This is President Obama’s vision for reshaping the teaching profession. I certainly agree with the idea that entry into teacher education programs should be selective and rigorous, but almost everything else about the program is odious.
The administration proposes a competitive grant program that would do the following [my comments are in brackets]:
The proposed grant program calls for states and districts to undertake a comprehensive set of five reforms including:
- Reforming colleges of education and making these schools more selective [good idea, but today the biggest producers of teaching degrees are online “universities” that have no standards at all so it is hard to know how these diploma mills might be affected, if at all]
- Creating new career ladders for teachers to become more effective and ensure their earnings are tied more closely to performance [this is merit pay, the same policy that has failed over and over, tying teachers’ earning to the test scores of students and calling it “performance”]
- Establishing more leadership roles and responsibilities for teachers, improving professional development, and providing autonomy to teachers in exchange for greater responsibility [no problem here, though I bet many teachers would like to have the autonomy to be freed of the high-stakes testing that NCLB and Race to the Top and Obama’s waivers from NCLB require]
- Creating evaluation systems based on multiple measures rather than just on test scores [what a joke, just like the “multiple measures” now adopted in state after state where test scores are “only” 40-50% of the teacher’s evaluation but outweigh all the other measures]
- Reshaping tenure to protect good teachers and promote accountability [in other words, no tenure at all, unless your students get higher test scores every year]
This is the same old test-based accountability of NCLB, with a new wrapper. Will the Obama administration ever look at the research? Might they look at the persistent failure of merit pay? Might they look at the National Research Council’s report on the meager results of test-based accountability? Must they continue to shove testing down everyone’s throat for the next four years?
Hey, I know Romney will be worse. But can’t Obama give us something positive to hope for in another term, some possibility of reforming his ruinous Race to the Top?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Your last question…that will only happen if the Obama girls are affected, so never.
Obama doesn’t get it and neither does Duncan. I plan to make the most of my final years doing what I want once I close the door.
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To answer your last question, NO!
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Linda,
Unfortunately, Obama does get it: he is a neoliberal to the core, and will be much more effective at privatizing the schools (and Social Security, for that matter) than the Republicans could ever hope to be.
It’s Nixon goes to China: just as a Republican was needed to establish trade with the Godless Red Chinese, so too is a Democrat needed to open the door to destroying Socal Security and accelerating attacks on the public schools and teacher unions.
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Agreed. Obama picked Arne and Arne filled DoEd with corporate reformers. Obama and the Democrats’ complicity in public school privatization, exemplified in Race to the Top, should have had teachers all over the country outraged. But early acquiescence by the AFT and NEA has left teachers with no leverage over democratic party education policy. More frightening it that NEA & AFT have no long term strategy to counterbalance these ignorant mandates.
Anytime Obama et al., inserts the word ‘reform’ into speeches, we should run the other way. Reform has come to mean selling public schools to private entities, turning teaching into a service profession, ending public pensions, privatizing social security, cutting medicaid, more financial industry deregulation, and no intervention in state and city bankruptcies. In short- austerity for all but the 1%. To save us from going over the imaginary cliff, of course…
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This is the new Big Lie “Creating evaluation systems based on multiple measures rather than just on test scores ”
I The big lie usually starts out like this…
“some people say teachers should ONLY be evaluated by test scores but I say…..”
Gates says it…
John King says it…
Duncan says it….
Now Obama says it….
NO ONE ever said that teachers should only be evaluated by test scores…
They are stating their old position, which is about 1/2 on scores, and pretending they are the good guys.
They need to be called out on this.
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Unfortunately the NEA and AFT leadership and, for the most part, rank and file, do not call Obama on his policies and instead offer endorsements of the president’s re-election one year out from the actual election.
As Glenn Greenwald has noted again and again, a constituency must hold politicians accountable by threatening to withhold money and support from that politician if promises about policy are not kept.
The LGBT community and immigrant activists have managed to hold this administration accountable by threatening to withhold money and support and, lo and behold, have gotten policy changes, policy pronouncements and other positives from Obama on things like DOMA, gay marriage, and immigration policy.
The NEA and the AFT, on the other hand, have acted like co-dependents in an abusive marriage, promising to stand behind this president no matter what.
And so we have seen Obama put into place RttT policies that make NCLB look like Waldorf schooling and we have seen Obama cheerlead the firing of teachers and we have seen Obama tout that teachers must stop teaching to the test in his SOTU address when the Obama policies actually require that teachers teach to the test in every subject in every grade level because there will be new Common Core “assessments” all throughout the year that a teacher’s job will be tied to.
Water Carriers for Obama and the Dems say the NEA and AFT leadership and rank and file have to support Obama because the alternative – the Romney voucher policies – would be worse than RttT.
Frankly whether it’s the slow drip privatization brought to us by Obama or the all-at-once privatization promoted by Romney, both of these men support the privatization of the public education system.
In a close election, the NEA and the AFT could use their leverage to force concessions from Obama on these policies (esp. the testing/evaluation nonsense.)
But they have chosen not to.
Therein lies the problem to me.
Given Weingarten’s need to be the reform-friendly union leader who gets to do the Sunday shows, I understand why the AFT engages in this. And I suppose that the NEA leadership has been bought off in some way as well.
But I cannot understand why more of the membership does not refuse to support Obama for his anti-teacher, pro-testing, pro-charter policies.
It’s a cliche, but I want to repeat the Eugene V. Debs quote (I’m paraphrasing) – “I’d rather vote for what I want and not get it then vote for what I don’t want and get it.”
I don’t want what Romney is selling.
But I don’t want what Obama is selling either.
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“But I cannot understand why more of the membership does not refuse to support Obama for his anti-teacher, pro-testing, pro-charter policies.”
This baffles me as well. It seems like the older teachers are completely demoralized, those in their late 20s/early 30s are politically disengaged and not inclined to believe in any sort of union activism (they did, after all, grow up under Reagan) and the really young ones just out of college are already drinking the Kool Aid.
I think Michael’s explanation of Obama’s neoliberalism goes a long way in explaining the mess we find ourselves in. It’s a bitter lesson to learn.
Perhaps if Romney were at the helm, we would finally see some push back. Is it worth the risk? Maybe…
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I’m 52, teaching is my 3rd career, and I’ve just finished my 7th year of teaching high school math (6 in Seattle). I lived in Boston in the 80’s, I grew up on welfare, I cooked in fine dining for 5 years in Boston, I cooked on boats in Alaska for a few years, I got a math B.A. from the U.W. Seattle, I worked as a support serf at Microsoft for 5 years.
MY gut tells me that The Issue in the union is the same as in the Democratic Party. Those driving strategery, tactics and messaging are the high credentialed, highly connected, highly titled, highly paid yuppie sell outs, with lots of aid from the toadies to the sell outs, and too much enabling from the dupes of the sell outs and the toadies. The Issue is how fed up we all are.
I was 32 in ’92 and working on floating death traps in the Berring Sea – I remember The HOPE thing, after 12 years of all the right wing lies. Remember how Clinton could actually do messaging and beat the liars? Remember how … we got sold down the river? Remember how Larry Summers and Geigthner were appointed in NOVEMBER …
oops! wrong sell out!
The most important job we can do, aside from doing our day jobs well and making sure we’re not living in a blue tarp under a bridge, and aside from maintaining and nurturing our human circles, the MOST important job we can do is get rid of sell outs, toadies and dupes sucking up the paychecks of “leaders”. period.
rmm.
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It sounds like Mr. Obama is ignoring the things going on in the rest of ed reform. Why improve standards and quality of teacher prep programs? Hasn’t TFA proved that 5 weeks gives you the best of those programs without the cobwebs?
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No.
First, what other profession expects people straight out of their undergraduate preparation to be at the pinnacle of their profession? There no recognition of appreciation for the fact (I would say) that teachers improve over time. About 1/2 of all teachers leave the profession within the first three years they enter–why is there never a proposal about a different kind of socialization process? I have witnessed firsthand many talented teachers pack it in because they received no meaningful support during those years.
Second, this promotes a culture of competition rather than collaboration in schools. There is a lot of research (and common sense) that tells us this is not healthy for teachers or students.
Third, I’m so tired of reading policies that promote the deprofessionalization of teaching. Why can policymakers not respect the in-class assessments teachers make to adjudge the learning of their students? Most teachers I’ve seen and work with are able to craft adequate, if not exceptional lessons and assessments that show student growth over time using a variety of methods, processes and outcomes.
These policies remind me of a Nietzsche quote: “In large states public education will always be mediocre, for the same reason that in large kitchens the cooking is usually bad.” The great benefit of the federal system for education in the US is that it decentralizes to the state level–every state is different and SHOULD have different assessments, processes, curricula and programs.
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I realize reading my comment that the irony was not there. I’m all for improving teacher prep programs and making them more important rather than less in deciding who gets to be a teacher. I think TFA is completely the wrong approach to preparing teachers, and I’m not so sure about MAT programs, either.
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I got your snark, rpillala. The elite edu-refomers immunity from their own hypocrisy would be funny, if it wasn’t so tragic.
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Satire is now indistinguishable from reality:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/my-year-volunteering-as-a-teacher-helped-educate-a,28803/
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Comedian Lewis Black has a great line to describe this phenomena: “I took LSD when I was younger to prepare myself for these times”.
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To me what is going on with the public school systems with the use of charter schools, etc. is similar to the sub-prime fiasco. This financial instrument was supposed to help more people to be able to purchase a home but in the end it was a failure with many people losing their homes. It was really all about profit for the banks and mortgages companies. With many for profit charter schools it also seems to be about profit and not really of the promise of a better education for all children. As a former teacher I worry what will happen with today’s children because of the chaos that has been created which they did not cause but will possibly be affected by for life. Our children deserve better and I am proud of all the teachers and parents are fighting back against the forces who are really not putting the children first.
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I get so aggravated with the “multiple measures” argument to justify evaluating by test scores. As Bruce Baker noted on one of his posts on value-added:
“In a system that places differential weight, but assumes equal validity across measures, even if the student achievement growth component is only a minority share of the weight, it may easily become the primary tipping point in most high stakes personnel decisions.”
In Tennessee, a teacher’s composite score (as well as the sub-components) is on a scale of 1-5, with 3 being “effective.”
Here’s an illustration of how value-added can be the tipping point in a teacher’s score even though it’s “only 35%”:
Teacher A
Observation avg. 3 (x 50) = 150
Value-Added 2 (x 35) = 70
Student Achievement 3 (x 15) = 45
Total = 265, Level 2 Ineffective
Teacher B
Observation avg. 2.5 (x 50) = 125
Value-Added 4 (x 35) = 140
Student Achievement 2 (x 15) = 30
Total = 295, Level 3 Effective
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Yet somehow Obama and his sell out band of Dumbocrats think they are entitled to our votes. During the height of the Wisconsin recall push D.W. Shultz the brain trust of the DNC said their recall had NO NATIONAL SIGNIFICANCE. When the people of Wisco needed the party’s help to counteract the millions funneled into the recall election by out of state corporate warlords like the Koch Bros. President Obama dug down deep and sent them a tweet. Yes friends that’s our collective bargaining rights, our professional pride and our very livelihoods are worth to this President and his administration. A goddamned tweet.
Meanwhile have a look at the midnight deal some charter school “reformers” — of course not an educator among — them are trying to pull off in Buffalo NY with a hostile takeover of 2 Buffalo schools.
http://b-loedscene.blogspot.com/2012/07/chameleons-attempt-land-grab-in-bps.html
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I disagree that Mitt would be worse than Obama. The poor track record for Obama on education is obvious and will continue to be that way if he is re-elected. Mitt wants to disable federal involvement in education. (A good thing, if you ask me) Yes, he is for vouchers, but we all know that will never work on a massive scale.
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This is not the Linda from the first post.
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Sad day. There is nothing I can believe that comes out of Obama’s mouth concerning education. He states he is opposed to wide spread testing– his money grab mandates them. He is says that teachers should be supported– he lauds the firing of teachers in Rhode Island. He ignored: attack on teacher’s unions in Wisconsin and Chicago, the wide spread smearing of teachers via popular press covering in valid interpretations of teacher ‘ scores’. He has not distanced himself from the Chicago public relations firm helping run his reelection that has openly had teachers/Chicago Union in their cross hairs. He praised Charter school teachers on National Teacher Appreciation Day.
He has been no beacon of hope or of change for this great nation of public schools. He who has roots in community action who should know the impact of poverty on societies and the family structure has patently ignored that impact on schools and have allowed public school teachers to have their jobs undermined, their position in society besmirched and allowed the security of the teaching profession to fall by the way side.
He could have done so much more and he could have given more than empty platitudes. The unions role in not demanding more from this president is appalling.
Sad sad day.
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I think Obama means well but has been mislead by education terrorists like Michelle Rhee. There needs to be a concerted effort of individual letters and emails, thousands of them from the real teachers to tell him what he is doing wrong and how to fix it. He said when he was campaigning that he would hire the best people in their fields to advise him because he did not know everything. He has done that. The economy is improving, Bin Laden is dead, the soldiers are coming home, Don’t ask Don’t tell is gone and DOMA is dying a slow death while GM is alive and the predatory lenders are still under fire. And Obamacare passed.
The one area he is wrong in is Education. Our President does not know what he is doing in the area of Education. Hiring Arne Duncan was a huge mistake. He is not a teacher. Neither the President nor his Secretary realize that teachers do not respond to incentive pay, that test training is not education, and that just because someone is smart does not mean they can teach and just because they are an expert in their field does not mean they can teach that field to someone else. I have seen non-teacher education “leaders” in Louisiana look stunned when I have told them this. It does not compute that we don’t work for the money. If he was not so old I would recommend former Governor of Georgia, Zell Miller for the position. The first thing he did when he got into office was raise teacher pay across the board by 15%. This caused earthquakes across the Southeast because eventually the other states had to raise their pay to be competitive. Then he passed a dedicated lottery. Zell was a teacher. Unfortunately, he is probably around 90 now.
Romney would be much worse, not because he himself is such a bad man, except for being affiliated with the wrong party and a little on othe greedy side as all Republicans are, but because he, like Bobby JIndal, would corporatize and privatize education and make it into a money maker. Special education and kids who need extra help would go down the tubes, the latter to pregnancy and prison and the former to sitting on the porch waiting for their SSI or warehoused in institutions again. As Republicans go he is not inherently evil as many, like Jindal, are, but his advisors would be. I would call Romney the best of the worst. But, for the moment, unless there is a fiasco on the Democratic side, I don’t think many people trust the Outsourcer in Chief.
Fixing this is really going to require an uprising among teachers and our supporters to tell President Obama to back up and fix things with Education.
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“I think Obama means well . . . And Obamacare passed.”
Yeah, that Obamacare that is basically the same plan as written by the Heritage Foundation in the mid 90s. The one that benefits the big insurance companies through mandated purchasing of crappy products at ever higher premiums. I don’t consider that an accomplishment.
Or how about Obama being the judge, jury and executioner of American citizens, one being a sixteen year old. Who was that? Al Alawki’s son (he was the only one with legal standing to sue over his father’s death). That’s evil in my book.
Or how about indefinite detentions for people not ever tried?
I could go on and on, but as E. Debs said “It is better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don’t want and get it.”
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I find it shocking that the AFT is endorsing Obama. All the “younger” teachers at my school are going to vote him as well since they do not have a clue about his true stance on education. I’m voting for Mitt due to the fact that he would most likely keep his hands off the whole educational “reform” movement and focus on the real problems that our country is facing rather than the propaganda of the educational “crisis” facing our schools.
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I need to change my post name to Linda1 or something else. This Linda cannot vote for Mitt, but I am sickened by Duncan and Obama.
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Mitt is incapable of changing the edu-corporate movement- his party serves corporate interests. His ‘hand’s off’ rhetoric only applies to private entities- not public services. His hands-off rhetoric has as much validity as Obama’s “reform” rhetoric. Look at the republican legislatures and governors all over the country for Mitt’s ‘hands-off’ approach to public education. The Republicans are historically in lock-step with their corporate donor’s interests and they rarely deviate from their ideology.
Our hope for change is in massive, united resistance from parents, teachers, and workers- true grasssroots efforts -to vote out the bought and paid for politicians.
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Clearly, the answer is “no,” as most commenters have said, but I’d like to go a little further than that. The problem isn’t that teachers are incompetent. The problem is that teachers cannot teach effectively when they are tormented by abusive administrators, as a great many are. Teachers’ unions are formed in response to such abusive treament. I have a solution to propose. It won’t fix schools overnight, but it would be a start, and would be the first time the root source of our problems has been addressed. I propose drastic cuts to the pay of all school administeators, nationwide. The abusive ones would then leave, and we only need a fraction of the number we have now. The ones who would stay are those few administrators who actually want to improve education, rather than indulge in personal power trips while lining their own pockets, at taxpayer expense. This would make public schools better, and that, in turn, would remove the reason for the mass exodus toward privatization of education by corporate interests. If you would like to examine this proposal in more detail, simply google “education reform petition cut administrators’ pay” – and look for the C.A.P. Proposal. The petition explains itself. Anyone with questions about it is invited to contact me, at robertlovespi@yahoo.com.
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Mitt said he would not dismantle the Department of Education because he would like to use it to battle teacher unions Linda. You haven’t done nearly enough homework. This election’s best candidate is none of the above and we need to let Obama know he doesn’t get our vote because we are thought of as a liberal or progressive or Dumbocrat demographic. He needs to know he is NOT getting it because he and his idiot secretary and his policies are toxic to public education and all of its practitioners.
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Linda1 agrees with you BigSean…NEA should not have endorsed him. Why do we have to endorse anybody at this point?
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I just reading an editorial about Jeb Bush in my newspaper, and one of the commenters speculated that Jeb Bush is vying to be the possible Romney administration education secretary. I wouldn’t be surprised if a President Romney kept Duncan as he is in alignment with Romney’s education beliefs. However, we’re in for a long political battle if Jeb Bush gets nominated.
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same difference.
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I think Jebbie is positioning himself for a presidential run in 2016. He’s counting on the US’s collective long term memory loss of W.
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I got an email from HR in June informing me that I was eligible to apply for a career ladder position based on my evaluation. I could get a stipend for either becoming a mentor teacher or having a demonstration classroom. It sounded a like an interesting opportunity, however, my interest declined the more I learned. For example, the opportunity to apply was just that. I would have to compete with other teachers in my building for a career ladder position through an application and interview process. Hadn’t we already proved that we were innovative (to use the Charlotte Danielson term of my district) teachers, so why the additional hoops? Yes, I know the answer to that question is money, but still…. Upon, further examination the career ladder seemed to be about competition, increased workload above already overloaded one, and hoops. I told my principal that I was not interested this year, as did the two other teachers I spoke with.
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Career ladder? What a fuzzy happy term for wringing more out of you and delegating EVEN MORE adminstrative duties onto the teachers while pitting colleagues against each other and probably with the same number of students, classes, etc and most likely for a pittance.
We should all pass…maybe if they did their jobs in the first place we wouldn’t need to spy on each other.
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I just read this on the onion….what the kids might say about TFA if anyone bothered to asked:
Can We Please, Just Once, Have A Real Teacher?
BY BRANDON MENDEZ, JAMES MILLER ELEMENTARY SCHOOL STUDENT
You’ve got to be kidding me. How does this keep happening? I realize that as a fourth-grader I probably don’t have the best handle on the financial situation of my school district, but dealing with a new fresh-faced college graduate who doesn’t know what he or she is doing year after year is growing just a little bit tiresome. Seriously, can we get an actual teacher in here sometime in the next decade, please? That would be terrific.
Just once, it would be nice to walk into a classroom and see a teacher who has a real, honest-to-God degree in education and not a twentysomething English graduate trying to bolster a middling GPA and a sparse law school application. I don’t think it’s too much to ask for a qualified educator who has experience standing up in front of a classroom and isn’t desperately trying to prove to herself that she’s a good person.
I’m not some sort of stepping stone to a larger career, okay? I’m an actual child with a single working mother, and I need to be educated by someone who actually wants to be a teacher, actually comprehends the mechanics of teaching, and won’t get completely eaten alive by a classroom full of 10-year-olds within the first two months on the job.
How about a person who can actually teach me math for a change? Boy, wouldn’t that be a novel concept!
I fully understand that our nation is currently facing an extreme shortage of teachers and that we all have to make do with what we can get. But does that really mean we have to be stuck with some privileged college grad who completed a five-week training program and now wants to document every single moment of her life-changing year on a Tumblr?
For crying out loud, we’re not adopted puppies you can show off to your friends.
Look, we all get it. Underprivileged children occasionally say some really sad things that open your eyes and make you feel as though you’ve grown as a person, but this is my actual education we’re talking about here. Graduating high school is the only way for me to get out of the malignant cycle of poverty endemic to my neighborhood and to many other impoverished neighborhoods throughout the United States. I can’t afford to spend these vital few years of my cognitive development becoming a small thread in someone’s inspirational narrative.
But hey, how much can I really know, anyway? I haven’t had an actual teacher in three years.
http://www.theonion.com/articles/my-year-volunteering-as-a-teacher-helped-educate-a,28803/
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You spoiled my one of my posts for tomorrow! But I’ll do it anyway.
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I’m sorry…..we must be searching the same sites. Just delete the entry. I don’t mind!
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I like Linda1’s point of view waaaaay better than the Romney supporter. Speaking of Bushes remember Neal the disgraced Keating 5 Bankster got into the edumaterialsbiz with hopes of getting rich off NCLB? Instead he ended up selling a lot of his crap to places like Dubai and Bahrain. Go figure. For a wholly unremarkable family they sure know how to stretch it out don’t they ?
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Speaking of Bushes, how about Prescott Bush be threatened with prosecution if he didn’t quit being the Nazi’s banker??
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This is the heart of it. The major dots have been connected right here. I’m speechless as I read this. It gets to it and in short order. Is Obama’s vision thing to implement the vary things that move away from what he seems to by saying? He’s riding the line between assuaging true teaching and learning and the corporate move to own a growing source of profit: education. I await the corporate owned bubble burst.
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Someone asked the other day why education reform hasn’t been a topic widely discussed in this year’s presidential race. It hasn’t been debated because Pres. Obama and Romney’s views aren’t very far apart. They both are pushing for merit pay, both want to ‘revise’ tenure ( we know what that means),both believe in high stakes testing, and they both continue to label our public education system as failing.
Well it’s not failing, merit pat doesn’t work, eliminating tenure will drive many excellent teachers out, and high stakes testing is a complete failure.
There are many other reasons to separate Obama from Romney, unfortunately education is not one of them.
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That’s because they are both bought and paid for thanks, in part, to Citizens United.
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I am not sure where to put this. I get at least one to two emails a day from the Obama campaigners. I have been responding but changing the subject line, so when it gets sent back it reads: YOU ARE RUINING OUR SCHOOLS and then I type a sentence or two telling them I have no money and no hope……..Shame, shame, shame….today I sent.
I don’t care. I have no money and Obama and Duncan are selling our schools to the highest bidder. I have no hope..you are selling our children to vultures.
It makes me feel better but it is probably pointless, but what if they got hundreds, thousands of negative responses?
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You just might initiate something with this idea and proposed ending question..
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Anyone who reads this, please pass along and do the same. At the very least, I feel happy when I hit the send button and then I go back to reading.
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Linda1, I get those too…I’ve taken to responding to each with,
I agree that it’s probably not going to help…since he (the Prez) never sees those. On the other hand…if we started filling the pail eventually it might spill over… 🙂
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I am forwarding all these comments to a very high level member of Obama’s inner circle
Diane Ravitch
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This is sickening stuff. I want Obama to lose just to see Arne Duncan fired! Romney will be worse, but he may keep his hands off the states. Really, how can this get worse at this point? Personally, anyone who hires that idiot Duncan to run the Department of Education shouldn’t be reelected. Let’s be serious. Can you see some character like Arne Duncan running education in France or Germany? He couldn’t even be a high school teacher in a serious country. He is just a basketball player who did nothing for Chicago schools. Believe me, I know. We teachers should not be endorsing this guy. I will take anything if I can just see Duncan go away! I am also beginning to wonder how smart Obama is. How intellectual can he be if this is how he views education? Being a good speaker (or teleprompter reader) is sadly not enough. I am sick to my stomach about all of this, and just counting down to retirement and Costa Rica. We need to reach out more to Occupy at this point. The Republicans and Democrats have sold out long ago.
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Great points! A. Duncan is literally an ignorant idiot! (and I apologize to any “idiot”)
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Duncan has a degree in Sociology from Harvard. How that qualifies him for being Secretary of Education I’ll never understand. He has never taught in a public school…he never even attendant public schools. His only education experience was that his mom ran a tutoring program and he watched. The head of the nation’s public schools needs to be one of us…someone with experience working with students and parents. Not a political lackey.
It’s not just Obama…Margaret Spellings was a Poli Sci major. When she was Sec of Ed she wrote (on the US DOE web site) that she was qualified to be Secretary of Education because she was a mom.
Have we ever had a surgeon general who was not a medical professional? Have we ever had an attorney general who was not an attorney? Have we ever had a chair of the Joint Chiefs who was not a member of the military?
I understand why Duncan doesn’t think that degrees in education mean anything…he hasn’t got one!
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Who, when, and how can Obama be influenced to realize how far of; base he really is? As long as Arne Duncan is on the scene, nothing will change for the positive.
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Online education schools do have standards. They were developed by subject matter experts, who are typically teachers in that specific field, and they are aligned with the standards of the specialized professional association (SPA) that is related to the specific degree, such as the Association for Childhood Education International (ACEI) for degrees in elementary education. Those programs may or may not lead to state certification, depending upon whether the school has met state standards and obtained state approval.
There was a time when online universities were very determined to create Teacher Education programs that would readily lead to certification. Some asked me then to design programs for them, so that furture teachers could become certified in any state. I laughed and told them that was impossible, because each state has different certification requirements. They were clearly very frustrated by that, but seemed hopeful that would change since NCATE partnered with all states.
Since then, a lot of schools have developed a program here and there that leads toward certification in a specific state, but at this point, I don’t think many have managed to obtain approval in more than a few states.
Today, with Teacher Ed the target of “reformers” with money and power, I wonder if they are aiming to loosen or dismantle state certification requirements, in order to eliminate the barriers faced by for-profit online schools.
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Quick comment about people who have been US Secretary of Education…President Clinton’s Secretary of Education was Richard Riley, former Governor of South Carolina. Riley did a variety of things while Governor of South Carolina to help improve public education. Among those were convincing the state to increase the sales tax and put part of this into public education, put more money into early childhood education, develop ways to reward schools for making progress with students. I thought he was a terrific Governor and a positive Secretary of Education. While none of us is perfect, I think things moved ahead in a number of ways with President Clinton and Secretary Riley. My point here is that the Secretary of Education does not need to be an educator. IN fact, I’d say that having some political experience is a valuable skill for someone who has to deal with Congress.
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I agree. The important thing about selecting a Secretary of Education is to choose someone who knows education well; is dedicated to improving it; but understands federalism, that is, the limits of the federal role. The Secretary of Education is not the national minister of education or the national Superintendent of Schools. It is not his or her job to tell schools what to do, what to teach or how to teach. It is the job of the Secretary to be a booster for good education, to oppose dangerous ideas (like for-profit schools and programs that lower the status of the teaching profession), to insist of nonpartisan research and information from the Department, and to defend the rights of children to a good education.
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Here’s what one student has to say about the quick fix teachers in Chicago.
Poet Rachel Smith, 18, is a senior and a member of Epic Sound, the Kenwood Academy Slam Poetry Team. This is her second year participating in Louder Than a Bomb (and she can also be heard performing here).
Hallelujah the Saviors are Here is a condemnation of teachers who come to “the inner city” without becoming a true member of the community
http://www.wbez.org/story/hallelujah-saviors-are-here-97183
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There are many ‘good’ teachers. They are artists in their field and they cannot necessarily be bribed to become good at what they do. While I would not turn down the offer (who would?) it seems a counter-intuitive use of the money. Not only that it is offensive to other talented teachers who are not singled out for these honors by the selectivity of the process. How do we judge success? This reminds me of handing out millions in bonuses to CEOs whose companies were failing. It is not the individual, it is the system. We need to rethink how we deliver education not who does it. I would suggest a better use of this money would be to spread it out to all the hard-working teachers still laboring under this cloud of perceived failure. They could use the $100 or so bucks, believe me.
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