Posted on 09/22/2006 5:27:29 AM PDT by shrinkermd
Schools of education have gotten bad grades before. Yet there are some truly shocking statistics about teacher training in this week's report from the Education Schools Project. According to "Educating School Teachers," three-quarters of the country's 1,206 university-level schools of education don't have the capacity to produce excellent teachers. More than half of teachers are educated in programs with the lowest admission standards (often accepting 100% of applicants) and with "the least accomplished professors." When school principals were asked to rate the skills and preparedness of new teachers, only 40% on average thought education schools were doing even a moderately good job.
The Education Schools Project was begun in 2001, with foundation funding, to analyze how America trains its educators and to offer constructive criticism. Its report card this week is significant for two reasons. First, it is based on four years of broad and methodical research, including surveys of school principals and of the deans, faculty members and graduates of education schools. In addition, researchers studied programs and practices at 28 institutions. No matter how many establishment feathers get ruffled by the results of these inquiries, miffed educators can't easily brush off the basic findings: There are glaring flaws and gaps in our teacher-training system...
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
IMHO the problem began during FDR's administration with collective bargaining for private and later for public entities. The outcome is that the schools are run for the staff rather than the students.
Personally, I don't think the NEA has done a particularly good job of representing teachers, either.
Representing teachers is not a priority for the NEA. They have other items at the top of their agenda.
All schools should be private, K-12 to college to graduate schools. The government should get out of the education business. Parents should incorporate new private elementary, middle and high schools, removing states and counties from the business of educating their children. Remove government subsidies and teachers' unions.
Read The Graves of Academe online to understand how educationists in teachers college control the system and manipulate it to their own benefit.
I went through the education training ritual to get a teaching certificate. One class consisted of learning the parts of a film projector. I'm not kidding. Another class was a phonics lesson: how to tell when a vowel was long or short. Something I had learned in third grade. Another class was a sex education class where we were graded on the development of the embryo to fetus to baby. I had a three year old son at the time, so needless to say, I doodled a lot during class. Skipped a few, too.
Fifty years ago, if you had a bachelor's degree, you could teach. Now you have to attend two years of useless classes to prepare you to be an "educator." You may be illiterate, but, dadgumit, you will know how to run a film projector.
In one course I learned the following:
Most of the students, and the professor, didn't believe in grades.
An overwhelming number were far left (and since I was a liberal then, we are talking about FAR left).
The education department was full of LIARS, because they said there were plenty of jobs (my mom was a dean at a private college at that time and I knew how hard it was to place even A student grads)
The professor was involved with an experimental, uncredited private school which had NO curriculum but taught this children things like playing poker and curse words (I am not making this up; he had slides and bragged about it)
After one semester of garbage like this I chose a geology major.
I second your suggestion to read Graves of Academe. I often have my ed. students read selected chapters.
These criticisms by Levine are little more than an effort to maintain and expand the influence of "educationism" into teacher prep. Prospective teachers need fewer credits in education courses and more in content courses. They also need help in becoming more literate, in gathering more knowledge and experience.
Vouchers.
I don't care how GM or Toyota make their cars. If GM sucks, I can buy a Toyota. Only through empowerment as a consumer, and with choice amongst competitors can their be progress. The system now is Soviet style in quality, quantity and response.
This comes up time and time again. It seems to me that when one factors in vacation days, summers off and union-inspired benefit packages teachers don't do so poorly at all. Every summer, I often catch myself wishing I'd become a teacher.
I helped my son nail fuzzy math right on the head. He came home with a homework question something like this: 34,925 divided by 642, estimate the answer. Well, I am an estimator by trade. I told him to write down 1 as the answer. He asked me how I came up with that. I told him, it is just an estimate, not a good estimate, but an estimate just the same. When his teacher questioned him on his answer, he told her just that. She marked the answer correct.
In colonial days (or maybe later, in the Wild West, or who knows when) the saying was "them as can, do; them as can't, teaches".
Teachers are born, not made. The best teacher loves kids and knows her subject. The latter is easier than the former.
The education courses I took while in college were useless. It's much more important to spend time learning field of expertise. Get a degree in a solid field, then cap it with a teaching certificate, because you're not going to know if you are meant to teach till you try being responsible for a classroom full of kids.
Alternative certification programs let already-degreed professionals earn teaching credentials with a little classroom and a lot of on-the-job training.
Teaching is a rubber-meets-the-road profession. Some people love kids and are wonderful in the classroom. Others do the job because that's what they got a degree in, but they don't teach well.
The whole certification process needs to be re-thought.
I had a similar experience. I went back to school to get my teaching certificate. It was a year and a half of BS. In one of the classes we actually had to do exercises to practice doing Internet searches. Same class had us practice entering data in MS Access so we would know how to build a database file. Then there was the class in Special Education which was just maddening. I survived, got a job teaching and lasted 3 mos. I HATED it. I parlayed my teaching certificate into a job as a corporate trainer, so at least it wasn't an entire waste of my time.
can their be progress=can there....
As a second career, but now retired, community college teacher, I could write a book on this issue. Likewise, I am well-acquainted with the curricula of schools of education with their emphasis on "eductional psychology," "methods," "practice teaching," "diversity" and the like. Prospective teachers should know first (and well), the discipline(s) they teach or propose to teach. They need secondly, the authority to control their classrooms. And lastly, they should really want to teach as opposed to just finding a job. Schools of education have little to do with any of these things.
Collective bargaining is one problem (probably the #1 problem), but for the curriculum problems you quoted, go back to John Dewey.
I would prefer to see a school stocked with math, english, history majors, and so on, especially in the higher grades. I think we should do a match up of a charter high school with no 'teachers' compared with a traditional public school. I myself have a BSEE and would love to go back in the job market as a math teacher. I think I would be qualified, but I have to go through some stupid education classes and get my education degree.
[IMHO the problem began during FDR's administration with collective bargaining for private and later for public entities. The outcome is that the schools are run for the staff rather than the students.]
Truer words were never printed. I have never heard a single Teacher Sponser group like AFLCIO, or any teacher union come up with a plan or suggestion that would make our kids smarter other than spending more money on teachers salaries and creature comforts for them and the kids. Our education system at local and federal levels is more often debated in the context of teacher jobs and pay than it is about what makes kids smart.
You want teachers to perform better? Make their pay 50% commission. Base their pay on how well their children perform on standardized tests. Change the tests every year and don't tell the teachers what the tests will cover. Have the tests proctored by local elected officials. For highschool teachers, have pay based on graduation rates and college admissions. Tie their pay into their performance. Once teachers get back to making a personal committment to the education of the students (Without cheating the system) the most best will rise to the top and the "others" will find a new line of work. Competition for teaching jobs will drive better education of teachers.
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