Stop the madness

How can a person teach if they have not had course work or student teaching? It is a question that I am asked many times when visiting states. In the past this was somewhat difficult to answer, but as the data comes in from multiple studies, it is clear that the answer to this question is: just as well as those who had course work and student teaching.

We now have four separate studies that provide pretty much the same conclusion that students of alternatively certified teachers perform as well as students from traditionally certified teachers.

The ridiculous compromise that many leaders use to create alternative teacher certification programs is to make people take course work at night. To these leaders I always try to stress that teaching in the first year is physically and mentally exhausting. You have to be “on” longer than in most professions and the last thing these new teachers need is to leave their school and go sit in a class. They still need to grade papers, tweak lesson plans, rest and spend time with the family.

It turns out we are right. From the most recent study on alternative certification (Note that AC is alternatively certified and TC is traditionally certified teachers):

Students of AC teachers who were taking coursework while teaching scored lower in math than students of their TC counterparts. This finding suggests that student performance in an AC teacher’s class may be negatively related to the teacher’s taking courses while teaching.

If the first rule of education reform is to do no harm – then we must eliminate course work requirements for new teachers that have no value and are actually reducing teacher effectiveness.

The studies are found here:
“What Does Certification Tell Us About Teacher Effectiveness? Evidence from New York City”, Kane, Rockoff, Staiger, 2006, http://gseweb.harvard.edu/news/features/kane/nycfellowsmarch2006.pdf
“Identifying Effective Teachers on the Job”, Gordon, Kane and Staiger, Brookings Institute, 2006
http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2006/~/media/Files/rc/papers/2006/04educ...
“What Happens when States have Genuine Alternative Certification”, Peterson and Nadler, Education Next, Winter 2009,
http://www.hoover.org/publications/ednext/34564684.html
“An Evaluation of Teachers Trained Through Different Routes to Certification”, IES/Mathematica, February 2009
http://www.mathematica-mpr.com/publications/pdfs/education/teacherstrain...

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?