Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
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Intel’s chairman on improving U.S. education
Great examples of quality learning can be found everywhere, no matter how easy or challenging the circumstances — at schools in cities, the suburbs or rural towns and in public, private and charter schools.
What’s the common denominator?
It’s great teaching, said Craig Barrett, the chairman and former CEO of the computer giant Intel. Barrett spoke today at the Education Writers Association annual convention.
These high performing kids do well because of the expectations of their teachers, the close relationships between the staff and students or other factors that relate right back to consistently having a great teacher at the front of the room.
“That’s because the magic in the classroom is the teacher,” he said.
Here’s Barrett’s top three suggestions for improving education in the U.S.:
Improve teaching.
Barrett said 30 percent of math and science teachers in the U.S. are not certified to to teach their subject.
“For a young child to get through 12 years and stay interested in math they probably have to have a good math teacher just about every year,” he said. “But any one year, the chance of having a quality teacher in that subject is only 75 percent. This is part of the reason why our system is so effective at filtering out young children not interested in math by 12th grade.”
What can we do about this?
We need a high focus on teaching content to teachers and training them to teach, with a heavy focus on content, according to Barrett. He argued against today’s certification process, noting that he has a PhD, has taught at Stanford and run a major U.S, company but is not qualified to teach anywhere in the U.S. because of certification rules.
Barrett also believes in pay for performance, saying, “If you pay good teachers the same as bad teachers what happens is good teachers leave and bad teachers stay.” He added later that teachers need to be paid more comparably to other professionals like doctors and lawyers.
Accurately assess student results
Expectations are too low, Barrett said, noting that most state exit exams require only eighth grade math. And he said the U.S. too often compares only to itself — city vs. city and this year vs. last year — rather than comparing to our competition by looking at how our kids do vs. kids around the world, especially the “3 billion new capitalists” in nations who formerly closed their economies to international markets.
Barrett urged reporters to compare internationally, but he didn’t have good ideas about how to do this in places like Dayton. There are not good measures to see how Dayton kids specifically do vs. kids in Singapore, Buenos Aires or Amsterdam. International test score comparisons are usually only on a macro level.
Competition
As a capitalist, Barrett likes competition. “I don’t know of a monopoly that has lasted through time that has served its customers well,” he said. In questions, though, he acknowledged that for education isn’t a perfect setting for market-driven change. But he still maintained that competition should help improve results.
In a last word, Barrett claimed to have a certain cure for the dropout problem in the U.S. — require all kids to show a high school diploma in order to receive a driver’s license in any state.
Permalink | Comments (7) | Categories: Teaching and Learning
Comments
By Mike Martin
June 7, 2006 11:59 AM | Link to this
It is painful to see Mr. Barrett speaking to a group of education writers. Education writers badly need a better understanding of how education works, but Barrett has no competence in this area. He may not have had much competence as CEO of Intel either. I own AMD stock and have doing quite well thanks to Mr. Barrett. And for him to claim he supports competition when he has been sued for anti-competitive practices is hilarious.By Mary
June 5, 2006 8:33 PM | Link to this
I hear you, old prof, and you seem to agree it is cognizant reality not to simply rely on or trust professionals. You are your own best advocate for yourself and your kids. Knowledge is power. Yes, even in health and medical care. Most people are past the Marcus Welby, MD myth of protective patriarchal health care. You have to research and prod on health care and medical issues like heck and rely on many sources to protect yourself from harm by the health care business. Last night I caught part of a CNN program regarding complications with living organ donors (who donate part of the liver or a kidney)and a news segment about people who die from things like hopsital strep - and that was just in one day.By Oldprof
June 4, 2006 10:26 PM | Link to this
But Mary, do you personally understand everything that goes on in, for example, your health care provider’s office, or your mechanic’s garage, or the city’s income tax department (that last one is a REAL disconnect). It’s not possible to be in everybody’s business—how can a parent who’s not even completed high school have an appreciation for what teachers do? Big picture: Not that every educator deserves it, but one of the problems I perceive is that, nowadays, nobody gets trusted for anything. And too many people in too many professions have done too much to destroy trust in general. When the ministry (in many religions) is guilty of sex crimes, when the accounting firm noted for integrity (Andersen) cooks the books, when the current president’s latest election may have hinged on fake campaign contributions, and when teachers keep getting indicted for sex with students/drug abuse/public indecency—then those of us who are honest and personally trustworthy are caught in the web of suspicion ourselves, while we must add to that web out of self-defense. I wish I knew an easy way out of that conundrum.By Mary
June 3, 2006 9:36 PM | Link to this
I think the greatest effect/influence on a student can be the disconnect between schools and families. It is hard for most families to know what is really going on in the child’s school experiences. It is easy for many busy parents to make some erroneous assumptions on what today’s school experience is like for their child. It can be difficult for the student/child to communicate to their parents what things are really like for them in school or understand what the school experience is really supposed to be.By Oldprof
June 2, 2006 11:24 PM | Link to this
Even more: the greatest single factor in student success is the student. The greatest influence on the student is family. Teachers are merely the greatest factor that we can try to control without interfering in family matters. As for having a Ph.D. and a successful career, I have that also, but I wouldn’t be so haughty as to claim I was qualified to teach in a K-12 classroom. On those grounds also, the article seems erroneous. So, d’you think Barrett is reading any of this?By Rick
June 2, 2006 5:13 PM | Link to this
Research from the effective schools movement found that effective schools had 5 characteristics: a) a dynamic and involved principle, b) high expectations of students, c) high expectation of teachers, d) parental involvement, and e) sufficient order to allow learning to take place. The Chairman didn’t do his homework.By Mary
June 2, 2006 4:22 PM | Link to this
I have read interviews with Barrett before where he came across as a little more lucid. Based on these comments, it does not sound as if he is totally cognizant of various details. I cannot see teachers being paid the same as lawyers and doctors considering the education and work differences. However, I do agree on the importance of the teacher in the classroom and their qualifications. I think he should also address the tone that the principals, superintendents, and boards set. We have a leadership problem throughout our institutions and culture, not just education. As a corporate leader, he should address some educational leadership issues, not just classroom teachers.