Teacher Preparation

I spent a little of last week meeting in Utah on their performance based teacher certification program - the ARL. They are really pleased with the people that become teachers through that program. There are no seat time requirements or minimum hours required. You demonstrate you have the knowledge, through a program like ABCTE, and you can become a teacher. Meanwhile, down in Louisiana, they created an alternative program that requires enough university based credits to be one couse shy of a Master's.

Swift and Able has a great blogpost summarizing the recent arguments on teacher preparation and letting us know that ed schools have not changed in a hundred years.

Even with pressure coming from Secretary Arne Duncan, I don't think they will change now unless they get enough competition from groups like ABCTE, that they realize they have no choice.

Closing Ed Schools

When practicality wins over tradition in education it is a noteworthy event. So I want to take the time to applaud the University of the District of Columbia President Allen Sessoms for taking a stand to close their education school. He is analyzing all aspects of UDC to create a much better performing university. When he looked at the ed school he found that it had a graduation rate of less than 8% after 6 years.

The reason for this is that the students cannot pass the basic skills test that is required to graduate. Essentially 4-6 of the 150 students in early childhood education graduate each year. That is beyond dismal.

Yet there are people fighting him because they want to uphold the tradition of having an education school at UDC. And by “they” we of course mean Marion Barry who would rather have dismal teachers in DC Schools than no ed program at UDC. (and still can’t pay his taxes).

In difficult economic times all organizations must take a hard look at everything they do and continuing doing the things they do well and eliminate those areas that perform poorly. It is great to see that UDC is finally moving in the right direction.

Note: ABCTE is hoping to be accepted in DC soon

Ed Schools looking at the Abyss

Not so shocking revelation from the Cleveland Plain Dealer on our college’s of education. To me it is amazing that this issue has not outraged more parents and students. (Note: there are always exceptions and there are many schools working hard to improve quality and all people who generalize are jerks). We do not have a lot of exceptional ed schools in the US and we cannot have a world class teaching work force if we aren’t more selective of who gets in the classroom.

The article states that “because universities often rely on education schools as "cash cows," low admissions standards are too often allowed because they help boost enrollments and revenues, he found. Some schools accept 100 percent of their applicants.”

It is a fairly balanced article and does point out that Ed Schools have not defined what it takes to be a great teacher and cant really improve until that is completed. And to be fair, I guess they have only had 100 or so years to figure that out.

If the universities want to compete with alternative certification programs, they have to have the best possible teacher going into the classroom and currently that is just not the case. Finding out what works, which courses provide the best support to students and to teachers will ultimately increase demand for college of ed students, allowing them to increase selectivity and build quality.

Until then, more studies keep showing that alt cert teachers do just as well as teachers coming through standard routes- here and here. So if the value is not there, why would you pay that much and take that much time to go through a standard route if you are no better prepared then an alt route?

The Fox Guarding the Hen House

Yesterday in Nevada, I again was subjected to the harsh conflict of interest that exists in Teacher Certification. Many states, like Nevada, have professional standards boards to approve changes to teacher certification that are made up of - SURPRISE - Ed School Deans and professors!! Woohoo. Now, normally they try to take the high ground and not appear blatant about protecting their monopoly – but yesterday was an extreme exception.

The chairman of this task force, Dr. Luft, Associate Dean of Education, University of Nevada Reno, stated that if he voted for approving ABCTE he would be “hung from the elms in the quad” at his school. Later in the discussion he said that they couldn’t vote for this as it would hurt the ed schools financially. Now if your conflict of interest is that deep, don’t you think maybe you should recuse yourself from the proceedings – not preside over them.

If anybody wonders why alternative certification programs end up looking like regular certification programs you only have to look at the make up of state agency set up to approve the programs. I don’t want to be too subtle here so let me explain it in layman terms:

IF YOU PUT ED SCHOOLS IN CHARGE OF APPROVING PROGRAMS – THEY WILL ONLY APPROVE ED SCHOOL-LIKE PROGRAMS.
Duh.