Jonathan Lovell, who has contributed several posts to this blog, has written to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan about his intention to grade colleges of education by the test scores of the students of their graduates. The deadline for submitting comments is January 2. Send comments to: https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2014/12/03/2014-28218/teacher-preparation-issues
Lovell writes:
Dear Mr Duncan,
As a teacher educator for the past 35 years in the field of English Education–having spent the past 27 of those years in my present institution of San Jose State University–and as someone who has observed upwards of over 2500 middle and high school English classes over the course of my career, I can say without qualification that the proposed new regulations for assessing the quality of teacher preparation programs would be an unmitigated disaster.
Others on this site have spoken eloquently about the extremely serious effects, especially to public institutions like ours, of the costs of implementing these regulations, as well as the wrong-headedness of linking the assessment of teacher preparation programs to a VAM-like measure of student performance in the classes of recent graduates.
I’d like to address a related issue, but one that has been strangely left out of the public discussion to date. It’s the effect of these new regulations on what might be called the “climate” in which teaching as a profession is perceived.
As I’m sure you are aware, there has already been a 50% decline over the past five years in the number of applicants to teacher education programs in the state of California. While we’ve countered this trend in the English Education program here at San Jose State, we’ve only been able to do so by focusing relentlessly of what helps beginning teachers improve not only their instructional practices, but their sense of personal agency in their chosen profession. The major player in this effort has been the San Jose Area Writing Project, which routinely selects exemplary K-12 teachers for an intensive four and one half week summer institute, then positions these teachers in significant roles in the preparation of new teachers.
Your proposed new regulations will be perceived as yet another iteration of all-too-familiar Bush-Obama refrain that “the whipping will continue until morale improves.” I believe it’s high time to turn from this thoroughly discredited approach to the improvement of teaching and teacher training, and to start looking more sensibly and honestly at practices that work.
The practices of the National Writing Project would be an excellent place to start.
Yours truly,
Jonathan Lovell
Professor of English and Director of the San Jose Area Writing Project
San Jose State University
Always laugh at “The whipping will continue until morale improves.”
It’s just more stupid by the folks that brought you VAM!
By Arne Duncan’s own standards, the administration should be authorizing a drone strike on my beloved University of Chicago Lab School. While inferior Teacher’s Colleges may graduate the occasional bad teacher. The Lab School graduated Arne Duncan, a uniquely destructive force in American education
great response!
Anthony Cody informs me that the effective deadline for submitting these comments is actually Jan 2 rather than Feb 2 (Feb 5 was my error).
So the more comments that the USDOE receives on this important question before that date the better. Thanks so much.
Through K-12 News Network I’ve created an annotatable version of the working document developed by the DOE. You can create an account and use a virtual highlighter or sticky note to write comments on the document. (This was highly effective when we pushed out the 2013 RFPs for iPads to local journalists in October of 2013. First we had local pro-public education watchdogs annotate the RFPs and Apple iPad contract. THEN we pushed the link with annotated text to the journos. Voila, we spurred journalists to do over a year’s worth of good investigative journalism instead of the stenography they’d been doing and we no longer have John Deasy as Superintendent of LAUSD.)
I’d recommend anyone wanting to comment to do so here and then once comments have been gathered share the link with the DOE: http://personal.crocodoc.com/Px29zWq
It will be powerful to have individual messages sent but it will also be powerful to have many comments engaging closely with the text of the proposed regulations all in one place.
I have looked at the proposed USDE regulations and the requirements for public comments about the new regulations. I am not confident that impassioned pleas from well-informed educators will do the job. The regulations are written so small tweaks might be made, but no major overhaul.
The thrust of the “accountability” agenda is to close teacher education programs at the level of subject preparation–social studies, ELA, math, arts education, and so on and to enlarge the market for on-line and “alternative teacher training.”
These regulations will put “teeth” into a bunch of accountability measures endorsed by the newly formed Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP). In other words, teacher educators have already be co-opted in forwarding the proposed policies. How did that happen?
CAPE standards for accrediting teacher education programs were written to please USDE. By meeting USDE’s implicit and explicit demands for “accountability” students who enroll in CAEP-certified programs to qualify for federal grants.
CAEP is the product of a July 2013 merger of the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) the NCATE and the Teacher Education Accreditation Council (TEAC). CEAC is now the only USDE recognized accreditation agency for educator-preparation programs. So, there was a lot of rolling over and saying “whatever USDE desires” by these two agencies to get the merger accomplished.
If you want to see the connection between the proposed USDE accountability requirements for teacher education, you need to look at the language in CAEP standards for accreditation.
The CAEP standards are designed to allow for-profit and on-line teacher education and TFA minimal competency programs to flourish IF their graduates produce test scores that pass muster with the expectations of the schools, districts, and state where these teachers are employed.
CAEP functions as the new and only entity responsible for the preparation of educators— including “a nonprofit or for-profit institution of higher education, a school district, an organization, a corporation, or a governmental agency.” In effect, a traditional college degree can be bypassed.
CAEP standards are filled with the same accountability demands and jargon inflicted on K-12 education. Here are few of CAPE standards.
1.2 Providers ensure that completers use research and evidence to develop an understanding of the teaching profession and use both to measure their P-12 students’ progress and their own professional practice.
1.3 Providers ensure that completers apply content and pedagogical knowledge as reflected in outcome assessments in response to standards of Specialized Professional Associations (SPA), the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS), states, or other accrediting bodies (e.g., National Association of Schools of Music – NASM).
1.4 Providers ensure that completers demonstrate skills and commitment that afford all P-12 students access to rigorous college-and career-ready standards (e.g., Next Generation Science Standards, National Career Readiness Certificate, Common Core State Standards).
1.5 Providers ensure that completers model and apply technology standards as they design, implement and assess learning experiences to engage students and improve learning; and enrich professional practice.
Here is a sample of the detail.
CAEP Standard 4.1, (p. 13) “The provider documents, using multiple measures, that program completers contribute to an expected level of student-learning growth. Multiple measures shall include all available growth measures (including value-added measures, student-growth percentiles, and student learning and development objectives) required by the state for its teachers and available to educator preparation providers, other state-supported P-12 impact measures, and any other measures employed by the provider.”
Add this to the mix, from p. 27: “Measures of completer impact, including available outcome data on P-12 student growth, are summarized, externally benchmarked, analyzed, shared widely, and acted upon in decision-making related to programs, resource allocation, and future direction.
Measures of Program Outcome and Consumer Information: A “consumer of information” is either an employer or an applicant.”
Impact on P-12 learning and development (data provided for component 4.1)
Indicators of teaching effectiveness (data provided for component 4.2)
Results of employer surveys, including retention and employment milestones (data provided for component 4.3)
Results of completer surveys (data provided for component 4.4)
Graduation rates
Ability of completers to meet licensing (certification) and any additional state requirements (e.g., through acceptable scores and pass rates on state licensure exams)
Ability of completers to be hired in education positions for which they were prepared
Student loan default rates and other consumer information
Do comment on the federal regulations. Recognize that it is not a job for the faint-hearted. The parallels between the CAPE standards and the proposed regulations reflect the incapacity of teacher educators to say “no” to federal funding, and the extent to which test scores and VAM have been reified by federal officials, at the behest of economists aided by the clout of billionaires who have purchased the policies for American education that they want.
Thanks Laura. As always, this is an extremely well informed and helpful response.
Why go into teaching ? The level of stress this puts a young teacher in is too much. Nursing pays more.
And nursing has just as much stress if not more with the patient workloads they have these days. It’s another insane “helping” profession-insane because economists and business types insist that the work of the two professions can be quantified and little to no attention is paid to the “human” aspect of the jobs.
The Bill Gates, Obama, Duncan, Walton, Koch war against the public schools is a modern day inquisition against teachers, and Bill Gates is doing the job of Pope Sixtus IV, who approved the Spanish Inquisition in 1478.
Given the idiotic idea of judging schools of ed based on test scores, who in the world would ever decide to teach the special ed students or the ESL students?
Well, according to Arne, special ed students are only special ed because teachers don’t have high enough expectations for them. Maybe it’s the same for ESL – if only we expected them to have perfect spoken and written English, they would.
I am so glad I am not teaching anymore! I find the Danielson and Marzano job ads ridiculous tools of micromanagement. Can you imagine what requirements are going to look like when these “standards” filter down into practice? As a special education teacher I never would have (and didn’t) survive data mania and teaching “with fidelity” (ie scripted teaching). I spent hours on largely useless paperwork; I hate to think how much more is being created. It is no wonder that education programs are no longer drawing candidates. While I understand the almost pathological desire to become a teacher, the profession is disappearing. It is bordering on deception to call what is being mandated “teaching.”
…and the vagueness of what they want is so frustrating – it is all this strategy and scaffolding – if I hear either of those words I want to barf. …the useless paperwork and testing takes you away from your students. A profession by definition is where a person by the quality of their education and experience is able to make ‘intuitive decisions’ on what is needed for their clients.
When the CAEP standards came out in September of 2013, I wrote about the unintended consequences and perverse incentives that would result here: http://alexandramiletta.blogspot.com/2013/09/teacher-preparation-standards-add-new.html It’s telling that the comment period is so short and at the worst time of year for teacher educators. Besides, even if we manage to make some noise it falls on deaf ears.
Why even attempt to engage with Arne Duncan? Empty suits cannot respond.