The Learning Curve

      After a weekend spent filming and then editing the video of my phonics lesson, I decided I needed to recover from my ascent up the VERY steep SMARTboard and iMovie learning curves.  Recovery = take a step back from technical issues and check my news aggregator (Feedly) for articles with a broader perspective.  Just in time for our flat classroom proposal, Edudemic has been posting a series of informational graphics entitled “18 Things to Know about Education in….”  Today’s post was about the educational system in France.  Some of the statistics seemed pretty positive (its score on the Human Development Index, the overall productivity of its labor force), but the graphic did not provide a point of reference for the data. How did France compare with the U.S.? With Finland and South Korea?  I decided to look at the The Learning Curve, a compilation of data sets assembled by the Economist (Intelligence Unit) and published by Pearson.   Under “country profiles” you can find data on education input and output—as well as socioeconomic—indicators for individual countries; “data visualization tools” allow you to compare countries over the course of two decades (1990-2011).  As educators around the world seek to determine which systems are most effective (and why), access to information of this sort can be helpful.  One should keep in mind, however, which specific outcomes are being evaluated.

       What really caught my eye, however, was a section of the report entitled “Getting Teachers Who Make a Difference”.  I agreed with a number of the factors they cited: attract the best people; provide proper training; treat teachers like professionals; and combine accountability with independence.  However, they claim a lack of correlation between higher teacher salaries and student outcomes. (The picture is complicated by changes in teacher salaries relative to GDP as countries develop.)  They do cite a correlation between performance-based pay and better student outcomes. Whatever correlations they might glean (or not) from their statistics, I am inclined to think that the inordinately low teacher salaries in some schools and regions of the U.S. is a deterrent to achieving the factors cited above.  (Similarly, I raised an eyebrow when I read in the Forward by Pearson’s chief education advisor that “reducing class size is expensive and has little or no impact on system performance”.  In our data-driven evaluation of schools, isn’t a school’s student-teacher ratio still one of the key criteria for “finding the best”? )   I agree, though, that pay is only part of the equation for achieving excellence, which brings me back to the videotaping I mentioned at the beginning of this post.  Feedback is a key part of professional development—in science, in medicine, in music, and—yes—in education.  I think learning to give effective feedback is almost an art form; the video camera (or iPad these days) may be an unforgiving critic—but it’s a start.