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I finally saw Michelle Rhee! She spoke on a panel about “Improving Quality Education” with two women from Mali and India–places that seemed worlds apart from Washington, DC but actually face very similar root problems in their schools. 50% of fifth graders surveyed by the NGO Pratham in India could not read simple sentences. The speaker from Mali said 80% of sixth graders in her country cannot read. And Michelle confirmed that those disparities are similar to the academic gap between rich and poor DC students. “I hope this tells you that books and desks and materials are so far from the end game,” she said. “We have all those things in DC. But the quality is still abysmal.”

All three speakers said the solution is high quality principals and teachers. How to get them as soon as possible is the concrete, unifying challenge facing all our countries. Across the world, the teaching profession isn’t structured for children’s education, but rather for adult employment. Currently, adults get paid as long as they show up in the classroom and deliver the curriculum. It doesn’t reward or punish them for how well their students learn the curriculum or how they do in the world. But those purposes are exactly what education is for! If we’re not paying people based on their students’ development, it’s not surprising that there are so many students who are in school but not getting an education. As Michelle says, the system is “adult-centered” and has bred entitlement instead of effectiveness.

Here’s a true story Michelle told. At one of her meetings with DC teachers to discuss her proposed salary reform, one woman asked what would happen to her if student test scores labeled her as a “bad teacher.” Michelle isn’t allowed to say “fired,” so she diplomatically replied, “You get separated from the system.” The teacher protested, “But that defeats the whole purpose of why most of us got into teaching in the first place. It’s a stable job for those who can’t make it in the corporate world.”

That story reinforces to me that it doesn’t matter how many years you’ve been on the job, where you graduated from, what kind of degree you have, or where you come from that determines whether you will be an effective teacher. It’s personal motivation and mindset. If teachers like the the woman in the story don’t even believe in themselves, how can they aspire to transform the lives of their students?

Educating students well–especially in disadvantaged environments like rural China or inner city America–takes people who personally care about their students’ well being and who have the inner resolve, energy and stamina to work like crazy to do it. They may not know how to teach well yet, especially if they’re young or inexperienced, but they have the most important ingredients already: belief and dedication. Support and time will do the rest. (Of course, the kind of support matters a lot and I’ll write more about that in subsequent post.)

Reformers like Michelle, KIPP, Teach for America, and all the others bet that there are enough willing Americans with those basic ingredients to revitalize failing American schools.  I’m betting that there are enough human beings on this planet to transform all the currently failing schools worldwide–as long as the government, private sectors, and NGOs pull together to facilitate their entry into and sustainable growth within the field. I think this is a global movement that RCEF is a part of and I’m so glad we have other like-minded organizations to exchange ideas with.