{"id":2309,"date":"2019-07-16T19:23:37","date_gmt":"2019-07-16T19:23:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/?p=2309"},"modified":"2024-10-15T22:02:11","modified_gmt":"2024-10-15T22:02:11","slug":"wanted-new-fashioned-way-of-producing-teachers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/2019\/07\/16\/wanted-new-fashioned-way-of-producing-teachers\/","title":{"rendered":"WANTED: New-fashioned Way of Producing Teachers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

One article in a recent Education Week<\/em> popped out of the page: \u201cAfter Career Overhauling Ed. Schools, Levine to Step Down, Foundation head known for lambasting teacher training<\/a>.\u201d The article refers to Arthur Levine, president of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, who will now remain at the foundation in a senior fellow role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The strong title is well deserved. Levine came to the\nposition with the intention of either fixing the existing model of teacher preparation\nor \u201creinvent[ing] it.\u201d He has been recognized for \u201cspearhead[ing] several\ninitiatives designed to improve the preparation of educators.\u201d In 2006 he\nstated teacher-prep programs were \u201cunruly and disordered, they\u2019re treated as a\ncash cow by universities.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

His views parallel those of Don Nielsen, program chair to\nthe American Center for Transforming Education. Nielsen puts it this way in his\nbook Every School<\/em><\/a>:<\/em> \u201cLaws\nthat mandated the hiring of only certified teachers resulted in giving schools\nof education monopoly control over the supply of human capital entering our\npublic schools. Like any monopoly, over time the business of certifying\nteachers became bureaucratized, bloated, inefficient, and ineffective.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Levine comments on the need to improve our teacher corps\n(which we\u2019ve previously written about here<\/a>):\n\u201cIf education schools don\u2019t reform, there\u2019s a serious risk that they will fade\naway or even be declared a failure.\u201d Changing the way we select, train, and\ncompensate our teachers is a big part of the system change necessary to improve\nhow we educate our children. Teaching is one of the most significant\nprofessions but the current system deters our best and brightest from entering\nthe profession, which in turn deprives our children. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Wilson foundation\u2019s program is designed so that students \u201cundergo a full year of clinical practice in a high-needs urban or rural school, and after they graduate, they receive mentoring throughout their three-year teaching commitment.\u201d The results are astonishing: \u201cretention among the fellows is 2.5 times the rate of other teachers in high-needs schools in the states in which they are prepared.\u201d Also noted in the current research is that students in the fellows\u2019 classes are outperforming their peers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With these kinds of results, the foundation\u2019s approach to\nteacher preparation may be worth emulating. However, at ACTE we believe that\nthe elimination of certification laws is also needed to place the most gifted\nteachers in every classroom, since certification laws tend to provide \u201ccash cows\u201d\nto the universities that hold a monopoly on teacher certification rather than\nactually improving teacher performance. \n\nAs Nielsen summarizes, \u201cwe must remove, or\nradically modify, our state certification laws. I\u2019m not suggesting that we\neliminate schools of education, but we must induce them to prove their ability\nto train and graduate effective teachers. By eliminating their monopoly\nposition, schools of education would have to do just that.\u201d Perhaps some education\nschools would have to close. Others would have to reform. But the net effect\nwould be of benefit to our children.\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One article in a recent Education Week popped out of the page: \u201cAfter Career Overhauling Ed. Schools, Levine to Step Down, Foundation head known for lambasting teacher training.\u201d The article refers to Arthur Levine, president of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, who will now remain at the foundation in a senior fellow role. The strong title is well deserved. Levine came to the position with the intention of either fixing the existing model of teacher preparation or \u201creinvent[ing] it.\u201d He has been recognized for \u201cspearhead[ing] several initiatives designed to improve the preparation of educators.\u201d In 2006 he stated teacher-prep programs were \u201cunruly and disordered, they\u2019re treated as a cash cow by universities.\u201d His views parallel those of Don Nielsen, Read More ›<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":343,"featured_media":2318,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_editorskit_title_hidden":false,"_editorskit_reading_time":0,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","footnotes":""},"categories":[48,49],"tags":[],"coauthors":[1062],"class_list":["post-2309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education-policy","category-teaching"],"acf":[],"author_names":["Bailey Takacs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/343"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2309\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2309"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2309"}],"wp:action-assign-author":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post\/2309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}