In an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad heaps praise on the much-maligned report of the National Council on Teacher Quality. For a foundation that claims to care most of all about performance, not inputs, Broad is surprisingly willing to endorse a report based solely on a review of course readings and catalogues, not results. That is probably because his foundation helped to support the “study.” He is impressed that the report was “eights years in the making,” but doesn’t mention that the NCTQ was created only 13 years ago by a conservative think tank to act as a battering ram against schools of education. This report is the culmination of its ambitions.
Bear in mind: NCTQ is not a professional association; it is not a research organization; it is not a think tank. It is an advocacy organization that promotes alternative ways to become a teacher, that is, alternative to going to an education school.
Broad’s recommends that future teachers be deeply grounded in their subject and that they participate in a high-quality residency program.
He writes: “We would never allow a medical student to perform surgery without participating in a high-quality residency program and studying under the careful eye of an experienced physician. We shouldn’t force new teachers to enter the classroom without the same type of support and training.”
Medical students are not allowed to perform surgeries without years of training in medical schools, internship, and residency. That leaves out Teach for America.
Is Eli Broad turning his back on Teach for America?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is a new twist on the same game: content knowledge and then working with a teacher in the classroom. No foundations. No theory. No social context of teaching and learning. No child development. No IDEAS. Their attempts at deception must be relentlessly subject to CCSS close readings of non-fiction texts. If the brand -TFA–falters–re-brand and keep selling.
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Is Eli Broad turning his back on TFA? Probably only if they’re not making enough money for him anymore.
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Keep Pounding away. Its movement. Content knowledge plus critically important Practical fieldwork and foundations plus the sociology and psychology of teaching. Cultural pedagogy. Then INTERNSHIP first… (student teaching) before “residency”
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Is broad abandoning TFA? No way. TFA founder Wendy Kopp sits on both the NCTQ and Broad boards:
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They are all sheep from the same fold. Which Black sheep will lead the way out of that protected pasture of theirs…comfortably feeding on our kids and teachers.
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Well put, David.
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Why does Eli Broad think that America cares about his opinion and phony study on education. The fact that the man would write an article about a “study” that he bought shows his low level of integrity. HIs money has definitely twisted his mind. How many traditional teachers has this man ever talked to? How arrogant.
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That’s what I keep wondering. Who died and left Eli Broad in charge?
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He has a sh-t load of money.
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Broad also financed TFA exec Kira Orange-Jones’ spot on the La state ed board (BESE):
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He writes: “We would never allow a medical student to perform surgery without participating in a high-quality residency program and studying under the careful eye of an experienced physician. We shouldn’t force new teachers to enter the classroom without the same type of support and training.”
Medical students are not allowed to perform surgeries without years of training in medical schools, internship, and residency. That leaves out Teach for America.
Is Eli Broad turning his back on Teach for America?
I’m guessing he wants it both ways. Ironic? Eh?
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Who is Eli Broad and why does he want to destroy public education?
http://www.defendpubliceducation.net/
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Broad must be showing his age and forgot what he was supposed to be saying since this reflects common sense and deviates from the education reform strategy/scheme.
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“Mr. Flosky suddenly stopped: he found himself unintentionally trespassing within the limits of common sense.” T. L. Peacock, Nightmare Abbey (1808).
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As I was reading Broad’s op-ed this morning, my thoughts went back to an article I read in another newspaper years ago. The article was about a start-up company that failed. It failed because the owners had forgotten to take the cost of labor into account when deciding how much to charge for their product!!
In writing about the quality of teachers, Broad seems to forget that in our country few people want to teach fourth grade for $35,000 a year, especially in good economic times. All he has to do is to look at all the reformers to see that “everyone” wants to help “those poor little black children” but no “reformer” wants to actually teach them. Of course, therein lies the problem. Put another way, universities can’t accept the top students into their education programs when the top students don’t apply for these positions. And when they do (as was the case with my son’s Harvard roommate) they are often talked out of it by professors (“With your brains, why would you want to be a teacher?).
We are having this conversation right now about teacher quality because of the effects of the recession. However, when good times return, will Joel, Michael, Michelle and Eli apply to become teachers? Will their children? I don’t think so.
I believe in the sincerity of people like Eli Broad and Bill Gates. But if they truly want to improve the quality of our teaching force, I suggest they start by honoring the teachers that we have now and providing them with the resources that they need to be successful. And yes, improved salaries, benefits and working conditions would help a lot. Help teachers to be empowered as full professionals and watch for immediate improvements.
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And to think that when NCLB came to pass we had a teacher living in the White House.
I agree. If you aren’t in front of children, or beside them helping, it limits the perspective. There is an implied due diligence (or should be) to pay in this field to really make teachers listen to you. It’s like nursing a baby. You have to have done it to really get it.
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at Harlan: I am referring to Obama’s State of the Union address. Or his second Inauguration. . .I guess it was, where he stated that education is the civil rights issue of our day.
Keep up.
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I’m such a slow thinker, Joanna Best, that you need to indulge me. That inferior education keeps black kids slaves (to ignorance) is a rouser of a political point, but the notion of a civil right not to be discriminated against is completely different from a purported civil right to be provided an education. You do see the difference don’t you, Bestie? Exclusion from a water fountain, a lunch counter, a school house, a polling place is different from qualifying for inclusion on a bus trip, or being invited to the country club, or being taken on a cruise. The former are civil rights, the rights of a citizen. The latter is a question of how wealthy one’s daddy is. No one has a right to be born rich do they? You thoughts on what seems to me a real difference.
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I think you’re identifying the distinction between procedural and substantive rights, or perhaps political rights and economic rights. The right to be free from something is certainly different from the right to receive something. The key difference in practice, I think, is that political rights are largely free (i.e. they don’t cost anything, because they don’t require the state or individuals to do anything, but rather restrict them from taking certain actions) whereas economic rights are resource-dependent (a person’s right to an education will ultimately be limited by the available resources to provide it).
But the distinctions can be messy. It used to be that a citizen’s civil/political right to be free from discrimination was limited to freedom from discrimination by government, because what individuals chose to do in the marketplace was a private economic question unrelated to one’s rights as a citizen in relation to the state. Then Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, and now even people like you think that the right to sit at the lunch counter at a private business is a civil right to be free from something, not an economic right to receive something. Or disabilities — do the disabled have “civil” rights to be free from employment discrimination, or do they have economic rights to receive accommodations on the job that force employers to spend real money?
Anyway, what’s the point? Call it whatever you like, but you can’t argue that the citizens of many states have a state constitutional right to a free education. You can lament it, but it is what it is.
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Also at Harlan:
I do listen to my husband. I listen to everything.
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If I may rant for a bit re: your last paragraph . . .
As a non-educator parent who uses the public education system, I would much rather have *more* teachers than “better” teachers.
If you want an ally in the fight against standardized testing, or the fight for lower class sizes, I’m with you.
If reducing class sizes and eliminating high-stakes testing improves working conditions enough to “improve the quality of our teaching force” — either because those conditions led more talented people to enter the profession, or because those conditions made teachers into better teachers — then great, everybody wins.
But if resisting education reform is just about raises and pension enhancements, I’m out.
And before anyone says it’s not an either/or situation, I’m sorry, but it is. The higher labor costs are, the fewer new hires can be made. Every dollar that goes toward pension contributions for retired teachers is a dollar that can’t be spent on salaries for new teachers. Would higher salaries or benefits “improve the quality of our teaching force”? Maybe. Or maybe not. Heck if I know, and heck if anyone else does. What I do know is that one extra teacher is one extra teacher.
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Flerp, you sound like my husband. 🙂
He thinks, and I know he would not mind me quoting, that there are many retired teachers collecting pensions who should not be because they did not live up to a high standard (but I don’t think he thinks that standard can be measured on a national test). He feels that public schools could help the state by privatizing the food service and the custodial services that work in them, to relieve the pension pool a bit. He becomes bothered by the number of people who taught him and are now “set,” who did not come anywhere near many of their students in aptitude, nor challenge them as they needed to be challenged.
I agree with you. I am not interested in protecting pensions. I am interested in knowing that going to school for every child is a guarantee and not something that a negligent parent or an intolerant system (within reason–chronic discipline or threats to other students have to be dealt with) can get in the way of. I tend to think most parents would rather just know that there is a school in their neighborhood that would welcome their child.
The civil right is that there is a school nearby that will welcome them; not that parents can go shopping and have their druthers funded by the public. Protecting that has gotten trickier now with charters and vouchers in the air.
I have an uncle who retired as a principal at the age of 53 from a very large high school. He’s now nearing 70 and nice and healthy. That’s a pretty good pension. That’s what he was promised. . .but is that how it should work? It needs to be examined, for sure. But not at the expense of there being a school nearby that welcomes each child. We all had that. We need to provide it for the next generation.
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So now education is a “civil right”? It is a desirable, of course, but it is not a civil right. Or at least I don’t see how that claim could be defended by an analysis. Where in the Bill of Rights do you find “education”?
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Of course, federal constitutional rights (and within that category, enumerated federal constitutional rights) are not the same thing as “civil rights.” Nor are state constitutional rights. But if you like the enumerated constitutional sort, check your state constitution.
Outstanding stuff today, though, Harlan.
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Pensions can be a bit odd in terms of what people were or weren’t “promised.” In New York, pensions are not negotiated through collective bargaining, they’re a legislative issue. And NY, like in other states, pension sweeteners have been cut between legislators and their “constituents” (i.e. lobbyists) with retroactive effect, based on arguably fraudulent misrepresentations about their true cost.
It is what it is and we are where we are. I’m not in favor of reducing the benefits employees or retirees have already accrued, regardless of how or when they accrued them or whether it was fair or unfair. I just don’t want to see any more retroactive pension enhancements, and I would like to see an end to the lying about how big the costs at going to be.
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Oh, you think teachers, lobbyists, and legislators lie? What a novel thought, FLERP. (And to Joanna, Listen to your husband.”
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In addition to the op-ed piece that bears Eli Broad’s name [see link above provided by Diane], Valerie Strauss has posted [as I understand it, from the US DOE website] the complete text of Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s speech to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.
Link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/07/03/arne-duncan-praises-slaps-charter-schools/
Please remember: these are not simply two individuals stating their own POV but key players in the drive to implement high-stakes testing, privatization of public education, and the creation of a two-tiered education system in the USA.
It is difficult to find the right words to explain how out of touch both pieces are with what is actually happening in public education today. Simply pointing out that both pieces are full of empty platitudes, marketing hype, half-truths and outright omissions is to fail to adequately describe them. Read them, in their entirety, for yourselves and make up your own minds.
The fact that such prominent members of the education status quo were flushed out and forced to articulate—to their own detriment—what they are currently implementing is due in part to blogs like this. A strong indication that they no longer hold an unchallenged position in the ed debates.
And think of the untenable predicament they now find themselves in because they are on the record. Once it’s on the net, their hypocrisy is available for all to see and read.
Is that how the edubullies see themselves? To judge by these two pieces, obviously not: “The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity.” [André Gide]
🙂
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There is no such thing as a “public” charter school. That outfit is as big a liar in the name of their organization as NCTQ.
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This guy is a capitalist first class, he sees the winds blowing in the direction of REAL reform and he is getting on the bandwagon even though he is one of the major backers of the deform movement. Is he abandoning the privatization movement, not at all. This is just a co opt of public educations main argument, the need for educators to frame the direction of reform. Veteran educators who are respected and not vilified by their districts and the public. As one of your commenters said, he wants it both ways.
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I honestly cannot read either the Broad article or the Duncan speech to charter schools without wanting to throw up and then take a long hot shower.
How we got to a point where two people so utterly unconnected with – perhaps “disconnected from” is more accurate? – actual classroom education got so much power in setting education policy is frightening.
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The cognitive dissonance hurts my head.
New teachers must be mentored by experienced teachers, the vast majority of whom are products of the traditional teacher preparation and licensing system. The CCSS and the reformers, like Broad, constantly focus on preparing students for college and yet disparage college-educated teachers and claim that college education and graduate work have no impact on students because they can’t correlate test scores to college degrees.
It’s pretty clear that the problem the reformers have is not with college education in general but specifically teacher education and, as Diane points out, that was the foundation of the reform movement — utter disgust with the “liberal” bent of teacher preparation programs that teach prospective teachers to look at the whole child, consider theories of child development, understand and promote diversity and the honoring of different cultures, and democratic ideals that spring from critical thinking and creativity. Remember the phrases “Reality has a liberal bias” and “We make our own reality” from the Bush years?
The real purpose of the reformers is to return teacher education into what they consider the ideal purveyor of conservative thought and culture. Direct instruction founded in the tabula rasa theory rejected by progressive educators for over a century. They’ve been pissed ever since John Dewey and they are willing to pay any price to destroy the liberal arts grounded, free thinking education establishment because graduates of that kind of program reject outright their conservative politics and social policies as crackpot theories that benefit the few at the top at the expense of all the rest of us.
Sadly, they have joined forces with the neoliberal conservative democrats and they are succeeding through typical conservative disinformation campaigns like the NCTQ report and this asinine editorial.
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They don’t care about that. What they truly believe is teaching is not a profession at all, and that anybody off the street should be able to do it.
That’s what they do in third world countries. Fifteen-year-old girls “teach” the younger kids.
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Chris has nailed this one with his first sentence: “The cognitive dissonance hurts my head.”
One example. This is what one of the world’s leading charterites/privatizers says in the first paragraph of his op-ed:
“If America’s medical schools were failing to offer their students the academic content and practical experience necessary to provide high-quality healthcare, we would be outraged.”
Now the first sentence of the fifth paragraph:
“We know that the highest-performing countries — such as Finland and China — recruit their teacher candidates from the top third of students.”
Now pair the two previous citations with the third from last paragraph: “We would never allow a medical student to perform surgery without participating in a high-quality residency program and studying under the careful eye of an experienced physician. We shouldn’t force new teachers to enter the classroom without the same type of support and training.”
Now mix in some of the comments above this posting that violate Diane’s sage reminder that “a promise made is a debt unpaid” re [among other things] providing teachers with a modest income, pension and benefits. **Remember: in Finland being a teacher is as highly regarded as being a doctor or other professional.**
If using the latest and greatest Accountabully Math, the implications are clear: doctors are sorely needed life-saving professionals who deserve the highest respect and compensation possible = teachers are sorely needed life-saving professionals who deserve little respect and little compensation. Get it???
Hence if we demand the same of teachers as we do doctors, but give them as little intrinsic and extrinsic rewards as we can possibly get away with, then we will get cagebusting achievement-gap crushing EduExcellent results, er, $tudent $ucce$$.
You want to replace “cognitive dissonance” with “logic”? There is a sort of “logic” to this, enshrined in the edupreneurial worship of Holy Metrics and Compliance Training [for OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN] rather than the superbly appointed and run schools they pay through the nose [for THEIR OWN CHILDREN].
Just requires crippling your own thinking faculties in order to ‘buy into’ their twisted version of EduExcellent Logic:
“Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you anywhere.” [Albert Einstein]
🙂
From their POV, we are the ones who deserve the short end of that stick. If you are a BAT or someone who thinks like that, well, you’re just being ‘illogical.’
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Of course, this is all just rhetoric. It’s a way of saying that teachers do important work and training is important. But there are obvious and sensible reasons why doctors are paid more than teachers.
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WHY IS A FATHER RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY OTHER KIDS BUT HIS OWN?
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Why is a father responsible for any other kids but his own?
It is called society or community.
Am I not my brother’s keeper?
Read the Bible, Harlan, you will find many other reasons to take responsibility for the well-being of others.
Or do you prefer a life that is nasty, brutish, and short for other people?
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Yes, yes, Diane. I understand, it’s the collective, the community. You seem to imply, as in your other response to me, that fathers should be compelled by the law of the land to fund the education of children they did not father. Is that a fair statement of your position, Diane? Now it may be good community policy for fathers to contribute by taxes to the education of all kids in the community, but, really Diane, is he in abstract, philosophical terms actually responsible for the feeding, clothing, and education of children he did not personally father???? Perhaps, if so, he might want along with that tax contribution some SAY about the way that education is carried out? Are you willing to give that man that input? If he is going to pay for the education of other men’s bastards, does he have ANY say in what that education is like? Or do you think all the men in a community are responsible for all the children born in the town? A good, and generous man, might WANT to contribute to the education of other men’s illegitimate children, but in true ethics does he have a duty to do so that is so compelling that he is under penalty of law if he does not pay his taxes???? Does he have ZERO say in how those other men’s children are educated? If so, isn’t that Taxation without Representation? Yes it is, and it turns a man into a slave. But, if slavery is part of your political program, hey, you are entitled to argue for it. But I am entitled to argue against it as well. It is NOT a given that any public school system has a ‘right’ to stick its hand in my pocket for my money, especially when I might be dissatisfied with the kind of education that taxation is used for. I’d like to see more emphasis on knowledge than skills. Yet the public schools are making love to the CCSS. Can YOU justify taking money out of my pocket at the point of a gun (i.e. by law) for the CCSS? I wouldn’t use them to educate my own children. Why should I support (politically) a school system that uses them to educate other men’s sons and daughters? If I get out voted, of course, I have to acquiesce, but I do NOT have to remain silent. You do provide an immense service to the country by at least providing a soap box for the extension of free speech. But I do think you have gotten into a position in which you are defending the indefensible.
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Eli Broad Predicted It
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Chris, I think you paint with too broad a brush. I strongly support unions, public schools and a strong welfare state. Yet, precisely because I am on the Left, I dislike Dewey-style progressive ed for the reasons that Marxist Antonio Gramsci pointed out: it fails to efficiently transmit to the poor the bodies of knowledge that make the elite so powerful. Progressive ed was beloved by Mussolini, because he knew it would mentally cripple the masses. We on the Left need to drop our caricature of Western Civilization and traditional liberal arts: it is so far from a monolith –it is filled with fiery clashes and intellectual diversity. It is stupid to suggest that learning about it simply “perpetuates hegemony”. Who is more radical than Socrates, Jesus, Galileo, Martin Luther, etc.? Who is more enchantingly subversive than Falstaff? Who is more powerful than an 18 year old who knows his math and science inside-and-out? Or who has an arsenal of advanced linguistic skills derived from reading Milton, Swift, Wallace Stevens, Willa Cather, etc.? Progressive ed is harmless when applied to rich kids; it’s devastating when applied to knowledge-poor poor and middle class kids. I detest 80% of Eli Broad’s agenda; however, if he manages to imbue our schools with a more content-rich curriculum, he will have done a good thing.
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I think you hit the wrong reply button, but I have to say that is one of the silliest characterizations of Dewey and progressive education I have ever read. Talk about content-knowledge challenged …
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BEAUTIFULLY SAID, PONDEROSA!!!!
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“Progressive ed was beloved by Mussolini, because he knew it would mentally cripple the masses.”
Also, you know who supported animal rights? Hitler. [And now your mind has been blown.]
But seriously, this is a good example of why I try to avoid mentioning Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, or Pinochet when I discuss education policy.
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Boy, what a flub of my attempt to use the italic tag for dramatic effect. Always close your tags, boys and girls.
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If Maria Montessori had never lived then maybe your theories would be worth considering. She proved over a century ago that progressive education works astoundingly well with the poorest inner city children of Italy, children considered to be mentally retarded.
Accusing me of painting with a broad brush and calling me stupid doesn’t further your point.
E. D. Hirsch-type arguments about the knowledge capital are familiar to me and I will ask the same question that I ask every time it pops up: Where is the proof that giving the poor children of color the inside secrets of cultural knowledge will end prejudice, racism, and the tilted playing field? Show me the graduates of Core Knowledge programs that have left the ghettoes and entered the halls of power.
It’s a great curriculum and a nice program but I do not believe it to be the magical answer to entrenched, generational poverty that its creator and his supporters claim it to be.
It absolves society from having to face the culture of racism and generational poverty and lets us off the hook from having to deal with either issue since we shared the secret handshakes.
It may help some but I have yet to see any proof whatsoever that it will change anything.
We have a biracial president in his second term and the plight of people of color in this country is worse than it has been in a generation. Barack Obama learned the insider knowledge and it benefitted — Barack Obama and a handful of supporters.
Obama’s cultural literacy has effected no systemic changes whatsoever. It’s a dream, a nice dream, but no panacea.
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I have always loved the introductory chapter of Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio, “The Book of the Grotesque,” which is about how grasping onto a sole “truth” and living by it makes one into a grotesque and one’s truth into a lie. It’s a beautiful statement within the American tradition of the Janist Anekantavada doctrine.
I’m an advocate for content, for conceiving of learning as attainment of knowledge–knowledge of the world (of what) and of procedures (knowledge of how), and I detest the skill-based conceptualization of standards instantiated by the Common Core in English Language ARts, but I also believe that there is much to be learned from Dewey and the progressives about starting from where the child is, about the importance of learning communities and of social factors that influence learning, about the value of discovery and of open-ended learning experiences (especially for unlearning), and much else. It’s important not to turn our opponents or ourselves into caricatures. And it’s important not to latch onto any one of these ideas and make it into a one-line, ultra-condensed summa theologica.
And I also have a problem with anyone’s presuming to dictate canonical knowledge to the rest of us. Prince Hal and Falstaff are extraordinarily valuable to know about–knowing these guys will enrich one’s life enormously–but it’s also arguably even more valuable to know about Rama and Ravana, as many millions of Hindus schooled in both Shakespeare and the Ramayana will be happy to explain to anyone who wishes to listen. : )
The most fertile climate for American K-12 education would be one with evolving, competing standards and evolving, competing canons, as well as autonomy on the part of learning communities, headed by teachers, with regard to what those standards and canons will be.
It does seem to me terribly ironic that people who claim to understand the importance of content in education should be among the cheerleaders for the CCSS in ELA and for high-stakes tests based on those standards, for the CCSS in ELA are simply a list of highly abstract SKILLS, and
people who think that one can make the standards-based tests high stakes and somehow
avoid creating a content-agnostic focus on vaguely defined, unoperationalized skills in teaching materials and in pedagogical practice
are woefully mistaken and haven’t learned from the actual history of skills standards-based K-12 instruction in this country.
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Thank you for this cogent conceptualization. No one in the public schools agrees with you. That’s why they are ‘failing.’ Ed schools tend to exhibit similar views in awarding high grades for content less courses. Knowledge is king everywhere but in schools. Such an irony.
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Robert, thank you for another thought provoking post. I will share with you a quote from educational historian/Stanford professor David Labaree, published in Paedegogica Historica, February 2005, titled “Progressivism, Schools, and Schools of Education: A Romance” in which he describes what he calls the triumph of the “administrative progressives” and their creation of industrialized schools over the “pedagogical progressives” and their failure to promote progressive learning in those same schools and who largely dominate the schools of education today:
“In the end, as at the beginning, the story also has retained the feel of a romance: an account of a longstanding affair of the heart between the faculty in education schools and the ideal of child-centered instruction, made all the more bittersweet because this ideal remained, and continues to remain, unrealized. The romantic nature of these education school beliefs may account in part for the melodrama in the debate between constructivist education professors and standards-based reformers over the process and content of American education, and for the unwillingness of both sides to seek a middle ground. As a result, for both sides this debate seems to extend beyond a disagreement about what works, becoming more like a battle between good and evil—with the professors, despite all evidence to the contrary, holding onto the dream of Dewey triumphant, and the reformers, despite all evidence to the contrary, persisting in the belief that Dewey’s followers have already ruined teaching and learning in schools.”
Click to access Progressivism_Schools_and_Schools_of_Ed.pdf
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Thank you Chris. The distinction between the administrative progressives and the pedagogical progressives, as you and Labaree have characterized them, is very useful!
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This is the little dance that billionaires do — constantly trying to position themselves as “thought leaders” in areas they never had a clue about.
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We should work on boycotting and divesting from the companies that support these foundations.
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Some people here missed the delicious satire in the last line of your post, Dr. Ravitch!
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Agreed. I love when Diane takes something on its face to make her own point.
I think the agenda here is to further their own new brand of teacher training. You create an organization with an agenda to take down schools of eduction. The organization produces a bogus report that slams VIRTUALLY ALL teacher education programs in the country. The report is utterly ridiculous but acceptable because our media is unwilling/unable to critically examine claims, and because our citizenry is largely uninterested. Next, you create your own free-standing, for-profit entities that will provide the teacher training that has been so woefully inadequate at public and private colleges and universities (hasn’t Diane blogged about a place or two like this that already exist in the northeast?). You take students into these programs and take lots of money from them and call these programs by fancy names so that the students will feel important. You might call them residencies so the students can feel as important as doctors! Then you get school systems to provide free labor via the existing teaching professionals who will supervise students on site. And, as we already do with TFA, school systems pay the students a teacher salary AND a bonus to the entities providing these amazing, magical, young, new and obviously better teaching candidates. It doesn’t matter if it is TFA, TNTP, or the Broad Teaching Residency Program (he already calls the business-y folks who infiltrate central offices of school systems residents so I am sure this is his plan). Thank goodness these do-gooders exist to save us from the teachers produced via all the pitiful education programs around the country. (And that, most certainly, is my own sarcasm!)
By the way, the Broad superintendent in my area had a similarly sickening opinion piece in our local paper a week or so ago. They must have sent out an alert to all Broadies to promote the NCTQ “findings.”
Hey, why don’t we create an organization with an agenda to evaluate all the undergraduate and graduate business programs that exist in colleges of business via course catalogs, syllabi and departmental websites? If only business schools could be held accountable for the performance of their graduates in the business world…What four criteria could we use?
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Eli Broad is such an idiot. Secondary-level teachers HAVE “content knowledge” in their area; they have to be in order to be certified in that subject. Elementary teachers are generalists and don’t have to know advanced math, science, and everything else under the sun, but they have to know how to impart that knowledge so kids can understand it (same is true with secondary teachers). They have to know classroom management and child psychology to even be able to do the job.
Broad and his ilk don’t even believe teachers should even be professionals or even licensed at all.
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Ah, Diane – Eli Broad wants it both ways. Simply put, the rich can always have their cake and eat it too!
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I can be President, I stayed at a Holliday Inn last night.
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