7/28/2019 Letter-2013-05-31-ver3

1/7

31 May 2013

Dear Secretary Duncan,

We are writing to share our vision for mathematics teaching and toadvocate for policies that will support this vision. We would like

mathematics teachingfrom PreKindergarten through college andbeyondto become a vigorous, vibrant profession that is designed forcontinuous improvement.

From our work with educators in other countries we are finding thatsystems that support teachers autonomy and professionalism, set ahigh bar to entry into the teaching profession, and foster ongoingdevelopment within learning communities produce an environment inwhich teaching and learning thrive. We think that in this country,systems should be developedor expandedin which teacherscollaborate, examine and discuss their work, use and build on each

others ideas, and seek to impress their peers with the quality of theirmethods and ideas. Such an environment could allow for excellence tobe achieved and demonstrated in various ways. It would push theteaching field forward, in much the same way as mathematics andscience make progress by sharing and building on ideas. It wouldcreate vigorous striving in the same way that the sciences do: by theneed to impress ones peers and the possibility of doing so in onesown way. Of course, the ultimate motivation for teachers is more anddeeper learning by students.

We have learned from Chinese teachers that to learn continually is a

central motto in education, that superrank teachers analyze andimprove the curriculum, and that testing is viewed as less critical thanin the U.S. (U.S. National Commission on Mathematics Instruction,2010). We have learned from Korean teachers that they have a strongand impressive teacher research culture, and that their systemsupports and nurtures such a culture.

Evidence in favor of developing systems in which teaching is anautonomous profession with a high bar to entry also comes fromFinland, where systemic changes led to improved teaching andlearning over the last several decades. While the U.S. has intensified

standardized testing and accountability since the 1990s, Finland atthat time emphasized teacher professionalism, school-basedcurriculum, trust-based educational leadership, and schoolcollaboration through networking. (Sahlberg, 2011). Indeed,Sahlbergs main message is that

there is another way to improve education systems. This includesimproving the teaching force, limiting student testing to a

1

7/28/2019 Letter-2013-05-31-ver3

2/7

necessary minimum, placing responsibility and trust beforeaccountability, and handing over school- and district-levelleadership to education professionals. These are commoneducation policy themes in some of the high performingcountriesFinland among themin the 2009 International

Programme for Student Assessment (PISA) of the OECD .(Sahlberg, 2011)

Finlands education system fits with Jal Mehtas vision, which hecontrasts with our own current system:

Teaching requires a professional model, like we have inmedicine, law, engineering, accounting, architecture and manyother fields. In these professions, consistency of quality iscreated less by holding individual practitioners accountable andmore by building a body of knowledge, carefully training peoplein that knowledge, requiring them to show expertise before they

become licensed, and then using their professions standards toguide their work.

By these criteria, American education is a failed profession.There is no widely agreed-upon knowledge base, training is briefor nonexistent, the criteria for passing licensing exams are muchlower than in other fields, and there is little continuousprofessional guidance. (Mehta, 2013)

We believe it is critical for teaching to be a respected profession andwe agree with Sahlberg that [a]s long as the practice of teachers is

not trusted and they are not respected as professionals, young talentis unlikely to seek teaching as their lifelong career anywhere. Or if theydo, they will leave teaching early because of lack of a respectfulprofessional working environment (Sahlberg, 2011). We areconcerned thatas stated in a teachers widely circulated resignationletter[w]e have become increasingly evaluation and not knowledgedriven (Strauss, 2013).

The need for professional, collaborative communities of teachers isfurther supported by findings from research on professionaldevelopment and school improvement. Research on professional

development in the U.S. and internationally indicates that collaborativeapproaches to professional learning and building strong workingrelationships among teachers are key components in improvingteachers practice and student learning (Darling-Hammond et al.,2009, p.5). At the school level, Bryk et al. (2010) found that having aprofessional community that uses public classroom practice, reflectivedialogue, peer collaboration, and collective responsibility for schoolimprovement with a specific focus on student learning is an important

2

7/28/2019 Letter-2013-05-31-ver3

3/7

indicator for school improvement. Relational trust was found to beessential for organizational change and for sustaining the hard work ofschool improvement.

Current education policy, including the Race to the Top law, and

especially the practice of evaluating teachers by their studentsperformance on high stakes assessments, will likely weaken, ratherthan strengthen, the teaching profession. Although the current policymay have intuitive appeal, a variety of evidence indicates it will notlead to sustained improvements in teaching and learning over the longterm. In fact, it is likely to lead to unproductive teaching practices andpoor outcomes, including narrowing of curricula, teaching to the test,less creative teaching, more superficial and nontransferable learning,more controlling behavior at all levels of power, more withdrawal ofeffort from at-risk students, and increased dropout rates (Ryan &Brown, 2005). We are especially concerned that current policy works

against the professionalization of teaching, that it reinforces a situationin which teachers do not own or control their profession, that it doesnot set teaching on a vigorous path of development and sustainableimprovement, and that it alienates and demoralizes teachers.

Some of the evidence against the practice of evaluating teachersbased on high stakes assessments comes from research on motivation.For example:

It is well established that use of salient extrinsic rewards to motivate work

behavior can be deleterious to intrinsic motivation and can thus have

negative consequences for psychological adjustment, performance on

interesting and personally important activities, and citizenship behavior.

(Gagne & Deci, 2005)

SDT [self-determination theory] research has found thatmotivation based on more controlled motives, such as rewards orpunishments (external regulations), or self-esteem-basedpressures (e.g., ego involvement) is associated with lower qualityof learning, lessened persistence, and more negative emotionalexperience. (Ryan & Brown, 2005)

In their meta-analysis of 128 well-controlled experiments exploring theeffects of extrinsic rewards on intrinsic motivation, Deci, Koestner, andRyan (1999) found a clear and consistent picture:

In general, tangible rewards had a significant negative effect onintrinsic motivation for interesting tasks, and this effect showedup with participants ranging from preschool to college, withinteresting activities ranging from word games to constructionpuzzles, and with various rewards ranging from dollar bills to

3

7/28/2019 Letter-2013-05-31-ver3

4/7

marshmallows. (Deci, Koetsner, & Ryan, 1999)

Teaching is an inherently complex, interesting, and creative activitybecause it involves knowing ideas and ways of thinking and engagingothers with those ideas and ways of thinking. Thus, according to theresearch on motivation, improving teaching will require workenvironments that foster intrinsic (or autonomous) motivation.Motivation research further indicates that the experiences ofautonomy, as well as of competence and relatedness, are important foreffective performance and psychological health and well-being (Deci& Ryan, 2008).

We doubt that students learning gains will outweigh the negativeeffects to the teaching profession of test-based accountability.According to the National Research Councils Committee on Incentivesand Test-Based Accountability in Public Education, the availableevidence does not give strong support for the use of test-basedincentives to improve education (National Research Council, 2011, p.91). Furthermore,

The research to date suggests that the benefits of test-basedincentive programs over the past two decades have been quitesmall. Although the available evidence is limited, it is notinsignificant. The incentive programs that have been tried haveinvolved a number of different incentive designs and substantialnumbers of schools, teachers, and students. We focused onstudies that allowed us to draw conclusions about the causaleffects of incentive programs and found a significant body ofevidence that was carefully constructed. Unfortunately, theguidance offered by this body of evidence is not encouragingabout the ability of incentive programs to reliably producemeaningful increases in student achievementexcept inmathematics for elementary school students. (National ResearchCouncil, 2011)

Looking at the effects of test-based accountability from aninternational perspective, we also do not find support for such asystem:

Are those education systems where competition, choice, andtest-based accountability have been the main drivers ofeducational change showing progress in internationalcomparisons? Using the PISA database to construct such acomparison, a suggestive answer emerges. Most notably, theUnited States, England, New Zealand, Japan, and some parts ofCanada and Australia can be used as benchmarks. The trendof students performance in mathematics in all test-based

4

7/28/2019 Letter-2013-05-31-ver3

5/7

accountability-policy nations is similar it is in decline, in cycleafter cycle, between 2000 and 2006. (Sahlberg, 2011)

None of the above implies that standardized tests for students are bador wrong. The issue is how tests are used. Using test results forinformational purposes in a trusting, collaborative environment isentirely different from using test results to monitor, evaluate, reward,or punish teachers. In this matter, we would be wise to heedCampbells Law and his observations about test scores:

The more any quantitative social indicator is used for socialdecision-making, the more subject it will be to corruptionpressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt thesocial processes it is intended to monitor. (Campbell, 1976,2011, p. 34)

when test scores become the goal of the teaching process,

they both lose their value as indicators of educational status anddistort the educational process in undesirable ways. (Campbell,1976, 2011 p. 35)

Near the end of its report, the National Research Councils Committeeon Incentives and Test-Based Accountability in Public Education stated:

Our recommendations, accordingly, call for policy makers tosupport experimentation with rigorous evaluation and to allowmidcourse correction of policies when evaluation suggests suchcorrection is needed. (National Research Council, 2011)

We think that the time has come for a midcourse correction. InSingapore, there is the motto teach less, learn more; in the U.S., weneed to test less, learn more. We have argued that test-basedaccountability stands to have negative effects on teaching as aprofession and that there are better ways to improve teaching. Werespectfully urge changes in policy to support a strong and vibrantmathematics teaching profession.

Sincerely,

Sybilla Beckmann,University of Georgia 1

Janine Remillard,University of PennsylvaniaGail Burrill,Michigan State UniversityJames BartaUtah State UniversityMyong-Hi (Nina) KimSUNY College at Old Westbury

1 Please address correspondence to Sybilla Beckmann,sybilla@math.uga.edu or Department of Mathematics, University ofGeorgia, Athens, Georgia 30602.

5

mailto:sybilla@math.uga.edumailto:sybilla@math.uga.edu

7/28/2019 Letter-2013-05-31-ver3

6/7

Roger Howe (NAS), Yale UniversityBernard Madison,University of Arkansas, FayettevilleSara Normington,Catlin Gabel SchoolJames RoznowskiDelta CollegePatrick (Rick) Scott, New Mexico Higher Education Department

Padmanabhan Seshaiyer,George Mason University

References

Bryk, A. S., Sebring, P. B., Allensworth, E., Luppescu, S., & Easton, J. Q.(2010). Organizing Schools for Improvement, Lessons fromChicago. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.

Campbell, D. (1976, 2011). Assessing the Impact of Planned SocialChange.Journal of MultiDisciplinary Evaluation, 7(15), 3 - 43.

Darling-Hammond, L., Wei, R. C., Andree, A., Richardson, N., &

Orphanos, S. (2009). Professional Learning in the LearningProfession: A Status Report on Teacher Development in theUnited States and Abroad. Dallas, TX: National StaffDevelopment Council and The School Redesign Network atStanford University.

Deci, E. L., Koestner, R., & Ryan, R. (1999). A Meta-Analytic Review ofExperiments Examining the Effects of Extrinsic Rewards onIntrinsic Motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 125(6), 627 - 668.

Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2008). Facilitating Optimal Motivation and

Psychological Well-Being Across Life's Domains. CanadianPsychology, 49(1), 14 - 23.

Gagne, M., & Deci, E. L. (2005). Self-determination theory and workmotivation.Journal of Organizational Behavior, 26, 33- - 362.

Mehta, J. (2013, April 12). Teachers: Will We Ever Learn? New YorkTimes. Retrieved from:http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/13/opinion/teachers-will-we-ever-learn.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

National Research Council. (2011). Incentives and Test-Based

Accountability in Education. Committee on Incentives and Test-Based Accountability in Public Education, M. Hout and S.W.Elliott, Editors. Board on Testing and Assessment, Division ofBehavioral and Social Sciences and Education. Washington, DC:The National Academies Press.

Ryan. R. M., & Brown. K. W. (2005). Legislating competence: Themotivational impact of high stakes testing as an educational

6

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/13/opinion/teachers-will-we-ever-learn.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/13/opinion/teachers-will-we-ever-learn.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/13/opinion/teachers-will-we-ever-learn.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/13/opinion/teachers-will-we-ever-learn.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

7/28/2019 Letter-2013-05-31-ver3

7/7

reform. In C. Dweck & A. E. Elliot (Eds.). Handbook ofcompetence (pp. 354-374) New York: Guilford Press.

Sahlberg, P. (2011). Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn fromEducational Change in Finland? New York: Teachers CollegePress.

Strauss, V. (2013, April 6). Teachers resignation letter: Myprofession no longer exists. Washington Post. Retrieved from:http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/04/06/teachers-resignation-letter-my-profession-no-longer-exists/

U.S. National Commission on Mathematics Instruction. (2010). TheTeacher Development Continuum in the United States and China:Summary of a Workshop. Ana Ferreras and Steve Olson,Rapporteurs; Ester Sztein, Editor; National Research Council.

Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

7

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/04/06/teachers-resignation-letter-my-profession-no-longer-exists/http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/04/06/teachers-resignation-letter-my-profession-no-longer-exists/http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/04/06/teachers-resignation-letter-my-profession-no-longer-exists/http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/04/06/teachers-resignation-letter-my-profession-no-longer-exists/http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/04/06/teachers-resignation-letter-my-profession-no-longer-exists/http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/04/06/teachers-resignation-letter-my-profession-no-longer-exists/