Good evidence shows that we’re stuck in a “learning recession.” We also need to consider the likelihood of a connected recession in something indispensable to student learning, namely effective teaching.
I often invite audiences to identify the same missing word in three eerily similar quotes by reputable educators over two decades. Each laments the gradual disappearance of something central to effective schooling. By the second quote, most of the audience correctly guesses that the missing word is indeed teaching.
The most recent example comes from author and consultant Michael Sonbert, whose observations in thousands of classrooms demonstrate that, however hard they work, “teachers aren’t teaching.” That is, they rarely provide explicit, sustained, whole-class lessons.
Instead, they’re more prone than ever to facilitate—to have individuals or groups complete assignments on screens or worksheets, often at their own (sometimes dawdling) pace. Sonbert dubs this shift the “biggest trend in teaching today.” It is tacitly confirmed by the photos that dominate education publications, which illustrate the pervasiveness of group activities involving crayons and colored markers.
None of my audiences balks at these findings.
Alarmed by this trend, a superintendent and assistant superintendent in Connecticut did some digging and reported their findings in an article titled “What’s Missing in Teacher Prep.” They made two discoveries. First, that their teachers had graduated from 17 different pre-service programs. Second, that none of them had received any “practical experience” in the most vital elements of instruction—like “checking for understanding.”
Similarly, in a Fordham Institute piece in 2020 called “Training teachers to fail,” two Minnesota teachers decry the preparation they received from two well-known ed schools. “Oddly enough,” they write, “we were not trained in how to actually teach” (their emphasis). They were warned, moreover, not to be seen “at the front of the room” during observations. Good thing, as they received “minimal to nonexistent training in effective whole-group instruction.”
I’ve observed this pattern in countless classroom tours. In one large district, we set out to find teachers who taught in a sequence of calibrated steps punctuated by checks for understanding and re-teaching. We couldn’t find any, even in A+ schools. The teachers knew the terminology but not the execution.
We need not despair at these grim findings. They represent an opportunity for schools to make rapid, substantial achievement gains.
Explicit, structured instruction—inclusive of frequent student interaction—has a prodigious pedigree. It accounts for the success of the highest-achieving teachers and is indispensable to effective literacy-based lessons across the curriculum. In a study of urban school systems, it was found to have a “whopping” impact on student outcomes—but was as rare as it was effective.
Only hardened purists now reject the evidence that the right kind of direct, frontal instruction is hugely effective at every level, from kindergarten to university. As literacy expert Mark Seidenberg makes clear, it is integral to and must often precede successful discovery- or project-based teaching, which must be “closely coupled with explicit guidance and instruction.” Experts increasingly acknowledge that the best, conceptually oriented assignments typically combine appropriate amounts of “productive struggle” and “inquiry” with adequate amounts of modeling and guided, sequential, whole-class instruction. With proper training in such teaching, virtually every teacher would achieve significantly higher outcomes, almost immediately.
And there’s the rub.
Starbucks once had a nationwide, one-day shutdown to thoroughly re-train every employee on how to pull a good double shot—the foundation of the espresso business. We need a similar—if lengthier—pause to train or re-train every teacher in the fundamentals of effective teaching.
But what we glibly call “training” is more often mere presenting. That must change. Serious instructional training must be conducted like an effective lesson: Each element of effective, whole-class instruction must be explained and modeled, in manageable steps, with participants taking turns to practice with peers until they demonstrate adequate competence. That’s how I learned them in just a few hours, after which I benefited from targeted coaching. It’s how the best alternative certification programs operate.
Our promiscuous use of the word “training” has kept us from enjoying the fruits of what the New Yorker’s James Surowiecki has called a performance “revolution” in every sphere. He cites just one profession where rigorous, mastery-based training has yet to have a game-changing impact: education.
Small wonder. As Seidenberg observes, “Prospective teachers aren’t trained to teach.” Or as Robert Pondiscio tells us, “training is a dirty word” in most teacher-prep institutions. Among the most bizarre, quietly calamitous facts about U.S. education is this: Its premier research organization, the venerable American Educational Research Association (AERA), officially spurns the very idea of training practitioners because that doesn’t jibe with the Association’s ideologically driven culture.
Schools can’t afford to wait until ed schools outgrow, or are forced to shed, their longstanding hostility to praxis. Our best hope, right now, is to take on the difficult task of reorienting school- and district-based PD toward mastery-based training. Upon completion, teachers should immediately collect, share, and celebrate positive, measurable assessment results, starting with those from individual lessons. As Tom Guskey points out, such frequent “small wins” are the key to continuous, energized effort—and professional morale. We could use some of that right now.
This ain’t rocket science. It’s organizational effectiveness 101. Determine, then focus ferociously on, the highest-leverage practices; train and re-train to mastery; monitor and coach to ensure and refine implementation; praise and celebrate successes, early and often.
Any school or district could begin doing these things. How about this coming school year?
