The real mystery is why its HTML title is "x - x"....

Vance: Yeah, that is a little mysterious, isn't it?

I wonder if that explains the CBEST (California Basic Education Skills Test) I had to take before becoming a teacher in California.

The CBEST does not test any skills; it's just a half English, half math test that I'm pretty sure I could have passed when I was in the eighth grade.

There are several aspects of the K-12 accreditation process that don't make much sense.

In most states, a student with a Bachelor's degree, Master's degree, or even a PhD cannot teach a subject at the high school level, unless they obtain additional (and often time-consuming and expensive) certification in the educational field. Yet, most colleges, including the most prestigious, allow their undergraduate courses to be taught by graduate students.

Now, I realize that with elementary education, there are a whole host of developmental issues, learning to deal with control of young children in a reasonable manner, and so forth. It makes sense to require that elementary school teachers be trained specifically in the educational field. But is high school teaching really that much different than teaching low-level undergraduate courses in college? I don't see why someone capable of doing the latter couldn't also do the former.

Teaching high school vs teaching college: huge differences in what that's all about.

1.) Big difference between average ages of high schoolers and college age kids. 15 year olds are *way* different from 20 year olds. Yes, there is some overlap between the oldest high school students and the youngest college students, but by and large these are two very different age groups.

2.) Different segments of population. College students all have graduated from high school and secured financing for their education. They have been screened for admission based on academic achievement and test scores and judged likely to succeed at the university. They are by and large smarter and much more motivated than the average high school student. High school teachers work with students who may have marginal motivation and/or ability.

3.) Different responsibilities. College teachers are not responsible for whether or not their students learn anything (see topic of the original post). If a student stops coming to class or doesn't turn in work, a college teacher doesn't have to call their parents.

4.) Different outcomes. Even though most high school graduates do not attend college, a large percentage of college students eventually drop out. The norm is *not* to be a college graduate.

5.) Different supervision. I'm not an expert in how university departments assign grad students to teach classes, but high school principals hire teachers to come to work right away and run classrooms. A graduate department could have its student instructors serve as TAs before letting them have classes of their own. That really isn't an option for high schools. They are taking a leap of faith and some sort of credential that says they know how to handle a classroom is important.

6.) Different content knowledge. High school teachers are generalists. Most states do not have very narrow certification for specific topics in high school. I suppose this could be changed, but it would be a pain for Principals to have to fire their experienced British Lit teacher and find a new American Lit teacher because the number of students fluctuated from year to year. Better to have generalists who can be assigned where they are needed within their area of certification.

None of this speaks to whether or not teacher credentialing programs need improvement. But teaching in high school and at university are two very very different jobs.

William--
Thank you. The current list of requirements for well-educated people to enter teaching is often far too long (depending on your state and whether exceptions can be found), but that does not mean that they should be eliminated. If you are going to teach in an elementary or secondary school, your teaching should be supervised by an experienced teacher first.

James Powell--
The tests have been ridiculous for a long time. I took the Illinois test in the early 90s, and I still laugh every time I think about the problem that showed a student's schedule and asked what class he had 3rd Period.

Publicizing test scores of graduates is, as a policy issue, a little iffy. It says a lot more about the students being accepted into the program than the program itself, since the tests have little to do with what is taught. The program I went through, because it was associated with a prestigious university and attracted students with solid transcripts, has extremely high pass rates on the exams even though it is a horrible program. The information would tell prospective students whether or not their classmates would be thinking humans or drooling fools, but it wouldn't be the best way to determine whether schools deserve funding.

Furthermore, if the states set the standards, then you are asking for trouble. Which state wants to keep away federal funding by setting high standards? Politicians aren't going to look out for the greater good when money is involved.

Reino, Illinois has changed since the mid 90s. The test you took, AKA the Basic Skills test, has been revamped to put it at the college level, and is now required, not for graduation, but for entrance into the teacher education program (at least it is at my university). Passing the subject-specific content area exam for high school teachers is required before students are allowed to student teach. Things have improved a lot.

Federal subsidies for education loans from private companies at the same time the government was in the business, inevitably led to the tying arrangements with college admissions officers. Likewise, it led to fraud in the technical education field as well.

As Lord Gresham observed, bad money drives out good. Similarly, bad practices lend credence to calls for doing away with good policies. There won't be a clean-up until the Federal government gets out of, completely out of, education, high, low and in between.

The federal government should stay in education. Funds from Title One, IDEA, Pell Grants, and other programs do a lot of good. The biggest problem is that those programs are underfunded. Additionally, I don't buy the idea that the feds would efficiently oversee educational programs if it wasn't for that money. The lobbyists would still be pushing for their clients, and most politicians know nothing about educational policy, so they can't counter whatever information is handed to them.

Conclusion?

The education lobby works to make education worse with federal money.

So, does anyone see why we hesitate to hand over responsibility for anything to the federal legislature?

Educational excellence comes from good well-disciplined students and cultural values. Teachers have little or nothing to do with it. Liberals will never get it.

I wonder how many right-wingers and libertarians will scan that article and write a screed about how teacher's unions blocked that accountability -- rather than college/university lobbysists.

As someone who is a former high school teacher, I can tell you that the accreditation program I went through (at a major university) was pretty mediocre. It was all about writing good lesson plans (which nobody does anymore), but taught me nothing about classroom management, which is the real challenge at the high school level. I learned everything I know about classroom management the hard way during my first few years as a teacher.

Just as big an issue as teacher training is teacher salaries. Although this topic has been dicussed ad naseum, the fact still remains that teaching is a financially unattractive career choice for most people and therefore does not attract the highest quality candidates. This is especially true in big cities with high real estate prices, where it is almost impossible to survive on just a teachers salary.

Combined with the high barriers to entry (i.e. the certification process), the long hours (most teachers work at least 20 hours a week outside of school grading papers and preparing lessons), and the endless bureaucracy, teaching becomes, on the whole, a relatively unattractive profession, especially in public schools, which makes it even harder to hold on to good teachers.

I left the profession several years ago to start my own private tutoring business, and I make more money working less hours than I ever did as a teacher, and with much lower stress levels to boot.

This smells to me like the k-12 industrial complex trying to pass the buck for its own failings on the most successful and democratic system of higher education in the world.

If anything the elitist systems of higher ed in Europe and elsewhere have much to learn from the American system where anyone - regardless of the extent to which our public school system failed them - can get a top quality advanced education at an affordable price at any point in their adult life.

Here in California the tuition for community colleges is twenty bucks a unit; anyone can go. And the big expansion in doctoral programs over the last generation and a half has meant that extremely bright people with PhDs from some our best universities now teach at obscure state schools and community colleges.

I'm not especially going to defend legacy admissions but they're really only a factor at the Ivy League and other highly elite universities and the few kids who get rejected from these schools because some rich guy's idiot son got in instead are going to go to Duke, or Chicago, or UCLA. They have nothing to do with the fact that American k-12 schooling sucks.

If you're going to talk about teacher quality in the public schools part of the problem is that women now enjoy access to white collar professions where they can earn a whole lot more money which means that really smart women may well be more likely to become technical writers than teach English to bratty kids whose parents threaten to sue the school for trying to keep them in line.

But if the idea is to do to American higher ed what you've done to k-12 education in this country my view is over my dead body.

Colorado requires the PRAXIS test for licensure of secondary math teachers. The test has no questions related to teaching, it is a math test. It's hard to see how the quality of an individual school's TEP would be judged based upon licensure results. Instead you'd be evaluating the quality of the Math department. A good mathematician does not necessarily make a good math teacher. Using the PRAXIS results would not garner the correct analysis.

Ivy League schools and schools similar to Duke, Chicago, and UCLA generally do not train that many teachers. Some of the large prestigious schools train teachers at separate Schools of Education that have low standards for joining them as students or faculty compared to the rest of the school. Most teachers come from those separate schools or from schools that have nothing in common with Duke or Chicago. (Two big teacher schools around here are National Louis and Chicago State.)

The reason to consider oversight of higher education in this case is that education schools are profitable. Students are willing to pay college rates to sit in large classes with mediocre professors so that those students can get certified to teach. Colleges see dollar signs when they look at the situation.

Furthermore, the oversight proposed was noninvasive. Colleges already publicize the average SATs of incoming students; the proposal was to publicize the pass rates of outgoing students.

It occurs to me too that not only are professors as a whole more and probably better educated than they have ever been but that k-12 teachers are as well. In the middle of the last century (which - bizarrely seems to be the point of reference for middle aged people in positions of power today [I'll discuss this further in a moment]) a significant number of primary and secondary level teachers did not have four year degrees let alone graduate degrees in education, history, math, or whatever.

It's my view that the kind of public education system America adopted in the 19th century (based largely on the Prussian model) was always going to be inappropriate for a multicultural society that assimilates significant numbers of non-native English speakers and which (like Holland) has a large dissident, religiously conservative minority but even still test scores began to rise as soon as the first wave of generation x (born in the early to mid 1960s) entered grade school and ultimately plateaued in the 1990s. Either the boomers were serious underachievers or our schools were worse in the middle decades of the last century; immigration was at a low point, and the student body was overwhelmingly white and spoke English as a first language.

No small part of the reason our k-12 educational outcomes look unimpressive compared with other western countries is that this country has a persistent African-American underclass (largely the result of slavery) and at the moment large numbers of new immigrants who are not native English language speakers; both these groups depress average test scores. I support school choice (in no small part for cultural reasons: k-12 public schooling in this country is too authoritarian), and many kids of all ethnic and cultural backgrounds are being left behind (up to 20% of high school dropouts are gifted kids; these are kids who by definition have IQs at least as high [literally] as the average Harvard undergraduate and none of them should be dropping out of school) but if you're looking strictly at test scores and junk memorized white kids are doing okay.

And part of the reason they continue to do okay is that America has the best system of higher education in the world.

I would add one caveat to my last comment: it may be the case that k-12 educational outcomes have been improving for a number of decades and that the improvement in test scores from the baby boomers to more recent generations doesn't reflect boomer underachievement but rather a lack of good data from before the boomers.

Linus, in the past, the teachers may have had fewer credentials, but I suspect that they were, by and large, smarter, on average, than the group of people who get education degrees today. After all, it was one of the few professions open to women. Now, highly intelligent and charismatic women have other options, and education schools are likely drawing from a pool that is much less talented, on average, than they had access to in the past.

I still don't understand the logic of removing government funding for under performance of students.

That's like saying the insurance industry should be further penalized for insuring high risks after they've already paid out for the accident. It's closing the barn door after the cows got out.

And besides, without funding, how are they supposed to fix the problems? And if they get funding without testing, how are we supposed to know the funds are being used right? The funds are gone at the point the tests are being taken.

It'd be better to threaten the system of accreditation than funding - funding without accreditation is useless.

"Now, highly intelligent and charismatic women have other options"

I think that was one of the points I made in my first post on my thread. But I don't think it's fair to insult a majority of public school teachers today. I think these are by and large pretty bright, hard working, and well trained people doing a job that doesn't pay as much as equally demanding corporate jobs and in some cases in schools that are pretty miserable places.

On the other hand, if the new line of attack by the unions and the public schooling establishment generally is to deflect blame for the failings of the system by blaming the best higher education system in the history of the world these people have another thing coming; their delusion, and hubris reminds me of the Christian right in the run-up to Schiavo.

Being the best higher education system in the history of the world does not place you above criticism. The Constitution was the best legal document in the history of the world when it stated that Negroes are three-fifths of a person (or the Magna Carta when it stated that a woman could not provide testimony in murder trials unless her husband was the victim), and our colleges and universities are the greatest higher education system in the history of the world when they do not train teachers as well as they should.

Sorry for the delay, but I wanted to provide my response to William's thoughtful comment above.

William argues that the requirements for high school teachers are substantially different than those for college teachers. While he has some good points, I think the overall thrust of the argument is somewhat exaggerated, and makes the differences out to be larger than they really are.

Different segments of population. College students all have graduated from high school and secured financing for their education. They have been screened for admission based on academic achievement and test scores and judged likely to succeed at the university. They are by and large smarter and much more motivated than the average high school student. High school teachers work with students who may have marginal motivation and/or ability.

I think this isn't nearly as true as it was 20 to 30 years ago. Although students at elite colleges are indeed likely to be strongly motivated high performers, the same cannot be said of community colleges and many state colleges. Many people attend college not because they want to, but because it is socially expected of them - just as high school was. Their parents expect them to attend college and make it a condition of providing continued financial support. As a result of this and other factors, the line between high school and college has considerably blurred. Most college students, let's face it, aren't interested in living the exalted life of the mind. They are there because they want a credential that will allow them to earn a middle-class living.

Furthermore, you also have to take into account that students will be taking numerous required courses outside of their major area. If you're (say) a math professor teaching introductory college algebra, I can guarantee that the majority of the students in these classes do not want to be there and consider that course a time-consuming distraction from their actual field of study.

3.) Different responsibilities. College teachers are not responsible for whether or not their students learn anything (see topic of the original post). If a student stops coming to class or doesn't turn in work, a college teacher doesn't have to call their parents.

Neither high school nor college teachers can make a student learn something if they are determined not to put in any effort. They can do the best they can to facilitate learning and make it interesting, and in that regard the obligations of high school and college teachers are not all that much different. It's true that high school teachers have to write out tardy slips and file attendance reports while college teachers generally don't, but this is just a minor paperwork burden, nothing that should cause serious problems for anyone with a post-secondary education.

4.) Different outcomes. Even though most high school graduates do not attend college, a large percentage of college students eventually drop out. The norm is *not* to be a college graduate.

This is more a matter of differing standards than anything else. Obviously, the curriculum at a high school level will generally be less demanding than that at the college level.

5.) Different supervision. I'm not an expert in how university departments assign grad students to teach classes, but high school principals hire teachers to come to work right away and run classrooms. A graduate department could have its student instructors serve as TAs before letting them have classes of their own. That really isn't an option for high schools.

The equivalent to TA work at the high school level would be student teaching. It would make sense to require a semester or so of student teaching before giving the prospective teachers their own classes. Indeed, most educational school curricula already do this. And the student teaching probably does a lot more to prepare the new teachers for the classroom than anything else does.

6.) Different content knowledge. High school teachers are generalists. Most states do not have very narrow certification for specific topics in high school. I suppose this could be changed, but it would be a pain for Principals to have to fire their experienced British Lit teacher and find a new American Lit teacher because the number of students fluctuated from year to year. Better to have generalists who can be assigned where they are needed within their area of certification.

I don't see this as being a particularly severe problem. Most college degrees are fairly general in nature as well, and map pretty well to specific areas of high school teaching.

One problem I have personally witnessed is that some schools try to impose requirements that have nothing at all to do with the ability to teach students. Several of my college classmates were turned down for high school teaching jobs because the schools wanted to hire someone who could also act as a football coach. This kind of thing indicates that education really isn't being taken very seriously.

I don't think it's fair to insult a majority of public school teachers today. I think these are by and large pretty bright

Apparently when they were studying to be teachers, they were not as bright as many other college students. I'll get to that in a moment...

On the other hand, if the new line of attack by the unions and the public schooling establishment generally is to deflect blame for the failings of the system by blaming the best higher education system in the history of the world...

They're not blaming the higher education system in general. They're criticizing the quality of many of the Departments of Education. Which seems fair to me. Students with education degrees typically score poorly on their SATs coming in and GREs going out.

It's not in any way unfair to point out that teaching has had a hard time recruiting top talent and the education schools have had a hard time nuturing what they have.

And, need you be reminded, again, our universities that rank top in the world typically don't offer degrees in Education (Harvard being a salient exception). So whatever gives our universities a reputation for being the best in the world, it's not because they have vibrant Education departments.

3.) Different responsibilities. College teachers are not responsible for whether or not their students learn anything (see topic of the original post). If a student stops coming to class or doesn't turn in work, a college teacher doesn't have to call their parents.

Response:Neither high school nor college teachers can make a student learn something if they are determined not to put in any effort. They can do the best they can to facilitate learning and make it interesting, and in that regard the obligations of high school and college teachers are not all that much different. It's true that high school teachers have to write out tardy slips and file attendance reports while college teachers generally don't, but this is just a minor paperwork burden, nothing that should cause serious problems for anyone with a post-secondary education.

While I tentatively agree with much of the rest of what was said by Josh G, the above response is ridiculous. This is the single biggest difference between HS and College education and it is huge. A HS teacher is expected to be babysitter, occassional parent, and constant conscience to their students in addition to teaching their subject. A college professor or graduate student teaching a section is not.

And as much as I agree with the claim that "neither high school nor college teachers can make a student learn something if they are determined not to put in any effort", that doesn't change the fact that HS teachers are expected to find a way to get every student to learn, regardless of the student's best attempts not to. The students know this. They also know that in most cases, their failure to learn affects their teachers far more than it affects them (in the immediate future, which is all many HS students understand), and are therefore even more unlikely to put in any effort. But still the HS teachers struggles like mad to be entertaining enough or inspiring enough or "X" enough to get every student to pass, lest their school lose funding, making it even harder to educate the students that DO want to learn.

"But I don't think it's fair to insult a majority of public school teachers today. I think these are by and large pretty bright, hard working, and well trained people doing a job that doesn't pay as much as equally demanding corporate jobs and in some cases in schools that are pretty miserable places. "

As I think someone else is going to point out, this is simply untrue.

Teachers are the low rung of the college grad pool, as is to be expected given the undemanding nature of the education and the promise of job security without performance requirements.

I'd say teachers fall into three categories:

1) Adequate and unambitious people with decent brains--they end up teaching in the suburbs.

2) Near-illiterates--check out the demographics and the average test scores of a teacher factory like Cal State Dominguez Hills.

3) Bright TFAers from elite schools--most of them really just "doing their two" to get an educational policymakers job; others determined to "make a difference". In either case, they're going to be gone in two years.

This is never going to change so long as teaching remains a "profession" because, as has been observed, women have far more options than they used to. We will never get a dedicated, determined professional teaching "career" pool again.

What I don't understand is why we should want to. Why not have part-time teachers with nothing more than demonstrated competence in the subject matter and no criminal history? I think we should make teaching more flexible and less "permanent". It will attract more capable people and so what if we have high turnover? We have that now.

Of course, any improvement of the teaching pool means that low income blacks and Hispanics will be taught by whites, not blacks and Hispanics--a little known reality of the cry to "improve teaching" that will stymie any attempt to improve the teacher pool.

Bingo! Cal Nails it! We should make teaching a part-time job with lower benefits. Man, who hasn't watched a teacher for a day and thought to themselves that they could do that job sleeping. How hard can it be to contact 140 parents on a regular basis to let them know how their child is progressing. And grading 140 essays? Heck, at 15 minutes an essay, that is only 35 hours of work. Everyone knows teaching is just too easy to be paid as well as it is. What we really need is joe schmoe off the street popping in to teach a bit before moving on to a REAL job. That will obviously drive up the quality of education in the U.S. After all, everyone knows that Walmart ensures high-level customer service by creating a work environment which encourages high turnover.

Now if only we could get those blacks and hispanics to go along, all us brilliant white people could come in and show them how it is done.

/snark

Some days I describe the sorts of things I hear on this board to my students (the ones who are in doing extra work on whatever math or theatre project currently on the books), and they inevitably wonder what kind of idiots speak about education this way. Even for the terrible teachers (of which we all know several), life isn't as easy as described here, much less for the vast majority who care even a little.