Few matters of
international education policy have achieved as much consensus as the
claim that teachers in U.S. public schools spend nearly twice as much
time leading classes as their counterparts in such high-performing
nations as Finland, Japan, and other nations belonging to the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Yet this
claim is far from true, Samuel E. Abrams explains in a new CBCSE study
entitled The Mismeasure of Teaching Time.
Teachers in U.S. public
schools work hard, for relatively low pay, and under increasingly
stressful conditions because of federally mandated high-stakes tests.
But they do not, as reported annually since 2000 by the OECD in its
compendium of educational statistics, Education at a Glance, spend so much more time instructing students than teachers in other OECD nations.
Through repetition by
journalists and scholars, this misinformation has become conventional
wisdom. In the process, a myth has evolved misguiding comparative
analysis of staffing practices. This myth has moreover obscured telling
differences between the structure of the school day in the United States
and other OECD nations. Finally, this myth has overshadowed the
critical issue of inferior pay of U.S. teachers in comparison to that of
their OECD counterparts.
Abrams deconstructs the myth by exposing contradictions about teaching time within Education at a Glance; by revealing an error in data collection by the U.S. Department of Education that is behind the figures in Education at a Glance;
and by providing detailed documentation of teaching time in the United
States from a sample of rural, suburban, and urban school districts.
This study provides readers
with a clearer understanding of the workload and challenges of U.S.
teachers and refocuses debate about education policy.
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