What makes a good teacher? Debate goes on

December 28, 2008 at 12:00a.m.

CLEVELAND (AP) — Researchers who agree that good teaching is invaluable to student learning struggle to determine what makes a great educator.

Factors up for debate include teacher training, state certification, an advanced degree and years of experience, according to a package of Saturday stories by The Plain Dealer.

Adam Gamoran, interim dean at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Education, says the question has been studied for more than a century.

Researchers focused first on personality, then qualifications, then work done in the classroom.

“It’s a hard nut to crack,” Gamoran said. “The things that are easy to measure don’t matter that much, and the things that matter aren’t easy to measure.”

The National Council on Teacher Quality concludes that, among other factors determining a teacher’s skill:

UMaster’s and other advanced degrees don’t appear to improve teachers’ effectiveness, although such degrees along with experience largely determine how much teachers are paid.

UThe value of classroom experience seems to level off or become unpredictable after the first four or five years.

UAttributes such as a sense of responsibility and the ability to motivate count for a lot.

Jennifer Walker, a Youngstown high school teacher who is Ohio’s teacher of the year, says teaching is both an art and a science.

“I could tout my degrees, grade-point averages and certifications, but if I didn’t have a genuine love for students, I would be nothing in the classroom,” she said.

Walker also said the best educators know their subject and state standards well.

“Good teachers don’t waste their precious time complaining about the Ohio achievement and graduation tests; they find strategies to help their students learn,” she said.

Teachers have become accountable for the performance of every child in the classroom since the passage of the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

That law requires scores to be analyzed by a variety of factors, from income to race to English fluency.

Some teachers resent the way their success in the classroom can be so closely monitored, while others use the data to their advantage by pinpointing individual students’ strengths and weaknesses.

The state has established a number of professional development programs for teachers. Those include mentoring young teachers, encouraging educators to become nationally certified and establishing a “master teacher” designation.

Critics of teacher performance sometimes point to teachers of the past, many of whom did their job well without such programs and incentives.

But Eric Gordon, chief academic officer for the Cleveland Public Schools, says the pressure to be accountable has created an entirely new ball game for teachers.

“There is a toxic nostalgia that suggests in past generations every child was able to read, write and compute well, when in fact large numbers of students dropped out after eighth grade to work in factories or graduated high school without reading,” Gordon said.