| « What Corzine's Defeat Means for Education Reform in New Jersey | States' Race to the Top: Where Are They Now? - with Michigan update » |
Reforming Teacher Prep: Let's Keep it Real
10/26/09
10:14:40 am, Categories: Announcements [A] Last Thursday, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan gave a strongly worded speech on the need for better teacher preparation.
The American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education responded in a fairly constructive fashion, but some of their members were somewhat defensive, and AACTE released a set of talking points that seemed to feed that.
Among these talking points was this bullet: "Let’s talk about tomorrow, rather than the past."
But, as philosopher/poet/novelist George Santanaya said: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
Re: this, a few points:
- People have been talking about these same problems for almost a century.
- Self-admonition has proved to be, to say the least, ineffective. Without real action that qualitatively departs from previous tinkering, nothing will change.
- While, as AACTE points out, there are promising reform efforts taking place, history indicates that the field has been resistant to wholesale and fundamental systemic change.
Some of the strongest criticisms of teacher prep have, and continue to, come from within the field. Change, however, largely has not.
See if you can guess the source of the following quotes (answers in comments #1). Hint: not all of them are Duncan’s.
And, given that, consider: what will U.S. policymakers have to do differently this time around to effect real change, rather than a few more islands of excellence and another decade (or century) of talk?
1. "The training of teachers is a highly significant part of the making of the nation. A more serious conception of the place of the teacher in the life of the nation is both necessary and timely." [I urge] "changing the systems that support poorly trained, paid and esteemed teachers." [Teachers should be prepared with] "the power of critical analysis in a mind broadly and deeply informed."
2. "In performance-based programs, goals are specified and agreed to in rigorous detail in advance of instruction. The student preparing to become a teacher must either be able to demonstrate his ability to promote desirable learning or establish behaviors known to promote it.
"He is held accountable, not for passing grades but for attaining a given level of competency in performing the essential tasks of teaching; the training institution is itself held accountable for producing able teachers. The emphasis is on demonstrated product or output. Acceptance of this basic principle has program implications that are truly revolutionary."
3. "Recently efforts have been made to establish performance-based teacher certification. In other words, teacher certification would be more closely related to demonstrated teacher competency rather than to the completion of specific courses, as has been the case historically. Performance-based certification is likely to be related to performance-based teacher-education programs."
"Although much remains to be done to bring about performance-based teacher-education programs and, subsequently, performance-based teacher certification, the concepts have merit and will probably be implemented in some form in the next few years."
4. "America cannot afford any more teachers who fail a twelfth grade competency test. Neither can we afford to let people into teaching just because they have passed such simple, and often simpleminded exams."
5. "Unhappily, teaching and teacher education have a long history of mutual impairment. Teacher education has long been intellectually weak; this further eroded the prestige of an already poorly esteemed profession and it has encouraged many inadequately prepared people to enter teaching."
6. "Taking and passing college and university courses is no guarantee that the material has been learned. Thus, all instructors should also pass a written test in each subject they will teach prior to certification. They should be sufficiently difficult so that many college graduates could not pass."
7. "The undergraduate education major must be abolished in our universities. For elementary teachers, this degree has too often become a substitute for learning any academic subject deeply enough to teach it well. These teachers are certified to teach all things to all children. But few of them know much about anything because they are required to know a little of everything. No wonder so many pupils arrive in high school so weak in so many subjects."
8. "American universities know quite well how to provide outstanding professional education. The best professional education in medicine, public affairs, business, and law that can be found in the world can be found here in the United States. There is no doubt that our universities can do an equally outstanding job for teachers. They only question is whether they will."
9. "By the standards of other professions and of teacher education in other countries, U.S. teacher education has historically been thin, uneven, and poorly financed. Although some schools of education provide high-quality preparation, others are treated as “cash cows” by their universities, bringing in revenues that are spent on the education of doctors, lawyers, and accountants rather than on their own students.
"As a result, teachers do not always have adequate disciplinary preparation in the fields they teach or adequate knowledge and supervised practice to enable them to use effective teaching strategies."
10. "In most European and Asian countries, teachers are highly respected, well compensated, and better prepared. They receive much more extensive training in content and pedagogy before they enter teaching, and they have much more regularly scheduled time for ongoing learning and work with their colleagues."
11. "Of the nation’s 1,300 graduate teacher training programs, only about 100 [are] doing a competent job; ‘the others could be shut down tomorrow.’"
Trackback address for this post
Trackback URL (right click and copy shortcut/link location)
1 comment
1. Henry Wyman Holmes, the dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education in the 1920's.
see: http://www.holmespartnership.org/
2. Stanley Elam, A Resume' of Performance-Based Teacher Education, American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education: What is the State of the Art? (Washington, D.C.: American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education, 1972, p. 3). personal collection, see:
http://swiftandchangeable.org/index.php/2009/09/03/race-to-the-top-state-of-play?blog=2
3. Introduction to the Foundations of American Education, Allyn and Bacon, 1979. personal collection, see:
http://swiftandchangeable.org/index.php/2009/09/03/race-to-the-top-state-of-play?blog=2
4-8. Holmes Group, 1986. The Holmes Group was composed of Deans of Schools of Education from throughout the U.S., including Teachers College, Columbia. Its work was funded by the Ford Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation, among others.
http://eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2sql/content_storage_01/0000019b/80/2f/4a/71.pdf
9-10 "What Matters Most," 1996, Report by National Commission on Teaching and America's Future.
NCTAF was comprised of education thought leaders from academia and the public sphere, including both major teachers unions. http://www.nctaf.org/documents/WhatMattersMost.pdf
11. Katherine Merseth, Director of Teacher Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education. March 2009, as quoted in the New York Times "Room for Debate":
http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/16/education-degrees-and-teachers-pay/
see: http://www.holmespartnership.org/
2. Stanley Elam, A Resume' of Performance-Based Teacher Education, American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education: What is the State of the Art? (Washington, D.C.: American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education, 1972, p. 3). personal collection, see:
http://swiftandchangeable.org/index.php/2009/09/03/race-to-the-top-state-of-play?blog=2
3. Introduction to the Foundations of American Education, Allyn and Bacon, 1979. personal collection, see:
http://swiftandchangeable.org/index.php/2009/09/03/race-to-the-top-state-of-play?blog=2
4-8. Holmes Group, 1986. The Holmes Group was composed of Deans of Schools of Education from throughout the U.S., including Teachers College, Columbia. Its work was funded by the Ford Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation, among others.
http://eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2sql/content_storage_01/0000019b/80/2f/4a/71.pdf
9-10 "What Matters Most," 1996, Report by National Commission on Teaching and America's Future.
NCTAF was comprised of education thought leaders from academia and the public sphere, including both major teachers unions. http://www.nctaf.org/documents/WhatMattersMost.pdf
11. Katherine Merseth, Director of Teacher Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education. March 2009, as quoted in the New York Times "Room for Debate":
http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/16/education-degrees-and-teachers-pay/
10/26/09 @ 10:26
This post has 36 feedbacks awaiting moderation...
Comment feed for this postLeave a comment
