House on Fire
Posted: February 12th, 2013 | Author: Michael Goldstein | | 5 Comments »
From the NY Times:
“There is almost universal agreement that the current system is broken,” said Thomas W. Lyons III, a member of the American Education Association’s Task Force on the Future of Teacher Education.
and
Ed Schools need to have far more practical training and closer ties to the profession. That has led a number of schools to choose deans from within the profession, like Mr. Allard, rather than from academia.
and
One group that came under frequent attack at the meeting here was tenured professors, who were criticized as having high pay, low productivity and a remote relationship with the practice of teaching. Robert L. Weinberg, a retired teacher recognized as one of the best in the nation, and a lecturer at George Washington University, said that instead of restricting the number of adjunct lecturers like himself, Ed Schools ought to greatly increase them because they bring real-world examples to students.
Wow.
Oh wait.
This story wasn’t about ed schools at all. It’s about law schools. I changed a few words for dramatic effect.
The real quotes were:
“There is almost universal agreement that the current system is broken,” said Thomas W. Lyons III, a Rhode Island lawyer and a member of the American Bar Association’s Task Force on the Future of Legal Education.
and
…Law schools need to have far more practical training and closer ties to the legal profession. That has led a number of schools to choose deans from within the profession, like Mr. Allard, rather than from academia.
and
One group that came under frequent attack at the meeting here was tenured law school professors, who were criticized as having high pay, low productivity and a remote relationship with the practice of law. Robert L. Weinberg, a retired founding partner of the Washington law firm Williams & Connolly and a lecturer at George Washington University Law School, said that instead of restricting the number of adjunct lecturers like himself, law schools ought to greatly increase them because they bring real-world examples to students.
Also this:
As the meeting ended, one task force member, Michael P. Downey of St. Louis, summed it up. “The house is on fire,” he said. “We don’t want a report that sits on a shelf.”
And this:
…Critics are increasingly saying that the legal academy cannot solve its own problems, partly because of the vested interests of tenured professors tied to an antiquated system. Effective solutions, they insist, will have to be imposed from the outside.
Since law schools are regulated by state courts, that means convincing top state judges of the necessity of major change.
I know a decent number of ed school deans who privately say they would like to radically change their teacher prep programs. I assume they’re not typical, but nor are they unique.
1. They’re limited by their faculty, many of whom don’t agree that their programs should change.
2. They deans are also restricted by 3 sets of regulators: state Ed Departments, NCATE, and regional accreditation organizations (whose approval is needed for all federal loans and grants).
3. Yet they feel pinned and mostly remain mum. The deans say if they even begin to lobby the regulators to permit big change, they’d likely alienate their own faculty, and if they did so aggressively, possibly end up on the receiving end of a no confidence vote.
My view:
1. Lighter regulations
Empirically, we really don’t know “what works.” Talked to a dean recently from Pennsylvania who described how the state had just added a bunch of new regulations for teacher prep, on top of a bunch of old ones. That’s crazy.
2. Greater transparency of outcomes
Easy to understand job results. Common satisfaction survey among all alumni, making it easy to compare. Test score data where available, like here.
If we did that:
*Easier for future teachers to choose which teacher prep program delivers the results they want.
*Easier for the best schoolteachers to be hired as valued adjunct professors.
*Easier for policymakers and reformers to notice standouts and laggards, and call attention to them.
*Easier for any teacher prep program to learn from others.
With my charter school hat on, it’s easy for our team to say “Hey, wow, kids at North Star Charter School in Newark really did great on Advanced Placement exams. Let’s hop on a train and learn what happens there.”
By contrast…
…with my ed school hat on, it’s hard for our team to say “Hey, wow, teachers who graduate from XYZ Ed School are particularly good at ABC.” Nobody knows who excels at what.
Mike, I don’t think it’s lighter regulations you’re calling for; it’s different regulations.
On the one hand, you concede, “empirically, we really don’t know ‘what works.’” On the other, you want greater transparency of teacher education “outcomes” and then link to a comparison of teacher ed programs’ PRAXIS scores. That suggestion implies you already have a working definition of “what works” in teacher ed – or that testing can at least provide a pathway to making the answers to this question visible.
In addition, your call to replace current state regulations with increased standardization of data seems to be a sort of contradiction. While fewer regulations is desirable (no one likes red tape), standardizing evaluation of teacher ed programs would certainly impose its own form of regulation of ed schools. In a sense, you’d be telling all schools what aspects of teacher education do and don’t matter because all programs will henceforth be evaluated against one another in the same way. Your next point explains how this could even becomes a coercive tool for regulation by policymakers and politicians. If logic follows, I imagine next steps would be telling poor performing ed schools we’ll shut them down and slate them for takeover by private outfits. It wouldn’t be the first time.
As you’ve said previously, when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. I worry this is what is happens when we reduce teacher ed to (merely) testable student outcomes. Whatever else a teacher ed curriculum could be gets thrown out the window because teacher ed will be scared straight into training teachers to “get results.”
I agree that when it comes to teacher ed, we don’t know what works. One of the reasons for this is because ed schools have no consensus about what this phrase should mean in the first place (works for whom? How do we know?). These are tricky questions that connect education back to questions of its purposes in the first place: social justice, jobs, knowledge, etc.
When we argue for the wholesale implementation of standardized means of evaluating teachers, we answer the question of “what works?” by replying simply “whatever we can test.” The circular logic of this argument should give us pause.
Hi Chris,
Thanks for the thoughtful comment.
I think I do mean less regulation. Let me sort of “think it out” by typing a response. Let me know if you agree.
1. Now: multiple regulators tell teacher prep programs lots of things. How many hours of X. What topics to cover. And so forth. There are multiple regulators, and the list on input requirements is often hundreds of pages long. Me: Cut it way down.
Now if I stopped there, I suppose I’d be really clear: that’s less regulation.
2. Separately, I believe there should be more transparency.
For example, I think teacher prep programs should publish if their grads got jobs, and where, and when. Stuff to make it easy for future teachers to compare Teacher Prep Org A versus Org B.
Similarly, the report card I linked with test score gains, some job retention data, and Praxis — all of that info is already compiled. The question is whether future teachers — like you back at age 22 — get to see it. Then let them consider it. Maybe someone cares about Praxis test rates. Maybe someone else cares about where grads get jobs. Maybe a third person compares about Value-Added data (that person is not you!)
I’m not suggesting the state use this data to regulate. I’m suggesting simply letting the future teachers use information.
3. I agree with you: my call for transparency can be described as regulation. We’re telling institutions what information they must share. Maybe that muddies my narrative of “less.”
But I don’t think is tantamount to “different.” If you cut hundreds of pages of input regs, and replace with a couple pages of transparency regs, I think it’s fair to characterize the sum as “less.”
On top of these issues, we could go with some of the powerful suggestions that come from working teachers who have ideas about how their training could have been better.
1. Far more classroom experience before graduation — for both Ed majors aiming for K-6 and HS teachers.
2. Far more curriculum and instructiion classes that are research-validated.
3. Far fewer classes that aim to make new teachers more culturally sensitive. Today’s young people do not need this, for the most part. These classes are a wasteland (and I speak as a progressive who wants the best education for minority and low-income kids).
4. Far more attention paid to classroom management.
Thanks for clarifying your positions. I’ll try to do the same.
I think we’re thinking about regulation differently. For you, regulation is about shredding all the nitty-gritty guidelines teacher education is told by the state to cover in the course of preparing its teachers. For me, I see regulation a bit more broadly as setting the terms for how teacher ed programs operate.
I think the transparency in data you’re suggesting will eventually replace explicit regulations as the tools of surveillance that will regulate the form and content of teacher ed programs by defining what counts as effective teaching, deciding how it will be measured, and holding the program accountable for those results.
We usually associate deregulation and transparency with some a greater diversity of options for the consumer. However, my hunch is that the newly transparent and accountable teacher ed marketplace would become more centralized/isomorphic than it is, not less. Why? Because teacher ed programs would see themselves in a race to the top of the rankings, competing for students’ tuition and state funding. Everyone would want to make sure their teacher corps looks really strong on the public assessments and other measures of program efficacy.
Maybe that’s the goal (that’s how I interpreted you saying you wanted to hop on trains to see other effective programs and all be on the same page). To me, this is regulation of teacher ed – just of a different kind, through different means.
Chris,
1. Thx again and good use of “isomorphic.” You should meet Jal Mehta!
2. My guess — just my guess — is that teacher ed programs would compete first on “overall brand” (prestige of university), and then, if my transparency thing ever got traction, based on the degree to which their grads get hired, and where they get hired, etc.
Because my guess is that’s what 21-year-olds seeking masters degrees care about more than test score gain size. Less true of 18 year olds who end up as undergrad majors in teaching.
EB,
I agree with your suggestions, but once again, I don’t want the regulations to require “my view” or anyone else’s view. If the ideas you suggest are correct, then over time, with greater transparency, more future teachers would choose programs like that.
Quick reax:
1. More classroom time only if it’s “deliberate practice.” I think most student teaching fails that test. And I question the value of an extra, say, 100 or 200 hours of non-deliberate practice.
2. NCTQ is trying to rate schools partly based on this criteria. As I’ve argued in other places, “research-validated” is a really murky term in our field.
3. I would simply amend “cultural sensitivity” to something much more applied — building relationships with students and their parents.
4. Drinking same kool aid.