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There’s yet another yet another new effort to improve America’s teacher training programs. This comes out of a report warning that teachers colleges are (still) not doing a very good job.
According to a piece by Stephanie Banchero in the Wall Street Journal:
We need large, bold, systemic changes,” said James Cibulka, president of the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education, the group that convened the expert panel. “As a nation, we are expecting all of our students to perform at high levels, so it follows that we need to expect more of our teachers as they enter the classroom.”
The panel said local school districts should work more closely with higher-education officials to train student teachers and assess whether they are actually helping students learn. In most states, candidates spend only about 10 to 12 weeks observing teachers or student-teaching themselves, with the bulk of their time spent listening to college lectures.
The panel essentially recommended tougher admissions standards into teacher training programs, more time in the classroom, and closer analysis of potential teachers’ performance in those classrooms.
Teacher quality is the most important factor in student achievement. People who enter college through teaching programs tend to have lower grade-point averages and standardized test scores than people in other programs.
The panel said teaching programs need to have higher standards in order to “improve the candidate pool.”
Good luck with that. The National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) is actually the organization that’s arguably responsible for this problem; it’s the body that’s been accrediting teacher certification programs at U.S. colleges since 1954. It’s had plenty of opportunity to help improve that candidate pool.
The trouble is that just because current programs are crappy doesn’t mean that making them more rigorous will actually help. As Elizabeth Green wrote in a piece in the New York Times Magazine back in March, “[While] study after study shows that teachers who once boosted student test scores are very likely to do so in the future, no research… has shown a teacher-training program to boost student achievement.”
Read the NCATE report here.
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buddy66 on November 16, 2010 6:02 PM:
One year I thought to pick up teaching credentials. The requirement to undergo practice teaching evaluation seemed reasonable enough, but the 10-week teacher observation period confounded me. Did they think I was from Mars? I had spent 16 years observing teachers. I told them they were nuts.
toowearyforoutrage on November 16, 2010 7:05 PM:
[While] study after study shows that teachers who once boosted student test scores are very likely to do so in the future, no research… has shown a teacher-training program to boost student achievement.”
But which one comes with a pay raise?
Take a wild guess.
If you want merit pay, oppose teachers unions' candidates that support the continued tolerance of mediocrity.
James E. Powell on November 16, 2010 10:41 PM:
Before I became an English teacher I practiced law for 20 years. I often compare the training for each profession. The classes I took to get a teaching credential were more relevant and useful to the job than law school classes were to practicing law. Neither job can be learned in school.
Firms vary widely in what they have new people handle, but you don't start out working the complex or big dollar cases. There is usually an apprenticeship of some kind, under a senior attorney's eyes.
Not so with teaching. New teachers get a key to a classroom, about 130-150 students who can smell the "new," and hearty good wishes from the administrators. New teachers go to the schools and get the classes that the veterans do not want to teach, i.e., the most challenging students in the worst neighborhoods.
Speaking from my experience and the experience of others I've observed, both of these professions are learned by doing them, not by taking classes about them.
In my opinion, new teachers should be working under the supervision of more than two senior teachers for at least two years. But no one is interested in paying for that kind of training.
Another related thing. It is all well and good to bitch about the mediocrity found in the teaching ranks. But it's like bitching about the third baseman. If you cut him, whose going to play third base tomorrow night? Because the pay and status are low, the profession doesn't attract a crowd of the best and brightest.
Teacher on May 11, 2011 12:14 AM:
Get the politicians and the state bureaucrats out of pubic education.
PACT was a total waste of time. It is for theoritical dummies.
Why is it that teacher trainers with Phd's make such terrible teachers. Is it that they couldn't make it in the classroom?
We would have much better teachers if they worked as assistants for 5 years and then were hired after their apprenticeship if the school wanted to hire them, school by school.
I honestly believe the teacher-training programs in California scare away the talent and leave mediocre work-a-holics who just obey the dumbed down state standards approach.