachers and as a resource for students."
We have several decades of attempts to
record and disseminate lectures via some kind of
telecommunications. Every few years, some new technological
capabilities are accompanied by exaggerated hopes and fears
that we can record and disseminate "the best lectures" in
ways that will improve almost everything. Within a few
years, the best of these options demonstrate lasting value
for limited purposes but fall far short of transforming
education. Putting lectures online is already happening at
a rapid pace, but most teachers and the vast majority of
learners do not accept recordings as alternatives to more
complex mixtures of media and activities - with good reason.
More widespread production and use of
such recordings is likely to be very helpful in providing
supplementary resources and useful models - as in MIT's Open Course
program. The widely respected
expertise of the MIT faculty and that institution's
commitment to very high intellectual standards ensures the
excellent "content" of the resulting sharable resources.
Making digital versions of several components of
an undergraduate course widely accessible can be
helpful both to students taking similar courses and to
teachers teaching similar courses - nationally and
internationally. Developing more varied kinds of such materials, accessible
in more varied formats, accessible to more teachers and
learners, will continue to be helpful - but not
transformative.
Whatever Gates might do to accelerate the
already ongoing expansion of production and use of such
recordings within one school or college or even within one
multiple campus system is also likely to be very helpful in
providing supplementary resources for courses.
But, as I said, I'm worried about the expectations
that may be raised by Gates' letter about recording some of
the "great teachers' lectures." I'm skeptical for these
reasons - my beliefs:
-
Variety of good and great teachers
There are many kinds of great teachers and many kinds of
good teachers.
-
Variety of recordability of good and
great teachers
Some of them teach and present in ways that can be
recorded and that will preserve and communicate some of
the qualities that make those teachers' work so
valuable. But others do not.
-
Variety of students for whom any
teacher is good or great
No teacher is great for every student all the time. Most
cannot even be good for every student all the
time. Teachers can be
very good for some students and terrible for others.
Fortunately, most teachers are good enough - and trying
to be better - for most students, most of the time.
-
Inability of some good and some great
teachers to describe or transmit their capabilities
Some of the most important, most powerful
characteristics that make some teachers great can hardly
be described in words at all - especially by some of
those teachers themselves.
[Quibble: I wonder if Gates means
something more like "very good teachers" when he talks about
"great teachers." I've only encountered a few teachers who
were considered "great" by myself or anyone else I've
known. I feel quite fortunate that I've had many teachers
who were very good for me at certain stages of my
education. And in all my work with hundreds of colleges and
many schools, the majority of the teachers were
pretty good for the majority of the students, and the vast
majority of teachers try hard to help their own
students learn better.
But I certainly agree with Gates'
letter
that the overall situation is far from good enough. Too
many students, their families, and their teachers should not
accept the inadequate education that is available.]
Summary of Main Points and Some
Excerpts
Gates makes these main
points about pre-college education in the United States:
-
Too many children do
not have good school opportunities.
-
Too many small schools,
even with grants, did not make significant improvements
in student achievement and graduation rates.
-
Many schools with
grants did make significant improvements. They had
these characteristics:
-
high expectations for
students' achievement
-
longer school days
-
engaging all of each
student's abilities
-
help their teachers be
more effective in the classroom
"It
is amazing how big a difference a great teacher makes versus
an ineffective one. Research shows that there is only half
as much variation in student achievement between schools as
there is among classrooms in the same school. If you want
your child to get the best education possible, it is
actually more important to get him assigned to a great
teacher than to a great school."
"Unlike scientists developing a vaccine, it is hard to test
with scientific certainty what works in schools. If one
school’s students do better than another school’s, how do
you determine the exact cause? But the difficulty of the
problem does not make it any less important to solve."
Above
excerpts from
"U.S. Education" section in 2009 Annual Letter from Bill
Gates - January 28, 2009.
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Email message text - Intro from
Steve Gilbert 2/3/2009
I'm worried
about Bill Gates' commitment to "learn why some teachers are
so much more effective than others." I'm worried about the
expectations that may be raised, but not about the value of
the effort. I worry that Gates' letter may
once again raise
exaggerated hopes and fears that by using some new
technology we can record and disseminate "the best" lectures
in ways that will improve almost everything about higher
education.
I also worry that Gates' initiative may be
limited only to the kinds of admirable teaching that can be
most easily detected or confirmed.
I hope that
when Gates identifies teachers to provide "model[s] for
other teachers and as a resource for students," he will
include great, or even good, teachers from BOTH these
categories:
A. Teachers
who are willing and able to describe successful elements of
their own teaching and to help colleagues make similar
improvements.
B. Teachers
who are good or great in ways that cannot be so easily
described - even by themselves - or emulated by others.
The
education section of Bill Gates' first Annual Letter offers
insights, support, hope, and confusion. He accepts the
challenge of improving education, especially high school
graduation rates, and says:
"…the
difficulty of the problem does not make it any less
important to solve."
"Whenever I talk to teachers, it is clear
that they want to be great, but they need better tools so
they can measure their progress and keep improving. So our
new strategy focuses on learning why some teachers are so
much more effective than others and how best practices can
be spread throughout the education system so that the
average quality goes up. We will work with some of the best
teachers to put their lectures online as a model for other
teachers and as a resource for students."
Above
excerpts from the second to last
paragraph of "U.S. Education" section in 2009 Annual Letter
from Bill Gates - January 28, 2009. I recommend that
you read at least the "U.S. Education" section of Gates'
first annual letter:
http://www.gatesfoundation.org/annual-letter/.
Steve
Gilbert, President, The TLT Group
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