should K-12 students keep the same teacher for several grades, especially in lower grades?
My current limited contact with the US K-12 system made me ponder the differences I see locally compared with my anecdotal experiences in Europe.
Specifically, the local practise, which seems to be widespread in the US, is to have the teachers stay with the grade level, passing classes through to another teacher in the next grade, and to mix up the students in each grade, rather than to make an effort to keep the same basic grouping of students in a class within each grade as they progress.
There are advantages and disadvantages to both approaches - keeping the teacher allows for continuity and progressive structured curricula, and the teacher knows the most of the students at the start of each year; but it also perpetuates bad situations and reduces the instructional variety any given student sees.
Well, as I suspected, this is something studied - keyword is "looping" and there are arguments for it within the US education hierarchy, although it seems to be limited mostly to private schools or small school districts experimenting with two year loops.
My sense is that the benefits broadly outweigh the disadvantages; it is harder to arrange looping if students move a lot, whether because of physical relocation due to economics or demographics; redistricting because of shifting demographics; or, because parents push for students to shift schools. However, for most districts the student pool should be stable enough that substantial consistency from year-to-year for classes would be possible and relatively easy. It would require teachers to stretch their curriculum development more, but the benefit would be that they would be able to develop a consistent curriculum sequence over several years.
Sometimes the Atlantic can be amazingly wide... I'm biased, but I think looping over 2-4 grades, especially at the lower grades, has benefits that overall strongly outweigh the disadvantages.
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It seems to me that the overall success of "looping" would be conditioned on somehow guaranteeing that *every* teacher involved is a good teacher to begin with. It can be fairly easy to overcome the handicaps of being stuck with an ineffective teacher for one year; multiplying that by 2 to 4 years would probably put most of those kids behind the curve permanently.
In my own 8 years of elementary education, I had two excellent teachers, 3 good ones, 1 mediocre one, and two who actively discouraged real learning through their petty tyranny and consistent putting down of the brightest students.
My first thought was 'dear god, horrible idea!' And after reading, I feel even more so. Each of my kids had one or more teachers so clueless as to make school into a grinding endurance test. The school would not move them into other classrooms because they were 'aware-winning' teachers. As they cried at night, I could only reassure them; "You will have someone different next year and they will probably be better". I shudder to think if they had been saddled with them for years at a time and the school had not listened.
Well, the percentage of teachers who grind down the kids is the same in both scenarios, it is just that in one case a bunch of students get consistently good teachers they relate to and a few are stuck with a consistently bad teacher or one they don't relate to.
In general schools that "loop" do have avenues for parents to move kids to a different class, with some hurdles put in the way to keep down the numbers of kids who move.
What studies I've found suggest looping leads to overall happier students who do better academically, but there will always be a spread in outcome.
here is one article
From an european perspective, I am appalled to learn that US schools do not "loop", not even in the very first grades. And that classes are disrupted more or less on purpose.
It is bad to be stuck for five years with a teacher (or a bunch of classmates) you don't like, but in my opinion this risk is quite minor when compared to the problems a small child will run into when continously changing not only his teacher, but also most of his classmates.
Obviously, a bad teacher/bad chemistry with classmates would require a corrective action. In the italian situation I am familiar with, teachers are practically un-movable, so this requires going to another school, and will cause the same kind of problems to the kid. But this is a choice you have, not an imposition: if things are fine, you can stick with them until the end of primary school (i.e. for 5 years).
Yeah, looping at the elementary level was so ingrained into me as a preconception that it took me a while to process the "which teacher did you get" chatter, and to translate that into "everyone gets a different teacher every year!"
There are two interesting things - one is that most of the US commenters (here and at Chad's place) take it as a novel idea (not sure if the commenter who suggested streaming as an new idea was being sarcastic or not); the other is how many people who have not been looped react negatively to the concept, focusing on the "what if I am stuck with a bad teacher for several years", while ignoring the known overall benefits.
Lots of sociology and culture there.
Yeah, looping at the elementary level was so ingrained into me as a preconception that it took me a while to process the "which teacher did you get" chatter, and to translate that into "everyone gets a different teacher every year!"
There are two interesting things - one is that most of the US commenters (here and at Chad's place) take it as a novel idea (not sure if the commenter who suggested streaming as an new idea was being sarcastic or not); the other is how many people who have not been looped react negatively to the concept, focusing on the "what if I am stuck with a bad teacher for several years", while ignoring the known overall benefits.
Lots of sociology and culture there.
If my general experience with our school system were that they were inclined to listen to parents and make real-world adjustments, I'd be more receptive to the idea. But our schools (I mean our school district) are run by, to put it politely, fascist idiots. "I'm sure it's OK" is their mantra.
Getting stuck with one of the really bad teachers is a non-trivial risk; IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO FIRE THEM so they will have classes of students regardless. No thanks, I'll take my chances with a bit of turnover each year.
My sister looped Kindergarten and 1st grade and had a good experience. And while I can see how a bad teacher could make this a very bad situation, I think it is on the average good. Some of the advantages are: the relatively new students don't have to learn a new set of classroom procedures at the beginning of 1st grade; the teacher already knows where all the students are (with some back stepping over the summer) when school starts (no reviewing last year's math for 2 months); and students know each other already making it easier on the shy ones. Students also know their teacher. My sister was very nervous at the start of this year (4th) because she didn't know her new teacher and had a bad one last year. This wasn't an issue going into 1st grade.
I think looping should be done more in the early elementary grades than it is now. People who are afraid their child might get stuck with a bad teacher need to think back to how many bad elementary teachers they had versus how many good ones. I bet the good ones well out weigh the bad.
You're not exactly selling me here...
As Steinn pointed out, and people should remember, looping isn't exactly a new thing. It's apparently been done in Europe for some time (add Sweden to your list of looping countries Stein!). We did it when I was below high school (some 10 years ago), and it seems like my father did something similar (some 50 years ago).
Also, I find the argument that you risk being stuck with a bad teacher somewhat strange as it is put forward like bad teachers are unavoidable. True it's unavoidable that there are teachers that will not get along with all the students in an acceptable way, it should not be considered acceptable to retain teachers that do not get along with any students at all.
To me it seems that the bad teachers are those that benefit the most from the shuffling of students, as it does not become as obvious how bad they are if the students know they need only put up with it for a certain time. If you as a kid know that that most hateful person will be your teacher for three years or more, one would hope they would voice their dissent in a manner understandable to their surroundings.
I totally agree. Just try to fire one in our system.
That's an excellent point. But we're putting the cart before the horse; first fix the fireproof nature of the teaching profession in this country, then have looping. Otherwise you're using some real actual children as an instrument of social change and that's wrong.
Also, there MUST be a safety valve in which a child can move to another teacher without penalty. No matter how "good" a given teacher is, they may not be right for everyone. I'm not just being contrary here; this is a really serious problem.
I see both sides of the coin and not sure what the best answer is. As a special ed teacher on the high school level, I was lucky to have the same kids for 4 years. I already knew their weaknesses and personalities which saved us from losing time at the beginning of each year. I was able to establish a relationship with the student and their families which helped them be successful. On the other hand, I worried that these kids have not learned how to adapt to new situations and new peers like they will need to learn when they get out into the workplace. Was this a disservice to them? I wish there was an easy answer.
OTOH, the threat of having children stuck with a "bad teacher" for several years might be just the impetus to get RID of the bad teachers that school systems need!
Rettaw and Clix sound like they don't know how the law works in most states regarding hiring and firing teachers.
After a teacher has been around for three years (and then automatically gets "tenure" or "professional status") he or she cannot be fired.
With two exceptions.
One: The teacher has sex with a student or something equally bad. Don't laugh. It happened in my town. It's also the only example I know of a teacher being fired "for cause."
Two: Due to financial problems or declining enrollments, the district is getting rid of teachers. But then the firing must be done on a strict last hired/first fired basis. If there is a good teacher who has been there four years and a bad teacher who has been there five, there is absolutely no choice. The good teacher must go before the bad teacher.
American teacher unions have been adament that this system stay in place.
Well. as I understand it, in Pennsylvania K-12 teachers must maintain professional certification through continuous education, or they are automatically decertified under Act 48.
Most states protect teachers from arbitary dismissal, but most allow firing for cause - either by revoking certification or by firing, including for Incomptence.
How often that is done in practise is a separate issue.
Looking over a legal guide to teacher rights, I see 27 states that list incompetence as just cause for firing (though proving incompetence to a legal standard could be hard).
Several of the other states have clauses which would imply incompetence as cause.
Quick news search revealed a Post-Gazette article that 11 teachers in PA were fired in the 1990s for incompetence, compare to a little over 100 who were fired for crimes including sexual offences.
http://www.post-gazette.com/localnews/20030206firingrp2.asp
BTW: teacher tenure is quite strong in Europe, but looping works quite well there...
When the potential barrier to becoming a fully credentialed teacher is so high -- due to baroque bureaucracy with an extra layer of crap imposed by Federal No Child Left behind -- there is a bimodal distribution of teachers.
(1) Most public school teachers, regardless of documented "qualifications" are at best sufficient but not good, the bias being the degree in Education is typically for nice people with less intelligence than needed for Physics, or Math, or the like;
(2) A smaller number of overqualified teachers, who actually HAVE subject matter expertise in Science or Math or whatever, and then changed careers to teaching, for a big pay cut but noble aspirations.
My wife and I have been in category (2). The bureaucrats are not allowed to actually look at undergrad and grad transcripts and publications and awards. They require one to register as a grad student in a College of Education, and pay extra to have designated experts look at one's undergrad and grad transcripts -- and are barred from considering publications and awards.
At the local "cheap" state university, Cal State Los Angeles, I have already paid $1,250 for the first quarter-year of Mickey Mouse classes, and there are 5 more quarters before I am "Fully Credentialed" as a full-time public school teacher, to teach the Math and Science that I have done professionally for a third of a century, and taught to over 2,000 students.
Tonight I go to my first Communications Science: Public Speaking for Teachers -- course. That I've been a professional speaker in almost 10 countries, live on every major TV network to 10 million people at a time, is irrelevent, because it is not in my transcript.
You pays your money and you takes your chances.
Steinn is absolutely right. A teacher will (not just can but definitely will) be fired if he or she doesn't attend a certain number of professional development events. However, no skill is required to do that.
All state laws say that teachers can be fired "for cause" but the process is long and requires exquisite documentation. As Steinn points out, in ten years only 11 teachers in Pennsylvania were fired for incompetence. Pennsylvania is a big state and during the same period, "a little over 100 who were fired for crimes including sexual offences."
For almost all practical purposes, tenured teachers simply are not fired because of the quality of the job they are doing.