Experience as a Liability

"The more experience you have, the more marketable and valuable you become".  This seems intuitive and is true in many careers, but not in teaching.  There is considerable disagreement about the degree of effect that experience and credentials have on teacher quality.  Years of experience and credentials (i.e., degrees) are really the only proxies currently available for assessing the "quality" of teachers.  Granted there are numerous evaluation systems currently in use (such as Danielson's Four Domains of Teacher Responsibility), however these systems are still a ways off from being actively applied to rank and measure teachers.  There is considerable evidence that supports the claim that after five years, teacher quality plateaus (though there is a measurable "vintage" effect that arises around 25 years of experience).  Furthermore, a vast body of research indicates that Master's degrees have practically no impact on teacher quality and student achievement, except for math and science teachers and then only when the degrees earned were in those specific subject areas.  Though there are inherent weaknesses in the measurement of teacher quality, it is the system in place and must do until something better replaces it.  Teacher quality varies considerably, with most teachers being "average", but teachers in their first five years of teaching vary the most.  It is obvious that first year teachers, regardless of their overall "quality", will likely have lower impacts on student achievement than a teacher with more than five years of experience.  At this time there is not much available to school leaders to accurately predict the future success of a teacher except maybe by using standardized test scores (SAT, GRE, PRAXIS, etc.), college grades, and a few other proxies.  Therefore, one could not effectively determine the differences in future success of a teacher fresh out of a preparation program and a teacher with several years of experience.  Yet many schools are hiring teachers with only a few years experience or no experience OVER teachers with several years of experience.  How can this be?  The simple answer is that it comes down to money.  It is vastly more expensive to hire a teacher that has ten years of experience and a Master's degree over a student intern with no experience and a bachelor's degree.  For instance, the cost "savings" in one district would be $20,840 if they hired a teacher with a BA and no experience over a teacher with a Master's degree and ten years of experience.  From a fiscal perspective this seems to make sense, but one must also consider the longitudinal ramifications.  Since it is extremely difficult to gauge the impact on student achievement of the new teacher, it is a total gamble.  With the experienced teacher, there is usable "data" (letters of reference, and the "signal" of experience and credentials) to use in the hiring process.  It is troubling that experience has essentially become a liability to teachers and clearly minimizes their mobility between schools and districts.  Obviously this is not always the case, but seems to be a rising trend.  Teacher turnover is a negative externality that drastically impacts schools across the country, but teachers shouldn't be stifled in their ability to change locales.  School budgets are tight and given that teacher salaries and benefits make up the greatest portion of budgets, school leaders may be "forced" to make cuts by hiring inexperienced teachers.  I should be clear that I am NOT saying that new teachers should not be provided a chance or that they are somehow less able than experienced teachers.  Often, teachers with no experience may very likely be more effective than a teacher with 5, 10 or 20 years of experience.  The problem is when experienced teachers are passed over because they are too expensive to hire.  This is an issue than requires further research to validate and practical solutions for school leaders to utilize.

Punctuated Equilibrium and School Reform

Education policy discourse is saturated with a wide spectrum of reforms, many positing to be panaceas for the ills of today's schools.  "Experts" both from inside and outside the sphere of education propose the next best thing for schools on a near daily basis.  Often new ideas are not vetted and are not research based,  yet they somehow find their way into schools and classrooms.  Despite the plethora of reforms sprouting up daily, there seems to be a dearth of any "true" reforms.  Analyzing the education policy arena through the lens of the Punctuated-equilibrium framework proposed by True, Jones, and Baumgartner (2007), one can understand the process of the education policy process.  Generally speaking the political arena tends to remain in stasis and incrementalism, but every so often there is a punctuation that represents some significant change (True, Jones, Baumgartner, 2007).  Though the education system is relatively immune to change, one would expect some sort of large scale change or policy leap at some point, but anything significant seems to be absent from education policy event history.  This is certainly an arguable point and many "reformers" would no doubt propose a list of reforms such as charter schools to counter my claim.  I view most if not all education policy reforms of the last several decades to be incremental in nature, offering nothing close to true punctuation.  Why there hasn't been a significant change is unclear.  It could be due to the nature of educational institutions or the opposition of certain groups to particular proposals.  There is no doubt that policy entrepreneurs have tried to advocate for certain agendas, but with minimal success.  I believe that major change is possible, but that it has not happened yet.  The education system in the United States is disturbingly similar to what existed over half a century ago.  The grammar of schooling remains resistant to change, but I am hopeful that the education system in the United States will exit its protracted period of stasis soon.

Tolerance for Adversity and Academic Resilience

       Grit, resilience, perseverance, tenacity, patience, tolerance for adversity, and persistence are all terms in the lexicon of current progressive education reform rhetoric.  Though academic content is clearly important, skills such as problem-solving, collaboration, critical thinking, perseverance and other non-cognitive factors have proven important for building the human capital of students.  Each year more research surfaces supporting the importance non-cognitive factors and many schools are attempting to teach these skills parallel to content standards in the hope of better preparing students for the 21st century workplace, which is becoming more complicated and abstract everyday.

       Assessing non-cognitive factors has gained some traction in recent years and is the central theme of the book How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character by Paul Tough.  Tough emphasizes that kids need to take risks and experience hardship in order to develop resilience and a tolerance for adversity.  So often children are shielded from failure and essentially taught not to take risks. In schools, failure is often ignored as part of the learning process and considered something to be avoided.  Author Amanda Ripley of the new book The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way also found that many see failure as demoralizing, thus schools and parents insulate kids from it.  There must be a sea change in this logic, since failure is part of life and is clearly documented to be beneficial to students.  Too many students consider themselves failures if they don’t immediately succeed, which does nothing to develop a growth mindset.  Leading psychologist and author of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success discovered that individuals with a growth mindset: embrace challenges, persist despite challenges, accept criticism, and ultimately are more successful than those with a fixed mindset.  Failure is part of learning, but if students avoid it and never really experience much challenge, they will not develop perseverance and resilience.

      Perseverance is closely coupled with academic success which is correlated with higher earnings later in life. The research is clear that students who score well on tests, such as PISA, NAEP, etc. tend to earn more than their lower scoring peers.  There are a plethora of factors that separate students, but one critical characteristic is how hard students work and more than that, how long they stay with a problem.  For instance, on the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMMS) test, students are asked to fill out a survey about their school, their parents, and other information regarding their demographics.  High test scores on the TIMMS is closely correlated with how much of this survey students complete. The students who fill out the most information, demonstrate diligence and persistence, which serves them well during the actual test.  

      Students need to fail and realize that failure is part of the learning process.  A required component of this is to take risks, which implies potential failure.  Many students are not willing to do this, for fear of criticism from their peers.  Schools sometimes lower standards or change the curriculum in order "help" students.  Rigor is a necessary component of learning and a rigorous curriculum should be challenging.   If a classroom culture provides for students to take risks, then students will likely not be stigmatized by saying something “wrong” or doing something that has the potential for failure.  Students should understand it is more than just getting the “right” answer, but is about taking chances and learning from mistakes.  Just to clarify, it is still important to be knowledgeable and to do well in school, but the point is that students are so paralyzed with the possibility of failure that the learning process has become corrupted.  A simple and easy way to develop the learning process in school is to use frequent formative assessments, so that students who “fail” early on can learn from their mistakes, with no penalty or consequence.   Furthermore, when it comes time for a summative assessments, they will be better prepared.  Like anything, developing perseverance and grit comes through extensive practice.  By experiencining challenge, through a rigorous curriculum, students will increase their tenacity and ultimately their ability to tolerate adversity.

           In the book Outliers: The Story of Success, the author Malcolm Gladwell found that the most successful individuals are those who practice extensively and expend just a bit more effort at what they are doing.  In short, success is not easy.  As an overly simple analogy, an golfer who hits 100 balls for practice versus the individual who hits 90 per session will be better for that extra effort, regardless of how minimal this seems.  

For decades, wilderness education schools such, as NOLS and Outward Bound have considered tolerance for adversity as a central tenet of their philosophies.  As a former mountaineering instructor and course director for Outward Bound Alaska, I saw first hand the critical importance of grit.  The weather and terrain of Alaska is notoriously brutal, with thick brush and frequent precipitation that can be soul crushing.  To enjoy a two week mountaineering adventure requires an incredible reserve of perseverance and a high tolerance for adversity.  What separated the successful from those who struggled was an ability to maintain a level of optimism in the face of daily physical, social, and mental challenges.  Physical fitness, though important, was not the chief characteristic that led to success.  Students who were metacognitive and able to embrace challenges as learning opportunities tended to be more successful while on course.  Tolerance for adversity is developed over time and applies to all sorts of contexts, including work, school, and life in general.  

To use climbing as an analogy, rock climbers often approach a route that they know is at their limit, if not a little beyond, but despite this will attempt the climb anyway; they take a risk.  Always problem-solving, they work their way up, but sometimes due to a slowly declining supply of energy, they may fall off.  This is normal!  The climber regains their strength and composure, reassesses the terrain and makes another go. Likely they will have a better understanding of the problem and will make it to the top or conversely they could encounter another crux, only to fall again.  This is the iterative process in action.  Now the climber could have attempted a route they knew was well within in their limit and effortlessly made it to the top, but there would have been little learning or improvement from that experience.  It is only through pushing ourselves into what noted developmental psychologist Vygotsky calls the Zone of Proximal Development, that we improve. Individuals must take risks, with the potential for failure, to improve whatever skill it is one is practicing and also to develop perseverance.  

Though content is important and should not necessarily be eclipsed, non-cognitive skills should take more precedence in our Nation's schools.  Teaching students to persevere in the face of challenges is a critical component of the learning process.  Students shouldn't be afraid to fail, but should be provided opportunities to take risks in learning with no penalty.  Hopefully, students will become more resilient to challenging situations and will ultimately become better learners with a growth mindset.  Non-cognitive skills are essential for success in the 21st century workplace and ultimately for the continued economic prosperity of the United States.

References

Dweck, C. (2006).  Mindset: The new psychology of success.  New York: Ballantine Books.

Gladwell, M. (2011).  Outliers: The story of success.  New York: Back Bay Books.

Tough, P. (2012).  How children succeed: Grit, curiosity, and the hidden power of character.  New York: Mariner Books.

Ripley, A. (2013).  The smartest kids in the world: and how they got that way.  Simon & Schuster: New York.