PBS高端访谈:学校如何留住好教师?

 　　JEFFREY BROWN:And now to another in our series on the nation's high school dropout¹ crisis, told this time through a different lens. Good teachers can help keep kids in school, but how can schools hold on to their top teachers?

　　Hari is back with a report for our American Graduate project.

　　HARI SREENIVASAN:It's a simple question at the center of almost any discussion on education reform. What makes a good teacher?

　　But the answers are many and often complex, and the question can lead to highly polarizing debates over exactly how and how often teachers should be evaluated on their job performance.

　　52.jpgAt the front lines of this debate are charter schools, the fastest-growing sector² of American education, with two million students now enrolled³ in more than 5,000 such institutions across the U.S.

　　Bridgeport Academy Middle School in Bridgeport, Conn., is one of them. Like traditional public schools, it receives per-pupil funds from the state of Connecticut, but is allowed to operate independently from the local district and uses a blind lottery⁴ for enrollment⁵. The school is part of the larger nonprofit Achievement First network of 22 charters along the East Coast serving mainly low-income minority students.

　　HARI SREENIVASAN:At Bridgeport Academy Middle School, the ultimate goal is to close the so-called achievement gap between rich and poor students. Its principal is Morgan Barth.

　　MORGAN BARTH, Bridgeport Academy Middle School: Bridgeport is on the bottom end of Connecticut, which has the biggest achievement gap in the country. And our kids are great, and they come to school with some really heartbreaking deficits⁶ in their academic skills. On average, a fifth grader comes to our school at least two or three grade levels behind.

　　HARI SREENIVASAN:These kinds of educational deficits have caused lingering problems for a city where one-third of all students fail to graduate on time. That has led to a concentrated effort by Bridgeport Academy Middle School, like all our Achievement First schools, to place and keep great teachers in the classroom.

　　In order to identify who those great teachers are, Achievement First CEO Dacia Toll⁷ says the organization has developed a comprehensive checklist to evaluate its teachers.

　　DACIA TOLL, Achievement First: In the past, teacher evaluation⁸ has focused on observations, which, at their worst, become staged dog and pony⁹ show experiences that don't actually tell you a lot about teachers' effectiveness or even more importantly how they need to improve.

　　WOMAN: I want us to now just walk quickly through the schoolwork for the whole observation.

　　HARI SREENIVASAN:At this, school teacher observations are detailed¹⁰ biweekly and discussed at length in regular coaching sessions.

　　WOMAN: You could have moved a little bit more efficiently¹¹ through just the process itself.

　　HARI SREENIVASAN:And, perhaps surprisingly, they're also welcomed here.

　　JUDY ANDREWS, Teacher: I thought that my pacing was off a little bit. I thought that there were a couple times where I wasn't quite there as I normally am.

　　HARI SREENIVASAN:Judy Andrews is a fifth grade math teacher and was a veteran in the nearby New Haven¹² Public School District until coming to Achievement First five years ago.

　　JUDY ANDREWS: The teaching model at Achievement First is different than the teaching model at most other schools in terms of the way the lessons are set up. So, I found it was extremely beneficial initially¹³ because I was getting immediate¹⁴ feedback.

　　HARI SREENIVASAN:Teachers here find out every day how effectively they have taught a lesson with short quizzes called exit tickets.

　　WOMAN:For your exit ticket, you have four problems.

　　HARI SREENIVASAN:Students are required to take one at the end of each class to measure their level of comprehension. But test scores and the results of classroom observations are not the only factors here that determine the quality of a teacher.

　　Again, Dacia Toll:

　　DACIA TOLL: We have parent, student, peer and principal surveys, so the teacher is really getting a whole 360 take on what they are doing well and what they need to improve.

　　HARI SREENIVASAN:A large part of the Achievement First plan to keep excellent teachers and those with potential to become great is the teacher career pathway.

　　It's a model designed to place classroom educators into five career stages depending on experience and classroom effectiveness, beginning at intern¹⁵ and concluding at master teacher. Reaching the fifth and final stage would bring a significant pay increase, although exact compensation figures are still being worked out. The goal is to incentivize teachers to stay in the classroom, rather than move toward administrative¹⁶ jobs with higher salaries.

　　DACIA TOLL:We have got to improve student outcomes. And in order to do that, we have got to attract and retain very talented people, as our teachers—as our international competitors have done. And we think a big part of that is saying, you can make this a meaningful, rewarding career.

　　HARI SREENIVASAN:That's something Judy Andrews finds appealing about how the model was designed.

　　JUDY ANDREWS:I'm not a first-year or second-year teacher, obviously. And in a traditional evaluation system, once you get to a certain point, whether or not you get any type of financial recognition is based solely¹⁷ on the number of years. And, after a while, that gets a little hard to take.

　　HARI SREENIVASAN:Retaining teachers is something charters across the country have struggle to do. In fact, a recent study by Vanderbilt University found that the odds¹⁸ of a charter school teacher moving to another school were 76 percent greater than a teacher at a traditional public school.

　　Rachel Curtis is a former educator-turned-consultant¹⁹ who recently analyzed²⁰ Achievement First for the Aspen Institute. She says the network has had buy-in on the evaluation system from its teachers, who are all on one-year contracts without the possibility of tenure²¹ because they were consulted during the evaluation model's development.

　　RACHEL CURTIS, Educational Consultant: The benefit of being the size that they are is that there's been an enormous amount of teacher engagement around the design. And so I doubt that there a lot of teacher at Achievement First who feel like this is being done to them.

　　And that's a much more common phenomenon in a large urban district in particular, where you can't possibly have every teacher weigh in on how they think you should be going about this.

　　HARI SREENIVASAN:The network is paying for the teacher career pathway in part with a six million dollar federal grant. That financial reality, Rachel Curtis says, would make it difficult to implement²² elsewhere. But it's a model that many school districts could draw lessons from.

　　RACHEL CURTIS: I think that there's a huge resource allocation issue, right? And what's not clear is, is it that they just have more resources or is it that they use the resources in very different ways?

　　So, if you go into an Achievement First school, you will see far fewer administrators²³ than in most traditional district schools. The choices they make about how they deploy²⁴ people I think is something that we all could learn a lot from.

　　HARI SREENIVASAN:Achievement First says the evaluation process and teacher career pathway remain a work in progress. But the principal of Bridgeport Academy Middle School, Morgan Barth, says he's seeing significant gains in the classroom.

　　MORGAN BARTH: We are regularly getting results that show that we have fifth and sixth graders growing two, two-and-a-half grade levels a year and really catching²⁵ up. And we're having seventh and eighth graders beat the state non-poor average.

　　HARI SREENIVASAN:Despite the fact that there are mixed results from national studies on whether charter schools are academically superior to their traditional counterparts, Achievement First says they're making progress in leveling the playing field between wealthy and disadvantaged students, important in a city where 40 percent of all children live below the federal poverty line.

　　JEFFREY BROWN: There's much more online, including a video about Bridgeport Academy's strict rules, uniforms and college expectations. Plus, tell us what you think makes a great teacher.

　　American Graduate is a public media initiative funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

1 dropout   

n.退学的学生；退学；退出者

参考例句：

• There is a high dropout rate from some college courses.有些大学课程的退出率很高。
• In the long haul,she'll regret having been a school dropout.她终归会后悔不该中途辍学。

2 sector   

n.部门，部分；防御地段，防区；扇形

参考例句：

• The export sector will aid the economic recovery. 出口产业将促进经济复苏。
• The enemy have attacked the British sector.敌人已进攻英国防区。

3 enrolled   

adj.入学登记了的v.[亦作enrol]( enroll的过去式和过去分词 )；登记，招收，使入伍（或入会、入学等），参加，成为成员；记入名册；卷起，包起

参考例句：

• They have been studying hard from the moment they enrolled. 从入学时起，他们就一直努力学习。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He enrolled with an employment agency for a teaching position. 他在职业介绍所登了记以谋求一个教师的职位。 来自《简明英汉词典》

4 lottery   

n.抽彩；碰运气的事，难于算计的事

参考例句：

• He won no less than ￡5000 in the lottery.他居然中了5000英镑的奖券。
• They thought themselves lucky in the lottery of life.他们认为自己是变幻莫测的人生中的幸运者。

5 enrollment   

n.注册或登记的人数；登记

参考例句：

• You will be given a reading list at enrollment.注册时你会收到一份阅读书目。
• I just got the enrollment notice from Fudan University.我刚刚接到复旦大学的入学通知书。

6 deficits   

n.不足额( deficit的名词复数 )；赤字；亏空；亏损

参考例句：

• The Ministry of Finance consistently overestimated its budget deficits. 财政部一贯高估预算赤字。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Many of the world's farmers are also incurring economic deficits. 世界上许多农民还在遭受经济上的亏损。 来自辞典例句

7 toll   

n.过路(桥)费；损失，伤亡人数；v.敲(钟)

参考例句：

• The hailstone took a heavy toll of the crops in our village last night.昨晚那场冰雹损坏了我们村的庄稼。
• The war took a heavy toll of human life.这次战争夺去了许多人的生命。

8 evaluation   

n.估价，评价；赋值

参考例句：

• I attempted an honest evaluation of my own life.我试图如实地评价我自己的一生。
• The new scheme is still under evaluation.新方案还在评估阶段。

9 pony   

adj.小型的；n.小马

参考例句：

• His father gave him a pony as a Christmas present.他父亲给了他一匹小马驹作为圣诞礼物。
• They made him pony up the money he owed.他们逼他还债。

10 detailed   

adj.详细的，详尽的，极注意细节的，完全的

参考例句：

• He had made a detailed study of the terrain.他对地形作了缜密的研究。
• A detailed list of our publications is available on request.我们的出版物有一份详细的目录备索。

11 efficiently   

adv.高效率地，有能力地

参考例句：

• The worker oils the machine to operate it more efficiently.工人给机器上油以使机器运转更有效。
• Local authorities have to learn to allocate resources efficiently.地方政府必须学会有效地分配资源。

12 haven   

n.安全的地方，避难所，庇护所

参考例句：

• It's a real haven at the end of a busy working day.忙碌了一整天后，这真是一个安乐窝。
• The school library is a little haven of peace and quiet.学校的图书馆是一个和平且安静的小避风港。

13 initially   

adv.最初，开始

参考例句：

• The ban was initially opposed by the US.这一禁令首先遭到美国的反对。
• Feathers initially developed from insect scales.羽毛最初由昆虫的翅瓣演化而来。

14 immediate   

adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的

参考例句：

• His immediate neighbours felt it their duty to call.他的近邻认为他们有责任去拜访。
• We declared ourselves for the immediate convocation of the meeting.我们主张立即召开这个会议。

15 intern   

v.拘禁，软禁；n.实习生

参考例句：

• I worked as an intern in that firm last summer.去年夏天我在那家商行实习。
• The intern bandaged the cut as the nurse looked on.这位实习生在护士的照看下给病人包扎伤口。

16 administrative   

adj.行政的，管理的

参考例句：

• The administrative burden must be lifted from local government.必须解除地方政府的行政负担。
• He regarded all these administrative details as beneath his notice.他认为行政管理上的这些琐事都不值一顾。

17 solely   

adv.仅仅，唯一地

参考例句：

• Success should not be measured solely by educational achievement.成功与否不应只用学业成绩来衡量。
• The town depends almost solely on the tourist trade.这座城市几乎完全靠旅游业维持。

18 odds   

n.让步，机率，可能性，比率；胜败优劣之别

参考例句：

• The odds are 5 to 1 that she will win.她获胜的机会是五比一。
• Do you know the odds of winning the lottery once?你知道赢得一次彩票的几率多大吗？

19 consultant   

n.顾问；会诊医师，专科医生

参考例句：

• He is a consultant on law affairs to the mayor.他是市长的一个法律顾问。
• Originally,Gar had agreed to come up as a consultant.原来，加尔只答应来充当我们的顾问。

20 analyzed   

v.分析( analyze的过去式和过去分词 )；分解；解释；对…进行心理分析

参考例句：

• The doctors analyzed the blood sample for anemia. 医生们分析了贫血的血样。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The young man did not analyze the process of his captivation and enrapturement, for love to him was a mystery and could not be analyzed. 这年轻人没有分析自己蛊惑著迷的过程，因为对他来说，爱是个不可分析的迷。 来自《简明英汉词典》

21 tenure   

n.终身职位；任期；(土地)保有权，保有期

参考例句：

• He remained popular throughout his tenure of the office of mayor.他在担任市长的整个任期内都深得民心。
• Land tenure is a leading political issue in many parts of the world.土地的保有权在世界很多地区是主要的政治问题。

22 implement   

n.(pl.)工具，器具；vt.实行，实施，执行

参考例句：

• Don't undertake a project unless you can implement it.不要承担一项计划，除非你能完成这项计划。
• The best implement for digging a garden is a spade.在花园里挖土的最好工具是铁锹。

23 administrators   

n.管理者( administrator的名词复数 )；有管理（或行政）才能的人；（由遗嘱检验法庭指定的）遗产管理人；奉派暂管主教教区的牧师

参考例句：

• He had administrators under him but took the crucial decisions himself. 他手下有管理人员，但重要的决策仍由他自己来做。 来自辞典例句
• Administrators have their own methods of social intercourse. 办行政的人有他们的社交方式。 来自汉英文学 - 围城

24 deploy   

v.（军）散开成战斗队形，布置，展开

参考例句：

• The infantry began to deploy at dawn.步兵黎明时开始进入战斗位置。
• The president said he had no intention of deploying ground troops.总统称并不打算部署地面部队。

25 catching   

adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住

参考例句：

• There are those who think eczema is catching.有人就是认为湿疹会传染。
• Enthusiasm is very catching.热情非常富有感染力。