Phi Delta Kappan

When PDK’s leaders created Kappan, in 1915, they saw the publication of this magazine as an essential means of building and sustaining their profession. By reading, writing about, and discussing the problems facing public education, schoolteachers and administrators determine their shared values, beliefs, principles, practices, and norms. In this month’s issue, contributors offer a similar prescription for the teaching profession today: What’s needed now are more opportunities for educators to engage in serious and ongoing conversation about their work and how to improve it.

The nature of the teaching profession has been a frequent topic in Phi Delta Kappan. Teresa Preston reviews what Kappan authors have written about the meaning of professionalism in teaching, how teacher unions and collective bargaining have contributed to perceptions of the profession, and how teacher quality has been defined.

Previous efforts to strengthen the teaching profession have aimed to copy the ways in which law, medicine, and architecture achieved that status — for example, by carving out decision-making autonomy, controlling who enters the field, and building a specialized knowledge base. What has been missing, however, have been efforts to clarify precisely what it is that accomplished teachers do in the classroom and to develop a common language with which to describe and discuss teaching practice.

The question of whether teaching is a profession, with all the status and responsibilities that entails, is not as settled as some believe. Emma García and Elaine Weiss look at the requirements and characteristics of a profession and examine data from teachers and find that teaching, as currently experienced by teachers, does not measure up to the traits of a profession, though it would merit the status,. Although teaching has credentialing requirements, many teachers lack the credentials associated with effectiveness. In addition, teachers do not receive the professional support needed to grow professionally, and they lack the societal respect and influence other professions enjoy. Teachers also receive lower pay than their peers, and many experience emotionally and physically damaging work environments.

Licensure tests play a critical role in any profession. Well-designed tests both delineate the core competencies that are required to enter a profession and provide evidence that candidates can safely practice in the profession. They also identify the professional knowledge and skill that differentiates any educated individual from the well-prepared professional. Geoffrey Phelps and Gary Sykes use a series of assessment tasks to illustrate how teacher licensure testing can be designed to focus more directly on assessing aspiring educators’ performance of the professional competencies that make up the day-to-day and moment-to-moment work of teaching.

Accreditation agencies and organizations calling for higher academic standards in the teaching profession have called for increasing minimum grade point averages and scores on standardized tests. However, it’s not clear that these requirements actually improve teaching. Lisa Borden-King, Warren Gamas, Kathy Hintz, and Chelsie Hultz researched whether teacher candidates’ scores on the Core Academic Skills Tests for Educators or their grade point averages correlated with scores on final student-teaching evaluations. They found no correlation between test scores and GPAs and how well teacher candidates performed as student teachers. They propose that, instead of focusing on standardized tests as admission criteria, teacher education programs should incorporate more clinical practice time, with opportunities for feedback that candidates can use to improve their teaching or decide not to enter the profession.

Teachers have historically been at the margins of educational improvement, and they are just beginning to drive improvements in the profession. Networked improvement communities (NICs) are one approach for collective reprofessionalization of teaching, where practice is defined and managed by practitioners. Edit Khachatryan and Emma Parkerson offer insight into the social organization of a NIC and use two real and mature networks — the Network to Transform Teaching and the National Writing Project — to describe how NICs structure roles and relationships and foster vital norms and identities among professionals.

Kappan’s editor-in-chief talks with renowned scholar Susan Moore Johnson about her extensive research into the professional lives of public school teachers. For decades, studies have shown that teaching tends to be isolating work, with few opportunities for teachers to collaborate with and learn from each other or to play meaningful roles in school decision making. In her most recent book, however, Johnson describes the much more supportive professional culture she observed in a group of successful schools in a high-poverty urban district.

An analysis of school district spending across the U.S. reveals 66 districts where the students face much greater needs than in surrounding districts (i.e., child poverty is more than 20% higher) but where per-pupil spending is less than 90% of the region’s average. This not only means that they have less money to spend on children who require more expensive services and supports, but it also puts them at a competitive disadvantage when it comes to hiring and retaining high-quality teachers and staff from the local area. These districts tend to be located in small to mid-size cities, and they serve disproportionately large numbers of Latinx students.

Little attention has been given to better understanding how to effectively evaluate the work of instructional coaches. This study by Evthokia Stephanie Saclarides and Sarah Theule Lubienski illustrates how a new evaluation system for coaches was implemented in one mid-size, urban district. They describe two ways in which the Evaluation Tool detracted from the coaches’ work to foster teacher improvement. Furthermore, they provide suggestions for school districts to consider when evaluating their coaches.

Bureaucracies are often perceived as inflexible, impersonal, hierarchical, and too devoted to rules and red tape. But David Labaree makes a case for these characteristics being a positive in the world of public education. U.S. schools are built within a liberal democratic system, where the liberal pursuit of self-interest is often in tension with the democratic pursuit of egalitarianism. In recent years, Labaree argues, schools have tilted toward the liberal side, enabling privileged families to game the system to help their children get ahead. In such a system, an impersonal bureaucracy stands as a check that ensures that the democratic side of schooling, in which all children are treated equally, remains in effect.

Donna Isaac and her students were looking forward to a field trip to Minneapolis to see a theatrical production of some of the stories they were studying in class. But that changed when, on the day of the trip, a parade was scheduled to celebrate the Minnesota Twins’ recent World Series win. School was cancelled so students could attend the parade, but it was too late to cancel the trip. Students were disappointed to miss the celebration, and the crowds filled the streets the group was supposed to traverse. Despite the disastrous day, Isaac continues to believe field trips are worth it, even when they don’t go as planned.

The Every Student Succeeds Act, passed by Congress in 2015, was meant to rein in the over-testing of public school students. Since then, however, standardized testing hasn’t eased up much, and it isn’t likely to go away anytime soon, notes PDK’s CEO Joshua P. Starr. As long as our schools are required to administer frequent tests, he argues, school system leaders should use the resulting data as best they can, letting it inform their interactions with community members, parents, educators, students, and colleagues in the central office.

Education issues often get attention during presidential elections, even though education is primarily a state and local issue. Maria Ferguson looks at how the 2020 presidential campaigns have dealt with such education issues as the plight of teachers and the value of charter schools. In many instances, these issues have been controversial, but they don’t generally stay in the spotlight for the entire campaign season.

A recent case in Maryland raises the question of how state policies related to school funding apply to religious schools with discriminatory practices. A private Maryland school was denied voucher funds when the state learned that the school’s handbook required that dress codes, pronoun use, and restroom choice align with a student’s sex assigned at birth. The school sued, claiming that the policy was not discriminatory because it does not apply to student admission. Suzanne Eckes and Julie Mead consider this case in light of past cases involving school discrimination.

Phyllis Fagell offers advice to educators dealing with professional problems. In this monthly column, a teacher wonders if they should worry about a principal’s directive to stop being sarcastic with students. A male principal wants to know how to appropriately manage an otherwise promising young female teacher’s unprofessional language and dress.

In a recent survey, 36% of college admissions officers said they viewed applicants’ social media profiles. As of the end of 2019, 14 U.S. states have begun requiring some form of media literacy education.

PDK International’s 2019 travel program offered scholarships that enabled teachers to learn about the world and bring those lessons back to students. PDK member Anne Tomlin reports on her visit to Finland. The deadline to renew PDK memberships before dues increase has been extended to March 31. Volunteers are needed for the 2020 PDK Conference.

Students who come from wealthy families and schools often have an advantage when it comes to science fairs. Parents with the time and resources to do so often get involved in every stage of the science fair project, enabling their students to create projects that are far beyond what they could achieve on their own. Todd L. Pittinsky suggests adding constraints by requiring students to develop projects based on a small list of items. Such constraints would not only spark student creativity, they would help level the playing field.