Gay teachers and role models

In this morning's Oregonian, metro columnist Anna Griffin writes about a disturbing incident here in Beaverton.  Apparently, a student teacher (one still studying for an education degree at Lewis and Clark), when asked by a student why he was not married, gave an honest answer--he is gay, and same sex marriage is not legal in Oregon.  A parent complained, and the Beaverton School District requested that the student teacher (one Seth Stambaugh) be re-assigned to another district.

As a Beaverton parent, I'm outraged.... that the school district would discriminate in this fashion.  (Often times, the words "as a parent" precede a steaming pile of bigoted nonsense, as though the well-intentioned desire to protect one's children from harm justifies any loathsome thought that might cross one's mind).  Were this a credentialed teacher, I suspect he would not be treated in this way (if for no other reason than the union might object)--but student teachers don't enjoy such protections.   Beaverton School District officials don't, as a rule, engage in witch-hunts against faculty who are sexual minorities, and frequently attempt to promote equality and diversity.  Yet in this case, they seem inclined to throw the student teacher in question under the bus.

I'm also a bit puzzled by Griffin's column, which takes Stambaugh to task for his words.  Griffin makes it clear that she has no issues with gay teachers coming out of the closet--and furthermore, suggests that they have a moral duty to do so (she invokes the case of Tyler Clementi, the New Jersey teen who recently committed suicide after a sexual encounter with another man was transmitted over the Internet).  Yet she faults Stambaugh for apparently going to far with his response to the student.  And BSD officials give the same reason for their dismissal of Stambaugh--he stepped out of line.

Why?

Were Stambaugh's response to be sexually explicit (whether gay, straight, or otherwise), that would certainly be crossing over the border of what is acceptable conduct.  But has far as I can tell, there was no sexual content to the remarks at all, other than an admission of his orientation.  By that standard, teachers who discuss their heterosexual partners ("my wife", "my boyfriend") ought to be sanctioned as well, and we obviously don't go there.  There are quite a few teachers at my children's school who are rather obviously "shacking up" with a partner--yet this doesn't generate any outrage. A teacher I know is, at this very moment, nine months pregnant (and due to deliver any day).  Nobody seems concerned that this might "expose" her elementary students to the topic of sexuality (though in years past, it might have).  Not only that, but the teacher in question was only  married over the past summer--yet there doesn't seem to be any outrage about this either.  Nor should there be--it's none of our damn business.  I certainly don't care; and only mention this to demonstrate the vast amount of hypocrisy which remains on this issue of public school teachers and their private lives.

Yet those who are uncomfortable with homosexuality view any discussion of the topic at all as tantamount to pornography, it seems--to many, there's little difference between a declaration of "I'm gay" and graphic descriptions of sex acts.  Others seem to think that such conversations are only appropriate with older students--that for a teacher to admit being gay in an elementary classroom--even if just an offhand reference to "my boyfriend" coming from a man--is somehow inappropriate.  Which, of course, puts gay teachers in a no-win situation; either they have to lie about their personal life, put up a big front of "its none of your business", or take the risk that any detail about their life outside of the classroom, no matter how insignificant, will cost them their job.  Which is why the closet is frequently so painful.


The other piece of Stambaugh's words--an apparent endorsement of same-sex marriage--might instead be what got him in trouble.  Again, I have a hard time agreeing with the district.  Teachers obviously ought not be using the classroom as a forum for political activism (though this rule is frequently only deployed against unpopular opinions), but what if a student asks a teacher his opinion on the issues of the day?  Here, Stambaugh volunteered a political opinion that was unsolicited--the student didn't explicitly ask about gay marriage--but the opinion was relevant to the topic.  When I was growing up, my teachers offered opinions on issues all the time (and a few of them "crossed the line" into advocacy), but I'm not aware of any of them being disciplined for this  But here's a few questions to think about:  What if the student asked the teacher why he doesn't eat meat, and the teacher responded that killing animals is immoral?  Or upon being asked about Afghanistan, questioned the patriotism of war protesters?  Or stated a refusal to cross a picket line somewhere?  Or expressed a belief that homosexuality is immoral?  Where do we draw the line between legitimate conversation, and illegitimate prostletyzing or indoctrination?


I agree with Griffin that teachers ought to serve as role models (regardless of sexuality), but I also think that first and foremost they ought to be educators.  Activities which interfere with the classroom should obviously be curtailed.  But activities which don't--such as a reasonable and honest response to a question posed by a student--should not be.  Assuming there aren't other facts which haven't been made public, The Beaverton School District should be ashamed of itself.  And Griffin, insofar as she is interested in gay rights issues, ought to rethink her position on this--the closet won't be fully opened so long as certain otherwise-legitimate political topics remain taboo when homosexuality is involved.

[edited to remove some identifying details]

Conor on teacher pay and tests

Conor Friedersdorf, guest-blogging at The Daily Dish, said a bunch I basically agree with:

I think America's teachers should be paid more in money and prestige, that the discretion of principals is a better way to determine relative compensation than test scores, seniority, or masters degrees, that programs like Teach for America demonstrate the need for reform in the credentialing process, and that a necessary tradeoff as teachers are paid more in a merit based system is less job security.

Teachers are educated professionals.  They should be compensated like professionals.  And they should be managed like professionals; not like factory workers or fruit pickers or fry cooks.  As professionals, their work product is one which is complex and difficult to evaluate, and a fair evaluation of such takes time.   Simple metrics such as test scores are not likely to produce fair evaluations of  teachers, any more than simple metrics like lines of code delivered or defect rate are not a good basis to evaluate computer programmers (my profession).  These things are important factors to consider, but are only part of the story.  And metrics which are too heavily relied on are often easily manipulated; "teaching to the test" is a well-known example of this.  (That said, much teaching-to-the-test is done at the behest of principals and administrators; not individual classroom teachers).

For private-sector salaried professionals (those who have a boss; not those in private practice), evaluation of the performance of professionals is the job of managers (in the educational context, principals).  A key part of the job of my boss is knowing whether or not I and my peers are doing a good job, identifying things that might need improvement, and making it happen.   The tools he has at his disposal include the usual artifacts of supervisory authority--the ability to assign and delegate work, to arrange for training, to manage pay, to promote/demote, and to hire and fire.

Yet many in the educational profession react with horror at the though of giving principals greater discretion to promote/demote, manage pay, and fire easily.  The stated reason:  concern that a principal might abuse his/her professional discretion to discipline someone "unfairly"--for reasons unrelated to job performance.  Is this a legitimate concern?  Yes.  Yet the private sector manages to cope with this--unfair bosses exist in the private sector, and life goes on.  I've had a few--and I've seen more than one talented engineer drummed out of a job due to a personality conflict with the boss.  However, these talented engineers had no trouble finding work elsewhere.   And legal protections against employment discrimination and harassment (and the remedies available thereunder) ought to apply with full force to teachers under any management regimen.

Conor continues:

Teachers ought to understand this better than most people since every week they read student assignments and use their fallible judgment to assign a letter grade, often based on opaque, somewhat arbitrary standards. This process culminates in a report card sent home at the end of every semester. It typically assesses achievement on an A to F scale that presumably doesn't capture every nuance of student mastery over a subject. High school teachers who give out these grades do so knowing that for many students they'll one day be scrutinized by college admissions officers, who'll admit or deny applicants largely based on the average of these somewhat arbitrary grades that don't capture every nuance of a student's academic abilities.

Evaluation of complex work products for quality is a key part of what professionals do--whether or not the work product is a technician's lab report, a paralegal's brief, a student's essay, a business's accounts, a teacher's teaching, a programmer's designs, or an executive's managerial skill.  As stated above, teachers are professionals.  So we trust them with the responsibility.

However, and this is important--principals are professionals too.  Evaluating teachers ought to be part of their job.  That said, giving principals (and superintendents) greater authority must imply that they too are held to higher standards of accountability.  Just as my boss is responsible for the successful performance of the design team he supervises, and his boss is responsible for the business making money, principals and district-level administrators must be held accountable for the performance of their schools and districts. 

And here, testing may be useful.  An interesting management paradigm is that it's often easier to measure the performance of an organization than it is the performance of an individual within that organization; whereas test scores may exhibit too much classroom-to-classroom variation to be useful in evaluating teachers; the larger sample sizes involved make them more useful in evaluating the performance of schools or school districts.