What Are The Characteristics Of A Quality Teacher?

Most educators, parents, students, and teachers  know that a "quality teacher" is important to a student's academic achievement.  However, the term "quality teacher" means different things to different people.  For example Mayor Bloomberg thinks a "quality teacher" is a low salaried temporary instructor who will leave the teaching profession before they earn a pension.  For education reformers like the misguided "Bill Gates" its the teacher that uses the "drill and kill" method to achieve good results on "high stakes testing".  For education reformers like Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee, and Dennis Walcott it's those teachers that are willing to toe the administrative line without complaint or be fired.  Of course the majority of us know what the characteristics of a "quality teacher" is.

What are the characteristics of a "quality teacher"?  They are listed below.

• A personal and emotional connection with the students.
• A deep knowledge of curriculum.
• Good classroom management skills.
• Repeated and demostrated student academic achievement.
• Respected by the students. as knowledgeable and caring about them.

However, our nation's politicians, lead by Iowa Democrat Tom Harkin has falsely defined a "quality teacher" as a "newbie" from alternate teacher certification programs such as the "two year wonders" from Teach For America and the "one and done" Teaching Follows program. How can "newbies" be considered "quality teachers"?  Easy, if there is enough political pressure by school districts who practice "education on the cheap" policy and try to fool the parents by hiring inexpensive teachers with little or no classroom experience as "quality teachers".  This absurdity is taken to the extreme in Chicago where many teachers lost their job as schools closed but the Chicago school system encouraged the schools to hire "newbie teachers" from Teach For America while senior teachers went on the unemployment lines.  If  Mayor Bloomberg had his way, the same would be true in New York City.

Our children deserve "quality teachers" along with small classes sizes, adequate resources, and supportive administration to academically succeed  To falsely claim that recruiting college graduates with 3.0 grade point averages who are clueless about what it takes to be a good teacher and for most is simply a "stepping stone" to bigger and better positions is not what's best for the children.  This leads to a sub-par education and an unstable school environment due to staff turnover. 

The fallacy that "newbie teachers", especially from alternate certification programs like Teach For America, are "quality teachers" must be exposed as a fraud on our children.  A "quality teacher" is a teacher that meets the characteristics I have outlined and we all know to be true.

My Cooperative Learning And Testing Class

I am in a an excellent school, with great students, wonderful peers and a very supportive Administration.  However, even in the best schools there will always be students who have difficulty handling the academic and behavioral discipline of a school environment.  The school, to their credit, has tried various measures to encourage these potential dropouts to finish school and earn a high school diploma.  One way is to create a class environment that separates them from the rest of the student body and give them classes that earn them credits needed to graduate high school.  These classes are for seniors or super seniors who failed in the regular school session.  These "last chance" classes for these struggling students and for the most part, the students do understand and appreciate this final chance to graduate with the rest of the school.  Unfortunately, these classes have been only partially successful as many of these students fail to live up to the academic and/or behavioral discipline that is necessary for graduation.
 
I have one of these classes and in a roster of 34, I have between 12 to 15 who show up on a regular basis.  For the most part, these students are seniors or super seniors who want to get the credits they need to graduate.  However, unlike my other classes, these students suffer from terrible work habits developed over their last 4 to 6 years of secondary school and maybe back to elementary school.  Moreover, since many of them are 18 or older, they have part time jobs or children care duties that interfere with their school attendance. Many of them lack self-esteem and believe nobody cares about them.  The question is how do you get the students to buy into education when the reason they are in the class in the first place is their lack of enthusiasm for education?

There are no real answers to that education question, except to show them that you really do care about their future.  I have found that I am able to reach them by showing that I care about their well-being and listen to their problems.  They respond in kind by trying to do the right thing such as behaving and doing work.  However, a caring teacher is only half the battle for these students to succeed academically. The second part is much more difficult and that is to change their terrible work habits that has been their problem for many years.  A common theme for these students is to do as little work as possible and hope the teacher gives them a 65%.  Unfortunately, many teachers did not pass these students and give up on them during the previous years and in turn, the students gave up on themselves.

At first, I tried to teach my senior class like the rest of my classes and realized that the students were not willing or capable of working like my other classes.  They needed to be given more worksheets and work together in solving problems.  While some teachers may see this, giving out worksheets, is a lazy way to teach, I have found that for this group of students, that giving them worksheets, along with good instruction and making sure the worksheets are rigorous and relevant allowed the students to work in teams and to complete their tasks.  Moreover, I found that giving them a test that allows hem to work together achieved much greater results academically then having them take the test individually.  While I admit their are some drawbacks to this "cooperative testing" approach but at this stage it seems to working.  The students appear more confident academically and their behavioral issues are less. 

While my approach is a "work in progress". I believe it is working and the students have better work habits, are showing academic improvement and with few behavioral issues. Most importantly, attendance is stabilizing and it is good to see the students showing up most every day and willing to work.   I can only hope these little steps by my students academically results in a big step for them, that is graduating in the school.

To Be An Effective Teacher You Need The Proper Resources, Administrative Support, And Most Of All, An Enforceable Student Discipline Policy.

I keep hearing the Emperor, Michael Bloomberg, and his poodle, Chancellor Dennis Walcott claim that they want "effective teachers" in the classroom.  However for a teacher to be "effective" the teacher must have the necessary tools to achieve that designation and that is the problem.  What the Bloomberg Administration fails to do to is to provide the tools to make a teacher "effective",  The City fails to provide resources and support to help the classroom teacher to become a quality teacher.  Even the usually Mayor friendly New Teacher Project identified the many failures of the Mayor's education policy in the New York City Public Schools.  According to the TNTP report the following problems were found and need to be addressed.

• Poor retention rates with 15% leaving yearly considered " effective or highly effective".
• Poor working conditions that result in a  low 50% retention rate within five years of teaching.
• Poor school cultures.
• Lack of Administrative support, especially principal leadership issues.
• Lack of resources.

Mind you, this report is by a pro-reform group and even they could not ignore the failures that the Bloomberg Administration has brought on to the New York City Public School students.  The report could, and should have added the following problems that hurt student academic achievement and they are,

• Increasing class size
• Lack of an enforceable student discipline code.
• poor teacher morale.
• lack of respect for teachers by the Bloomberg Administration.

Of all the problems listed above I find that the failure of the DOE and school Administration to enforce the student discipline code is the most serious obstacle for effective classroom teaching. When students realize that the Administration will not back up the teacher, the teacher is then handicapped and it is unreasonable to believe that a teacher in a low preforming school with high poverty rates and large percentages of Special Education and English Language Learners would be able to achieve high test scores without these children getting extensive wraparound services and a zero-tolerance discipline policy.

Teachers who work with the academically-challenged population must have not only Administrative support but his or her student's family must receive professional assistance and the student should have after-school programs and services to  help them academically as well as behaviorally.  Presently, the City does not offer adequate wraparound services to these children, instead it it easier for the Mayor and Chancellor to blame teachers for the student's failure to behave and succed academically rather then provide the necessary wraparound services for student academic achievement.

The best method to improve student academic achievement is to enforce student discipline and get these disruptive students the help they and their family needs so that the teacher can become the "effective teacher"  that the Mayor and Chancellor claim they want/  All other strategies fall behind the most important factor and that is a peaceful classroom where students can learn without disruptions from a behaviorally-challenged student.

There Is No Excuse Mayor Bloomberg And Chancellor Walcott For Your Failure To Narrow The Racial Achievement Gap. Instead It Actually Widened!

With the release of the 2012 test scores for the elementary and middle schools the data shows that the student  racial achievement gap has widened since 2006.  As Mayor Bloomberg's ed deformer friends would say, there are no excuses for the widening of the racial achievement gap if his educational policies were working.  Therefore, the Mayor and Chancellor must take the blame and the "accountability" for their failure to narrow the racial student achievement gap between whites and minorities.  

In 2006 the ELA racial achievement gap between Blacks and Whites was 30.5% which has widened to 32.1% in the latest 2012 results.  The differences between Hispanics and Whites in 2006 was 30.7% and widened to 33.1% in 2012.  The racial achievement gap also widened between Blacks and Whites for Math.  In 2006 the racial achievement gap was 29.4% and in the 2012 results widened to 31.6%.  One bit of good news is that the achievement gap between Hispanics and Whites actually narrowed a little..  The entire report can be found on the DOE website.

Malsie McAdoo has taken apart the entire report and her conclusions, which I share, show that the Bloomberg/Klein/Walcott reforms have been a failure and even the miniscule rises in the school report are questionable.  Her analysis is in Edwize and can be found here.

To read and hear the Mayor's press releases, one would think that the schools were improving.  However, these statements are higher distorted truths and downright lies.  In other words the Mayor's claim of significant improvement of student academic achievement is a "bunch of crap" The bottom line is that the local news media must hold the Mayor and Chancellor "accountable" for the widening racial student achievement gap and question the failed policies of this Administration that has put their political motives first and the "NYC public school children last.

Good Parenting Skills Are The Prime Factor In Student Academic Success.

Over the last few years I have written about why parents are the primary factor in student learning.  Even the Emperor, Michael Bloomberg has  lately realized how important parents are in their children's academic success and ripped them for not helping their children to achieve academic competence.  Of course this is very different than the education reformers wanted to hear.  These reformers, otherwise known as deformers, claim that a child's academic success depends on their teacher and not their upbringing.  This very flawed vision is known as "no excuses" and deformers like ex-Chancellor Joel Klein and Michelle Rhee were strident supporters of this approach. Just read what these middle school students, who likely come from poverty and single parent households in East New York, acted at the World Trade Center Memorial.  Is that the school's fault or do we place the blame squarely on the primary cause of their misbehavior, the lack of discipline in the family.

Study after study has shown that the social-economic influences in a child's family and community are approximately 80% of a student's academic success.  How is a child going to learn when there are no books in a house, a parent to help with homework, and worse, allowing the child to roam the streets at all hours of the night!  No wonder they are always sleeping in class. Where is the parent's responsibility to make sure that the child actually arrives at school  on time , if at all?   Are they fed properly? Why fault the school when the parents are the cause of truant and hungry students?  That brings me to Michael Goodwin's article that identifies the root cause of poor student academic performance and that is the parents.  While I do not agree with some of his conclusions such as Catholic Schools are better, I do agree with him that parents are the primarily cause of student success academically.

While a "quality teacher" small class sizes, and adequate school resources are all important factors in a student's academic success, the most important factor is the student's family and even the Emperor has reluctantly realized it.  Instead of wasting money and resources on failed options like
Turnaround schools" the Mayor should spend the money on wraparound services that help support the family structure and their involvement in the schools.

The Proposed DOE Weakening Of The Student Discipline Policy Will Further Encourage The Lack Of Student Responsibility.

Chancellor Dennis Walcott has proposed a significant weakening of the student discipline policy, especially in the classroom.  For example students can no longer be suspended for cursing at a teacher, using their cell phones or ipods in the classroom, or defy a lawful command by the teacher.  Moreover, the student can no longer be removed from the classroom for excessive lateness or their failure to work in class.  These new rules are in draft form and can be found here. What is really amazing is that our next potential Mayor, Christine Quinn, otherwise known as Michael Bloomberg lite, wants to weaken it even more.  Just unbelievable.  Maybe these people should spend some time in the classroom before they develop these flawed education policy directives.


The new draft regulations recommend counseling for many student infractions and limits teacher authority to remove a student from the classroom. Weakening the student discipline code is short-sighted and harmful for the student in the long term.  What the weakening of the student discipline code will do is to further reduce student responsibility and make them ill-prepared for the adult world.  I have seen first hand what happens to a school when the Administration allows the students to run the school. 

Can you imagine a student who went through high school showing up late to class, always text messaging in the classroom, and frequently being unprepared to work (no notebook or pen) and the only thing that happened to him or her was to take an occasional  online "credit recovery" course that took less than a week to finish.  The result is that the students  receives an undeserved diploma. In my present school this happens far to many times and is a way to artificially raise the graduation rate.

Now this academically unprepared student tries to join the work force and since he or she is used to showing up late, having poor work habits, and disrespects authority guess what happens?  Right the now ex-student cannot hold a job because companies will not tolerate lateness, poor work, or lack of respect.
These ex-students move from short-term low paying job to the next and may never become a productive member of society and the reason is that the schools never held these students responsible for their poor academic work.  I actually saw this at my usual breakfast spot. 

Rather than weaken the student discipline code, we should strengthen it and hold students responsible if they are to become responsible and productive adults. Did the Chancellor ever hear of "tough love"?  Oops, there I go again using a bad word (love) I hope the Chancellor does not sic SCI on me.

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Why Doesn't The News Media Challenge Mayor Bloomberg's False Claim That He Has Reduced The Student Achievement Gap By 50%?

In an "Education Now" meeting in Washington D.C. the Mayor falsely boasted that his Administration has reduced the student achievement gap by an astounding 50% and that proves that "Mayoral Control" is on the right path to improve the New York City Schools. However, except for various education critics, the news media accepted the Mayor's false conclusions without question.

The Mayor falsely claimed that under his Administration the student achievement gap between "Asians & Whites" and "Blacks & Latinos" was narrowed by 50%. Yet not one newspaper or local network reporter questioned the Mayor's absolutely false and self-serving statement. Instead, the news media simply reported the Mayor's false boasts without checking it for accuracy. Is this simply incompetent journalism, or something much worse? Like being the Mayor's propaganda mouthpiece?

• The reality about the student achievement gap is that it has hardly budged since the Mayor took office. In the Gotham Schools Community, Aaron Pallas, in his "Emperor's New Close" showed what the real changes were between the achievement gap for "Asians & Whites" and "Blacks & Latinos". Since 2003 Mr. Pallas found that using the New York State tests for grades three through eight that the achievement gap narrowed by just 1% not 50%. Maybe the Mayor was talking about the "gold standard of the federal NAEP test" that tested fourth through eighth graders? Sorry, Mr. Pallas found that the achievement gap between "Asians & Whites" and "Blacks & Latinos" actually increased by 3%! What about the high school students? I wrote a column that showed the large and growing larger racial achievement gap in SAT scores between the two groups since 2007 Here. Worse, the racial achievement gap is wider in New York City than in other large cities and in some cases actually doubled Here. Unbelievable, that the Mayor can blatantly lie and not be challenged by the news media.

I guess that the news media rather bash and shame teachers than print the disturbing truth that the Mayor's education policies are failing, just like their media journalists who fail to independently investigate the false claims by the Mayor and his poodle the Chancellor.

My Idea To Improve Student Academic Achievement In The New York City Public High Schools.

I have gone to many schools this year and watched the different ideas on how to improve student academic achievement. These ideas range from pretesting students with a test before giving them the same test two days later (I call this cheating) to fudging scholarship grades of students who don't even come close to passing the dumbed down entry level Regents and endanger not only the next group of teachers who now have to explain to the Administration why these students who were given undeserved grades in the 70's and 80's aren't passing the harder course the next year but also allows students to believe that they don't need to work hard to graduate high school. Moreover, too many schools use technology as a crutch and not an aid to student learning. Just look at the explosion of "credit recovery programs" that artificially increase the school's graduation rate while having an abysmal "career and college readiness" percentage.

One of the most overriding issues is the lack of student discipline in many of the schools and that must be blamed on the school's Administration. I have seen first-hand when the Administration takes charge how the school tone changes and the academic improvement that results from it. Too many schools allow cellphones, ipods, and thuggish clothes (hip-hop pants with the underwear showing) and students who fail to go to class as an acceptable or tolerated practice. The result is that the school academics eventually fail. However, if you look at the better schools, student discipline is not an issue. Strict enforcement of student discipline is part of the answer to improving student academic achievement.

Just as important in improving student academic achievement is putting teachers and students together in groups, when possible. For example all 136 students have the same core course teachers (English, Math, Science, Social Studies) who meet in their professional period to discuss their students. How is the student progressing? Is the student only acting up in one class or all four? Is the student having personal issues that one teacher knows about and can alert the others? This four teacher group can better work with the student and the parents to bring out the academic potential. In some cases, after freshman year it can be a logistical nightmare. However, if done properly, the student will have a knowledgeable corps of teachers who can readily design a program to improve the student's academic achievement.

For those students that are having academic or behavioral issues that are beyond the capability of the core teachers, they will receive specific counseling services from Guidance, the Social Worker, and other professionals who work with problem students. While my approach is not a solution to an increasingly vexing problem in the New York City High Schools, it is certainly worth a try in my version of "children first".

Droopy Pants And Poor Academic Achievement In Male Students Seem To Have A Correlation, So I Have Observed.

In my travels as an ATR I have been in eight high schools and observed each school's culture. Being in the classroom and after speaking to many Deans and teachers there seems to be a correlation between how low male students keep their pants and the grades they receive.

Apologists will tell you that it is simply prejudice by teachers who give these boys low grades because they wear these droopy pants with their underwear showing. The reality is that many of these boys show disrespect to school staff and their peers and the droopy pants are simply an expression of that disrespect for others. Even some community leaders have expressed disgust of this prison-inspired dress. A few schools I have been in tolerate the droopy pants look and their tolerance of this dress and thuggish behavior is reflected in the school's poor grades and terrible academic performance. By contrast the better schools with good academic performance have very few male students that wear droopy pants and the few who do are told to pull up their pants. In the high-achieving specialized school I was at not one male student wore droopy pants!

The Deans tell me that the boys who wear their pants so low that their underwear show all the time are also the students must likely to "dropout" or need massive "credit recovery" to graduate. The CTT teachers echo this and add that these boys tend to sit in the back of the room, away from the teacher and instruction, and have to be reminded repeatedly to take off their hats and hoods. The same teachers say when they try to reach out to these students it is "like pulling teeth" to get them to participate in any academic activity and quite a few simply go to sleep. By contrast the honor classes in the same schools have no male students wearing droopy pants and are actually embarrassed when a fellow classmate points out that their low-riding pants are so low that the top of their underwear is showing (I saw it myself twice).

Yes, I know the apologists will claim that teenagers should express themselves and that teenagers are naturally rebellious. However, droopy pants are more than simply an expression of being a teenager. In this case, the male student's droopy pants is associated with disrespect of school staff, fellow students, and is correlated with poor academic achievement.

Think what you like but "the truth is the truth" that male students who wear these droopy paints with their underwear showing, are associated with poor academic achievement and schools that tolerate this type of dress are destined to continue to fail the students academically.

Mayor Bloomberg's & Chancellor Klein's "Big Lie" Of Academic Progress Is Exposed By The New York State Test Results.

The results of the 2010 New York State reading and math tests are in and the numbers are bad, really bad. The composite math passing rate declined to 54% passing from a 2009 figure of 82%. That is a whopping decline of 34%! Worse, was the composite reading passing grade declined to 42% from a 2009 rate of 69%, an unbelievable decline of 39%! Moreover, the Mayor and Chancellor's pride and joy, the Charter schools, had even worse results, with corresponding declines of 39% and 42% in math and reading respectively. These dismal academic numbers are a result of a more comprehensive testing protocol by the State and is in line with core academic skills recommended by Harvard Professor Daniel Koretz whose team found that the New York State tests were too easy and not comprehensive enough as a reliable indicator for academic proficiency.

Even the usually reliable Bloomberg & Klein media mouthpieces couldn't sugarcoat the terrible results. Here, Here, Here, and Here. However, the New York Post editorial did try to blame the State for the dismal test scores but also rightly questioned the academic gains the City claimed for the past four years. While the New York Daily News editorial gave the Administration a pass by falsely claiming that there was academic advancement. Where did they get that from? The NAEP which they have ignored for years and then cherry-picked the reading statistics. As well as the Math statistics. The question I have is now that the New York State test results show that the academic gains were an illusion, do all those "Leadership Academy Principals" get the real school grade they richly deserve? the answer is of course not. Already the DOE has said that the school grades will be marked on a curve. However, what is exposed is the Mayor's and Chancellor's "children last" policy which includes starving the schools of funds, increased class sizes, "education on the cheap" programs, an unfair strident funding formula, and misspent funds on non-classroom items. A must read is the article by Leonie Harrison "A Teachable Moment" that exposes Bloomberg and Klein for what they really are. Liars, and cheats when it comes to manipulating data to suit their propaganda. How about the City's claim of narrowing the achievement gap between white and black students? You guessed it. It is an illusion. The achievement gap actually widened from 17% last year to 34% this year, (41.3% between Asian and black students this year compared to 20% in 2009) which is the same as 2005. In fact, according to NY1, the racial academic achievement gap is as wide as it was before Mayor Bloomberg took over in 2002. More phony gains exposed as being an illusion. However, in a press conference with Chancellor Joel Klein, Mayor Bloomberg still claimed academic progress despite the numbers. Incredible, I guess Joseph Goebbels would be proud of how the Mayor and Chancellor continues to sell the "big lie" of academic progress hoping the public actually believes it. Now that the "big lie" of academic progress is now exposed, just ignore the data and continue claiming academic progress. Or maybe the Mayor and Chancellor were simply being Abbott and Costello when it comes to Math, considering how they manipulate statistics. To say the least, both the Mayor and Chancellor has a credibility problem and should be held accountable for their lies.

It is about time that the Administration's "children last" policy is exposed and shows that there has been no real academic improvement in the New York City Schools. It is time that educators regain control of the New York City schools if there are to be real academic progress for our children.

Update: Please read Juan Gonzalez's article about how the "kids are the big losers in the Mayor Bloomberg, Joel Klein School Test Scores Game". A must read.