Behaviorist B. F. Skinner took two pigeons and made them turn in two opposite directions. When one turned in the correct direction, he gave that pigeon a reward, something to eat.

 

State legislatures want to make teachers teach better, but instead of rewards certain legislatures have given teachers a whack up the side of the head with an annual appraisal. They mandate that teachers must teach better or receive a low rating on their annual evaluations. What these legislatures want is better teaching without having to pay for it with worthwhile rewards. In effect they take a big stick and murder the pigeons.

 

States such as Texas and Georgia have come to the same conclusion as the U.S. Air Force study by J. E. Morsh and E. W. Wilder (1952), which stated: "No single specific observable teacher act has yet been found whose frequency or percent of occurrence is “invariably and significantly correlated with student achievement." Both Texas and Georgia legislated teacher appraisal systems that were based on the effective-schools research. Several years after instituting these systems, these states ranked 43rd and 45th respectively on SAT scores (Kelly 1991). The Minnesota Educational Effectiveness Program (MEEP), which was designed to employ the behaviors identified by the school-effectiveness research, was declared ineffective by the Minnesota State Department of Education in 1989. Educators in all three states eventually concurred with the Air Force findings.

 

Recently, several studies in which teachers were trained and observed using the effective-schools research found that students actually did worse than students of teachers not so trained (Stalling 1987; Gersten et al. 1987).

 

John Goodlad and associates (1982) surveyed 1,350 teachers, 18,000 students, and 8,600 parents in 39 schools and all the principals, superintendents, and school board members in these schools. After 5,000 classroom observations, Goodlad concluded that there was very little difference in techniques and methods of teaching between successful and unsuccessful schools.

 

James Coleman (1966) studied 4,000 schools, 60,000 teachers, and 570,000 students. Instead of finding that better students had better instruction, he found that social class was the only characteristic that had a consistent relationship with academic performance. Many of the southern states attempted to mandate quality instruction for their children through the statewide appraisal system; they have consistently failed and have found instead that Morsh and Wilder, Jencks, and Goodlad and associates were all correct in their findings. Albert Einstein said, "An autocratic system of coercion soon degenerates" (Bargman 1982).

 

If one compares New Hampshire and Iowa (whose students scored the highest on the SAT) with Texas and Georgia (whose students scored 43rd and 45th), two very important differences are obvious. One, .the top states do not have legislated teacher appraisal systems. Two, top states have teacher unions. These two characteristics reflect the management philosophy of W. Edwards Deming (1990).

 

The annual appraisal has become a way of motivating teachers by fear. The principal focuses on the end product while trying to avoid the problems of teachers, thereby creating management by defects. On the other hand, the union gives teachers power; it empowers those teachers who use the best approaches to teach in any given situation. Thus they have more freedom to innovate and experiment without administrative interference. With teacher unions, school administrators are placed in a position of leadership, which is exactly where they belong.

 

Consequently, southern states need to make two moves if they truly want a better education for their children. First, remove the teacher appraisal system. In its place, substitute a catch-em-doing-it-right program. Reward teachers when they improve SAT scores. Second, write laws that permit teachers to go to the table and bargain with school boards for better teaching conditions and salaries. Thus, the dignity of autonomy will replace the indignity of economic slavery.

 

Christopher Jencks (1972) concluded that the solution to unequal educational opportunity was to be found in the redistribution of wealth in society as a whole, not in the schools alone.

 

Education reform calls for the restructuring of American society at large. One out of five high school students carries a weapon to school (Kien 1991). One out of five children lives in poverty (Day 1989). One out of twelve children is hungry (Brown and Pizer 1987).One out of six children has too much lead in his or her blood (Abend 1989).One out of five children has lived with an alcoholic (Shahid 1991). Almost one out of two lives with a single parent (Cherlin et al. 1991). One out of two high school students uses alcohol (Shahid 1991). All of our children live in a nation that murders sixty-four people every day, almost half of whom are killed with a handgun (Squituri 1992). Many children suffer without adequate medical care (Anderson 1992). The U.S. Constitution requires the federal government to attend to the general welfare of the people. In this respect federal, state, and local elected officials have failed miserably. They murdered the pigeons.

 

REFERENCES

Abend, C. A. 1989. Lead poisoning is still a threat for kids. American School Board Journal 176 (May): 29-31.

 

Anderson, K. 1992. 17% receive inadequate health care. USA Today (Feb. 27):1.

 

Bargman, S. trans. 1992. Albert Einstein: Ideas and opinions. New York: Crown.

 

Brown, J. L. and H. F. Pizer. 1987. Living hungry in America. York: Macmillan.

 

Cherlin, J. A., F. F. Furstenberg, Jr., P. L. Chase-Lansdale, Kiernan, P. K. Robins, D. R. Morrison, and J. O. Teitler. 1991. Longitudinal studies of effects of divorce on children in Great Britain and the United States. Science, 252 (5011).

 

Coleman, J. S., E. Q. Campbell, C. J. Hobson, J. McPartland, A.M. Mood, F. D. Weinfield, and R. L. York. 1966. Equality of educational opportunity. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.

 

Day, A., ed. 1989. It's a national disgrace. Los Angeles Times (October 14):B8.

Deming, W. E. 1990. Out of the crisis. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

 

Gersten, R., M. Gall, D. Grace, D. Erickson, and S. Stieber. 1987.The differential effects of teacher behavior on high-ability and low-ability students in algebra classes. Paper presented at annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Washington, D.C. (7 April).

 

 Goodlad, J. L. 1982. A study of schooling. Paper presented to the Stanford Teacher Education Project, Stanford, California (28 January).

 

Jencks, C. 1972. Inequality: A reassessment of the effect of family and schooling in America. New York: Basic Books.

 

Kelly, D. 1991. Rankings depend on number of kids tested. USA Today (24 Sept.).

 

Kien, J. 1991. Student searches yield fear. USA Today (Nov. 12):1

 

Morsh, J. E., and E. W. Wilder. 1952. Identifying the effective instructor: A review of quantitative studies 1900-1952. USAF-Rsearch Bulletin AFPTRC-TR-54-44. San Antonio, Tex.: United States Air Force.

 

Shahid, S. 1991. More kids at risk from alcohol than drugs. USA Today (Nov. 13): 15A.

 

Squituri, T. 1992. Soaring murder rate "tears apart" Charlotte. U5A Today (Jan. 31):6A.

 

Stalling, J. 1987. For whom and how long is the Hunter-based model appropriate? Response to Robbins and Wolfe. Educational Leadership 44(5):62-63.

 

Burel Block is an assistant professor of educational administration at Albany State College, Albany, Georgia.