Louisiana under Bobby Jindal is diminishing the value of certification. State Commissioner of Education John White (ex-TFA) thinks that nothing more is needed than a college diploma to be a teacher. Extra degrees, like a masters or a doctorate, will not be recognized or rewarded in this state. In other words, they want students to get more education but not their teachers.
This teacher wonders if she can get her money back:
I earned a Ph.D. In Curriculum and Instruction from Louisiana’s flagship university to strengthen my pedagogy and to live in the joy of learning. With each passing day my degree is becoming irrelevant. Do I have grounds to demand the return of tuition and punitive damages for establishing what are now false certification and academic advancement requirements that are no longer needed to be a teacher in Louisiana?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Get a 404 message when I try to find this.
Christa Allan Walking on Broken Glass, 2010 The Edge of Grace, 2011 http://www.christaallan.com
It’s all about money. By not recognizing advanced degrees the state does not have to pay more for teachers. And by equivocating all colleges degrees suitable for teaching, it almost guarantees no advanced degrees will be earned anyway, especially if pay raises are merit-based instead of experience or education level. Again, at the end of the day, it’s all about money. And education quality will suffer for it.
They don’t want students to be smarter, really. Just better trained. The school choice for those with means (money) and objective data approach to pushing buttons, pulling levers and balancing books (for those without) is aimed at supplying us with Romney-esque dynasty leaders and do-ers, and a growing population of underprivileged followers. Teachers who are too wise, too capable, and too willing to teach for freedom and democracy are a threat.
Ok I’m confused. Doesn’t this go against the politicians and corp ed reformers leading argument that American education is failing because teachers are BAD? So the solution to their imagined problem is to hire people who are even less educated in education techniques. Yeah that sounds about right for the reformy crowd.
I agree with Dan, but don’t blame it on a political party. The move toward a “better trained” workforce is coming from the corporations, who have equal grip on both the major parties. It’s a matter of trying to keep us (and our students) in our “place.”
Do I have grounds to demand the return of tuition and punitive damages for establishing what are now false certification and academic advancement requirements that are no longer needed to be a teacher in Louisiana?
Was there an express or implied guarantee?
OTOH, the loss of liberty from compelling students to attend schools suggests some confidence on the part of school officials that schooling benefits schoolchildren.
Some kids might have a better legal case (against K12) than the adults (against teacher prep and ed grad schools).
Negligent credentialing cases typically involve patients harmed through malpractice at an institution that failed to take due care.
Maybe NCATE and the SPAs engage in negligent credentialing. How do teacher preparation programs ensure their graduates are prepared to address the “compelling governmental interest in educating all of our children to function effectively in a multiracial, democratic society and realize their full intellectual and academic potential?”
Perhaps the teachers’ unions should take care to ensure their members are prepared to fulfill the claims their union makes in court on behalf of public education.
SPAs, NCATE and Colleges of Education most certainly have those standards.
However, how do you suppose a program like Relay meets such requirements, when they are training their teachers to implement ONE approach, which is a militaristic, social engineering model based on behaviorism, for low income children of color who are often in segregated schools? Colleges of Ed typically like to see teachers have a lot of tools in their tool box, so they can reach diverse learners, not just ONE tool, because education should not be one-size-fits-all. And yet, Relay says on their website:
“Relay GSE is accredited by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE). As a former component of Hunter College, which is accredited by NCATE, Relay GSE is accredited on an interim basis, to give it the opportunity to seek accreditation in its own right.”
NCATE does list Relay on their website as accredited –and separately from Hunter College.
I hoped to inquire if teachers are well-served by accreditation policies used by teacher preparation programs.
Prof W responds with a “Thank God for Mississippi” argument.
My hope would be all teachers would be well-served by all staff, and all staff would be well-prepared. But the current strategy is “to the lifeboats!” So permit me to note that (in the eyes of policymakers) the standards for lifeboats are less than the standards for ocean liners.
It’s not a case of “thank goodness there’s someone worse than us who makes us look better.” I think excellence in education should always be the priority.
In my experience working with private colleges, corporate backers have figured out that affiliating with another college, while planning to become independent, is a way of obtaining immediate accreditation. Now that they are independent, it remains to be seen whether NCATE grants accreditation to them in their own right.
The irony, really mendacity, of the reformers is on full display with TFA and the virtual charter movement: The reformers, with Sir Kenneth Robinson as their lead propagandist, love to rage on and on about our “industrial-age” practices (of course ignoring the fact that this was foisted on us by the business elites of their day), and how we need to move “into the 21st century” by agreeing to all their demands. But the reality of their programs is a truly packaged “education product” delivered by the untrained and inexperienced or over the wire (like call centers and telemarketing); in short, it’s just the 21st century version of industrialized training; it really can’t even be called education any more.
Exactly. I think that all the double-speak is just to divert attention away from the major process of dismantling education that has been taking place across the country, and the smoke and mirrors is to conceal the intention to ultimately declare brick and mortar schools obsolete and teachers expendable and unnecessary. Effectively, the goal is to not have teachers anymore.
One online teacher I work with put it this way recently, “We’re just glorified graders now.” Honestly, for a teacher, there is no glory when your job boils down to just grading. But politicians, corporate reformers and companies like Pearson and K-12 seem to think that education can be reduced to presenting material on a screen and testing, and that they can train virtually anyone to be graders.
Actually, online, you can set it up so that tests are self-administered and automatically generate grades, so currently instructors are grading papers, class discussions, group projects, participation, etc. and I can see how that might one day be considered superfluous to the powers that be.
The real game is to make education a profit-maximized business for corporations like Pearson. They could care less about the content and test scores: it’s all a big lie to stampede the public into agreeing to their terms, which usually exempt them from the same standards the claim the public schools can’t meet. Once they have their hooks into the legislature, then the mask comes off.
Today’s Reading assignment:
The US Military personnel take their duty to educate those serving military connected children seriously. As such, The US Dept Of Defense has put together a program for school systems and university education programs that inform curriculum and practice relative to military families and their children.
“Educate the Educators” is a project initiated by Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden with The American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) in partnership with Military Children Education Coalition (MCEC) to start an awareness campaign about the unique needs of military children in school. The information is research-based and substantive. All of the material is drawn from several areas of evidence-based educational research and associated valid practices. Here’s the link: http://aacte.org/Programs/Operation-Educate-the-Educators/
All of the content was developed by researchers and faculty from Colleges of Education around the country. The AACTE-MCEC advisory Board is made up of deans and professors from colleges of education around the country. (e.g.,Teacher’s College, Emporia St.; Department of Special Education, UNiversity of Maryland; School of LEadershio and Education Sciences, UNiversity of SanDiego; College of Education, Penn St.; Center for Educational Partnerships, Old Dominion; College of Educaion and Human Development, Texas A&M; Curry School of Education, University of VA.)
This distinguished board selected by our military to support military families and their children all have advanced degrees in education, as does Dr. Jill Biden, the 2nd Lady of the US who has a PhD in Educational Leadership from the University of Delaware.
Answer the following questions based on the reading assignment:
Why do Bobby Jindal & John White hate the military?
What does Jill Biden have that Wendy Kopp and her loyal followers do not?
Under another post I wondered where the rich, who want educated teachers for their own kids, expect to get educated teachers in another generation or so? The McTeachers at the test prep mills won’t be producing them. The kids attending. Chicago Lab, Sidwell Friends, er al. are being groomed for loftier enterprises than mere teaching. So where will the wealthy get teachers for themselves in the future?
Didn’t the super-rich have their kids tutored at home by people with doctorates in previous eras? If they want to send their kids to school, they’re really just the top 20%, so maybe a lot of teachers won’t be needed at private schools.
I don’t think they’re using a lot of forethought to imagine what it would be like to have all of the children of the underclass at home every day, supposedly on computers, but free to roam the streets while their parents are working…
I’m posting info on my blog from folks fleeing LDOE about how there is a conscious effort to rig test results to favor charters, takeover schools, and voucher students. The latest twist is figuring out a way of giving LAA2 tests to voucher students (which are given to our severe profound special education students) to show improvement.