Quality of Teaching in Wisconsin Deserves an 'A'
WEAC President Terry Craney has sent this letter to newspapers editors
throughout the state in response to a recent report issued by the magazine
Education Week.
Dear Editor:
If a sports magazine were to give Brett Favre a D- for the quality of
his quarterbacking, nobody would take it very seriously.
So it is perplexing to us that the media give any credence to the recent
Education Week report that appeared to give a low grade to the quality
of teaching in Wisconsin.
This state’s superb corps of teachers has made Wisconsin schools
among the best in the nation. Wisconsin students consistently score at
or near the top on the ACT and SAT and repeatedly far surpass almost all
other states on a variety of other assessments. Year after year the statistics
tell the story – Wisconsin schools are far superior to most, and
Wisconsin teachers are better prepared and more experienced than most.
Given this evidence, we could understand how a magazine might quibble
over whether Wisconsin teachers are the best or second best in the nation.
After all, some things are left to perspective and prejudice. But how
could Education Week take what is clearly one of the best and portray
it as one of the worst?
As they say, the devil is in the details.
Upon closer inspection, we learned that the Education Week analysis never
judged the quality of teaching, although it used “quality of teaching”
as a category. Interviewed on the Wisconsin Public Television program
“Weekend,” Lynn Olson, senior editor of Education Week and project
editor for the “Quality Counts” report said:
“We did not look at the quality of teachers in this state
or the quality of the teaching force - I want to be very clear about that.
What we were looking at was state policy.”
Education Week did not analyze student test scores. It did not go into
Wisconsin classrooms and observe teaching practices. It did not attempt
to make any kind of objective measurement of whether teachers are succeeding
with the children they teach.
The magazine judged the “quality of teaching” by the presence
or lack of specific government policies that help determine the process
for training and assessing teachers.
What would it take to go from a D- to an A under the Education Week criteria?
It would take nothing more than a 15-minute legislative session to adopt
policies identified in the Education Week report.
WEAC has long advocated these types of programs, including standards
and assessments for teachers, an independent state professional standards
council, and evaluation programs for new teachers.
However, Education Week is dead wrong is stating or implying that the
lack of these programs automatically leads to a low quality of teaching.
Wisconsin is proof positive that that is not the case.
We invite Education Week to do a comprehensive study of the true quality
of teaching in Wisconsin. We’re confident that the grade will be
an A.
Oh, yes, and we believe Brett Favre deserves an A too.
Sincerely,
Terry Craney
President
Wisconsin Education Association Council
Posted January 14, 1998