Many of us could live our lives without giving a second thought to teacher education. Either we earned a degree in a teacher preparation program or we didn’t. Only those who work in these institutions are deeply engaged in their future.
Never fear, as Laura Chapman reported in the last post, and as James Kirylo documents here, Bill Gates has trained his laser vision on teacher education.
Kirylo writes:
“As most know, Bill Gates, through his foundation, has worked hard in an attempt to disturbingly shape K-12 education in his own image. Next on his radar is teacher preparation—with the awarding of $35 million to a three-year project called Teacher Preparation Transformation Centers funneled through five different projects, one of which is the Texas Tech based University-School Partnerships for the Renewal of Educator Preparation (U.S. Prep) National Center.
“A framework that will guide this “renewal” of educator preparation comes from the National Institute for Excellence in Teaching (NIET), along with the peddling of their programs, The System for Teacher and Student Advancement (TAP) and Student and Best Practices Center (BPC). Yet, again, coming from another guy with bags of money, leading the charge of NIET is Lowell Milken [brother of junk bond king Michael Milken] who is Chairman and TAP founder.
“Though a handful of other places could serve as an example, the state of Louisiana illustrates how NIET is already working overtime in chipping its way into K-12 education. And now that NIET is applying a full-court-press in hyping its brand in the Pelican state, the brand is working its way into teacher education preparation programs, namely through the Texas Tech based U.S. Prep National Center.
“This Gates Foundation backed project involves five teacher education programs in the country (Southern Methodist University, University of Houston, Jackson State University, and the University of Memphis– and includes one in Louisiana— Southeastern Louisiana University).
“Thus, teacher educators must be “trained” in order to propagate the NIET brand. Because I am a teacher educator at one of the impacted universities that has been recruited by the Texas Tech based U.S. Prep National Center, I was recently mandated to attend three full days of NIET indoctrination (with continued follow-up training).
“Along with my colleagues—who collectively bring a rich background of K-12 teaching experience, in addition to decades of teacher education work, a wealth of post-graduate education degrees, all of whom have made meaningful contributions to the professional community through a wide array of venues—in a teacher education program that has a sterling reputation—yet, all of which was of no concern to the NIET trainers. That is, because right out of the gate, the NIET officials were off and running, making it implicitly clear that a new teacher education sheriff is in town.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Correct me if I am wrong, but teacher education programs have kind of sat on the sidelines while teachers have taken a beating. It was only a matter of time before the reformsters turned their sights on teacher prep programs.
Some programs have received funding from Gates, Peterson, Goldman Sachs….
That’s who funds a consortium of universities, CPRE, Center for Policy Research in Education. It was founded by the President of Columbia Teachers College, who was featured in an article at, In These Times, June 13, 2013, by George Joseph, “Teachers College Students Urge President to Cut Ties with Pearson”.
You are correct, Liz. Outside a scattering of voices from around the country, teacher educators as a whole have been eerily silent while our P-12 colleagues have been taking a beating. So, yup, it was only a matter of time…Hopefully the “sleeping giant” will wake up!
It does seem like a obvious that teacher prep programs would be next on the cutting board. After all, where did all those lousy teachers come from? Unfortunately human beings seem to like to establish pecking orders. Who hasn’t heard or even tacitly participated in denigrating someone or some group they see as their superiors (or who act superior)? The examples for “underlings” are rampant. So even though these distinctions are on occasion subtle, I think they play a role in how vociferously we move to defend someone who is not “one of us.” There is a subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) divide between academics and practitioners. While university faculty as a whole do not seem to have been very vocal in support of the teachers who they trained, we cannot afford to sit on the sidelines and watch teacher education be robotized. There is probably a book in how teacher education is being cannibalized in Massachusetts.
An Impatient Optimist blog post ( Nov. 20, 2015 Brent Maddin), or as I call it, Impatient Opportunists, confirms Gates involvement in “ensuring every professor is high quality.” That’s reflects a lot of hubris from a Harvard University drop out.
Laura Chapman cited the Inside Higher Education article, Feb. 3, 2016, “Gates Foundation Sharpens Its Data Push” . The article features IHEP material.
IHEP is funded by Gates.
This gates fellow has got to be stopped. It may well be that “teacher education” has drifted too much towards education(!) and away from training, but his solution is NUTS.
Maybe a twitter hashtag @stopbillgates is in order (perhaps it exists already).
At Gates-funded Education Pioneers, a Columbia Teachers College graduate, states, “Recognizing that I didn’t have the ideal skillset to be a successful classroom teacher…”.
A tangential job, in data, at a charter school, that describes itself as “public”, appears to have been the solution.
This is what happens when the richest man in the world has an impression or bias. Teacher education is now on his radar so they can expect to deal with his non-proven, pseudo-scientific claims about teacher education. He can then launch his non-evidence based agenda on teachers. Of course, with all of his “philanthropic” endeavors, there is always money to be made on his endeavors along with generous tax credits compliments of taxpayers. I suppose he will make profit on his spying, data mining as well as his fake teacher preparation.
Gates’ teacher program will be as much of a flop as on line education. All he wants to do is code teaching. No heart or soul, boring….
Teacher.NET or iTeach?
2old2teach mentions the problem of cannibalization in MA. That IS one problem; another is the old one of easy programs driving out harder ones. If you make the requirements too heavy, potential students will go elsewhere, or even into less rigorous programs within the same university or even department. These problems can only be engaged if teacher-education programs organize and develop common agendas. But that’s difficult in an environment of competition, in which one program’s gain is another’s loss.
It remains to be seen whether the threat of Gates and company, TFA and the like, will drive teacher education programs to work together. If they don’t, it’s clear that some will go under, and not necessarily those that are weak.
Love the acronym, let’s just say niet to NIET.
Starting off the New Year right, eh fire grade monkey!!
“Nyet” means “No” in Russian.
But it blends out the same.
Diane I am a strong supporter of your brave actions to defend public education. A strong grassroots movement is important but a leader that is more of the same won’t have the courage, insight, desire or character to do battle with Gates or any other entity like Gates. The bottomline is the driving force for corporations. Rather than making a smaller profit and benefitting more with jobs corporations choose the profits over humanity. Hillary will too choose her rating with corporations over the “little people.” Obama is letting this happen under his reign and has allowed similar actions that attack public education and belittle educators…Hillary will continue in Obsma’s footsteps. “…I failed to speak up and next they came for me!”
In an article at the Philanthropy Roundtable website, the K-12 tab, Frederick Hess summons, plutocrats to takeover university departments of education.
So once we have used long years of test-score reforms to silence our elementary and secondary teachers, we move on to the universities?