By Jay Mathews
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 17, 2002; 12:27 PM

Long ago, when I was a young reporter writing about local schools, I did not know much about what went on inside classrooms.

My editors wanted me to focus on educational policy, not practice. Policy issues were debated and voted on at school board meetings. My editors figured, as clumsy and inexperienced as I was, that I could at least be counted on to take notes and put in the paper what people at those meetings said.

They also thought that what was actually being taught in schools, whether in line with policy or not, would be impossible to cover adequately because every classroom teacher was different and I would only have time to visit a handful of the hundreds of teachers in the districts I covered. And even if I did spend time inside classrooms, I lacked the background and training to understand much of what I would see and hear.

This is still a problem. To this day most of us--particularly journalists, parents, politicians and pundits--do not know very much about what teachers do after they close their room's door. I have spent the past 20 years sitting in as many classrooms as I can, trying to figure it out. But I don't know nearly as much as I would like, and so when social scientists probe the mysteries of a teacher's day, I give their results a close read.

In September, the Center for Civic Innovation at the Manhattan Institute published a report by Christopher Barnes of the Center for Survey Research & Analysis at the University of Connecticut called "What Do Teachers Teach? A Survey of America's Fourth and Eighth Grade Teachers." It can be found at www.manhattan-institute.org/html/cr_28.htm.

President Bush, both houses of Congress and the vast majority of state governors have endorsed the new No Child Left Behind law as the best way to improve our schools. But Barnes' study indicates that a substantial portion of classroom teachers don't have much faith in high standards for all and are likely to turn the federal and state initiatives into mush.

Here are some of the report's most interesting findings, based on telephone interviews with a varied sample of 403 fourth grade teachers and 806 eighth grade teachers in January and February:

Teachers tend to care more about the way students approach a question than whether they got the right answer. Only about a quarter of respondents said when evaluating student work they placed the greatest emphasis on "whether the student got the correct answer or information." A little more than 40 percent emphasized "whether the student approached the task in a creative, thoughtful way" and a little less than 30 percent emphasized "how hard the student tried." The older a teacher was, the more likely she was to support correct answers more than thoughtful approaches.

At least half of the teachers grade more on how much a student has done with his abilities rather than how well he has met a single, class-wide standard. Grading by a single standard was more common among eighth grade teachers, 49 percent, than fourth grade teachers, 38 percent.

A large portion of teachers don't ask much of their students. More than half of fourth grade teachers said they didn't expect their students to spell correctly at all times. More than two in 10 fourth grade teachers regularly permitted their students to use calculators in class to solve math problems, even though that is the grade research says is hurt by calculator use. About a third of eighth grade teachers didn't require their students to write, edit and complete a composition of at least 250 words more than once a month.

Many teachers don't expect much from their students either. Thirty percent of eighth grade history teachers said all or most of their students by the end of the school year would not know when the Civil War was fought. Only 42 percent of the 200 eighth grade science teachers surveyed thought that all or most of their students would understand the theories of natural selection and evolution by the end of the year. Nineteen percent of those science teachers said that absolutely none of their students would understand evolutionary theory by that time. And that was not the worst result. Twenty percent of science teachers predicted they would teach not a single kid "the general form, location and function of the major organ systems of the human body."

Chester E. Finn Jr., the president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, said in a foreword to the Manhattan Institute report that it reveals "a chasm . . . between the views of the teachers and the expectations of reformers." He blamed not the teachers but the education school professors who trained them. "The professors and the profession have not entirely bought into standard-based reform. It goes against their grain. It contradicts their own philosophies of education," Finn said. "Never mind that it's the law of the land, the principal public education dynamic of nearly every state, and the strong preference of most parents."

There is much in the report to buttress Finn's view, although I think he makes too much of the fact that 56 percent of the respondents say their teaching philosophies lean "more toward student directed learning" than toward "teacher directed learning" and more than 70 percent say "learning how to learn" is more important than learning "specific information and skills."

I have seen other surveys that reflect this majority commitment to the ideals of educational theorist John Dewey, a squishy-brained dreamer to standards advocates like Finn. But I have come to think this is just a reflex, probably the result, as Finn argues, of what is taught in education schools. It does not say much about how most of those Dewey fans conduct themselves in the classroom. I have yet to observe a teacher who is not putting considerable emphasis on specific information and skills. Just how successful they are is another matter, but if you know of a study that shows that Dewey's principles are actually practiced in any serious way in many American classrooms, I would like to see it, because it conflicts with what I have found.

American educators are full of surprises. The Barnes study, for instance, reveals that the teachers who seem so wedded to the leftist concept of students taking an active role in the classroom are also strongly in favor of the rightist push to end social promotion and to force failing students to repeat a grade.

But that still leaves the depressing fact, confirmed in this study as well as others, that a significant number of teachers are not trying to bring most of their students up to the level they would want for their own children, perhaps because the curriculum does not allow it or they think their students are not up to it. The percentage of students who get little work on their writing, as revealed by Barnes and others, is in my view a particularly galling disgrace.

I asked some experts to tell me what they thought of "What Do Teachers Teach?" Educational psychologist Gerald W. Bracey, one of the most articulate critics of the No Child Left Behind law, said there is not enough information about how the sample of teachers was collected and how close it came to a cross-section of the nation's instructors. He said he was suspicious of the conservative political views of some of the scholars involved and thought some of the questions, such as the one about teacher-directed versus student-directed learning, presented false dichotomies. The best teachers both dispense truths to students and inspire students to find some of them for themselves, he said.

Two highly regarded middle school math teachers had contrasting views of the study. Linda Allen of Gunston Middle School in Arlington said she shared the report's bias in favor of standards. "If the state has provided clear standards (and Virginia has) and IF the teacher has adequate resources to implement those standards (Arlington does), there should be no room for feel-good, relativistic education. Kids who pass on a report card but fail state tests ought to have parents knocking down the doors asking, 'How did this happen?'" she said.

She agreed that many teachers do not like to set a standard that many children might fail. One teacher she knew never gave a student anything less than 55 percent on an assignment or test, even if only 10 percent of the answers were correct. The teacher told Allen that if she gave anything lower than a 55, "the kid was doomed for the marking period."

Paul J. Shalonis of Mark Twain Middle School in Fairfax County agreed with Allen that standards were important and are working well in Virginia. But he did not like what he called the study's "negative spin on teachers."

He said, "I just can't believe that barely one teacher in seven holds the view that educators' core responsibility is 'to teach students specific information and skills.' I work to teach students to think and learn how to learn, but how can a teacher not teach skills and specific information?"

He shared my skepticism about the survey results on student-directed learning. "I'm teaching my 11th year in Fairfax County and I have yet to know one teacher that would let students determine what they are to know and learn," he said.

So it is useful for people interested in schools to take a peek inside our classrooms when we can. We may not agree on the meaning of what we see there, but at least we will be arguing about something real.

We are in the midst of the largest and most expensive effort ever made to improve our system of public education. It has only begun to reach the classrooms in most states, and its success will be determined not by the office seekers and school superintendents and columnists whose views we are familiar with, but the teachers we hardly ever see.