My friends at The Chalkface have thrown themselves into the fight to support public education, with a radio show, videos, and blogs.
Now they let you know–in language you won’ t hear from me–about the latest reformer attack on teacher education. The reformers want Arne Duncan to ignore the objections of major institutions of higher education. They want him to adopt regulations that would judge teacher education programs by the test scores of the students of their graduates.
Got that. The test scores of the students taught by the graduates of these institutions.
This is guaranteed to make teaching to the test the official doctrine of American education, top to bottom. It means imposing NCLB on higher education.
It is absurd. It is reckless. It is ___________. (Fill in the blank.)
Diane Ravitch's blog 
That is exactly what Relay and Match, the two “schools of education” created by charters do. They use student test scores as a basis for certifying teachers. This is an attempt to “charterize” schools of education. Teachers will learn to “pounce like a cat” on student who are distracted. They will learn how to teach students to wiggle their fingers to send energy, and how to be a “badass”. No scholarship or research necessary.
We always hear business people say that the college you attend doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is what you do with what you learn. There are Ivy Leaguers and other elite college graduates who aren’t doing to well while there are state college graduates who are doing wonderfully.
I guess that doesn’t apply to teachers.
(Sarcasm alert) This is great! We will have teachers perfectly matched to the vision of ed. reform that has been created by non-educators for our students. We don’t want schools that are full of people passionate about learning, we want people that when they think of schools think of number two pencils and bubble sheets. These folks are comforted by the fact that nothing exists outside the lines and there is only one right answer (and they know it). It will be a comfortable existence for these drones who will never need to worry about risk-taking.
Hey, they didn’t create the system. No, they are just doing what they were told so if it isn’t preparing students effectively it isn’t their fault.
Honestly, could we do ed. reform in this country any worse? (rhetorical question, which by the way are not encouraged under the current reform model)
Fill in the blank? It is Kafkaesque.
(Sarcasm alert! Thank you, plarkin.) How academic! I was going to fill in the blank with something toward the downright vulgar.
… on top of micromanaging by the state (in Florida).
… a double-standard (guess which alt-cert and alt-entry paths won’t have that obligation or will turn out to be excused from it?).
NCATE (the major Teacher Ed Accreditation Agency) has been pushing this for several years. Recently they have asked us to post these and other student scores prominently on our websites . . . so this lunacy already appears to be deeply embedded in Teacher Education.
…..stifling academic freedom, dictatorial.
There is an attack by the federal, state, and local governments, in league with a bipartisan funded extremism, to abolish teacher education programs in colleges, eliminate college-trained teachers in the classrooms (and the protections of union contracts), reduce higher level administrator and other staff positions, and liquidate public education as we know it.
I have seen a growing trend toward privatization of public schools. I meet many new teachers, for example, who have just completed their TFA training (five weeks) and are now given waivers to take positions as special education and general teachers while just having completed their undergraduate degree (most often in subject areas unrelated to their placement). The public schools that have dropped into “zones of innovation” (read: Title I schools predominantly in high poverty areas in the process of restructuring and open to further outside agency scrutiny) have been instructed to fill existing teacher vacancies with a current minimum of 20% from TFA pools.
The University of Hawaii has revised their teacher education program to include online coursework for TFAs and others to complete credentialing as well as masters degrees in education. New TFAs have told me that their preparation for teaching is inferior, leaving them ill prepared to deliver classroom instruction: curriculum implementation, management plans, etc.
While I am retired from teaching and lecturing within university as well as public schools, my consulting work allows me to be in daily contact with current staff at these sites. Given the information provided me, it’s clear that future narrowing of teacher training programs at the university level will continue to the point where they increasingly coincide with the corporate training syllabi of privatized teacher education schemes.
Accountability for secondary student achievement imposed upon teacher educators will eventually eliminate teacher education staff in public universities. All done through government / private corporate collaboration and supported by privatization profiteers. Since the new charters replacing public schools will not have the same accountability mandates for learner outcomes, any consideration of higher education’s roll in these outcomes will be reduced to algorithms and the ever increasing growth of testing data. The imposition will be placed upon programmers and software developers via top down management directives in conjunction with guiding legislation from a unified and privatized federal or global department of education.
Today, teacher educators are holding on to what they have: positions, salaries, benefits, and accruing pension benefits when they choose or are forced to retire. No one I’ve spoken with would consider raging against the privatization machine. Feelings of uncertainty, disquiet, and anxiety are palpable. Tomorrow, they’ll all be part of the picture of a gone world.
Unless………….. we ALL rise up and push back and defeat privatization of public schools and ground the circling vultures of corporate ed reformers.
“It is absurd. It is reckless. It is….” heartless, like all the other corporate sponsored education “reforms”, and it is one of the main reasons why I really wish I could afford to retire, preferably in another country at this point.
Nothing like coming to the end of your career and being accused of having been a failure for decades. I don’t agree with that, but feeling this upset, angry and helpless is extremely stressful.
I won’t ever get to retire though, unless I win the lottery, because I have nothing but a wealth of intrinsic rewards to show for my decades of working for peanuts in teacher ed. No union, no livable wages, no pension, no savings, no health care, no safety net, and a job that ends this month. So I get to look for another job and work until I die. I don’t need health care though; this work is probably going to kill me.
Part of a persistent reduction of education to schooling and schooling to testing. The tail — what can be measured — wagging the dog, pardon the metaphor. Teacher education needs reform, no question about it. But the focus should be on how best to prepare people to begin teaching and, equally important, how to organize schools so that all teachers, including beginners, can continue learning to help all students learn.