At last! The leaders of 350 teacher education programs have issued a bold statement in collaboration with the National Education Policy Center denouncing attacks on teacher education and market-based “remedies.”
The group calls itself Education Deans for Justice and Equity.
Their efforts contrast with those of a group called “Deans for Impact,” funded in 2015 by the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, which supports charter schools (such as KIPP, Achievement First, and Uncommon Schools), Teach for America, Educators for Excellence, New Leaders, TNTP, Conservative Leaders for Education, Teach Plus, Stand for Children, and a long list of other Corporate Reform ventures. Deans for Impact has 24 members. The founder and executive director of Deans for Impact is Benjamin Riley, former director of policy and advocacy at the NewSchools Venture Fund, which is heavily endowed by billionaire foundations to launch charter schools and promote education technology.
The statement of Education Deans for Justice and Equity criticizes such disruption agents as Teach for America (which places inexperienced, unprepared college graduates into challenging urban and rural classrooms), the National Council on Teacher Quality (which pretends to evaluate teacher education programs without having the knowledge or experience to do so and without ever setting foot in the institutions they grade), the Relay “Graduate School of Education” (a program intended to grant master’s degrees to charter teachers that lacks the necessary elements of a graduate institution, such as scholars and research), and Pearson’s EdTPA (which seeks to replace human judgement of prospective teachers with a standardized tool).
Their statement begins:
Teachers are important, as is their preparation. We, Education Deans for Justice and Equity, support efforts to improve both. But improving teaching and teacher education must be part of larger efforts to advance equity in society.
Whether crediting teachers as the single most important factor in student success or blaming and scapegoating them for failing schools that only widen social and economic dispari- ties, many of the stories that circulate about education presume that it’s all about the teacher. Concerned less with the system of education and more with the individual actor, this rhetoric tends to reduce the problem of education to the shortcomings of individuals. The solution correspondingly focuses on incentives and other market-based changes.
Without a doubt, teacher-education programs cannot and should not operate as if all is well, because it is not. Several current efforts to reform teacher education in the United States, however, are making things worse. Although stemming from a wide range of actors (includ- ing the federal government, state governments, and advocacy organizations), these trends share a fundamental flaw: They focus on “thin” equity.
In their recently published book, Reclaiming Accountability in Teacher Education,1 Marilyn Cochran-Smith and colleagues contrast two understandings of equity. “Thin” equity defines the problem as the curtailing of individual rights and liberties, and the resulting solutions focus on equal access and market-based changes. In contrast, “strong” equity defines the problem as the legacies of systemic injustices, and the resulting solutions focus on increas- ing participatory democracy. Because thin-equi ty reforms obscure the legacies of systemic injustices, and instead focus narrowly on student achievement, teacher accountability, re- wards, and punishments, improving teacher education requires moving away from these and toward strong-equity reforms.
Below, we identify seven current trends impacting teacher education (including at many of our institutions) that are grounded in thin-equity understandings. In a number of ways, these approaches lack a sound research basis, and in some instances, they have already proven to widen disparities. Following a discussion of these trends, we present our alternative vision for teacher-education reform.
First, marketizing teacher education. Most teacher education in the United States happens at universities, and with much variability. Nonetheless, the long-touted claim that higher education’s “monopoly” over teacher education results in mediocrity and complacency has resulted in increased competition by way of “alternative” routes—some that meet state stan- dards (and some that do not), and some that involve little to no formal preparation via fast- track programs. These include non-university-based programs like the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence; programs that partner with universities, like Teach For America; and programs that identify as institutions of higher education, like the Relay Grad- uate School of Education. Such faith in the market to drive improvement frames Congress’s recent rewrite of Title II of ESSA, which allows for public funds to support both non-profit and for-profit alternative certification programs and routes. The problem? Merely expand- ing competition without building the capacity of all programs to prepare teachers has led not to improvement, but to widened disparities among students and increased corporate profiteering off of education.
Second, shaming teacher education. The assumption that shaming will spur effort to com- pete is another way to place faith in the market to drive improvement. Such is the approach of the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) in its annual Teacher Prep Review, which scores (and, for the most part, gives failing grades to) teacher-education programs using an eight-dimension framework. Since its inception, the vast majority of programs nationwide have opted not to participate and share materials for review, citing NCTQ’s faulty methods of review and the lack of research basis for its framework.
Third, externally regulating teacher education at the federal level. The twice-proposed, Obama-era Teacher Preparation Regulations were never implemented, but their “value-add- ed” logic reverberates in other reforms, including NCTQ’s review and the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) accreditation. Measurement experts warn that the use of value-added modeling to determine the effectiveness of teachers to raise test scores, and in turn, the effectiveness of programs to prepare teachers to do so, are neither reliable nor statistically valid.
These are three of the seven malign trends they discuss. Open the link to read the statement in full. It is short and won’t take more than five minutes of reading time.
It is very encouraging to see the leaders of teacher education stand up for professionalism and research-based practice, and to take a stand against quackery.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I would hope that more than twenty-four deans would stand up for professional training for new teachers. If they intend to have an impact, they will need more members
Thin equity is not a clear way to describe so-called reform in my opinion. Instead of thin equity, I think a better term is false equity. Market based education has zero intention of truly providing equity. It creates winners, losers and enhanced segregation These results do not reflect any type of equity. Targeting mostly minority students and placing them in separate and unequal schools is an affront to the concept of equity. To me this a racism.
My own college experience from many years ago was a model of a good program as it married the theoretical with the practical. In addition to all the education, psychology and methods courses, each semester of the junior and senior years required students to apply what they were learning. Students had to tutor in a public school and lead groups of young people. I spent two semesters in a settlement house directing after school programs and trips. All of these interactions with young people prepared students for the semester of student teaching, which by the way, was fifteen weeks long. I have worked with some colleges as a cooperating teacher where the student teaching experience was a six weeks long.
350 deans stood u for equity and justice.
24 are funded by a foundation that funds charter schools and TFA.
Did you read my post?
Yes, I did, but too quickly while at the dentist.
Good News!
Problem: Quackery is soooooo lucrative to charlatans & their charlatan thieves!
Can’t pry their greedy hands away from children who are worth million$ to them.
Everyone & everything is for sale, including our children and their lives.
Should be illegal to destroy public education.
However, a step in the right direction for our dedicated, hard-working teachers.
Quackery: excellent summation
It’s up at OpEd. https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Education-Deans-for-Justi-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Education_Education-Funding_Education-Higher_Educational-Crisis-191010-82.html#comment747052
with this comment
The ‘markets’ are loving the propaganda about ‘teaching’ and offering very profitable ‘alternatives’ to schools, and now, alternatives of ways to ‘train teachers.. Imagine if we trained doctors, instead of demanding they learn the disciplines that underlay their practice of medicine. Hospital want experts running the place, but top-down managers hire superintendents that help line their pockets.
Investigative journalist Jeff Bryant:a bombshell article https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/another-school-leadership-disaster-private-companies-work-an-insider-game-to-reap-lucrative-contracts/
about entrepreneurs who operate superintendent searches, then call on their Superintendents to buy professional development, technology, training, and other services.
The conflicts of interest and self-dealing are shocking. Districts lose millions of dollars and buy services they don’t need, while the search service continues to pay them; ‘previous investigations of school leadership search firms https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/08/a-national-public-school-leadership-disaster-private-firms-vetting-candidates-for-superintendent.html conducted by Our Schools have found companies frequently forego background checks of prospective candidates they recommend, promote favored candidates regardless of their experience or track record, & push board members to keep the entire search process, including the final candidates, confidential from public scrutiny.’
CAEP was a farce from the get go. Arne Duncan threatened to pull “TEACH” grants from programs that did not comply. Mercedes Schneider has a great history lesson on how the teacher education programs came to be captive of federal policies and the idea that university programs should be judge by “customer service” surveys, test scores produced by the graduates of programs and the rest.
That EdPTA test is being challenged by the NOTE exam. NOTE equires a candidate to teach a “virtual class” of five to six avatar students for six to seven minutes with evidence of ability to use “high leverage” skills, such as presenting content, leading a group discussion, interacting with each avatar, and addressing misbehavior.
NOTE is marketed as an “advanced technology” developed by the US Military with “simulated students and trained, calibrated human ‘inter-actors’ who use standardized protocols.” It is certainly worth considering why a technology for military training is being marketed as a test for teaching. In effect, the distinction between education and training has been made to vanish in order to secure data for a test.
NOTE, a project of Education Testing Service, will compete with the edTPA test for teachers (formerly the Teacher Performance Assessment). The edTPA calls for teacher candidates to video-tape their teaching in a classroom and submit clips that represent specific aims and skills, among other requirements. These performance exams, whether with avatars or a video sample of living students, are not based on significant research on teaching in the ARTS and least of all in a studio or laboratory environment. The edPTA person I questioned by email did not know the difference between programs that train artists and programs that prepare teachers in the arts. In any case they were not really interested in what they called the “specials,” teacher in the arts among these aliens.
No signatures from the directors of the Arnold-funded EPIC center at Michigan State U. (Cowen and Strunck)? No signature from Douglas Harris, director of the Arnold-funded ERA Center at Tulane? No signature from the Chair of the CAEP board, Gallagher, who is a Fellow of the Gates-funded Pahara Institute and chair of the ed department at the University of Southern California (the university is in the news due to several current scandals)?