Two years ago, Malcolm Gladwell wrote an article for the New Yorker talking about the "quarterback problem" – how the National Football League has a difficult time predicting which college quarterbacks have the right skills, personality and intangibles to succeed in the NFL – and how the quarterback problem also applies to how America hires its teachers.
This is the quarterback problem: some of the most highly touted college quarterbacks have gone on to fail at the professional level, and some of the best quarterbacks in the NFL were passed over by dozens of teams who didn’t see their potential. It’s hard to know which is which.
Tom Brady, a three-time Super Bowl winning quarterback, was drafted #199 in the sixth round of the 2000 NFL Draft. Kurt Warner, who eventually won a Super Bowl as the quarterback of the St. Louis Rams, started his post-college career stocking shelves at a Hy-Vee grocery store in Iowa because no NFL team would give him a chance to play.
The quarterback problem is so tricky because, as Malcolm Gladwell wrote, “There are certain jobs where almost nothing you can learn about candidates before they start predicts how they’ll do once they’re hired.”
A college quarterback with a strong arm, great stats and a perfect pedigree can turn out to wilt under the pressure of the faster, more complicated, harder-hitting NFL game. Drafting quarterbacks out of college (and paying them millions of dollars in signing bonuses) can be risky for NFL teams, because the teams don’t know whether they are getting their next franchise quarterback, or the next historic bust. The quarterback is the most important position in football. A great NFL quarterback can lead his team to the Super Bowl. A lousy NFL quarterback will lead his time to defeat and despair.
What does this have to do with teaching?
In recent years, education research has found that teacher quality matters more than we ever thought possible. Just like the difference between a great NFL quarterback and a bad NFL quarterback, the difference between a great teacher and a bad teacher is huge – as Gladwell’s article states: “the students of a very bad teacher will learn, on average, half a year’s worth of material in one school year. The students in the class of a very good teacher will learn a year and a half’s worth of material. That difference amounts to a year’s worth of learning in a single year.”
Teacher quality matters more than the quality of the school or the size of the class – students learn more and do better on tests when they are taught by great teachers, even if their school is less than stellar, even if their classroom is crowded.
The “quarterback problem” of education is that it’s not easy to predict which college students will go on to become great teachers. Malcolm Gladwell argues that instead of raising standards for teachers, we should be lowering standards, “Because there is no point in raising standards if standards don’t track with what we care about. Teaching should be open to anyone with a pulse and a college degree—and teachers should be judged after they have started their jobs, not before.”
Instead of certifications, Master’s degrees, and other credentials, Gladwell’s article argues that the most relevant signs of a good teacher are more intangible skills. Great teachers tend to display the following behaviors in the classroom:
- Individualized feedback: Great teachers find ways to make the material relevant to the students and engage with every student in the room.
- “Withitness:” Great teachers are “with it;” they seem to have eyes in the back of their head and are able to quickly respond to subtle signals from the kids in the class, and calmly defuse misbehavior before it spreads.
- Regard for student perspective: Great teachers know how to allow some flexibility for students to engage in the classroom; they don’t criticize students who fail to sit up straight. They know when to let things slide.
- Teacher sensitivity: Great teachers find a way to respond whenever a child speaks – and instead of giving “Yes/No” feedback, they find a way to gently bridge the gap between a “wrong” answer and the right answer as well.
Anyone who is interested in being a better teacher or improving the quality of teaching in America’s schools should read this article. It will change the way you think about teaching, and about how we measure the success of our education schools. There’s no easy way to solve the “quarterback problem,” but we can start looking for the right sorts of behaviors instead of limiting the search to the “right” degrees and credentials.
Ben Gran is a former teacher, freelance writer and marketing consultant based in Des Moines, Iowa. He is an award-winning blogger who loves to write about careers and the future of work.
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