The portrayal of teachers and educational leaders in the film: waiting for “ superman” ppt

1. Introduce your topic (teachers' issue) and your team (1-2 sentences). (Lan) Lan
2. Teachers and educational leaders in the film - 2-3 minutes (Lan)
Distinguish between 2 kinds of inclusion:
+Those who are characters will have their names introduced and can talk (sometimes at length)
+others who are shown/talked about but not heard from.
Name people in the first group & provide description of who they are, what they want

3. What the film says about teachers (be brief in this section. Focus on summarizing, with evaluation where Thư
appropriate): 5-7 minutes
3.1 Teachers' role: What the film says about the importance of teachers in education/students' learning. The impacts of
good vs. bad teachers (Thư)
3.2 Teachers' standard & appraisal: How to become a teacher, How are teachers evaluated. What determines the
pay/salary of teachers (Thư)

3.3 Teacher tenure: What it is and what it leads to. (Nga) Nga
3.4. Inequitable distribution of teachers (among different schools /areas) - 5 minutes (Nga)
- What the film says about this
- What you find from your own research (eg. the actual distribution, some explanation for this distribution)
- Your evaluation

4. No Child Left Behind and how it has affected teaching (this is based on your own research): 5-7 minutes (Nguyet) Nguyet

5. Teachers' Unions & their impacts on educational reforms. 7 minutes (Tô N) Ngoc
- What the film says about teachers' union
- What you find from your own research
 - Your evaluation

6. Discussion
To what extent are teachers responsible for the quality of education in Vietnam? What are the responsibilities of the
government, Ministry of Education, and each individual student?
The success of any education system depends on the quality of teachers, which, in turn, depends on the effective teaching / learning
process. Teachers’ role is of vital significance for the development of society and appropriate changes in the society. Thus, the quality
of higher education depends upon the quality of those who impart it. Teachers are the most important components of any educational
system. Teachers play the most crucial role in the development of the education system as a whole and also in imparting and
maintaining the standards of higher education.
Dedication and Commitment: Dedication and commitment of teachers plays a crucial role in improving the quality of education and
shaping the future of the nation.
Motivation: A teacher should act as a motivational force and should be able to create a learning environment in which students are
encouraged to think carefully, rationally and express their thoughts and decide on the situations and difficulties. It is the responsibility
of the teacher to create a context in which the students’ desire and ability to learn can work most effectively. A teacher should act as
the role model for the students.
Skill Development: Skill development is crucial to the success of students in the job market. Skill development of students, on par
with their counterparts elsewhere, is an important aspect of enhancement of quality of higher education. With liberalization and
globalization of economic activities, the need to develop skilled human resources of a high caliber is imperative. Consequently, the
demand for internationally acceptable standards in higher education is evident.
→ Therefore, preparing the students to achieve core competencies, to face the global requirements successfully is very

important. This requires that the teachers should be innovative, creative and entrepreneurial in their approach, to ensure skill

development amongst the students.

Other influential factors to education quality:

-Policy and management mechanism of the government

-Curriculum development and orientation

-Infrastructure and school equipment

-Attitudes of students in learning

thankyou group 1 discussion, and to be continued topic related about American Public Schools in Education Reforms, now we
come to the topic review of teacher’s issues. we are group 5 and our presentation today divided into 4 part: -Teachers and
educational leaders in the film,
-What the film says about teachers,
- No Child Left Behind and its impacts on teaching,
-Teachers' Unions and their impacts on educational reforms
Before move on to discussion, now we look at a short video of teacher in film,
 a. Teachers:
While the film does highlight some examples of good teaching, it mainly stresses that there are far too many bad
teachers out there and that the system is constructed in a way so that we cannot get rid of them.
“bad teachers” put as little effort as possible into teaching their students.

Evidence: The director let a student puts a camera in his backpack and video tapes the class as it is in motion
+ one of the teachers is relaxing in his chair reading a newspaper article while students in the back are gambling
+ the teacher has officially been put on tenure and decides that she no longer wants to teach the class, but instead elects another
student to teach while she relaxes and reads a magazine
+ There are some short dialogue in the film between teachers and students that are:
‘“ -What are we doing in here today’
- Nothing.’
‘-Are you gonna teach us anything or are we just wanna sit here?
-Just do whatever you want
-I wanna learn from teacher
-Besides that!’
+ A bad teacher covers only 50% of the required curriculum in a school year, while a good teacher can cover 150% while still
being paid the same amount of money for their job. That teacher told their students that they are bring paid whether these
students learn or not.
+ The film includes footage of idle educators with their heads on tables in one of New York City’s notorious “rubber rooms,”
where teachers who were suspended for incompetence or behavioral infractions spent months, or even years, awaiting
hearings.
=> Teacher union contracts and teacher tenures produce lazy, uncaring, and clueless teachers.
b. Educational leaders:
- Michelle Rhee:
Rhee is the seventh superintendent for Washington D.C. She does not have a doctorate in education, and has no
previous experience.
● Michelle Rhee’s decidedly top-down reforms:
● She fired the principal, bad staff, closed the school. => Her moves to decrease the bureaucracy, make a deal with
the teacher’s union to do away with tenure by offering greatly increased salaries, and shutting down a significant
number of failing schools (i.e. neighborhood schools) were all met with great resistance.
● D.C. public schools and a former teacher for the district expresses sharp criticism of Rhee: Rhee's ideas about
how to fix the ailing school system were largely misinformed, and it's no wonder: She knew little about
instruction, curriculum, management, fiscal matters, and community relations. She was, to be sure, abrasive.

● She received protest because Administrators, teachers, and parents in Washington D.C. did not appreciate Rhee’s
ideas and policy moves because they were opposed to the accommodations they had to make.
- Geoffrey Canada:
The founder of the Harlem Success Academy, a much-sought-after charter school in New York City. Who recalls that as a
child his belief in a superman who could arrive on the scene and set things right was shattered by the reality that not everything
can be fixed so simply and definitively.
+ Public school: a high-performing charter school where kids are animated by their own high expectations, discipline, and love
of learning. The American public school system is in crisis, failing millions of students, producing as many drop-outs as
 graduates, and threatening our economic future. Public schools already spend too much. Test scores are low because there are
so many bad teachers, whose jobs are protected by powerful unions. => Students drop out because the schools fail them, but
they could accomplish practically anything if they were saved from bad teachers.
+ Harlem Success Academy: Tuition free charter school, in the worst district in New York but guaranteed all students will get
into college. Success doesn’t depend upon where you come from, or the color of your skin, or how much money your family
has — because they are getting real results in the poorest communities. => Because of the free education system, the US has
produced a lot of talent. The Harlem Success Academy, 88 percent of the students passed the state’s reading test and 95
percent passed the math test, while comparable schools have pass rates of 35 percent in reading and 45 percent in math.

What the film says about teachers

3. Teachers’ role:
- Teachers in real life:
Teachers play an important role in how well students succeed. An effective teacher is something almost all students have
experienced. There are many teachers who have made school an exciting and fun place. Effective teachers possess a certain passion
for the subjects that they teach and they genuinely care for the students within their school district. Those teachers have inspired
students to deeply consider lessons, to take on challenging work, to dig beyond surface meaning, to pursue careers in a particular area
of study, and to enjoy the learning process.
- Teachers in the movie:
+ Lose interest in educating due to the lack of money paid. With granted tenure, they have no problems with students having low
test scores and have no motivation to improve as an instructor.
 + The role of a teacher is huge. The difference between a good teacher and a bad teacher shows that in one year of learning. In
the film Hanushek shares his research findings indicating that students with high performing teachers progress three times
faster than students with low performing teachers. The film goes on to illustrate this point saying a poor teacher only covers
about 50 percent of the year's curriculum while a good teacher can cover 150 percent of the year's curriculum. This is the part
of the film we watched at the beginning.
+ A teacher is so bad that the whole school and everyone knows his ability but cannot fire him because the contract clearly
states. It seems that there is no teacher-student relationship in learning.

- The impact of teachers on student learning in the movie

The film emphasizes on the impact a teacher can have on student learning. A child’s family life will still have a profound impact on
their success in school, but teachers need to focus on the children in their rooms. Shifting the blame of why students may be
struggling in school does little to help their situations. Regardless of a child’s circumstances, a good teacher can make a big
difference. When discussing how to reform America’s schools, it is important to remember the power that individual teachers have.
Large scale organizational changes can be made to how public school systems operate, and those changes may also be important, but
great teachers will make any school system better whether it is the current system or a new innovative one.

4. Teaching standards/ appraisal

In the film, P-PEP stands for Professional Performance Evaluation Process was applied to assess the quality of a teacher. This is strict
rules on replacing a poor teacher.
Starting with an initial conference at the beginning of the school year, the assessed teacher will be helped each week preparing to be
evaluated. The observation has to occur for certain time. Then there is a post conference which happens after the observation. Over
those 90 days, the principal must do three more observations…
-There’s a lot of forms and dates and deadlines that have to be followed and if a single date is missed, for whatever reason, the entire
process can be subject to grievance.

Because of the contracts with the teachers union, the school not only can’t fire the bad teachers, but also tie teachers’ hands. Even
some teachers do really well, schools can’t pay them more based on their performances since it’s not in the contract.
As a screenshot in the film, we see that “bad teachers” as Geoffrey Canada calls them put as little effort as possible into teaching their
students. Because the teachers know that they have a legal contract that is fully supported by the teachers’ unions, they tend to slack
off in their instruction and effort that they give their students. What happens is that teachers are unable to be fired by the school
board. Their contract states that they will have a job for life.

3.3 Teacher tenure (Nga)

What it is:
“Tenure” guaranteed teachers’ jobs for life, teachers who got tenure can’t almost never be fired for any reason.
like we have watched the video earlier
The idea of tenure started in the university system which meant to protect professors from getting fired for arbitrary or political
reasons.
In universities, the professor only granted tenure after many years of teaching and a grueling vetting to assess whether they were
eligible or not.
But in public schools, tenure has been automatically given to teachers whoever have teached for 2 years.
what it leads to:
“the dance of the lemons”: principles can’t fire bad teachers -lemons, so at the end of the year they get together to rearrange the bad
teachers with hope that these teachers would get better.
In NY, they have the “rubber room” to deal with this: tenure teachers waiting for disciplinary hearings on offences like excessive
lateness, sexual abuse, incompetence. Teachers still collect full salaries and accumulate benefits for spending 7 hours reading or
playing cards. They spend an average of 3 years in the rubber room for hearings that last 8 times longer than the average criminal
cases.
In general, tenure in education could create an increasing number of unqualified teachers and a waste of education spending for
paying them.
3.4. Inequitable distribution of teachers
What the film says
In 1 district that has a hundred public schools, there’s usually only 1 mainstream school with high-performing teachers that could help
generate amazing results.
The school between 2 areas could be “2 different world”
Findings from additional research
- Research indicates that teachers are not equitably distributed among schools within districts and among districts within states.
Studies consistently conclude that students attending high-poverty, high-minority schools are more likely than other students to be:
•Taught by less qualified and less experienced teachers (Clotfelter, Ladd, Vigdor, & Wheeler, 2007).
•Taught by teachers assigned to classes outside their content area or grade-level specialization (Lashway, 2004).
•Taught by teachers trained at less competitive colleges or universities (Lankford et al., 2002).
•Subjected to higher teacher-turnover rates (Allensworth, Ponisciak, & Mazzeo, 2009; Ingersoll & Perda, 2009).
- Research has focused on teacher preference, mobility, and attrition as explanations for inequitable distribution within the teacher
workforce.
• preference: young teachers are motivated to work in high-need schools or communities that familiar to them
• mobility: Teacher movement from one school to another for a better teaching assignment can create imbalances in the teacher
workforce.
• attrition (when teachers quit teaching entirely for such reasons as retirement, administrative assignment, or employment outside the
education sector): depend on personal interest and working conditions
Several studies suggest that social norms and official policies can create staffing inequities within schools as well.
Evaluation
Inequitable teacher distribution could lead to an ineffective educational system. Understanding the scope and scale of the issue is the
first step toward developing solutions.
Multiple education leaders should create programs and incentives that influence the distribution of teachers.
It is necessary that state, district, and school-level leaders put concerted efforts to facilitate equitable teacher distribution.

4. No child left behind and its impact on teaching

a, Contemporary issues:
-At the time of its passage, there was increasing public concern regarding the state of public education.
+There is a contrast between increasing education spending per capita and students' performance. Although 1971-2007, educational
spending in the US has risen from $4.300 dollars to more than $9.000 for each student, the reading score was flat line and math was
not better.
+Many schools didn’t focus on the progress of disadvantaged students. Between 5th and 7th grade, a huge number of minority kids
go from being B students to D students.

b, No child left behind act

-No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, a U.S. federal law was passed by Congress with bipartisan support in December 2001 and signed
into law by Pres. George Walker Bush in January 2002.
-The assertively stated goal of NCLB “is to ensure that all children have a fair, equal, and significant opportunity to obtain a high
quality education, and reach, at a minimum, proficiency on challenging state academic achievement standards and state academic
assessments” (NCLB, 2001).
c, Provisions of the act
*SCHOOLS
School accountability rules were a big part of NCLB.
Annual testing: Schools had to give students statewide math and reading tests every year in grades 3–8 and once in grades 10–12. All
kids had to take the tests, including even students in the disadvantaged groups. Schools also had to publicly report school and
“subgroup” results. For example, schools had to report how students in special education were performing on reading and math tests.

Academic progress: States had to bring all students, including those in special education, up to the “proficient” level on tests. They
had to set targets for improvement, called adequate yearly progress (AYP) which is different for the category of students.

Schools essentially got a report card from the state on how they were performing. The school had to share that information with
parents of their students. If a school didn’t meet AYP, it could be labeled as “needing improvement.”

Penalties: Schools with many low-income students are called “Title I schools.” If a Title I school didn’t meet AYP, NCLB allowed
the state to change the school’s leadership team or even close the school. If those schools repeatedly failed to meet AYP, parents had
the option to move their kids to another school.

*TEACHER
Highly qualified teachers: No Child Left Behind mandates that all teachers must be "highly qualified" which means that a teacher
must meet the license and certification requirements of the state in which they teach. A teacher must also hold at least a bachelor's
degree and must pass state testing criteria to be eligible to teach beyond the 2005/2006 school year. If a teacher did not meet any of
these qualifications, they will not be allowed to teach again until they do meet these mandatory requirements.

d, Impacts
****On the positive side, Students’ performances:
+The new school accountability systems generated large and broad gains in the math achievement of fourth graders and, to a
somewhat lesser extent, eighth graders (Dee & Jacob, 2011).

+many believe NCLB led to a greater focus on struggling students.

By making schools report results by subgroup, NCLB shined a light on students in poverty, students of color, those receiving special
education services, and English language learners.
+The graduation rate for students with specific learning disabilities increased from 57 percent in 2002 to 68 percent in 2011.

-Teacher quality: 88% of school districts reported that by the end of the 2005-06 school year all their teachers of core academic
subjects would have met the NCLB definition of “highly qualified” which generally means having expertise in the subject area in
which they are teaching, along with the skills to teach what they know (USDOE, Office of the Under Secretary, 2003, p. 11).
****Problems arise
-Some say that NCLB focused too much on standardized testing. Some schools ended up “teaching to the test” — focusing only on
what students were tested on. This left little time for anything else kids may have needed or wanted to learn. Some even argued that
NCLB’s standards-based accountability was inconsistent with special education, which focuses on meeting a child’s individual needs.
-The second problem is conflicting regulations and mixed standards.
Each state has its own proficiency test.
-> The federal government passes the law and sent money to the state but the states fund schools too and set their own often
conflicting standards
-> As a result, school governing was a tangled mess of conflicting regulations and mixed standards (local school board, state
department of education, federal department of education, district,...)

Current situation
-Major portions of the NCLB law have proven problematic, particularly as the law has matured without any congressional update or
reauthorization. By 2010, several states did see failure rates of more than 50 percent to achieve NCLB’s target.
In 2015 Obama signed into law the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which rescinded several of the most-unpopular provisions
of NCLB.

d. Teachers unions
Claim :Teachers’ unions are an obstacle to educational reforms
Evidences:
+ Randi Weingarten, the head of the National Federation of Teachers, as a demagogue, intends on protecting all teachers no matter
how bad they might be. or in the films represented the Teacher Union.
Her aim is to protect all teachers including the bad performing one. —-> Good teachers get no reward, bad teachers receive the same
wage as everyone.

+ Institutional phenomena like the “dance of the lemons,” wherein bad teachers are let go by one school at the end of the year, but
since union contracts say they cannot be fired, schools swap bad teachers
New York City Public Schools Rubber Room
→ The tenure system and the unions that support it make it nearly impossible to fire bad teachers

+ Resistance from teachers' unions preventing progressive reforms from passing

+ In Rhee’s case, she struggled to reform the D.C school system, because of the Union. She offered a trade of 100% pay raise for
student achievement with no tenure and earning much smaller pay raises with tenure rights retained. However it was opposed by the
teacher and turned down by the TU with a lot of backlash went into Rhee.

+ The viewer sees footage from the early 1990s of a teacher reading a newspaper while his students sit listlessly at their desks. This is
what Guggenheim argues to be happened in all neighborhood public schools. Frustrated that her son is trapped in an overcrowded
school in the Bronx, which filled with apathetic and disengaged teachers, one mother applies to a charter school believing, “If he
doesn’t get in, he doesn’t have a chance.”
→ How tenured teachers affect the quality of education in America: America’s children don’t have a high-quality
education
Facts:
+ Context (Chen, 2022)
Early years of the 20th century, the beginning of education reform
Teachers weren’t treated as a significant part of the reform process, so they rebelled against the changes and formed local
associations on which today’s teacher unions are based.
+ Goals - early focus
Raise the standards of teaching
Ensure student achievement
Root out corruption
+ Impacts
According to StateUniversity.com: at the turn of the 21st century
AFT: around 900,000 members
NEA: about 2.3 million members
=> grand total of teachers affiliated with teacher unions to about three-fourths of all public school teachers.
Teacher’ unions contribution:
The press is more likely to view teacher unions critically than positively or even neutrally (Goldstein, 2011)
Even though in the film, David Guggenheim really criticizes the teacher unions, Richard D. Kahlenberg who is the writer of The
Smarter Charter argues that there is no empirical support and evidence saying “teachers’ unions are the central impediment to
educational progress in United States” (Kahlengerg, 2012).
Kahlenberg states that teachers unions are actually doing some good things
- paying teacher bonuses to attract them to high-poverty schools.
- allow teachers to have their own voices.
- Today they are trying to get rid of those teachers who are not working, “not based strictly on test scores or the
subjective judgment of principals, but through multiple measures of performance, including “peer
review””(Kahlengerg, 2012).
 As you can see the pre 2011: There are few articles that talk in favor of TU. —-> Only after they change that people started
viewing them differently
There is no doubt that the teacher union is hard-head in terms of change even though some of the methods to protect teacher
rights are not relevant anymore. However after receiving some much criticism from the public they do change their attitude
and improve the system. After all, they still have a big influence in the education field.

How does the tenure policy affect the teaching standard in VN?