In this season of reflection and celebration, we want to take a minute to put our teachers front and center. We know. You’ve heard it all before.
We think our teachers are among the very best. We cannot say it enough.
This time out, though, we are going to defer to researchers from MIT, Columbia, Michigan, and Berkeley. A recent op-ed piece in the New York Times (“Schools that Work,” 11/6/16) summarized findings from comprehensive studies that measured the impact of Boston-area charter schools recognized as “high expectations, high support” schools. These schools are reported to have a couple of things in common—many of which should sound familiar:
- They invest in teachers. All else in the budget comes in as a distant second.
- They run longer school days, relative to the other schools around them, and in doing so leverage extended contact between teachers and kids (and not always in the traditional classroom).
- They expect students to do well and back that expectation up with sufficient and differentiated instructional support, meeting kids where they are and making a path forward.
- They position teachers themselves as learners who benefit from and respond to feedback offered by peers and administrators who are frequent visitors to the classroom.