Education: Raising the score

English teachers reflect on why Israel grades so poorly on international tests and how the country can improve its record.

By SHARON KANON
Achva College 521 (photo credit: Courtesy)
Achva College 521
(photo credit: Courtesy)
‘I want to speak perfect English. I want to change my life,” shout thousands of young Chinese in a football stadium chant. The startling image – a scene from a TED video produced two years ago – captures the zeal of the Chinese to learn the language perfectly.
And as two billion people are learning English to communicate in the global economy, Englishmania is becoming a worldwide fad.
Israel’s educators should be paying attention. In an age of globalization, the country’s young people need proficient English, as well as math and science, to compete in the world economy.
Are students prepared to meet the challenges of the future? Are they able to analyze, reason and communicate their ideas effectively?” Why is it that after having studied English for eight to 10 years, many Israelis speak it brokenly and stumble reading a sentence? The Education Ministry hopes improved scores on the standardized Meitzav English tests fifth- and eighthgrade pupils took in the 2010-11 school year will begin a trend. Jewish fifthgraders scored 17 points higher than the year before; eighth-graders scored 10 points higher. Arab students gained 30 points in English proficiency. There was, however, a widening of the huge gap between pupils from lower socioeconomic backgrounds (from 72 to 77 points) – unfortunately an increasing segment that pulls average scores down.
The new modular system for the English bagrut (matriculation) exam aims to make the test shorter and more flexible.
Teachers allow students to take the different modules until they pass.
Statistics present a rosy picture: In 2010, 75,731 students took the exams, and 98 percent passed – with a grade of 55 or higher.
However, colleges and universities do not use English bagrut results as the basis for placement or exemption from preparatory English courses. They require all applicants to take either the Amir test or the English section of the psychometric test, which evaluate proficiency in “English for academic purposes.”
Why is there such a gap between highschool English and the level needed for college and university? One side of the problem is overcrowded classes, discipline problems and students who just want to pass.
“It is very hard to be creative in a class with 35 students,” says Renee Wahl, an experienced teacher who left hi-tech to teach English 20 years ago because it enabled greater creative freedom. She still enjoys that part of teaching, but often feels frustrated.
“How can a teacher teach students when they just want a grade? Parents say you have to motivate them.”
A colleague adds that “Israeli students have a lot of excuses for not doing work.
They lack self-discipline, and put demands on the teacher and not on themselves.”
According to an OECD finding, “it is a myth that students don’t like discipline in the classroom.” The organization notes that there is a strong correlation between proficiency scores and countries with orderly classrooms, stating that “classrooms with disciplinary problems [Israel is one] are less conducive to learning.”
“One problem is that not every native English speaker is a good teacher,” says Barbara Verdriger, an instructor at Levinsky College. “The first thing that a principal asks a new teacher [is] not ‘Can you teach?’ or ‘Do you speak English well?’ but ‘Can you manage a class?’” Even if some of the country’s youth will not represent the “start-up nation” in the global economy, there is good reason to nudge them up the education ladder.
Studies have shown that years of schooling directly correlate with rates of employment and salaries.
“People with university degrees have suffered far fewer job losses during the global economic crises than those who left school without qualifications,” according to the OECD’s annual “Education at a Glance” report for September 2011. “Good education and skills are crucial to improving a person’s economic and social prospects.”
And today, English is a key component in the skill toolbox.
Yael Haimov, 31, is tackling this job.
She is the only certified English teacher in the special-needs AMIT high school in Ramle, which has 120 students. Two “uncertified” teachers are also on the staff.
“The children that I teach are kids from a low socioeconomic level. They have very low self-esteem. Students tell me they have no purpose in life. Many can’t even read Hebrew, let alone English,” she says.
Her hardest job is to teach different modules of the English bagrut exam in one class.
“My students are bored when a teacher stands up in front of the class to give a lesson. They need interaction, action,” says Haimov, who is training her new assistant (a young man who taught Hebrew studies in the US) to use songs, games and food fairs to teach vocabulary.
“I encourage my students to take part in the English bagrut in the 10th grade so that they get to feel success,” she says.
“I believe in my students. I ask them what they want to be, and what they need to do to get there – to become an officer in the army, to be a fashion designer.”
She admits she loves the challenge of the Ramle high school and turned down an offer to teach in the middle-class community where she lives.
Haimov exemplifies the PISA (Program of International Student Assessment) discovery that when teachers have high expectations for all students, the students perform better. Although she has gone to students’ homes to wake them for class and driven students to bagrut exams, she asserts that “we are not a factory for grades.”
Mentor Chasia Friedman says Haimov gives her soul to her students.
“I want to pull people in to help, but in the last two years, the situation has become worse,” Friedman laments.
“English is a tough subject. A teacher has to be very professional. You have to be born to like the language and the kids.”
The shortage of talented, certified English teachers is becoming a glaring problem.
“I sometimes get frantic calls from schools that need teachers,” says Dr. Melodie Rosenfeld, director of the Department of English at Achva Academic College. “In Netanya, one junior high school reports that because of the shortage of English teachers in the elementary schools, pupils commonly enter junior high with lower levels of English than in the past. When a teacher goes out for maternity leave, it is especially difficult to find a replacement.”
Page after page of postings on the ETNI (English Teachers’ Network in Israel) advertisement board and job center site confirm the nationwide shortage.
Why is the country beginning to feel the shortage now? “Many of the influx of English teachers who came after the Six Day War are now retiring,” posits Rosenfeld.
Dr. Judy Steiner, the chief inspector for English language education in the Education Ministry, says the feedback she gets from her people in the field is that there are very few cases in which there is a lack of English teachers.
However, Batya Bar Lev, who assists the ministry’s head of teacher training, confirms that there is indeed a shortage.
At a recent meeting in Tel Aviv at the MOFET Institute, heads of the teacher training colleges’ English departments pow-wowed about the shortfall.
“There is a dire shortage of English teachers in the Jewish sector,” said Dr. Ruwaida Abu Rass, who chairs the Forum of English Department Heads of Teacher Colleges sponsored by MOFET.
Although Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar said that there was a 62% increase in enrollment in teachers’ colleges, English departments did not reflect this increase, with a total of 649 students in 2012, down from 674 in 2011.
“One reason English departments get fewer candidates than other departments is that we have high standards,” says Rosenfeld. “At Achva College, a potential candidate needs a combined grade of 525 from the psychometric exam, and usually five points in English [on the bagrut] with a good grade (above 80). In addition, freshman candidates need to have basic oral and written proficiency to start.”
Arab students in the Arab teaching colleges are an exception, says Abu Rass.
“They attract roughly three times more English teacher candidates than the Jewish sector,” she notes. “It is a cultural phenomenon. English teaching is a great and prestigious profession for girls.
Teaching is from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., and then they go home to take care of their children. Sometimes Beit Berl [College] is called the College of Brides for the Arab girls, since if the husband pays for the tuition, he knows that his wife will pay him back with her salary as a teacher. Teaching has high status.”
WHEN THE hi-tech bubble burst in Israel, the government launched an initiative to encourage hi-tech people to retrain as English teachers, but they did not stay in the system because of low salaries, inability to control pupils, and lack of support. New immigrants drop out with the same complaints.
“There is a huge gap in mentality between teaching abroad and teaching in Israel,” cautions Verdriger. Israelis who return from abroad have an easier time than new immigrants in dealing with unruly Israeli pupils.
Hoping to attract new immigrants to the profession, Steiner says, “We allow people with an academic degree from native English-speaking countries to teach. They are evaluated at the end of the year. If they get a positive report, they can complete courses in Hebrew needed for certification.”
New immigrants, especially Englishspeakers with degrees in other subjects and past teaching experience, can take a one-year certification course without any payment.
Pamela Ziv, 35, taught elementary school in Florida before coming to Israel three years ago. She is completing the certification course.
“I was lucky. I got a job teaching English three months after I arrived,” she says. She has since taught in a state high school for girls and a boys’ yeshiva, but she opted to teach privately run classes for English-speakers in elementary school.
“When you have 35 to 40 kids in a class, it takes half the class to get everyone quiet. The pay [for private classes] is also considerably more than a teacher usually gets,” she points out. “I don’t think a salary of NIS 5,600 is enough.”
The jury is still out on whether new reforms like the Ofek Hadash (New Horizon) and Oz Letmura (Courage to Change) programs are good for teachers.
Abu Rass is wary of Ofek Hadash, which increases teachers’ salaries but requires them to spend more hours in school and away from their own children.
Some teachers are happy that they are getting a salary increment of NIS 900 or more each month with Oz Letmura. But Wahl is skeptical about the new offerings.
“I advise teachers not to sign the new agreements that add hours, water down the hourly wage, and don’t cover child care costs,” she says.
IF IT is higher grades Israel is after, PISA’s findings bolster the argument for higher salaries.
“PISA has long established that highperformance educational systems pay their teachers more,” the program reported in May. Teacher salaries in Israel fall below the average in OECD countries.
According to the OECD 2011 chart “How Much Are Teachers Paid?” average salaries in lower secondary school in Israel are in the bottom one-third (even lower than in Greece). They contrast sharply with high salaries in Switzerland ($98,000) and Germany ($77,000).
Beginning salaries in these countries are higher than those of veteran teachers in Israel, who start at $18,935 and earn $27,912 after 15 years. Elementary school teachers in Israel earn about $2,000 more; upper secondary school teachers start at $16,715 and earn $25,013 after 15 years.
The OECD notes that performancebased pay has an impact in low-paying countries. Raising pay levels and status are two game-changers the organization recommends..
In a Taub Center for Social Research report, Eric Hanushek and Ludger Woessmann point out that it pays to invest in education.
“Education is the key to economic growth,” they write. “If Israel had improved its national score on core subjects by 50 points in 2010 alone, GDP would have increased NIS 41 billion.”
Getting good grades on national and international tests is one goal. But the World Economic Forum counts innovation among its “12 pillars of competition,” and that’s where Israel’s English teachers can excel.
Going beyond the drill and drum English lessons taught in the Far East, young and enthusiastic Teachers of English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) in Israel need to teach young people to communicate fluently and naturally in a world in which they often have to give fast, spontaneous, and innovative responses. Raising the salaries of English teachers will attract more people to the profession and help make it happen.