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Find more Kappan articles in the Subscribe today to access complete current issues online! The Contradictory Nature of Professional Teaching Standards: Professional teaching standards are often burdened with committeespeak, redundancy, contradiction, and lofty pronouncements. But, Mr. Gallagher argues, it is the standards' incompatibility with our nation's current obsession with standardized testing that is most exasperating. WHEN FIRST introduced to a 10-page document of professional teaching standards, many readers become a bit dazed. They wonder if they have come across something written by the character in Joseph Heller's Catch-22 who "made a fortune selling hogwash on an international scale."1 Indeed, the language used in the teaching standards is often confusing, and highly idealistic statements can be impossible to put into practice. But the larger problem is the substantial disconnect between the standards as stated and school environments demonstrably hostile to their practice. In this article, I touch briefly on issues of language and expectations, then more thoroughly on the many paradoxes that create the Catch-22 schools in which teachers find themselves. The Problems of Committeespeak The document containing the Illinois Professional Teaching Standards (IPTS) consists of a preamble with seven "we believe" statements, a page of 11 sentences that are the standards themselves, 69 "knowledge indicators," and another 97 "performance indicators."2 Clarity of language is not a strong point of this treatise: for example, the word "and" appears over 300 times in the 10 pages from preamble to final knowledge indicator. Most people who run across short sentences with four and even five "and's" soon begin to mutter under their breath. Redundancy is also rampant: performance indicators that note that "the competent teacher uses a variety of communication modes to effectively communicate with a diverse student population" and "communicates using a variety of communication tools" quickly have us chasing our tails. At another level, the standards might strike one as hogwash because they are so incredibly idealistic. Experienced teachers cringe at the idea that they are expected to magically individualize instruction for all students, as the standards would have them do. Secondary teachers who meet regularly with 150 students per day, or elementary teachers who must cover five different subjects with 25 students, know how exceedingly unrealistic it can be to individualize lessons for each student. Given that some students need a consistently quiet environment while others need movement and stimulation, the teacher cannot provide both simultaneously. The teacher's job is one of balancing many conflicting elements rather than being all things to all people. The standards are much better read as ideals toward which a teacher might strive than as statements of what a competent teacher must do. Standards, Knowledge Indicators, and Performance Indicators: Writing in the Ironic Mode Of the 11 standards, those dealing with communication, collaborative relationships, and professional reflection are quite general in nature and can be left alone. The statement on content knowledge refers to yet additional sets of standards in the various teaching fields and is beyond the scope of this article. The remaining standards -- on human learning, diversity, planning, the learning environment, instructional delivery, assessment, and professional conduct -- focus most directly on the teaching/learning process. These seven standards and their indicators are worth a closer look. Standard 2. Human Development and Learning. The teacher understands how individuals grow, develop, and learn and provides learning opportunities that support the intellectual, social, and personal development of all students. The indicators give a brief overview of the essentials of human learning and stress how "students' physical, social, emotional, ethical, and cognitive development influences learning." The more one knows about human learning and development, the more likely one recognizes how woefully wrongheaded such laws as No Child Left Behind can be. For example, performance indicator 21 sets up one side of a conflict between professional standards and today's real-world expectations: "The competent teacher introduces concepts and principles at different levels of complexity so that they are meaningful to students at varying levels of development and to students with diverse learning needs." Varying levels of development are not acceptable given the limited view of accountability currently in vogue, so teachers are actually pressured away from the standard rather than toward it. In our current environment, a more accurate standard would read: "The competent teacher ignores human learning theory and administers whatever tests are mandated by those on high, no matter how inappropriate these tests might be for a given individual." Standard 3. Diversity. The teacher understands how students differ in their approaches to learning and creates instructional opportunities that are adapted to diverse learners. Again, we must recognize that words such as "diversity" are overused and that the language of standards tends to soar to unrealistic heights. Even so, the indicators here lay out the many factors that influence learning and urge teachers to take these into account. Learning is indeed influenced by "individual experiences, talents, and prior learning, as well as language, culture, family, and community values." Such influences are becoming more and more prevalent in 21st-century America, but massive testing programs shove all this aside. The teacher should also recognize "different learning styles, multiple intelligences, and performance modes," but this may not do much good when the only performance mode that counts must be orchestrated with a number-two pencil and a bubble sheet. Accountability schemes emphasize a great deal of the verbal and mathematical but little or none of the several other intelligences that Howard Gardner and many others urge educators to recognize. Indicator 3H demands "appropriate provisions (in terms of time and circumstances for work, tasks assigned, communication, and response modes) for individual students who have particular learning differences or needs." None of these provisions is acceptable in a "tests gone wild" environment. Here, the standard might read, "The teacher understands how students differ in their approaches to learning but ignores these differences in order to prepare all students for the same test." Standard 4. Planning for Instruction. The teacher understands instructional planning and designs instruction based upon knowledge of the discipline, students, the community, and curriculum goals. This standard gives no help to the teacher who recognizes that "the discipline, students, the community, and curriculum goals" are quite often -- in fact, I would argue more often than not -- in conflict. Discussions about the roles of schooling in relationship to the rest of the community date back at least as far as Plato, with no agreement in sight. In our current environment, teachers are expected to plan based on "curriculum goals" developed far from the classroom. They also must contend with "teacher-proof" materials, programmed instruction, Saxon math, and a host of other lockstep schemes. Knowledge of the students sounds great, but if such knowledge is at odds with external learning benchmarks and tests, we all know what is supposed to rule. Planning for instruction is one of the most important things teachers do, but increasingly, our world simply demands that teachers prepare students for the mandated tests. A very simple standard might do here: "The teacher implements predesigned instructional materials to maximize test scores." Standard 5. Learning Environment. The teacher uses an understanding of individual and group motivation and behavior to create a learning environment that encourages positive social interaction, active engagement in learning, and self-motivation. While the importance of "social interaction" is stressed here, the test-makers don't seem too interested in that element of schooling. In fact, they actively prohibit it. The knowledge indicators place great emphasis on groups, and though we all know that teamwork is essential throughout the world of work, students who excel in cooperative activities may not perform well on tests that prohibit any sort of talking or looking around. "Active engagement in learning" takes a back seat to a steady diet of worksheets tied to the tests. "Self-motivation" only shows up if the "self" is a good test-taker. The emphasis throughout the indicators on individual needs is a rhetorical check that the realities of schooling cannot cash. This standard could also be more simply stated: "The teacher creates a learning environment that is conducive to success on standardized tests." Standard 6. Instructional Delivery. The teacher understands and uses a variety of instructional strategies to encourage students' development of critical thinking, problem solving, and performance skills. There is great disagreement over what counts as "critical thinking" and what students need to know before they can think critically. E. D. Hirsch, Jr., the "cultural literacy" guru, points out that individuals need a wealth of background knowledge in order to think critically about issues. While much of his work is not popular with educators, it is serious work and should be given close attention.3 However one might view higher-order thinking, the standard on instructional delivery is blatantly contradicted by the testing regimen, which emphasizes multiple-choice responses on strictly timed assessment instruments. The only "problems" ultimately worth "solving" are those presented on a mandated test. "Performance skills" morph into "performance on a test," which turns notions of performance upside-down and inside-out. While Hirsch emphasizes that it is possible to construct multiple-choice tests tuned in to critical thinking, in practice very few tests are up to the task. A new standard might read, "The teacher uses instructional strategies that discourage critical thinking, problem solving, and performance skills so that students won't be confused when it's time for the tests that really count." Standard 8. Assessment. The teacher understands various formal and informal assessment strategies and uses them to support the continuous development of all students. Increasingly, the only assessments that count are the ones sanctioned by those who seem to know little or nothing about human development, learning, and diversity -- in essence, what the other standards in their sometimes awkward ways are trying to address. This standard is quite simply at odds with reality. Teachers are pressured to prepare students for certain kinds of tests, so the knowledge encouraged by the standards becomes superfluous. The statements in the knowledge and performance indicators for this standard are encouraging, but in practice it seems not to matter that teachers "understand the purposes, characteristics, and limitations of different kinds of assessments." Such knowledge is disregarded by one-size-fits-all testing. It might indeed be the case that a "competent teacher appropriately uses a variety of informal and formal assessments to evaluate the understanding, progress, and performance of the individual student and the class as whole," but does anyone beyond the teacher, student, and parent really care? Any such evidence of understanding, however sound, is ignored; evidence gleaned from massive testing programs, however unsound, is what puts schools on probation, gets published in the paper, and is used to sell real estate. Our standard here might be quite blunt: "Here are this year's high-stakes tests. Good luck." Standard 11. Professional Conduct and Leadership. The teacher understands education as a profession, maintains standards of professional conduct, and provides leadership to improve student learning and well-being. Imagine the teacher who -- based on an extensive knowledge of human development and learning, an appreciation for diversity, and a deep understanding of and love for her students -- attempts to "provide leadership to improve student learning and well-being" by 1) explaining to anyone who will listen that certain tests are demonstrably harmful to some students and 2) taking a professional stand not to allow such torture of the students she loves. If she takes this far enough, she is likely to be fired. This final standard on professionalism gets to the heart of the contradictory world teachers inhabit. Even if a teacher can clearly identify indicators toward which to strive, actually achieving "competence" all too often turns out to be counterproductive. The competent teacher may indeed "understand education as a profession" according to the standards she has been given, but politicians and test-makers far away from the classroom have a radically different understanding of "education as a profession." Our final standard: "Do what you're told." Some Steps Toward Sanity It is remarkable that teachers do as well as they do in such a contradictory environment. It seems they must develop their professionalism covertly. Teachers manage to run classrooms filled with community, inquiry, wonder, and joy despite the dampening effects of the testing/accountability axis. Any set of standards will ultimately make value judgments, and creative teachers interpret the standards for their profession in ways appropriate to the full growth and development of children and teenagers. Even so, several steps are in order. We can take a simple first step in making standards more workable if we pare away the committeespeak, redundancy, contradiction, and exaggeration that typically plague such documents. Rather than try to adhere to the lofty language that is far removed from the everyday world of teachers, we can bring the standards down to earth. In "Sanity, Madness, and the School," William Pinar pointed out some years ago how the contradictions of schooling can be maddening for students.4 Now we have extended the same opportunity to teachers. Most important, our entire nation must scale way back on its fixation on testing and its counterproductive schemes for accountability. The two go hand in hand and should be treated together. We have managed to get to a point almost 180 degrees from where we should be. Rather than have teachers develop sound educational programs for which they should indeed be held accountable, we have noneducators demanding unsound educational programs whose effectiveness is measured almost solely by number-two-pencil tests so limited in scope as to be laughable. In Standardized Minds Peter Sacks comments:
Imagine a matrix of accountability in which teachers do what they can, parents do what they ought to, and corporations actually pay their fair share of taxes. Fortunately, we can see movements afoot to rein in the testing obsession: states opting out of No Child Left Behind funding, parent groups demanding better for their children, websites challenging the tests from a variety of perspectives, and politicians coming around to the realization that accountability is the intersection of many avenues.6 Hope is on the horizon, but concerned individuals need to act. An additional recommendation is stated quite clearly in Performance Indicator 1J under the "Content Knowledge" standard: "The competent teacher anticipates and adjusts for common misunderstandings of the discipline(s) that impede learning." For those of us whose "discipline" is pedagogy, we realize that many "common misunderstandings" flow directly from the standards/reality disconnect and ultimately "impede learning." We can "adjust" for this situation by preparing teachers for the complexities of real-world classrooms and by working toward making those classrooms more human-friendly rather than test-friendly. Teachers might then find themselves striving toward the best intentions of the standards rather than constantly looking over their shoulders at Catch-22 accountability schemes. 1. Joseph Heller, Catch-22 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1961), p. 173. WILLIAM J. GALLAGHER is an assistant professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville. |
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