Start with this thought experiment.  “If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one to hear it, did it really fall?”  You’ve heard it before.  It poses the relationship between observation and perception.  If you cannot observe something, it becomes hard to prove that it scientifically exists.  Similarly, Einstein posited that “…the moon does not exist if no one is looking at it.”  Now, extend the thought experiment to this:  “If I taught my students a unit of instruction and they did not learn it, did I really teach them anything?”  The answer is no.

Like observing a tree falling in the forest or the moon in a nighttime sky, the perception of teaching requires an observation of learning evidence in order to prove the reality that teaching occurred.  Just as George Bernard Shaw could not disprove Einstein’s statement that the moon must be observed to prove it exists, a demonstration of successful learning is required proof of successful teaching.

Given the above, why are educational leaders loath to be so direct in their evaluation of teaching?  Why do we place more emphasis on the delivery of instruction than on the learning outcomes teaching is designed to cause?  This is true.  Our scenarios for determining educator effectiveness show that a teacher who demonstrates high scores in the use of models of instructional delivery that result in lower scores of student achievement will be rated higher than a teacher who demonstrates low scores in instructional delivery that results in higher scores of student achievement.  Teaching practices are prioritized over student learning.  Why?

We want there to be a direct cause-effect line between a set of teaching practices and student learning.  But there are variables in the learner that disrupt this causation, we are told.  We know this by the ways in which we manipulate student achievement data based upon the presence of students with special education needs, who live in poverty or unstable home environments, are effected by drug and violence in their community, and attend schools with higher percentages of similar students.  Institutionally, we posit that these students will not demonstrate high levels of achievement in learning as compared with students without these challenges.

Yet, there are many stories of success with highly diverse students.  In each of these stories, teachers who add “the art of teaching” to the science of effective teaching practices find ways to connect their teaching to their students and cause high learning achievements.  These teachers observe falling trees and a nighttime moon, because they are present in ways that exceed and/or differ from the standardized instructional practices.

I refer to Billy Bean in the movie Money Ball.  “If he is a good hitter, why doesn’t he hit good.  We need more players that hit good.”  For Bean, the batter’s technical skills were not as important as the batter’s ability to get on base.  For educators, the teacher’s technical skills matter but not as much as the teacher’s ability to cause all children to successfully learn their grade level or course curriculum.  We need to prioritize our teachers who cause children to get on base and score with high regularity.  Otherwise, a teacher can teach a classroom empty of students or full of inattentive students and still believe that teaching occurred.  Without learning, there is no teaching.

(Prioritizing learning outcomes does not condone a reaching of achievement measures by any means possible.  Breaching professional ethics can and should lead to loss of employment and/or incarceration.)