Teacher Education Without the Education Establishment

James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal ^ | October 7, 2026 | Davis Smith

[karpov]

In 2012, Dr. Daniel Coupland, professor of Education at Hillsdale College, published a Martin Center (then the Pope Center) article entitled “A College Reinvents Teacher Education.” That piece described how Hillsdale’s Education Department resisted the state of Michigan’s mandate that all teacher certification programs in the state be nationally accredited.

Coupland wrote that following the decision to move away from state certification, Hillsdale’s faculty “began to think about what teacher education could be without the ideological straitjacket (i.e., ‘standards’) from the state.”

A glance at the standards listed on the website of CAEP (the largest national accreditation agency for education programs) shows why that was a sound move. Of its seven standards required for “initial” accreditation, only one is devoted to “content and pedagogical knowledge.” And rather than focusing on actual topics teachers need to know, it involves “facilitat[ing] candidates’ reflection of their personal biases to increase their understanding and practice of equity, diversity, and inclusion.”

In sum, adherence to the “diversity” agenda is all that matters.

CAEP’s other standards require programs to overcome elaborate bureaucratic obstacles that do little to help teachers to become stewards of knowledge and effective leaders of the young.

Hillsdale faculty and administration quickly recognized that this push for national teacher education accreditation represented not only a significant added financial strain for smaller institutions such as Hillsdale, but also a threat to teacher preparation programs that want to follow their institution’s mission and the principles of the liberal arts tradition.

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TOPICS: Education
KEYWORDS: college; edschool; education; hillsdale; indoctrination

[rey]

I taught at the college and university level. In all the interviews I’ve had I’ve never been asked what do I know and how do I teach it?

The closest I’ve come to those questions is, how do you engage a purple haired transsexual? That’s what they were called then. Kinda makes me wonder what happened to them.

[Jeff Chandler]

how do you engage a purple haired transsexual?

[goodnesswins]

Bfl

[Seruzawa]

Teachers are trained to forward communism. Half of HS grads can’t read or write or tell time with an analog click. The teaching profession has betrayed the nation. I am sick to death of their arrogance and worthless excuses for their abysmal failures.

[dfwgator]

That’s what The Weather Underground did after bombing buildings and shooting cops. They became teachers.

[Mogger]

The teaching colleges have betrayed the young skulls full of mush who become teachers.

[Reily]

There’s way too many “education departments\colleges”! In my state each state university has a education college and all the smaller schools have education departments. This produces far too many “teachers” for a state with falling student numbers. When I point this out, the answer is “Well they can go to other states to teach!”. Yes but those states produce “teachers” too.

[pfflier]

There are thousands of potential teachers out there who haven't had their minds polluted by the ED mafia if school districts look for them.

For example: I got a provisional teaching certificate in Arizona in the 1990's, I was eligible because I had a BS and applied experience in the USAF and in industry (the state minimum was a min of 2,300 hours of experience).

It worked for me. I taught electronics, physics and engineering prep for 16 years. The best thing was, none of the regular ED teachers wanted anything to do with me. To them, I was appointed, not anointed.

[whitney69]

As an educator you are following a plan to get the best for your students. It seems rediculous to consider you would be teaching anything that encompasses state laws in all 50 plus our territories. So having a federal mandate to your curriculum is not reasonable.

I don’t know what college you taught at but I’m sure you are dealing with too much on the plate to get the job done. You can’t accomplish the demands of the feds, state, and your own college for determination of product without missing some important parts that in their interweave contradict each other.

And the only reason the feds want a say is that they are supplying taxpayer funds to the institutions in tiny amounts just so they can have that say to shine on their voters. (Blackmale)

The federal government budgets roughly $120 billion to $135 billion per year in total financial aid and student assistance programs, plus an additional $60 billion in federal research and development (R&D) grants and contracts to higher education institutions. And that isn’t much when there are roughly 8000 colleges with their hands in the cookie jar. That comes to around $37 billion a college if it were evenly disbursed...which it isn’t.

Neither the college nor the governments can create a catalog that can satisfy the requirements for the education as defined. This is why some colleges are popular and get more money with more students because of their plans that satisfy students needs and not neccessarily their education. Harvard, Yale, Princeton, or some unknown. The unknown is there to satisfy those that can’t afford the others. But they aren’t getting the money either. So who are you able to satisfy...the students or the requirements to keep the doors open? No win.

wy69

[ProgressingAmerica]

Ayers and his ilk became unopposed teachers. The lack of opposition is critical to the understanding. Conservatives abandoned education and in many if not most cases, are proud of the conservative abandonment of education.

So much so are conservatives proud of the abandonment of education, there is even a slogan representing the pride of abandonment.

“Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.”

Meaning, conservatives feel superior to the profession of teaching because conservatives are not found inside of the inferior “can’t” category.

But there’s a problem.

Nature abhors a vacuum. So when conservatives created a vacuum in the teaching profession, what did nature put into the vacuum?

Communism.

Should we finally close the vacuum?

[Ann Archy]

I think RETIRING MILITARY PEOPLE could EASILY be TEACHERS and DISCIPLINAIRANS ESPECIALLY in INNER CITY SCHOOLS!!

The kids would LEARN and also BE WELL BEHAVED!!

[Ann Archy]

LOL!!!~

[Ann Archy]

I’ll repeat it.....EX MIKLITARY PEOPLE SHOULD BE TEACHERS!!!