I don't necessarily advocate eliminating ed schools, but here are some ideas regarding the positives that might come out of it:
- Adminstrators would have to think harder and be creative about deciding who is best qualified to teach in their school. They can no longer assume anyone coming out of an established school of education will be adequate.
- Professional development for hired teachers might be taken more seriously because there might be less education-specific training beforehand. Maybe more "life-time learning" takes place. Maybe fruitful mentorships for novice teachers become more common.
- Stigma associated with teacher ed. programs is no longer relevant, so maybe the applicant pool of teachers improves.
Eliminating Ed Schools would improve schools by improving the potential pool of teachers.
Let's be honest, Ed Schools primarily appeal to those with low opportunity costs (i.e., the not very bright) in other professions.
However, eliminating the Ed Schools does nothing to guarantee that the bureaucrats in charge of hiring will choose the more qualified applicants teaching on a lark.
Your premise is screwy. "Schools" don't need improvement. Most suburban schools are excellent and do a good to great job, for example. Many like to pretend that all schools are equally bad, but the fact is that the top 10% of kids are taking harder classes in high school than their parents ever dreamed of. The next 40-50% is doing about as well as always.
So the real question isn't "How do we improve schools?" but "How do we teach less intelligent kids in a world that thinks everyone should go to college?"
I'm with disgruntled, more or less.
The current state of ed schools is mostly a symptom not the disease. The attitude disgruntled ascribes to educrats is also a symptom, a seperate symptom but not the disease.
Closing them down, a politically ridiculous notion, wouldn't effect the underlying cause.
Jenny -- After re-reading the article I am amazed at what ed schools are set up to do and not do. For the most part they do NOT prepare teachers for the classroom. Nor do they believe that is what they are charged with doing. Did I misread this?
So...what do they need to do? Two things -- either ed schools need to become vocal about schools having a true mentor system with real master teachers mentoring the new teachers for the first several years of their career and yes, eliminating tenure or second, education/teacher training becomes a master level program. In this scenario students who want to teach would have a liberal arts or whatever major with an education minor. The students who want to teach will be tested to see if they were qualified to enter graduate school. In graduate school they would have the ability to teach in demonstration schools, get constructive feedback on their teaching skills/style - what does and does not work, be video taped, get help with classroom management, lesson plans, working with disruptive students, handling larger classes, etc.
By doing this you would raise the professionalism of the teaching profession. Better teachers, doing a better job of teaching and connecting with students will be able to demand and get higher pay.
Parents would need to be educated about their role in the education of the student. Parents would need to be held accountable, just as teachers and students should be, to make sure everyone is doing whatever it takes for the child to learn.
Just my thoughts --
Elizabeth
Schools of education can reform via NIST's Education Criteria for Performance Excellence. Initial challenges will be Categories 4 (Measurement, Analysis, and Knowledge Management), 6 (Process Management) and 7 (Results). Four school districts, one community college, one business college, and one university (UW Stout) have achieved national recognition under the NIST criteria.
Education philosophy matters because it provides the foundation for teacher dispositions. If a teacher's real interest is coaching and students want the best grade for the least effort, what should we expect? Even Thurgood Marshall needed a Charles Hamilton Houston. Aspirational goals from education adequacy lawsuits should underly education philosophy and ethics (because they set a high standard that ought to be legally binding). However, education philosophy is the domain of individual school districts, which ed schools should accommodate, not dictate. Boston University integrates ethics in teacher prep. Ed schools, school boards, administrators, and politicians must clarify mutual expectations. (That would be Category 1, leadership.)
Best practice identification and deployment matters. New teachers should know to look for effect size measured by meaningful (broad and valid) instruments. If ed schools followed Jeanne Chall's lead and paid heed to the data, navigating the curriculum and pedagogy wars would be much easier for all concerned. There should be no excuses for ignoring the evidence, whether Brazosport or Baltimore (http://www.baltimorecp.org). Value-added metrics would also be useful.
The soft skills that contribute to student engagement need clear analysis. Have videos of exemplary instruction received scrutiny from objective ethnographers, psychologists, and acting coaches--with an eye toward reproducing the soft skills, rather than validating a preconceived ideology? If so, why the dispute regarding TIMSS video (http://www.nychold.com/read-math-curr.html)?
NCATE accreditation needs renegotiation state-by-state to align with expectations from NIST, adequacy lawsuits, and local districts. North Central Association has aligned to NIST (at the community college and district/LEA level); NCATE can follow their lead. Ditto for the subject matter specific Specialized Professional Associations: NCTM, NCSS, NSTA, NCTE, etc.
The EdD should probably be integrated with a Masters of Education Administration, modelled after an MBA. There's a reason for "preferring to work with business schools:" Teams of MBA students actually provide real help to real businesses.
Thoughts?
No one has really touched on this but it's simple economics - if you lower a barrier to entry then you will create more competition. Ed Schools are an unnecssary barrier that many people chose not to surmount. More people may enter the teaching profession in response to their desires and life circumstances if they didn't have to jump through pointless hoops.
It's perhaps bad form to note that both Medicine and Law would also improve if the artificial entry barriers protecting those cartels were eliminated.
Disgruntled, suppose we eliminated law and medical schools as requirements to practice in those professions. How would the practice of the professions improve?
What if we continued with Ed schools, but created a difficult and meaningful exam to get a teaching license?
The direct instruction people say it takes two years of instruction in the classroom to teach a teacher how to teach low performers effectively. So, certainly there is a need for for a school for teaching these kinds of difficult to teach children.
At one time, you could study under a senior lawyer for a set number of years in many states to be eligible to take the bar exam in lieu of law school. This may still be the case in some states.
What if we continued with Ed schools, but created a difficult and meaningful exam to get a teaching license?
Why continue on with Ed. schools though? Can we use the past as an indicator for the future? They've failed at improving the practice but are they going to reform and actually create positive results? If so, how? More likely, they've blown their credibility by crying wolf far too often and not maintaining professional standards of training and research.
It's one thing to say that there needs to be a "difficult and meaninful exam" but what on the exam would make it so difficult and meaningful?
Also, if the exam is a way to bypass the necessity of Ed. School, then what incentive is there for students to subject themselves to an Ed. School process? Why wouldn't they rather spend their time and money on other educational efforts and then write the exam and get their teaching certificate?
The overarching question remains: what added value do Ed. Schools provide? Frankly, I don't see any. Well, not in a program-major sort of frame but if Education could be studied as a minor, a handful of courses filled with actual useful knowledge and stripped of filler material to stretch time and fill the weeks, and coordinated with an apprenticeship program during the schooling which reinforces the content of the handful of Ed. classes, then I could see the use of a much reduced Educational faculty.
what added value do Ed. Schools provide
"To Touch the Future: Transforming the Way Teachers are Taught" suggests ed schools could be self-policing. I've outlined steps to make that happen--and provide independent oversight. Ohio currently has HB 107 which provides a window for state board action to direct reform in ed schools.
However, I've not gotten constructive feedback on the specific things ed schools need to be doing to prepare teachers. I need a list I can take to state board members.
Should new teachers be prepared to evaluate professional development to direct their own continuing education?
Should they be prepared to teach Singapore math and NCTM/NSF curricula?
Should they be prepared to integrate a course of study with educational software? Evaluate the effectiveness of educational software?
What should they know about Direct Instruction before graduating?
I could really use some help with this!
Thanks!
Ed schools haven't failed. If they had, there wouldn't be any of them and there are lots so they are successful. The confusion revolves around assuming that ed schools exist for their stated purpose, educating teachers, when that's self-evidently not so.
If educating teachers where the primary purpose of ed schools then their graduates would walk into their first professional position with the experience and insight of all the landmark teachers who preceeded them. They wouldn't have to tediously discover each and every skill, fact, move and reality on their own or with the aid of a friendly, experienced collegue. They'd know the bonehead mistakes to avoid because they did well in the "Classic Classroom Mistakes" section of their Advanced Classroom Management class and aced the practical.
But if any graduates of ed schools are prepared to step into a classroom it's a distinct minority.
Before ed schools can be fixed, in any reasonable sense, it would be good to identify who views them as not being broken at all and why.
Before ed schools can be fixed, in any reasonable sense, it would be good to identify who views them as not being broken at all and why.
This group consists of all the professors and deans of the existing Ed schools. The reason why is that they follow an ideological agenda and are immune to the increasing amount of evidence that shows they are wrong.
identify who views them as not being broken
Arthur Levine, president of Teachers College of Columbia University, spoke to this: "we increasingly see the institution in distorted caricature, and we develop unrealistic expectations for what it should be able to accomplish."
I think he minimizes the brokenness of ed schools, and other deans are likely similar in that regard. That said, I'm impressed with the nearby ed school deans, as are nearby superintendents.
The key to fixing this is for your local state representative to support whatever legislative enabling might be required for your state board of regents to take action.
The first step would be to express concern about Dr. Levine's comments to your local ed school dean as follows:
"Dear Dean,
I read Dr. Levine's editorial, and wanted to confirm that our state's ed schools won't suffer the same plight as Teachers College. ... Perhaps the historic leadership exercised by Teachers College results in defeatism among educators of future teachers. ... Perhaps education schools could match expectations of business schools via the Baldrige "Education Criteria for Performance Excellence." ... I am especially keen to know how your school achieves alignment regarding Baldrige item 3.1a(2), 'Student, STAKEHOLDER, and Market Knowledge ... HOW do you use relevant information and feedback from current, former, and future students and STAKEHOLDERS.' Please let me know if my inquiry is better served via another means (search of college or state regents web site, Freedom of Information Request, etc.). Finally, I am committed to work with state Representative Whoever to ensure that future direction from the state board of regents or state legislature helps your institution overcome all impediments as it strives toward performance excellence."
Writing such a letter might be an indicator in high school civics. In any case, blaming the ed school for your failure to take action is, at best, hypocritical and counterproductive.
What should they know about Direct Instruction before graduating?
Take a look at the University of Oregon's Ed school curricula. That school in particular focuses much more on what a teacher needs to know to be a successful classroom teacher with 90% less education theory nnsense.
"This group consists of all the professors and deans of the existing Ed schools. The reason why is that they follow an ideological agenda and are immune to the increasing amount of evidence that shows they are wrong."
"Take a look at the University of Oregon's Ed school curricula. That school in particular focuses much more on what a teacher needs to know to be a successful classroom teacher with 90% less education theory nnsense."
Try not contradicting yourself.
Reading the article Eric linked, Expectations for Our Teachers Are Misplaced, is a pretty good example of someone who sees nothing wrong in ed schools although in this case it's an example of tendentious defensiveness and hamhanded buck-passing:
- There's nothing wrong with ed schools that wouldn't be fixed by raising teacher salary's, always an applause-getter, so that the field, and the schools, could attract a better class of student then that with which they are currently afflicted.
- If the expectations of the graduates were reasonable, as they are for medical, law and engineering school graduates, then ed school graduates wouldn't be seen as wanting and neither would ed schools. And it's the fault of the K-12 schools for not turning out well-educated graduates.
- If the unreasonable expectations of ed schools were moderated, fixing the public education system is the example given of unreasonable expectations, then ed schools wouldn't be seen as failing.
The complaints about ed schools stem from factors over which the ed schools have no control or responsibility, i.e. there's nothing wrong with the ed schools as far as Mr. Klein is concerned.
He ends with a one-paragraph whine-a-thon in which he blames everyone but Judge Crater and everything but the direction of the prevailing wind:
To expect schools of education to carry out a litany of other activities is irresponsible and unfair. It is looking for someone to blame rather than solving the real problems that we face: the low salaries and status of teachers; the failure of school administrators and their boards to turn around failing schools; the absence of induction programs for new teachers, and, in the end, the disconnect between high schools and colleges that leaves many students adrift. We can do better.
Trouble is, Mr. Klein's carefully crafted defense of ed schools doesn't get us any closer to the purpose that drives their results. That requires looking at the product of ed schools: graduates.
If you compare the experience of ed school graduates to the experience of, say, engineering school graduates, Mr. Klein's comparisons-of-convenience come apart.
A proto-engineer wants to go to the best engineering school because it gives him a better shot at the best engineering outfits, the highest salary, the most challenging projects. There's a fairly clear expectation that going to the best engineering school leads to the best jobs because the best schools select the best students and provide them the opportunity to get the best education and that's what the best engineering firms are looking for. The belief is fairly clear and obvious: quality sells.
A proto-teacher, by contrast, has a teaching certification as a major part if not the primary goal of their education. Problem is, teaching certificates don't come with GPAs and if they did, who would care? The K-12 Eden in deepest suburbia would probably attract quite a few resumes and be inclined to look for teachers from a prestigious schools but any resume that doesn't indicate certification is second-class and every one that does is first-class. If the ed school produces graduates with teaching certificates it's a success because that's what everyone, students, school districts, politicians, want.
Mike, you must have missed this part of the last sentence of my first quote: "immune to the increasing amount of evidence that shows they are wrong"
The University of Oregon doesn't have this problem since what they do is in accord with the current Ed research.
Your sniping aim has been worse than usually lately.
Allen,
You meant Levine, correct? Not Klein.
I'm puzzled by the article. In the past I think he's criticised Ed schools, but this is the company tune, no doubt about it.
THOUGHTS....
HAVE ANY OF YOU BEEN TEACHERS???
HOW LONG AND WHAT DID YOU TEACH?
MIKE
A comment above mentioned getting rid of ed. schools. Someone countered with getting rid of law and medical school as well. Before I became a teacher I was a paralegal. Every new associate right out of law school had lots of book learning but no experience at application. I had to teach them how to file a lawsuit, how to complete title research, how to deal with clients, etc. My point is this. Ed. school is necessary, however, aspiring teachers need to be in a real classroom much earlier and for longer periods of time. In the beginning they need to spend the majority of their time observing the teacher and most importantly the students. It takes a new teacher a year or two to become accustomed to the fast paced environment of the classroom and to hone direct instruction skills. And.....to Disgruntled I don't exactly like your comment that I teach because I'm not capable of being "bright" in other careers. Many teachers today have had one or two other careers before they entered the classroom. I was very successful paralegal and later I owned my own legal research company. It is simply too hard to realize that there are people in this material world that will sacrifice a huge paycheck for personal growth and to spark personal growth in others? It's sad that you don't understand that.
Have Carnine & Engelmanm really impacted teacher prep at U of Oregon? The school looks remarkably inbred.
Might our hypothetical 20-something teacher-to-be relate to the following? Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk, 7(2), 197-220 "The Impact of Direct Instruction on Elementary Students’ Reading Achievement in an Urban School District:"
The call for educators and policymakers to consider the results of research when selecting reform models for high poverty schools is heeded, at least occasionally. ... the search for a curriculum with a research-proven track record led members of the Baltimore Curriculum Project to select DI, ... Although it was possible to find an educationally significant effect size (.25 or greater) using measures of oral reading fluency or CTBS reading vocabulary as outcome variables, the study did not uncover an educationally significant effect size of DI on reading comprehension.
If educating teachers where the primary purpose of ed schools then their graduates would walk into their first professional position with the experience and insight of all the landmark teachers who preceeded them.
Let's continue that a little further then: all law students should leave school prepared to argue cases before the Supreme Court, following in the footsteps of those landmark lawyers who came before them.
Ridiculous of course.
Mike, about to finish my 13th year of teaching.
elementaryhistoryteacher,
You're taking my comments too personally. I was simply pointing out that ed majors tend not to be very bright. I've read numerous studies documenting this fact. This, of course, does not imply that you are not bright, or that there aren't many bright teachers.
And before you get too self-righteous, I should mention that I am currently a teacher.
Generalization: Anyone who throws around acronyms is a part of the problem rather than the solution.
Ed. schools are essentially charged with teaching theory. There is nothing wrong with this. The improvement of teachers must come from actual, competent mentoring programs in the schools. This is, sadly, unlikely because it will cost real money to take good teachers of teachers (not just good teachers of kids) out of the classroom to assist other teachers.
Of course, it could be done, but with so much of our society so disconnected from the schools...
You're taking my comments too personally. I was simply pointing out that ed majors tend not to be very bright. I've read numerous studies documenting this fact.
The "reform"/anti-public school crowd tried to push this claim about 6 or 7 months ago. Of course, if you took the time to read the actual study it said that high school seniors who said they were going into teaching had lower SAT scores. It said nothing about the actual people who became teachers.
"Disgruntled, suppose we eliminated law and medical schools as requirements to practice in those professions. How would the practice of the professions improve?"
This is a false analogy. These professional schools teach a body of knowledge. In contrast, ed schools and the associated letter-soup organizations are beholden so some bizarre anti-knowledge cult called constructivism. Closing them down would be beneficial in many respects. For one thing, it would enable professionals from other areas to enter the field who now recoil in horror at the thought of having to pass through these vacuous indoctrination mills and who are consequently deterred.
Ed. schools are essentially charged with teaching theory.
By whom? Governors? Legislators? Taxpayers? Parents? Teachers? Students? Unions? Governors? Chief State School Officers? Courts (as in educational adequacy lawsuits)? Other university divisions?
Or have ed schools ignored the legitimate requirements of their stakeholders and failed to adequately self-regulate?
Ragnarok wrote:
You meant Levine, correct? Not Klein.
Dang. I wonder why the spell-checker didn't catch that? Oh yeah.
Mike in Texas wrote:
Let's continue that a little further then: all law students should leave school prepared to argue cases before the Supreme Court, following in the footsteps of those landmark lawyers who came before them.
Let's do. But let's try being a trifle less self-serving, shall we?
All law students should leave law school with an understanding of the foundations of the law, familiarity with legal terminology and theory as well as knowledge and understanding of landmark decisions and laws.
How's that, Mike? Not quite as precious and contrived as your example I know but obfuscation wasn't my intent.
The "reform"/anti-public school crowd tried to push this claim about 6 or 7 months ago.
Actually, the claim/information that ed school students are at the low end of the SAT spectrum has been around a lot longer the 6 or 7 months. Similarly, the disdain in which EdD's are held has also been around a lot longer the 6 or 7 months. Sorry Jenny but that's the view of people who live and die under the lash of ruthless intellectual rigor.
Eric wrote:
Or have ed schools ignored the legitimate requirements of their stakeholders and failed to adequately self-regulate?
Who are those legitimate stakeholders? Let's identify them and we can, perhaps, determine what their stake is.
Once again Allen, you're spreading an un-truth. The study was about high school students who said they were going to be teachers, not ed school students.
How's that, Mike? Not quite as precious and contrived as your example I know but obfuscation wasn't my intent.
Speaking of untruths, where is the proof ed schools are doing a poor job? All I've heard out of the "reform" crowd is opinion.
Mike,
"Once again Allen, you're spreading an un-truth. The study was about high school students who said they were going to be teachers, not ed school students."
Compared to kids who said they wuz goin' to be doctors, lawyers, engineers, scientists, etc. Looks like an apples to apples comparision to me, don't you agree?
But in the case of the GRE scores to which I believe KDeRosa linked, you shifted your ground and argued that they were irrelevant.
So which is it? Unfair or irrelevant?
Once again Allen, you're spreading an un-truth.
If you bother to check the data you find that Mike is not completely wrong. We went through this in January and I actually did check the data:
Education majors come in third-to-last place on the Math portion. Only "Agriculture or Natural Resources" and "Public Affairs and Services" majors scored worse.
In the Verbal portion--which should be a teacher's strong point, or so we thought--Education majors took the silver medal in the race for last place. "Public Affairs and Services" again occupied the basement.
You'll note that prospective farmers scored next lowest to the prospective teachers.
Mike seems to hang all of his hopes on the fact that the test subjects were all prospective education majors and that it's possible that all of the low scorers transferred into more competitive programs with their low scores or dropped out of school, thus leaving only the high scoring prospective teachers to actually complete the intellectually demanding education school program and embark on a teaching career.
Unfortunately, when we look at actual teachers who apply for graduate study the rank order is about the same, thus popping the balloon that is Mike's hypothesis. Go to page 19 of the GRE 2005-2006 Guide To The Use Of Scores and you see that Ed. majors had a mean score of 450 V (ranging from 418-462 for the different ed. disciplines) and 534 Q (495-548). Only accountants scored lower on verbal with a score of 415, and for quant., social workers scored 468, home economists 498, student counselors 500, special ed. majors 502, public administrators 513, communication majors 533. You don't even want to see what the mean scores for physics were.
So, our actual teachers who go on to graduate school have better mastery of English than our accountants, phew, but every other discipline outscores Ed. majors. Our teachers have better mastery of mathematics than do our social workers, but at least some of the Ed. sub-disciplines are better at math than PR flacks and gov't administrators.
Overall, I say that the truism that ed. majors score at the bottom of the barrel is an accurate assessment.
See "How to Build a Better Teacher" (__Policy Review__ ). See also the discussion of teacher credential requirements in Chubb and Moe, __Politics, Markets, and America's Schools__.
Years ago the __Kappan__ published an article by Kenneth Adelman which related scores on standardized tests for graduate school admission (GRE Verbal, GRE Math, LSAT, GMAT) to undergraduate major. Social work, Journalism and Education majors scored near the bottom of the rankings. Jim Linn, then the Dean of the Honors program at the University of Hawaii, told me that, at UH, Education majors had the highest GPA in their major and the lowest GPA outside their major of all undergraduate majors at UH.
"What works?" is an empirical question which only experiment can answer. If the State (government, generally) would subsidize, at 90% of the per-pupil regular-ed budget, education options outside the government school system, through tuition vouchers, education tax credits, or (my preference) contracting with parents to provide for their children's education if parents apply for the contract, we would soon have a basis for comparison of various factors relating to student success, including teacher credentials. One function of a market is to conduct an on-going experiment in combining resources to meet the demand for goods and services. Markets innovate. Monopolies stagnate.
Sifting the wheat from the chaff in this thread, we get:
1. Many ed. schools spend an inordinate amount of time on non-practical theory - perhaps to pad things out to Bachelor's degree respeoctability, and to charge more tuition.
2. Even the best-prepared teacher will require on-the-job mentoring, just like other professionals.
3. One of the roadblocks to improving the level of education in general is the lack of deep knowledge of other subjects by teachers. Expanding the teaching pool by removing the protracted credential process would alleviate this.
- - - - - - - - -
Add it all up, and teaching would be greatly improved by shifting from a Bachelor's degree, pseudo-professional format to a shortened, practical course of study that people can do after/during other studies, or while working. This short intensive course would be followed by on-the-job mentoring.
Certification would consist of tests and classroom observation.
Let theory and research go back into the psych departments.
I am a mechanical engineer who would love to transition out of hi-tech into education as my late 40s approach... but I'm not about to sit through 4 years of gobbledygook, nor can I stop working.
Yet the educational system is dying for qualified math and science teachers, and we constantly hear horror stories of teachers who have mastered some abstract "theory of teaching" and think they don't need to know the subject matter to teach it.
So?
And I'll use the same arguements we had before.
How accurate of an assessment is the GRE? Has it been shown to be an accurate measure of what ALL students should have learned as an undergraduate?
Also, how accurate can a mulitple choice test of verbal ability be?
The GRE is not intended as a measure of what "all" students have (or should have) learned as "an" (sic) undergraduate. Like the SAT, it is intended as a predictor of success in school. These are related (someone who learned nothing in four undergraduate years is unlikely to benefit from grad school), but not the same. Every test represents a compromise of accuracy, reliability, validity, and cost. The subject area GRE tests are better measures of what an undergraduate has learned in that subject area, though I suspect that American-born Econ or Math majors would outscore Ed majors on the NTE or PRAXIS or GRE Ed exam (if such there be) if they scanned a sample of Ed texts for a couple of days.
Can a multiple choice test accurately measure verbal ability? A multiple choice test can be as accurate as you want. Accuracy refers to the probability that any two test takers will get the same score. Greater accuracy means a lower probability (finer differentiation).
An essay test is a multiple choice test. If I have available one page, 50 lines, 100 characters per line, and 100 characters (A,a,B,b...Z,z,1,!,2,@,...) available on the keyboard, I select a response from among the universe of 10**10,000 (ten to the ten thousand power) responses. This is a large number, but such a test is still a multiple choice test.
I spent the morning trying to find evidence that showed that teacher ed students are less intelligent than other students.
Teacher IQ is an extraneous factor, like the amount of parental support. We have to take the teachers as we get them, even if they aren't drawn from the brightest pool. Similarly, we have to assume that many students, especially the low performers, will not have sufficient parental support.
Any instructional program put into place by a school has to take these things into account. They should not be excuses for failure.
JennyD said:
"UPDATE: I spent the morning trying to find evidence that showed that teacher ed students are less intelligent than other students. I can't find any."
But you yourself said on this very blog that you had data that showed that the top 10% are evenly distributed across all disciplines, including ed schools; the next 40% contributes almost nothing to ed schools, and then a substantial contribution to ed schools from the bottom 50%.
Correct? Your archives should contain your original post, although for some reason they don't seem to be complete. You confirmed this in response to one of my comments.
So in this case I'd say your data trumps your anecdote.
Ragnarok, yes kind of. What I said was that the distribution of SAT/ACT scores fall that way. But I am not certain that these are indicators of intelligence. The scores are designed to predict success in college.
If I said it differently elsewhere, I will correct.
One of the commentors above said something about intelligence, or brightness. I wonder about measuring that in twenty-year-olds. what about laziness or disinterest?
Anyway, what I will agree with is that regardless of what kind of teaching pool we'd like to have, we still need to produce enough teachers to fill all 3 million teaching spots. That doesn't mean 3 million teachers a year, but it means several hundred thousand. That's a big group of people.
BTW, Rags, on a different topic altogether. Where did you get this screen name? Is it from a famous poem?
Tangoman wrote:
If you bother to check the data you find that Mike is not completely wrong. We went through this in January and I actually did check the data:
I missed that exchange so plead innocent. However, you ought to read what I wrote, not make assumptions from Mike's response. I heard/read the "teachers at the bottom of the academic heap" meme a lot longer then 6 or 7 months ago. Decades longer so this isn't some new affront to the dignity of the teaching profession. It's an affront with a lengthy pedigree.
Mike's just jerking a knee. Any vicious, hate-filled slur has to be met with a valiant response in defense of everything that's true, decent, reverent, brave, clean, blah, blah, blah. He's never displayed much interest in objective and measured debate which is understandable. He's got a mortgage and a self-image to defend. It's tough enough to manage objectivity when there's nothing personal at stake, all the more when there is.
Besides, I don't really care whether the data shows that teachers are, every one, as dumb as a turnip or transcendentally connected to a higher consciousness. I only care that the system of which teachers are a part produces the results for which I pay. I'm willing to grant validity to the assumption that an educated populace is necessary to the functioning of a democracy but then I'd damned well better get an educated populace since that's what I'm paying for.
To get back to the source of this thread - what to do about ed schools - there seems to be a pretty fair number of solutions and precious little in the way of analysis.
Some people believe there's nothing wrong with them that reasonable expectations wouldn't cure, some people think they're a refuge for the intellectually wretched and that external standards would provide the framework ed schools lack and need. Some people just want to nuke 'em.
While I have some sympathy for the "just nuke 'em" point of view - brevity being a insufficiently practiced virtue - it's not a practical solution, it's a visceral response. A practical solution requires that an accurate diagnosis preceed the selection of a treatment and the diagnosis hasn't been rendered or even all that actively pursued.
I've got my notions about the reason for the state of ed schools but I'd appreciate hearing/reading others provided they aren't of the "they're all idiots, that's why" school of thought. That's self-evidently not true, as attractive and concise as that view is.
JennyD said:
"Ragnarok, yes kind of. What I said was that the distribution of SAT/ACT scores fall that way. But I am not certain that these are indicators of intelligence. The scores are designed to predict success in college."
Sure, but I think you made the association in recounting your anecdote:
"I spent the morning trying to find evidence that showed that teacher ed students are less intelligent than other students. I can't find any....
...I have my own anecdote. The re SAT and ACT scores of students are my Ed School fall into the same range as students in all the other schools (literature, science and arts, business, social work, etc.). But the mean is slightly lower, meaning that there are more than 50 percent of students in the bottom half of the bell curve."
Also, though I could be wrong about this, I think people in general agree that high GRE scores indicate brightness/intelligence. Not sure how strong the correlation is, though.
As for my screen name, I took it from "The Weirdstone of Brisingamen" by Alan Garner, a fantasy novel. Nothing profound, just liked the sound of it.
tangoman, will know this for sure, but I'm pretty certain the correlation between SAT and IQ is about 0.82.
See http://members.shaw.ca/delajara/...jara/
index.html for more information than you'd care to know about IQ corerelations. You'll also notice a GRE to SAt correlationpage there as well.
And, in answer to JennyD's question the "laziness" and "motivation" factors are part of the reason the correlation isn't 1.0.
UPDATE: Some have said that closing Ed Schools would improve the pool of teacher candidates. What evidence is there for that conclusion? It might be very correct. I just want to know.
I don't think there's much evidence. Nobody has closed down all the ed schools yet.
But I thought this was a 'thought experiment' - one can certainly imagine ways in which closing ed schools would improve the pool of teacher candidates, but that doesn't mean it would actually happen. It's just a possible benefit.
So, if you actually use the 2005 GRE data for Ed schoolers (combined v &m score = 984) you see this represents an IQ of about 110. Not to shabby; though this does respresent the cream of the crop. I think its safe to say that in theory most Ed schoolers are smart enough to be able to teach effectively.
The fact that most of the teaching today is not effective can be blamed on lots of things (Ed schools not doing their job is certainly one of them), but I see no reason why teaching cannot be made effective using our existing teachers.
Ken said:
"So, if you actually use the 2005 GRE data for Ed schoolers (combined v &m score = 984) you see this represents an IQ of about 110."
This works out to about the 50th %ile V and about the 33rd %ile Q. Not impressive, though I agree with Ken that they can probably do the job.
But they aren't rocket scientists, and we shouldn't treat them as if they were. As I've said before, all you need is reasonable (~average) intelligence and a suitable temperament, plus good training.
I personally don't think the GRE/IQ translations are all that useful, but because several people seem interested, there was an article in Personality and Individual Differences a few years ago that reported V+Q+A GRE scores for specialized fields. The highest mean was 1906 in Astronomy and the lowest was 1376 for Early Childhood Education. There were many education-related fields somewhere in the middle;
Secondary Education: 1623
Curriculum and Instruction: 1545
Education Evaluation and Research: 1505
Elementary Education: 1475
Education Administration: 1430
Special Education : 1410
Again, there are all sorts of selection issues that make it pretty difficult to take anything meaningful away from this.
No one has yet mentioned this so I thought I'd throw it into the mix - when we look at the GRE scores for prospective graduate school students, we also need to consider that the acceptance rates for the different schools and majors vary quite a bit.
Therefore, we may see a moderate score for biologists or engineers, but if their specialties have a low acceptance rate then the GRE scores of those who actually do make it into their graduate specialty will be higher.
It's fairly well known that Graduate Schools of Education, as a nationwide category, have a tremendously high acceptance rate, so the parsing we see in the application process for other degree fields is much reduced for education and the GRE scores of the test takers and the admitted students shouldn't be to disparate.
Also, JennyD is at a prestigious institutiuon so it will be more selective than other institutions, but it's graduates don't get that much of a premium effect in the job market from the institutional prestige. It also makes sense that if she samples the SAT and GRE scores for her student body that the scores will be above the national means for ed. majors.
It would be interesting to see a study on the Ed. School graduate acceptance rate from prstigious institutions compared to non-prestigious institutions, or the acceptance rates from one institutions professional schools, say the Ed. School versus the Medical School.
Jenny, you know perfectly well that the low achievements of education majors and masters have been well documented.
What exactly is it that you think the teacher competency tests are all about? You think the people who failed the tests majored in math or science?
Tangoman wrote:
but it's graduates don't get that much of a premium effect in the job market from the institutional prestige.
Which is pretty counterintuitive, right?
Obviously, the better school, as measured by prestige, should send graduates out into the world that are distinctly more competent or better prepared then their peers from lesser schools. Better qualifications should equate to a differential in pay but it doesn't for ed school grads. Amble over to the med school and you'll get a very different view of the value of quality.
Would anyone care to venture a guess as to why graduating from a prestigous ed school is comparable to peeing in your pants while wearing a dark suit?
Jenny, you know perfectly well that the low achievements of education majors and masters have been well documented.
Then it shouldn't be all that difficult to back up your statements with some proof.
Then it shouldn't be all that difficult to back up your statements with some proof.
When you've been dealt a bad hand you should know when to fold.
Published in The Nation a prould Leftist magazine - When Teachers Flunk the Test:
In 1998, Virginia's then-governor, conservative Republican James Gilmore, reported that as many as one-third of would-be teachers in his state flunked the test. Virginia has the country's highest cutoff score for Praxis I, and experts say scarcely one-half of the prospective teachers nationwide who took the test would have made the Virginia cut.
* Fewer than one-half of the nation's 1,200 teachers colleges meet professional standards of accreditation.
* Among the 21 states using the Praxis I math test to screen teachers, most set cutoff scores so low that applicants could miss 40 percent of questions and still pass.
What is astonishing is that the vast majority of professional educators and school administrators interviewed for this article did not believe that failing the basic tests should be sufficient to disqualify a teacher from remaining on the job. In other words, the general mind-set is that just because a teacher doesn't know the material he or she is responsible for passing on to students, that teacher shouldn't be excluded from teaching that material.
If a teacher doesn't know math, and has been hired to teach math, they shouldn't be in the classroom pretending to teach it. This would be equivalent to working in a hospital where there's an opening for an anesthesiologist and they hire you to bore the patients to sleep because they've got to fill the space. You really don't know anything about anesthesiology, but you've seen the tubes and, gosh, the nurses love you and it seems it might work. Everyone would totally reject that idea in any other profession and it should be rejected in the teaching profession."
This is not rocket science. The tests that teachers are being asked to take are not just basic, they're painfully basic. One of the issues that comes up is the claim that the content of the tests is too rigorous, but it is only what we expect the children to know at the end of their journey with us. On top of that the state sets its own cutoff score, usually way below the 80 percent limit. The fact that teachers are not passing these basic tests is outrageous."
The article also reprints some questions from the exam. How could any college graduate, never mind junior high graduate, fail these questions:
1. Select the most appropriate word to complete the sentence below.
Both storms were bad, but Friday's was than Sunday.
A. worse
B. worser
C. worst
D. worsest
3. Which of the following is a complete sentence?
A. Clark, a bright and interested student.
B. He learns quickly.
C. Some concentration problems tough.
D. Writes very well.
6. In a class, 60 percent of the students need new text books. What fraction of the students need new textbooks?
A. 10/6
B. 3/5
C. 6/100
D. 6/9
I feel a little dirty relying on anything printed in the Nation.
See Learning Curves for some more comically wrong pre-service teacher math test answers.
http://learningcurves.blogspot.c...o-
children.html
TangoMan,
6/10, methinks, not 10/6? 
"Then it shouldn't be all that difficult to back up your statements with some proof."
I did, earlier. Why do you suppose there was a lawsuit about the CBEST? Because the passrates for this absurdly simple test were abysmal.
I can't figure out if Jenny is being disingenuous about the low stats, or if she is really that clueless about the education major's low reputation.
Can't resist this, try googling for Sara Boyd and CBEST.
This woman was Vice-Principal of Menlo-Atherton High, took the CBEST four times in six years, "...twice scoring the equivalent of zero in
math."
She joined the suit against the CBEST.
I've never met a high school teacher who majored in education. Maybe an MA in education later, but their undergraduate degrees were in other fields.
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