 |
CAT Tracks for October 22, 2009
TEACHERS OF TEACHERS |
Maybe if we are lucky, teacher-bashing U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan will stay focused on the teacher of teachers.
It would be "fair"...would be "consistent".
Mr. Duncan does NOT blame students for their failure to learn...it's all the teachers' fault.
Okay, then why not reason that we should NOT blame teachers for their failure to teach...it's all the teachers of teachers fault?
From The Washington Post...
Duncan to ed schools: End 'mediocre' training
Class Struggle
Education Secretary Arne Duncan, in prepared remarks circulating in advance of a speech Thursday, accuses many of the nation's schools of education of doing "a mediocre job of preparing teachers for the realities of the 21st-century classroom."
My colleague Nick Anderson, on the national education beat, and I found the advance text a meaty read.
Duncan's speech, to be delivered at Columbia University, goes further than any other I can remember from an education secretary in ripping into the failure of education schools to ready teachers for the challenges of the day, particularly the demand for academic growth in all students.
Duncan's speech points out two major deficiencies in education school teaching with which most critics would agree: They do a bad job teaching students how to manage disruptive classrooms, particularly in low-income neighborhoods, and they don't offer much in the way of training new teachers how to use data to improve their classroom results.
The excerpts of the speech we were given, however, did not appear to address one part of the classroom management problem that is often raised when successful teachers explain how they learned to keep students in order. These teachers often say they learned by doing, by facing a class alone without help, trying one thing after another until something worked for them. Education school deans have been critical of the Teach for America program, which pushes recent college graduates into classrooms with only a few weeks training, but teachers who have survived that toss-them-into-the-water approach say it works better than class management classes at their teacher's colleges.
Some education school professors say they try to teach class management but students are incapable of understanding what they are taught until they are in the classroom, struggling with unruly students. New programs have tried to create more time for students to face disruptive classes, but that is hard to arrange, since the most dysfunctional urban schools are unlikely to seek relationships with student teacher programs, and the program leaders are leery of such schools.
Here are excerpts circulated in advance by Team Duncan:
"[B]y almost any standard, many if not most of the nation’s 1,450 schools, colleges, and departments of education are doing a mediocre job of preparing teachers for the realities of the 21st-century classroom. America’s university-based teacher preparation programs need revolutionary change--not evolutionary tinkering. But I am optimistic that, despite the obstacles to reform, real change is underway.”
###
“[M]ajor demographic shifts mean that teaching is going to be a booming profession in the years ahead—with school districts nationwide making up to 200,000 new, first-time hires annually.”
###
“I am urging every teacher education program today to make better outcomes for students the overarching mission that propels all their efforts. America’s great educational challenges require that this new generation of well-prepared teachers significantly boost student learning and increase college-readiness. President Obama has set an ambitious goal of having America regain its position as the nation with the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020. But to reach that goal, both our K-12 system and our teacher preparation programs have to get dramatically better. The need is urgent--and the time to cling to the status quo has passed.”
###
“For decades, schools of education have been renowned for being cash cows for universities. The large enrollment in education schools and their relatively low overhead have made them profit-centers. But many universities have diverted those profits to more prestigious but under-enrolled graduate departments like physics--while doing little to invest in rigorous educational research and well-run clinical training.”
###
“Now the fact is that states, districts, and the federal government are also culpable for the persistence of weak teacher preparation programs. Most states routinely approve teacher education programs, and licensing exams typically measure basic skills and subject matter knowledge with paper-and-pencil tests without any real-world assessment of classroom readiness. Local mentoring programs for new teachers are poorly funded and often poorly organized at the district level.”
###
“The draft Race to the Top criteria would also reward states that publicly report and link student achievement data to the programs where teachers and principals were credentialed. And the federal government is funding a large expansion of teacher residency programs in high-needs schools, including one to be run out of Teachers College.”
###
“In the end, I don’t think the ingredients of a good teacher preparation are much of a mystery anymore. Our best programs are coherent, up-to-date, research-based, and provide students with subject mastery. They have a strong and substantial field-based program in local public schools that drives much of the course work in classroom management and student learning and prepares students to teach diverse pupils in high-needs settings. And these programs have a shared vision of what constitutes good teaching and best practices—including a single-minded focus on improving student learning and using data to inform instruction.”
By Jay Mathews
