Wouldn’t you know that the narrative of “bad teachers cause low scores and failing schools” would produce new contenders to prepare “great” teachers?
The regular ratings published by the National Council of Teacher Quality in U.S. News claim that almost every teacher education program in the nation stinks. They reach that conclusion not by visiting campuses but by perusing course catalogues and give demerits based on their own criteria.
But what to do?
The answer (to some): online teacher education.
Many online “universities” already offer degrees to teachers, who presumably never interact with a real child until they enter the classroom. Online universities are the biggest producer of masters’ degrees for teaching.
Now, Emily Feistritzer has created an online company called “TEACH-NOW,” which will offer degrees to those who want to teach. She has already awarded degrees to 600 teachers but plans to expand the number of students to 10,000.
The newly rebranded TEACH-NOW Educatore School of Education (taking the go-big-or-go-home approach to capitalization) was founded in 2011 by Emily Feistritzer, a long-time analyst of alternative-certification programs. TEACH-NOW is a traditional certification program, however—it takes at least nine months to finish, leading to certification. The first class began in March 2013.
While the school has commenced or completed training more than 600 teaching candidates, it announced this week ambitious plans to prepare 10,000 new teachers over the next five years, and establish a master’s degree program. To help with the expansion, TEACH-NOW has hired Philip A. Schmidt, former dean of the teacher-training program for Western Governors University, a major nonprofit online school. At WGU, Schmidt helped oversee a similar scale-up over the past 14 years.
“It’s true that we’re in the relatively early years of this school of education [TEACH-NOW], but everything about what I see and hear tells me that the jury is no longer out,” Schmidt said in an interview. “This pedagogical approach is the real thing.”Emily-feistritzer-phil-schmidt.jpg
That approach involves a cohort-based, activity-based model with a focus on group work and early exposure to the classroom, starting by week three of the program, Feistritzer said. There’s also emphasis on candidates understanding several forms of education technology.
I admit I am skeptical of most online learning programs for children and for professionals, but I am willing to be convinced. Has any reader earned a degree online? What do you think of your preparation to teach?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I earned an online Masters of teaching a few years ago. Of course, this was after I had earned a traditional teaching license, become National Board Certified and taught for about 20 years. My program was ok, not great, but ok. The reason I went with online was that as a teacher, I knew I could not manage driving to the nearest university to take classes while I was teaching full time. I suspect that is why most teachers get their Masters online. Practical considerations.
These are the same people who think putting kids in from of a computer screen is personalized education. Gross.
Imagine how easy it will be to cheat in an on-line education program. If students who attend brick and mortar colleges can hire someone to write a paper for them and even take tests for them, then an entire industry will explode for on-line programs where people will offer to do all the work for the student so the client can earn their on-line degree and not have to bother with the time it takes to actually learn anything about the subject they are majoring in.
You can believe this is happening more than you know.
Yes, I have heard “students” brag that they didn’t do the work. Laugh because they got ‘B’ s because their wives, husbands, girlfrends, etc. do the work, and they think they fool someone. Aren’t teachers supposed to model and teach ethics, honest, and good character?? Doesn’t anyone look into this disgusting, money-grubbing, hoax????Would they go to a surgeon who was “educated” this way?
In my experience, just like at brick and mortar colleges, online schools and faculty like me tend to be very alert to plagiarism of all kinds. I don’t think there has been even one term in the past seven years that I have been teaching online when I did not find and report incidences of plagiarism, which is the same as when I taught at brick and mortar schools.
Colleges deal with this in a variety of different ways, in addition to using Turn It In. At one school where I teach online courses, some assignments and some tests are randomly proctored, which often changes so students are unable to predict this. At another college where I work, the tests were replaced with many more in-depth, detailed assignments requiring the use of specific kinds of software programs. It was discovered that there are websites where students were posting test questions and answers, as well as Word document type assignments that could be easily plagiarized, so courses are revised there a lot, too.
All of the local community colleges near me offer “remedial” and math courses through calculus online. These same community colleges also boast how their students’ mathematical achievements (as far as pass rates and grades are concerned) are increasing! I know many people first hand who have hired people to do their homework, which is entered online, and take their tests. No proctor. No identification.
I have also seen cases where there were “hybrid” courses, where up to 50-percent of a grade was homework to be completed online, some project worth a percent, and 30-percent exams. There are many issues with this that could be argued, but for me, I don’t like the fact that students can have people complete homework for them and enter it online (and can redo the HW until they get 100%), go in and fail the tests, and still get a “C”.
I, myself, have experienced online courses during my undergrad. I loved them because there were more opportunities to get the “A” with minimal effort, but I didn’t like them (in general) because I didn’t learn much from them. It was a means to get that course checked off of my plan of work.
It’s all relative though. I know people who travel where oine education works for them to pursue a higher education. I knew a high school student once who did ballet in New York who enrolled in an oine high school. This high school student was doing online coursework that was more “rigorous” than what was being taught at the urban high school I taught at (different story for a different day). It worked for her, but she made it work. Needless to say, Harvard didn’t even consider her application due to enrolling in an online high school.
I teach at a community college and I can tell you how those passage rates and grades are higher. It’s because online classes have high “drop” rates. The instructors I talked to say that they see about a 30% drop rate in an online class compared to about 10% in a brick and mortar class. Online students say that it’s hard to be disciplined enough not to fall behind while regular classes institute a pacing that serves as a reminder to get things done.
I think you have identified the biggest problem for online courses. Cheating and online choruses go together like peas and carrots. Some years ago, I took a 52 hour required life insurance course in person. A few years later the state of California authorized an online version. Almost immediately all kinds of people who were functionally illiterate in English, were passing the required course. People trying to build sales teams were teaching them how to cheat and pass the online tests. I believe good cyber education is possible but it cannot be done on the cheap.
I am not against some online learning if it is rich in interaction, but I do not see how a service oriented degree can be earned online. The interactions that are required for K-12 teaching are spontaneous, ongoing, and usually involve more than one other interlocutor. It sometimes feel that I spend a large part of my interactions asking and digging into my students ideas to help both me and them to learn. This is a skill that teachers need to learn and that learning requires on-site humans. Of course there is also classroom environment, gestures and other factors that also do not show up online. This is very different from an online atmosphere.
I agree. One of the reasons I was prepared to tackle the demands of student teaching is that my university recognized that a lot of teaching is craft, and for that you must have real interactions with real people to develop those skills. Prior to student teaching I had to tutor in Philadelphia for two semesters. Another semester I had to direct a group of adolescents at a settlement house in the city. It gave me a chance to get my feet wet when the responsibilities were less. My student teaching experience was also fairly rigorous. We had twelve weekly observations and evening seminars, and each observation was followed by a conference and a write up of each lesson.
How can they take the Ed-TPA if they’re online? I agree with Yvonne Siu-Runyan — these are the folks that don’t want to pay anyone decently and just want kids in front of computers. One teacher for 150 kids in some schools here in Los Angeles.
Just say “NO” to online teacher training.
I can’t speak for myself but I have two children who have been in hybrid programs (half online). One was in a teacher ed program. Both say the only good thing about the online courses was they didn’t have to drive to campus. They felt they learned more in in-person classes. The personal connection was important to them. Online classes also seemed to be more problematic with grading re: professor errors and more difficult to rectify. Of course, they put up with them because of their programs.
Teaching is supposed to be collaborative. How do you learn to collaborate if you’re in an online program?
My son had the same response. He welcomed the convenience of the hybrid or on-line courses, but found the in-person courses more interesting and engaging.
As far as the collaborative aspects of learning, my son was required to participate in an on-line discussion group that was monitored by an instructor. Again, it’s better than nothing, but not the same.
One of my grown children took a workplace training program online. It was for a Japanese company. They make auto parts. He and some co-workers would check in and view a class that was being conducted elsewhere. They hated it and he isn’t some ancient, cranky Luddite- he was 21 at the time at the time and he can take a computer apart and put it back together. A lot of them stopped going. By the end he was the only one showing up.
The company eventually scrapped the program because they’re trying to teach them to work in teams and learn from one another, so although it was cheaper what’s expensive is the employee TIME spent on training. That has to be worthwhile or “cheaper” isn’t a good investment.
Online education, particularly for-profit online education, is the reason Masters programs have been watered down. Which, I’m convinced, is a major factor in the criticism that M. Ed. programs are ineffective.
I agree. My master’s degree in TESOL is very old, the seventies. It was like a degree in applied linguistics. When TESOL became a demand field, I had several student teachers from a few different colleges. They were far less trained than I was. Also, to be fair, I had gone back to school and held certifications in special education and reading. I begged the colleges to include a teaching of reading course as part of their TESOL requirement. If they are sending out students to teach in American schools, they need to know how to teach reading as many of the ELLs are illiterate in L1. I did get one school that changed its requirement for those planning on teaching ESL in America.
Stand and Deliverilogy:
Kids minds treated as products to be measured and categorized, early!
Sit Down and Shut Upism:
Monastery oath for deformers on the Isle of Billionaire, where they sit and twiddle their thumbs all day. M
And watch as the devil himself mixes fact and lie.
We were just talking about this at work the other day in relation to library school programs, many of which are now online. The online environment is fine for adults learning the basics of a profession. However, the worry is that the grads of these programs in the library field, while having excellent technical skills, have not had much practice in the soft skills needed to deal with library patrons. Many librarians spend most of their day dealing with the public, so those skills are vital to being successful. Of course, this is even more true for teachers.
I have taken many online classes. I think it is a good forum for continuing education on specific topics IF the class is small and the teacher is engaged and interacts with all the students. This is especially true when the audience is highly motivated – e.g. need the info to do a specific task at work. Larger, less well-moderated classes, such as MOOCs are OK for picking up a few skills or pieces of info for fun, but they are not very useful if you want to dig deeply into a topic.
I would cautiously say that it is OK for a teacher to get some of their training this way as long as the course is very carefully crafted and the teacher is comfortable in the medium. I would not want my kids taught by someone who has received their entire training in this manner.
I completed my masters online at the same university where I completed my (in class) teacher certification program. As a masters program it worked for me. I didn’t have to waste time driving to class after a long day of teaching but professors were real people I could reach out to. When completing my thesis there were a number of on campus meetings in addition to the professor visiting my school and cooperating administrator.
That being said it wouldn’t work for everyone and I’m not sure it would work for undergraduate studies.
New term for the thought disorder of some of these folks:
WCBIMFL, or just WIMFL
Willful Confirmation Bias with Intent to Mix Fact and Lie
We had a student teacher once who was from WGU (an online program). He was good at bs-ing his way through things, and had absolutely no sense whatsoever about teaching. Left a roomful of kids completely alone for a long time because he was stressed (didn’t ask a nearby teacher to help out or let the office know or anything). We eventually fired him as a student teacher, but he eventually finished somewhere else, and because he was sped and math certified (by WGU recommendations), he got hired anyway, but didn’t last long (then he worked at an online charter and I don’t know where he is now) — the point being “good at bs-ing” does not a teacher make. Kids know these things — too bad a lot of adults don’t.
If I were an administrator, I would NEVER hire anyone from an online undergraduate program —
Yeah, I haven’t been impressed with the Western Governors University graduates in “Education” here in Utah, either.
Ha – I had a similar experience with a WGU teacher ed “student”. My first thought upon meeting this person was that I absolutely did not want him around kids. I think any traditional teacher ed program would have had the same sense that I did had he applied and been interviewed the way I was when I entered my pre-service program ages ago. But since this was all online and he looked good on paper, I think he got by some of the usual alarms. Scary.
At my college most candidates for MS degrees in teaching take at least one course online, many do a lot more. They tell me that just as with in-person classes, the experience depends a lot on factors such as the skill of the instructor in engaging everyone, the peer group, technology that works as it should, and so on. Conversations with candidates about their experiences has made me less skeptical than I was at first about taking graduate courses online. In my own teaching, I avoid online classes because I believe to be a teacher you have to understand that developing relationships is an important key to your future success, and no matter the methods, it is simply easier and more effective in person than online.
Is Online Teacher Education as Good as Traditional Teacher Education?
NO!
I have not seen any online education/training which beats face to face education/training. Having said that, there are some training opportunities where online is OK, and adequate, but overall it is not a better delivery method.
I took a grad level course “distance learning course” once to get salary credit for my job. Don’t tell anyone this: I earned three grad level credits and the course took me one day (12 hours of intense bs work) to complete! I don’t even remember what the course was about.
In my opinion there is no substitute for “being there”.
Sounds familiar. I took a long distance course back in the late 1980s—doing this was mandated by the state to keep our teaching credentials. The course selected had to be from an approved list, and I went down the list and made my choice on a topic that sounded interesting. They sent me a 300 page workbook with worksheets that I had to complete to prove I studied the workbook. The workbook had an index. I never read the entire workbook. Instead, I looked for a keyword for each question on the worksheets and then used the index to find the location in the book where it was easy to find the answers. I finished the worksheets in no time and mailed the worksheets back to them. Then they had me take a test. I used the index again and easily found the answers without reading any of the chapters. I scored 100% on that open book test, and earned the credit I needed to update my teaching credential. It took me about five hours total, and I learned nothing useful. I don’t remember what the workbook cost and the cost of the course through that approved long distance learning center. But thanks to legislation in California, they’d made some money off of me and I didn’t gain anything that would make me a better teacher.
To answer your question—– no—–
Emily Fertilizer??????????????????????????
This smells of the masters degrees given to TFA and the credential-ing they get at Quickie-Lube Teacher School. Smells of Broad too–his Supes Academy that trains a-holes to be bullies and buys them positions of power.
Emily Fertilizer. hahaha. I crack myself up.
One of my friends who works at a local university told me once that they toss out the applications of everyone who has a PhD from an online institution (Ed PhDs are becoming very popular online, too). Then again, I heard of firms who would toss mine out because I didn’t attend a big ten or of league institution.
agggggh!!!!!!!
I have to confess that these comments, on the whole, are a bit discouraging. Have we not learned in the last 20 or 30 years of education reform that complex issues like this are not reducible to “good” or “bad?”
“Online education,” even if you restrict it to teacher preparation, is not a single thing to be celebrated or vilified. Technology has given us a vast collection of tools that can be deployed in any number of contexts. Are people really willing to claim that none of those tools have a valid pedagogical purpose? Ever? That there’s no circumstance in which they might beat a traditional model? Why would you assume that an online program doesn’t have an in-classroom component? Every state requires a student teaching component for a teacher preparation program to be approved. Is that really impossible to include with an online program, even with technology like webcams, video chat, video sharing, or Skype?
I would offer two points and a suggestion.
1. It’s easy to find examples of “online education” done poorly in higher education, but that’s true at every level (and true for much than online education). Teachers put their students in front of computers and then effectively check out; universities put their students in front of computers and collect tuition checks. The fact that technology can so easily be misused doesn’t preclude the possibility that it can also give students access to material and resources that they would never have had access to without it. I’ve personally seen, in both K-12 and higher ed settings, technology be instrumental in providing the instructional support, community of learning and motivation to students who accomplish things they never would have without it. These success stories are not difficult to find.
2. Let’s also not romanticize the traditional classroom environment. While I think NCTQ’s methodology for their report is embarrassing would be laughable if it weren’t so sincere, I also don’t have a lot of evidence that teacher preparation programs are knocking it out of the park. My personal intuition is that even if you’re sitting in a classroom with 20 other people in front of a pHD lecturer, your preparation is probably quite poor. Does that shock anyone? Doesn’t every with classroom experience develop the sense that teaching is a difficult job often not done well and incredibly hard to effectively train for? So if the quality of preparation is already low, then are we really harmed by experimenting with the dominant model and, even if we CAN’T improve the quality, at least try to make it more affordable and convenient?
Finally, I would suggest that a more productive conversation than “is online teacher preparation better than classroom-based’ probably sounds more like “how can we use technology to improve teacher preparation?” Or maybe “what are the biggest obstacles to delivering an effective teacher preparation program online?” Or even “if technology can lower the barrier to entry to teaching and create more new teachers, how can we also use it better support new teachers?”
Technology is not going anywhere and its disruption in education has already begun. The longer we put off having serious conversations about how to meaningfully manage that disruption, the more painful it will be for all us.
I have to confess that these comments, on the whole, are a bit discouraging. Have we not learned in the last 20 or 30 years of education reform that complex issues like this are not reducible to “good” or “bad?”
“Online education,” even if you restrict it to teacher preparation, is not a single thing to be celebrated or vilified. Technology has given us a vast collection of tools that can be deployed in any number of contexts. Are people really willing to claim that none of those tools have a valid pedagogical purpose? Ever? That there’s no circumstance in which they might beat a traditional model? Why would you assume that an online program doesn’t have an in-classroom component? Every state requires a student teaching component for a teacher preparation program to be approved. Is that really impossible to include with an online program, even with technology like webcams, video chat, video sharing, or Skype?
I would offer two points and a suggestion.
1. It’s easy to find examples of “online education” done poorly in higher education, but that’s true at every level (and true for much than online education). Teachers put their students in front of computers and then effectively check out; universities put their students in front of computers and collect tuition checks. The fact that technology can so easily be misused doesn’t preclude the possibility that it can also give students access to material and resources that they would never have had access to without it. I’ve personally seen, in both K-12 and higher ed settings, technology be instrumental in providing the instructional support, community of learning and motivation to students who accomplish things they never would have without it. These success stories are not difficult to find.
2. Let’s also not romanticize the traditional classroom environment. While I think NCTQ’s methodology for their report is embarrassing would be laughable if it weren’t so sincere, I also don’t have a lot of evidence that teacher preparation programs are knocking it out of the park. My personal intuition is that even if you’re sitting in a classroom with 20 other people in front of a pHD lecturer, your preparation is probably quite poor. Does that shock anyone? Doesn’t every with classroom experience develop the sense that teaching is a difficult job often not done well and incredibly hard to effectively train for? So if the quality of preparation is already low, then are we really harmed by experimenting with the dominant model and, even if we CAN’T improve the quality, at least try to make it more affordable and convenient?
Finally, I would suggest that a more productive conversation than “is online teacher preparation better than classroom-based’ probably sounds more like “how can we use technology to improve teacher preparation?” Or maybe “what are the biggest obstacles to delivering an effective teacher preparation program online?” Or even “if technology can lower the barrier to entry to teaching and create more new teachers, how can we also use it better support new teachers?”
Technology is not going anywhere and its disruption in education has already begun. The longer we put off having serious conversations about how to meaningfully manage that disruption, the more painful it will be for all us.
“While I think NCTQ’s methodology for their report is embarrassing would be laughable if it weren’t so sincere,”
The only thing NCTQ is sincere about is being a tool of neoliberal, market-based corporate education “reform.” Their aim is to further the business plan of replacing Ed Schools with corporate & charter sponsored training programs, both online and at bricks and mortar, like Relay and Match, which prepare TFAers and other prospective teachers primarily in ONE pedagogical method, that of the Behaviorist animal trainer, so they can subject poor children of color to racial subordination in privatized military style boot camp schools (and provide our nation with an army of compliant non-union workers who will accept low wage jobs at places like Walmart).
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=National_Council_on_Teacher_Quality
I had courses online as an undergrad. I did attend a traditional college university. I’ve been teaching for 11 years. I received masters and specialists degrees online. I have had a successful career. I am a great teacher. I am also very self-directed and got the most out of those online programs for that reason. I really learned a lot and became a better educator because of those degrees. I can understand the business model behind this and see why it is a turn off. However, I think online masters and beyond are okay if you are teaching and working in the field where you will be applying what you learn. It worked for me anyway.