Secretary of Education Arne Duncan can’t get over his obsession with the idea that the only reason children don’t have higher test scores is because they have “bad teachers” with low expectations. He has consistently said that teachers’ colleges bear the blame for those “bad teachers.” Never having taught, he has strong opinions about how to fix teaching. He loves charter schools, especially those without unions; he loves Teach for America, because they are elite. He loves evaluating teachers, principals, schools, even teachers’ colleges, by student test scores.
David Berliner, one of our nation’s most eminent researchers, does not agree with Duncan. He has different ideas. He tells Duncan, as he once told his dean, how to solve the problems of teacher education.
Berliner writes:
“Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and the Obama administration want to improve teacher education. Me too. I always have. So I went to the president of the university I was then working at and showed him university data that I had collected. I informed him that a) we were running the cheapest program on campus, even cheaper to run than the English Literature and the History programs; and b) that some of our most expensive programs to run, computer science and various engineering programs, produced well-trained graduates that left the state. But teachers stayed in the state. I told my president he was wasting the states resources and investing unwisely.
“I told him that with the same amount of money as we spend on the students that leave the state I could design one year clinical programs so every teacher does clinical rotations in the classrooms of schools with different kinds of students, rotations modeled on medical education.”
Berliner has many other good ideas. Read them here. Arne should invite him to meet and hear his ideas on how to improve teacher education.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
In two years Arne Duncan will do one of two things: either he will disappear from the Education scene altogether, because he is not truly invest in it in the first place-(it’s been a lucrative opportunity for him, one in which he got paid for expertise that he absolutely doesn’t have); or because of that lack of knowledge, will become the shill for the likes of Gates, Pearson, SAT, etc.
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I highly doubt Duncan would leave education altogether. He’s far too invested in it – and I mean “invested” in the monetary sense. He’s got a very nice gig waiting for him at Pearson.
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Of course!
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But how can Pearson profit from Mr. Berliner’s suggestions?
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Take over all of teacher training in the world!?!?!?!
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“How to Fix Teacher Eduction”
Five weeks is too long
To train a brand new teacher
A teacher for a song
Is what we need to reach here
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Learning from terrific teachers would help a lot
Unfortunately award winning teachers say their services by colleges of education are rarely bought.
Much of teacher ed could be based in great schools
They get results in part by ignoring fools.
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I have always believed that teaching is part cerebral, part craft and part art. I think my own training at Temple U.many years ago was on target. In addition to the theoretical courses in education, I had to work as a teaching assistant in an inner city school for thirty hours on semester; the next semester I tutored reading in an urban public school. The semester after that, I directed a group of teenage girls at a settlement house in Phila. The following semester was closely monitored student teaching. At the school where I student taught we had student teachers from Temple and U of Pennsylvania. The kids from Temple rolled up their sleeves and went right to work, and the Ivy League kids looked like deer in headlights. The point is the Temple students were prepared because the training married the theoretical and practical. We were ready!
I had many student teachers during my career. I never turned them down because I felt I had an obligation to help prepare future teachers. I also believe seasoned teachers should video tape or even audio tape their own lessons from time to time, and teachers should have the opportunity to observe each other. It is a way to continue to develop and refine the craft of teaching.
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“Data”?! “Resources”?! “Investing”?!
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OH MY!!
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Hey BLARney, We’re not in Kansas anymore!
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David Berliner and Gene Glass’s 2014 book 50 Myths & Lies That Threaten America’s Public Schools (Teachers College Press) is a “must read” book for all who care about the attacks on our schools and teachers.. — Edd Doerr (arlinc.org)
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I live in the Phoenix area and wanted you to see this, Dr. Ravitch. From The New Times:
http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/valleyfever/2014/12/failing_charter_schools.php?utm_source=Newsletters&utm_medium=email
By the way, several of us retired teachers and working teachers are going to take a roadtrip to hear you speak at the U. fo Arizona! I hope I get to meet you, but I am happy I get to hear you speak!!!!
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I like his idea of rotations in teacher training. I am both a registered nurse and a special education teacher…this concept has infinite possibilities.
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The Duncan Yo-Yo is sleep walking at it’s finest. Behold the Loop-de-Loop of his
problemsolution of peer pressure compliance programming. His “new” social fairness
network, pretends to turn on the light. Fat chance of doing that. Bringing the truth out
of the dark, would expose too many systems as scams.
If the Government can “make”you, it can break you.
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Rotations in Teacher Training are not his idea. We have been doing it at Austin College in a 5-year MAT Program since the late 70’s.
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This is why I don’t feel the need to defend universities that are now the target of standardizing. They’re on their own on that one. Where were they when the focus was only on K-12? Some spoke up, but most didn’t.
?
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You know, Joanna, my gut reaction says to sit back and watch them suffer without the help of teachers. I am extremely angry with the school where I received my credentials; they have bought into and support the reform movement, so I feel no sympathy for them. However, an attack on teacher education programs is an attack on future teachers who will have to deal with these imbecilic policies. I’m not sure how to respond, but I have a feeling we might be foolish to hold their lack of support for current teachers against them.
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Unless the K-12 students are promoted by proficiency, as the students are promoted from grade to grade, as the federal, NCLB law demands in math and English,but is not enforced, what effective teacher training addresses this injustice?. For example, the NAEP( our national report card) and K-12 classroom R & D both document that the mean non-proficient student by 8th grade math is functioning with the skills of a fourth grade proficient student. In addition, most new teachers are placed into schools with a high percent of the educationally disadvantaged students, who generally are mostly math and English non-proficient. Question: What kind of teacher training addressed this dishonesty, which is a form of teacher, student, and tax-payer “academic abuse”?.. .
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