Volume 19, Number 5
September/October 2003

Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Teachers

School reforms are destined to fail until teaching becomes a professional career

By KATHERINE C. BOLES and VIVIAN TROEN

Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Teachers, continued



It is telling that an American parent's aspirations for a son or daughter often include the practice of medicine or law but almost never of education. An African American student at Harvard told us her parents tried to discourage her from becoming a teacher. They advised her to go into some other field where, as a smart and talented young woman, she "could be a real success." She went into teaching despite the urgings of her parents and many of her friends. She is an exception—one of the few academically accomplished college students who choose teaching over other, more attractive opportunities.

Teaching is a job—not a profession or even a career. There are recognized criteria, after all, for a profession, and teaching meets almost none of them. And for a job to be a career, there must be a visible and attainable career ladder with advancements based on increased experience, knowledge, and expertise.

To understand the deficiencies of this job-that-is-not-a-professional-career, we must look at teaching's history. In the industrialized 19th century, women, recently freed from farm work by mechanization, took up the only intellectual jobs available to them. By 1885, women made up 90 percent of the teaching force (a ratio almost the same in elementary schools today), working in poor conditions for little pay. In the 20th century, once women obtained the right and the means to compete for nearly any job available to men, fewer chose teaching. The shortage of qualified classroom teachers is now a national crisis. Although a softening of the economy and a shortage of jobs have many college grads considering teaching, most see this as a short-term option. When they find the positions they really want, they'll quickly leave.

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It is telling that an American parent's aspirations for a son or daughter often include the practice of medicine or law but almost never of education. An African American student at Harvard told us her parents tried to discourage her from becoming a teacher. They advised her to go into some other field where, as a smart and talented young woman, she "could be a real success." She went into teaching despite the urgings of her parents and many of her friends. She is an exception—one of the few academically accomplished college students who choose teaching over other, more attractive opportunities.

Teaching is a job—not a profession or even a career. There are recognized criteria, after all, for a profession, and teaching meets almost none of them. And for a job to be a career, there must be a visible and attainable career ladder with advancements based on increased experience, knowledge, and expertise.

To understand the deficiencies of this job-that-is-not-a-professional-career, we must look at teaching's history. In the industrialized 19th century, women, recently freed from farm work by mechanization, took up the only intellectual jobs available to them. By 1885, women made up 90 percent of the teaching force (a ratio almost the same in elementary schools today), working in poor conditions for little pay. In the 20th century, once women obtained the right and the means to compete for nearly any job available to men, fewer chose teaching. The shortage of qualified classroom teachers is now a national crisis. Although a softening of the economy and a shortage of jobs have many college grads considering teaching, most see this as a short-term option. When they find the positions they really want, they'll quickly leave.

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For Further Information

R.S. Barth. Improving Schools from Within. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1990.

N. Hoffman. Woman's "True" Profession: Voices from the History of Teaching (2nd ed.) Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Education Press, in press.

National Commission on Excellence in Education. A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education, 1983.

J.D. Saphier. Bonfires and Magic Bullets: Making Teaching a True Profession, the Step Without Which Other Reforms Will Never Take nor Endure. Carlisle, Mass.: Research for Better Teaching, 1995.

V. Troen and K.C. Boles. Who's Teaching Your Children? Why the Teacher Crisis Is Worse Than You Think and What Can Be Done About It. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003.

D.B. Tyack. The One Best System: A History of American Urban Education. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974.

D. Tyack and L. Cuban. Tinkering Toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995.
It is telling that an American parent's aspirations for a son or daughter often include the practice of medicine or law but almost never of education. An African American student at Harvard told us her parents tried to discourage her from becoming a teacher. They advised her to go into some other field where, as a smart and talented young woman, she "could be a real success." She went into teaching despite the urgings of her parents and many of her friends. She is an exception—one of the few academically accomplished college students who choose teaching over other, more attractive opportunities.

Teaching is a job—not a profession or even a career. There are recognized criteria, after all, for a profession, and teaching meets almost none of them. And for a job to be a career, there must be a visible and attainable career ladder with advancements based on increased experience, knowledge, and expertise.

To understand the deficiencies of this job-that-is-not-a-professional-career, we must look at teaching's history. In the industrialized 19th century, women, recently freed from farm work by mechanization, took up the only intellectual jobs available to them. By 1885, women made up 90 percent of the teaching force (a ratio almost the same in elementary schools today), working in poor conditions for little pay. In the 20th century, once women obtained the right and the means to compete for nearly any job available to men, fewer chose teaching. The shortage of qualified classroom teachers is now a national crisis. Although a softening of the economy and a shortage of jobs have many college grads considering teaching, most see this as a short-term option. When they find the positions they really want, they'll quickly leave.

To find long-term solutions to the teacher crisis, we must take off the blinders and look at the system as a whole. Public education suffers under what we call a Trilemma Dysfunction—a three-component cycle that stymies effective education reform:

  • Not enough academically able candidates are attracted to teaching.
  • Teacher education programs do an inadequate job of preparing classroom teachers.
  • The professional work life of the teacher is, on the whole, unacceptable.

First identified in A Nation at Risk, this is a self-perpetuating cycle—one in which the underqualified are given inadequate preparation to enter a workplace culture that defeats attempts at excellence. It is highly resistant to the kinds of systemic changes needed for the improvement of public education. And it is the primary reason why most proposed reforms, even those that would make sense if they could be implemented, are doomed to fail.

How to break the cycle of dysfunction? If a magic wand could make every student entering a teacher-preparation program the perfect candidate for classroom teaching it still would not solve the problem, because even the best students would be stymied by the poor education they receive at most graduate schools. Wave the wand again to upgrade every teacher-preparation program in the country and the cycle would still not be broken.

Why? Because the true culprit in the equation is the nonprofessional culture of classroom teaching. It is there that the pursuit of educational improvement is defeated and it is there that the work must begin.

Equal and Isolated

Based on a model of industrialization that viewed teachers as interchangeable assembly-line workers, teaching is both egalitarian and isolationist. Egalitarianism is the pervasive myth that every teacher is as good as every other teacher. The flat organizational structure, with one principal at the top and all teachers on one level underneath, effectively squashes attempts at leadership and true professional development. This is a neat organizational/cultural device for keeping each teacher in her place. Should one teacher aspire to improve her practice, she must do it quietly, alone, and preferably unnoticed—or run the risk of being labeled and ostracized.

Combined with egalitarianism, isolationism makes collaboration with peers virtually impossible and keeps teaching a private act. This effectively defeats attempts at accountability, because supervision and mentoring, while given lip service, are never well implemented. Teachers who ask for help are treated as incompetent, and the very notion of an "equal" teacher giving advice to another teacher who is already supposed to know everything she needs to know is seen as patently ridiculous. For the same reason, schools currently putting teachers in "teams" are merely engaged in a game of rearranging chairs because, of course, teams without acknowledged leaders are mostly ineffective.

We will not see long-lasting improvement in overall educational quality until we reinvent the job of teaching as a true profession—transforming an isolated, freelance culture in which mediocrity is the norm into an open, collaborative culture that fosters excellence and accountability.

A Multi-Tiered Profession

The first task in the professionalization of teaching is to create a career ladder—a multi-tiered structure in which different teachers have different job descriptions and responsibilities. We have imagined schools in which the principal supervises not 70 or 80 teachers and paraprofessionals, but a cadre of perhaps four chief instructors. Each chief instructor in turn supervises and is responsible for the performance of perhaps two teams, each made up of professional teachers, fully licensed teachers, associate teachers, and teaching interns.

Teaching interns are graduate or undergraduate students who work full-time in classrooms as part of a degree-granting program with a university. They are not on the fringe of the school but are considered junior faculty who have responsibilities for the instruction of children. This includes classroom teaching responsibilities part of the time, under the close supervision of a professional teacher.
Associate teachers are the novices, first-time teachers who are participating in an intensive two-year period of induction. Rather than flying solo, they teach classes only part of the week as they receive constant supervision and mentoring. At the end of two years they become fully licensed teachers and, if they wish, advance their careers to the level of professional teacher or chief instructor.

Chief instructors are the team leaders who supervise teams consisting of professional teachers, fully licensed teachers, associate teachers, and interns. The chief instructor earns a credential by working several years as a professional teacher, plus intensive study; the position offers the highest pay and the highest level of achievement in the teaching profession. A chief instructor must be an expert in content, curriculum development, student learning and assessment, and must demonstrate the ability to translate relevant and proven research into practice. The chief instructor must also provide tangible evidence of contributions to the profession, including research, publications, university teaching, and/or presentations at conferences. Working an 11-month year, the chief instructor's primary responsibilities are supervision and mentoring—assisting colleagues, giving demonstration lessons, observing, coaching, and facilitating curriculum and staff development.

This model is designed not only to transform the profession but also the culture, making commonplace that which was formerly impossible. An open system where everyone's work is visible leads to accountability for everyone. Under the leadership of a principal who has been schooled in this new form of power sharing, true teamwork and collaboration lead to shared decisionmaking and the improvement of individual practice. Mentoring, supervision, and professional development are no longer "add-ons" but integral components of the career. A clearly defined career path provides tangible rewards for accomplishment and professional recognition.

When teaching becomes a real profession, more academically able people will be drawn into it (and stay), colleges will be forced by market competition to improve the quality of their education, and better prepared teachers will enter the classroom and improve the profession.

As Larry Cuban and David Tyack have pointed out, Americans are fond of constantly tinkering to improve education. Well, we've seen the results of tinkering on scales both grand and small, and it isn't a pretty picture. It's time to stop tinkering and do the serious work necessary to transform and professionalize teaching once and for all. We'll know we've been successful when mamas again want their babies to grow up to be teachers.

Katherine C. Boles and Vivian Troen cofounded the Learning/Teaching Collaborative, one of the country's first professional development schools, and Trilemma Solutions, an education consultancy. Boles is a lecturer on education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and Troen is implementing professional development school initiatives at Brandeis University. The Trilemma Dysfunction, Millennium School, and other ideas expressed in this article are derived from their book, Who's Teaching Your Children? Why the Teacher Crisis Is Worse Than You Think and What Can Be Done About It, published in 2003 by Yale University Press.