I can sympathize with this issue, but I also wonder if part of the problem lies in an idea that colleges have to be a "factory" for the kind of teachers that each state's educational system wants. Nobody wants true innovation and excellence from their colleges in this area, so much as conformity to a particular view of education that the state is partnering with them to engender. It would be great to see some sort of national standards for what is expected, much as there is in the counseling, legal, or other fields, but what we really want is conformity to an idea of a local "system." While it might be easy to mask incompetence as "innovation," it's also possible that true innovation is not encouraged, and the modern teacher-education program is, in reality, just doing what the state expects it to do.

Newsflash! Before standardized testing came along, our public education system was just as much the deplorable joke that it is now. The pathetic, insulting, SED programs that somehow translate to a professional-level credential is beyond me. I continuously ask my friends with school-bound kids to please take a look at the comical SED graduate courses found in any university before they dismiss home schooling. At least with home-schooling, there's at least a minimum chance they might discover the great books and literature of Western civilization. Public schools do a great job of lobotomizing millions of otherwise naturally curious youths each year. Walk up to any American high school student and ask him/her to list which reputable, scholarly books were prescribed this year and you can expect to see a look of utter discombobulation. Huh? What would a scholarly book look like?
Actually, the way to prove what our high school students know is to walk up to them face to face and ask them as I constantly do. Their ignorance is staggering. Do you think they can tell you which century the Vietnam or Korean wars transpired, etc.? Guess again!

You can't teach the kind of mind an educator needs. Intellectual curiosity, what used to be the hallmark of any teacher, is something that can't really be tested for and can't really be taught. But, it is precisely what is absent from the "education" curriculum. The students generally do not exhibit the "symptoms" of having it any more than those who too often administer such departments.
For too long now education has become a pencil pushers paradise and a real teachers hell.
And it all begins with the education departments in our universities.
When a future highschool History, Math, Science, or English teacher can't manage above 3.0 in the area that the will be teaching in this grade inflated age then we have a problem.
I teach at one of the top universities in the United States, with an education department ranked amongst the best in the country. The future teachers in the subject that I teach are nearly always the worst students in the class. I don't expect them to be the most gifted at the subject--that is for the majors--but I do expect them to be engaging the subject with the expectation of teaching it one day. Sadly, this is rarely the case. In fact, education majors are the first to complain that something is too hard. The first to ask the dreaded, "is this really necessary? Why do I have to do this?" Questions. They are the ones who are sloppy students forgetting about assignments, sending annoying late night emails asking for special considerations, showing up to class not fully prepared, etc.
Heck, most business majors or majors from other "diametrical" disciplines are far better than education majors.
It is terrifying to think of these students as the ones staging the future "first contact" with my field for some young mind.
I cannot believe it is any different in other disciplines.
For too long us "major" faculty have ignored education folk. We happily took their money and considered ourselves lucky that we didn't have too think too much about high school, junior high, or elementary school children that weren't our own.
No more. The Education Major is a sub-emphasis. Not fit for its own degree path. It has clearly demonstrated an academia wide inability to develop itself with anything resembling the rigor of other established fields.
No longer should the "minor" disciplines of the education "major" allow their ethos to be carried forward by these hack "practitioners." Instead, we need to de-emphasize the education department's role and raise the major's standards. An English or Physics major can get a BA/S (respectively) with a teaching emphasis and be considered qualified to teach grades 7-12, while someone with an education major can teach grades 1-6.
Our system worked when it was Math majors who taught math in high school, she would've been armed with dozens or more of classes in the major, including a handful of upper level courses or a capstone class. Now an education major with a minor in math teaches the subject, and after only a handful of math classes (typically lower level courses) they are ill prepared to teach their subject. That is messed up.
And that, along with the poor funding for public ed, and the over reliance on testing is what is wrong with the United States public education system.

Jack Cade needs to look at the evidence on the teacher education students. Most of those pursuing secondary education licenses in fact major in their teaching field and, contrary to his report, education students earn the same grades in the courses in the major as the non-education majors do. At least that has been the case in the 100 plus programs accredited by the Teacher Education Accreditation Council.

Teaching is a talent. Teaching is a calling as well. Back in the "good old days" when women had
few options (school teaching and nursing), the best and the brightest women became teachers.
As more professions opened up for women, the best and brightest chose other fields because
the pay and opportunities were greater.
Now, we are left with the "less than the best", those without talent and those for whom it is not
a calling.
Combine this with low pay and working conditions and requirements that absolutely get in the
way of excellent teaching, why would anyone consider or stay in the profession?
Schools of Education have been "strange bedfellows" with legislatures who have mandated and
required so many courses, leaving very little time to master a subject, such as math, biology
French, English literature or history. Very simply, you cannot teach what you do not know or
understand.
Schools of Education have failed us. They have cluttered the curriculum, farmed out the
student teaching supervision to adjuncts, and added more and more courses to justify their
own research and paychecks, forcing public school teachers back on campus every summer.
The system is broken.
Mastering a subject should come first, for middle school and high school teachers.
Then teaching experience. Undergraduates who have never taught, who do not know know
their subject matter, have very little interest in education courses. After they have taught
for a year or two, they find methods and pedagogy much more interesting.

It's pretty clear to me how this one's going to break down. My personal observations jibe with those of jack_cade. The "studies" may say something else, but why so many of my colleagues in the humanities and liberal arts disciplines across the country make the exact same assessment as jack_cade requires some sort of explanation.

That said, I think that much of the problem stems from the very fact that, at some point, the academy began to offer actual education degrees. Once that move was made, "education" became a field of study which boasted "experts." Why is this a problem? I don't oppose the acknowledgment of new fields of study and their experts. It's that "education" is the very endeavor in which ALL of us on the faculty are DIRECTLY involved, and have been, collectively, for centuries upon centuries. When institutions of higher learning opened education departments, they implicitly handed over the authority for these new "experts" to tell everyone else at the institution what they should be doing and how. Everyone in education will deny this claim because it sounds too shocking to be true, but anyone who has traced the academic culture for the past several decades can clearly see that what I say is indisputably true. The rise of the accreditation commissions with their ever-increasing hold on the whole process of education and the historical correlation to declining standards in the institutions they accredit are troubling phenomena that need to be investigated with a presently impermissible explanation on the table for consideration: that, maybe, the experts are the problem.

Indeed, education has now become the new queen of the sciences, promoting itself as a metadiscipline-cum-gatekeeper overseeing every other discipline in academia. By sending large numbers of its graduates along an HOV-lane from graduate school straight into university administration, schools of education have become a Brahmin caste in the university community, despite the comparatively low educational standards in Ed.D. programs. Arthur Levine and others have been waving a banner of reform for years, and yet nothing seems to change in this area.

Several comments from a thirty-year veteran who got a teaching certificate in six months (long after getting a PHD in English Literature):
1. All bachelors' degrees should be in the discipline, NOT the teaching of the discipline.
2. Professors in a college's education department should have an active teacher's certificate, preferably one which requires not only teaching in K - 12, but taking their colleagues' courses.
3. All undergraduate teacher certification programs should include at least two years of student teaching.
4. Graduate Education Programs (Master/Doctor of Education) are even more vacuous, irrelevant, and uncontrolled. Fly-in, week-end, and summer programs. I wrote my first principal's doctoral thesis for Nova University: he got his E.D.; I, tenure.

As a current graduate student in one the so-called "vacuous" masters programs, I regret to admit that that conditions are not academically rigorous, the work expected less than intellectually stimulating, and the required coursework infiltrated with state-mandated endorsement fillers. I easily concede most of the points listed throughout the comments; however, I must assert that teaching, whether skill or art, must be taught through a combination of experience and guidance and coursework. Content knowledge is not everything. In fact, those (mostly middle class white female) teachers entering the profession without professional preparation are missing some of the essential knowledge bases that make a difference -- multicultural education, sociology, etc. A teacher knowledgeable on content but who perpetuates gender stratification in education through ignorance, for example, is not a good teacher. Yet, one could also argue that even though one has taken courses intended to interrupt these thought processes does not necessarily grow from the experience...

New Theologian commented that "at some point, the academy began to offer actual education degrees." The off-handed note seems to imply that was relatively recently. I'm not sure when the "first" came in name, but in the US normal schools began in the middle of the 19th century. The focus on education as a discipline by itself, and the rise of the EdD, came out the Progressive Era and the teens-thirties movement intertwined with the rise of the modern high school (required school attendance, skyrocketing school attendance and graduation rates compared with previous decades, rise of the middle class.)

So, at least 100-170 years, depending on how you define it. Yes? So, if the commenters have memory of a better time, before education was it's own academic discipline, then they are either really old or... something else. I'm not saying the core arguments are flawed; only that the assumption that the recent shift to education as a field of study for practitioners as the culprit is not compatible with historical record.

Agree with maxwellaustin about the HOV lane approach into higher education administration. At our institution we have an Ed.D. program close by, and several of our professional administrators have gone for that degree (two years or fewer), writing a joke of a dissertation. Those of us who are "real" academics and have climbed through the ranks as faculty but then decided to move into academic administration find this offensive, especially when the salaries do not value real intellectual work. It's made the doctoral degree worthless on our campus.

I too have come into contact with students like those described by jack cade and new theologian. They are shallow and unreflective. They typically cling to their biased opinions, bolstered by selective perception, even in the face of hard data to the contrary. In fact, I know a few colleagues who are similarly shallow, unreflective, and overly confident in their own opinions, and they aren't all education professors, which I presume jack cade and new theologian are not.

I agree with princeton67 with one exception: there should be no undergraduate degrees in education at all. Any one wishing to teach K-12 should come equipped with an undergraduate degree in one of the liberal arts and/or sciences (the variety of requirements makes for better training than the more specialized business or engineering programs). We need to treat it more as a profession, less as a "calling."
I am a secondary English teacher (resisting the contemporary "language arts" label). I came to teaching as a second career, and nearly left based upon the vacuous nature of most of the courses and assignments (how many reflection papers do we really need?), as well as the generally low level of intellectual passion in the students.
Some reasons for the relative easiness of education graduate work, though:
1. Teachers must continue to gain graduate credits to increase salary. We start at a VERY low salary, when compared to those with similar qualifications. Our only promise of improvement has been through years of service and taking graduate-level classes. This does need to change, but the powers-that-be are treading the wrong path (student test scores aren't a reliable enough indicator).
2. I know this may sound whiny, but teachers are incredibly busy and exhausted. It's not only the demands of the classroom, planning and grading (my college professor friends know they have it much easier than I), but the increasing legally mandated paperwork demands -- IEPs, 504s, RTI, ILPs, etc. Our days are filled (try getting medical appointments -- most don't even accept appointments at the time my official work day ends -- but that's another story). Education coursework is often based upon an understanding of the lack of time that teachers experience as well as the actual hours we have available. Teachers can't attend graduate courses at 1:30 in the afternoon! Strong summer and evening graduate programs that allow for financial aid and longer time frames for completion would help....

Like most English profs I've often experienced ed majors in my classes as consistently underprepared and unmotivated, no matter if undergrad or grad student. But I've wondered if it can't all be the fault of the ed dept. Given the general sense of the status of secondary school teachers in our culture (which may have changed in the last decade or so), must not an automatic self-selection process occur? An ed degree is relatively vocational, the job has had low status, and on the surface wouldn't demand as much as many other degrees/jobs: how much, content-wise, do you have to know in order to know more than k-12 students? So I wonder if students with lower learning motivations might automatically choose the degree in larger numbers than some (many?) other degrees. This doesn't entail that ed depts should not be demanding. If they're easy, they'd only reinforce all this. But still, if the nature of your degree tends to automatically attract very high numbers of less motivated students, then what are you gonna do? I'm not sure about all this, but have, as I say, wondered about it.

tony jackson

A couple of observations/opinions...

As a society, the U.S. does not value "education" as highly as it does athletics, celebrity, American Idol or buns of steel videos. So can we really expect our SEDs to change the world views, level of motivation and perceptual value placed on education held by its students? These students are a very accurate reflection of our society and the values found in it.

Our rapidly declining levels of academic achievement in the continuum of academic rigor when compared repeatedly around the planet, scream out loud. But, we continue to step over the dead canaries around us and head for the campus tail-gate party, while our campus "leaders" spend their time dodging career-ending bullets on campus and rattling that tin cup in front of donors.

American H/E is just another societal facet that reflects a society in rapid decline.

Look at K-12 and focus on actual content and less on local school board-dictated politically correct themes of "education" and then see what truly inspired "education" can look like. American education leaves its "graduates" ignorant about US history and totally unaware of even our neighbors to the North an South. Don't even ask about the rest of the planet. OMG!

Heather may have 2 mommies today, but of what value is that "acceptance" if Heather is little more than a walking political bumper sticker with NO understanding of the world beyond the local farmer's market or garage sale.

SEDs I have had professional involvement with (all of them repeatedly in the "Top 5" in the country) were more concerned with the fleeting fictions of "diversity", "multi-culturalism" and "gender-neutral" politics than the calibre of "teachers" they produced.

You could line them up and in true parrot-speak they could recite the top 10 reasons they were among the best and brightest, but don't bother to ask them what the biggest challenge facing American education is, because the silence would be deafening.

In brief, they were very ill-informed about THEIR role in American education and to ask them about it, would be a HUGE stretch after 4 years in a mind-numbing program that asked very little "self-reflection" of them.

Many of these SED graduates WILL leave education when professional demands inform them that all the feel-good, touchy-feely workshops and roundtables they wasted time in, left them totally unprepared to teach anything beyond where the bathroom pass was last seen.

Problems with teacher education are NIMBY situations. Every teacher ed program has to realize the basic flaws associated with the preparation model:
1. Students entering education are generally not the brightest students - hence the need to test their writing and math skills (at a very minimal level).
2. Teacher ed faculty members are former school teachers - mostly from elementary education and they tend to be either the sappy-happy or the stern-by-the-rules type, either of which turn off their young adult students and cause the few intelligent students to drop out.
3. Teacher ed faculty may understand pedagogy but know nothing about andragogy.
4. Teacher ed faculty are hired based on yrs of experience in school system and not based on their intellectual abilities or ability to work with college-aged students.
5. Most teacher ed schools try to train second career adults the same way they train their college freshmen.
6. Teacher ed programs do not provide sufficient training in data based decision making or in continuous improvement models necessary for improving the classroom experience.

I too agree that the systems is flawed with regard to our education system but I believe that some of this lies with regard to lack of accountability once an educator has spent time in the field.

My wife who has completed her third year as a middle and high school English Teacher in the State of New York; completed her Bachelor of Arts in English while in conjunction completing her Education certification program in secondary education at a small liberal arts college was required as early as freshman year to have completed a classroom experience in a non traditional classroom placement on top of her student teaching experience. Students who completed this program, many of whom I knew very well were asked to constantly be creative in their pedagogy studies and many have gone on to rewarding careers in education.

She has since completed her Master's Degree in curriculum instruction and design and finds this portion of her career the most rewarding in trying to think outside the box in terms of material delivery to her students, which would include in some cases finding additional books sometimes away from the classics that her students find in cases more relative to their lives to ensure greater student success and that has been achieved. She does not teach to NYS test but rather finds ways to deliver the required materials with students not feeling like they are going through test prep everyday.

Frustration occurs many times for educators like this when the same level of effort is not being provided in all subjects throughout, often times lack of district success can breed apathetic teachers, and a lack of interest in challenging themselves in their careers everyday. But what we see in the NYS teacher system is a system flawed by the lack of checks and balances a system that does not require continuous professional development for which is tested. With observations being limited but also scheduled and no ramifications for poor performance. I can not pretend to know how things are done in other state systems but this is definitely a flaw here in New York State.

The whole system from pre-K to postdoc needs an overhaul (some levels more than others). There's no doubt in my mind that there are far too many unqualified people teaching K-12, or that the lax standards of schools of education carry much of the blame for that. (We have a similar crisis in nursing, another traditionally-female undervalued and totally critical field that no one thought it necessary to pay decent money to women for doing, because it came 'naturally' to them.)
Keep fighting for true reform and keep any child you care for out of the public school system, if at all possible.

In my experience as a teacher of math for undergraduate elementary education majors, these students are, on average, less interested in learning than their peers with other majors. I could go on about differences in abilities, motivation, etc, but the lack of interest in learning is really the most shocking aspect. How can you become a good teacher if you don't want to learn? For that matter, you should have a desire to keep learning throughout your entire life after the degree.

Some have commented that content knowledge is not enough. That is a red herring. Nobody is discounting the fundamental nature of other teaching qualifications, but that doesn't address the fact that content knowledge is ALSO fundamental. No superior achievement in other aspects of teaching can compensate for poor understanding of content. I have known my share of professors who are good researchers but bad teachers. But I have yet to meet a single education major who excelled in content and failed in other ways. I see plenty of students who can't do math but describe themselves as "good with kids". Most of them think that college is in their way of becoming a teacher and complain when attendance is not enough to earn a "B".

Having said all that, none of us should be surprised at the quality of education, given the low pay and working conditions. The last thing that I want to do is raise the salaries of some existing bad teachers, but until there is a substantial salary increase, we can expect potentially wonderful teachers to choose another career. The same so-called capitalists who advocate market-driven education hypocritically expect to extract quality education through low wages. Wake up: while you may encounter the occasional noble soul, on average you get just what you pay for. And what kind of teacher do you expect at $26,000 per year?

Keep your kids in public schools while fighting for reform. Otherwise, the private sector will be seen as more successful (rather than the same low quality instruction that lines the pockets of investors who are uninterested in education). And no matter how bad it seems, homeschooling is not the answer in general. Most parents are not qualified to teach their own kids, any more than they are qualified to administer emergency medical care. Instead, supplement your child's education at home and talk to them regulary about their schoolwork.

"The political will to support a more-comprehensive accountability system will not grow until teachers and colleges of education perceive that the new system is fair" attributed to Ms. West of the AACTE is instructive for the simple clarity it offers on where the focus on "fairness" is aimed. There is little to evidence that it is on fairness to the millions of students who have paid the lifelong burdensome price for their poor educations but, rather, on the "teachers and colleges of education" along with the teacher/education accrediting agencies that serve those primary interests.

You may eliminate nursing from your consideration of overworked
underpaid professions. We have a nursing school here. The
students can get a job nearly instantly anywhere in the country
over the internet at premium salaries. Because of the
hyperactivity of the nursing job market, we have a bumper crop
of students preparing to apply for nursing school (two stage
process -- complete the state prescribed program of study with
some Mickey Mouse chemistry, biology, and math courses in the
first two years and then apply to the nursing school to complete
the last two with the RN and BSN at the end). We get a lot of
incompetent girls applying who would otherwise sell socks at
Macy's or run a fry cooker at Burger King in addition to students
who may have a real chance. The students who drop out of the
pre-nursing program go into elementary educ. Nursing is peculiar
in that a student at a community college can earn an RN with an
assoc. degree just like a student at a 4 yr bachelor's degree
institution. Students with the community college RN can complete
a BSN here by taking even more nursing courses (not math, science,
or arts and humanities) and do it on-line. Come to think of it
the nursing training pile on is very much like education -- taking a year's worth of work and turn it into a bunch of vacuous credits.

Those who can, do; those who can't, teach; those who can do neither go into schools of Education.

My question is, compared to what? Teacher education in the USA is the envy of the world. If you doubt that statement, ask a teacher in any country (I have visited SCDE in fourteen nations). We provide more access to four-year degrees, and broader choices of curricula in those degree programs. I'll admit that breadth exceeds depth, especially in comparison to nations whose specialists in science and mathematics are more highly-trained (e.g., Germany, Japan, Scandinavia, Russia), in some cases at the doctoral level. But at the scale of the USA (3 million teachers), no one comes close.

At what point, exactly, did American education become so poor that it is "burdensome"? I see bright, hardworking students I helped to educate, now completing college and planning strong careers. I see students taking more AP and college prep courses than ever -- and doing some extraordinary work. I see young men and women deeply involved in their communities and in the world.
I also see students told that they must go to college, even when their skills and motivations do not tend that way. Twenty or thirty years ago, they would have left school with about the abilities they have now, found a reasonable, decently paid blue collar job, and lived productive lives.
Has education really faltered, or has society placed unreasonable demands on young people who simply aren't interested in (or capable of) academic work? Is the paucity of jobs for these young people really because they aren't skilled enough or is it because it's just plain cheaper to take the jobs overseas than to pay for the American standard of living?
Sure, from the perspective of college professors, it would seem that American students are worse than ever -- you're getting a significantly larger percentage of students than ever before! And, yes, there are areas that need improvement (although I doubt that it's in improving their ability to answer multiple choice questions and inane writing prompts).
Society gives little more than lip service to education. WE care more about grades and test scores than learning. Until we actually value the educational process, teacher quality will continue to decline.

I work at a high school for gifted students, and the great majority of our faculty have terminal degrees in their content area but most often little "teacher training." Therefore, I think I view this issue from a unique perspective. And it has not been my experience that one can reliably assume that those with the highest competence in their content area make the best teachers, at least when it comes to engaging younger learners. I would, for example, take exception to new theologian's assertion that "'education'" is the very endeavor in which ALL of us on the faculty are DIRECTLY involved," at least not by my definition of the term. A great many faculty are engaged simply in the "profession" of knowledge, top-down, to the flock of "students" who are willing to pay for the privilege of listening. And at the higher ed level, I think that's probably ok. After all, at that point in their lives, young adults can and should accept responsibility for their own learning, and the information itself, as opposed to the "entertainment value" of the delivery, is most important. When it comes to elementary and secondary education, however, technique DOES matter, because the aim is different. Educators at this level must be concerned with helping young people to awaken their minds and their curiosity for learning. They cannot be content with simply filling students' heads with content! That is not to say that teachers should not possess compentence in the subject matter. But they do need to exercise those other muscles as well. At our school, some of our best teachers are those who have taken an interest in furthering their pedagogical skills. At the same time, I suspect that those who gained the most from teacher ed programs were also strong, self-motivated students already. For me, then, the larger issue is: how do we make teaching attractive to more of our stronger students?

Just curious: how many of the respondents here are themselves graduates of America's public schools? For the most part public schools did right by us, else we wouldn't be here. So what's changed? It would appear to be something more recent than the 100-170-year-old shift that 22228715 posted. I'm inclined to agree with cmclain's observation that the devotees of market-driven reform (i.e., "capitalists who advocate market-driven education [who] hypocritically expect to extract quality education through low wages ... what kind of teacher do you expect at $26,000 per year?") and with mlisaacs' point that legislators/state and federal policymakers have layered mandate upon mandate on schools that have little if anything to do with teaching students the content we seem to agree they need (e.g., courses in "financial literacy" or "wellness" are likely insufficient to help students understand, say, the economic and social gaps that led to the Russian Revolution which would seem to be useful to know in interpreting current economic conditions and their potential consequences).

@redbird19 - July 30, 2010 at 11:20 am

I work at a high school for gifted students, and the great majority of our faculty have terminal degrees in their content area but most often little "teacher training."

Is yours a public school? I have never encountered a public high school teacher with a terminal degree in their content area.

What I find reprehensible here is the number of people willing to say that teachers aren't spectacular. True we do have teachers that are simply awful but then again how many other people also suck at their jobs.

Teachers are continually ham-stringed, held back, and held to standards that not many others are brave enough to take on.
I have an idea those of you who judge the classroom teacher so harshly get out of your ivory tower and get in to a classroom. You raise 150 kids every year.
You grade 450 assignments a week.
You keep 3 or 4 versions of the exact same records.

I got into a PhD program only so I could help my fellow teachers because the people running and ruining schools don't know what a real classroom is like.

I agree that college programs could do a better job in preparing teachers.

Mainly though I'm just disgusted and disappointed by the elitest attitude of those in higher ed towards those brave enough to go into k-12 classrooms.

As a former Teach for America Corps member, I would like to give my perspective. I went to college and majored in Psychology and Sociology, and then went on to get a Master's degree in an interdisciplinary area studies program. I joined TFA after finishing my master's degree, because I always had a desire to teach. My firm background in social sciences made teaching a wonderfully fulfilling experience. My TFA training (the summer prior to beginning to teach and ongoing throughout my committment) focused on the mechanics of teacher--classroom management, lesson planning, and data collection/analysis. Everything I learned about being a teacher came from those two experiences. During my TFA time I enrolled in a Master's of Arts in Teaching program, with the exception of one professor's courses, I did not take anything from that experience into my class to make me a better teacher. In fact, I transferred from a large state institution to a small private school seeking a more fulfilling experience. It helped, but minimally.

I believe that to be an amazing teacher you need raw talent, but also time to experience learning at the college level. Teachers should major in liberal arts fields (or other area relevant to desired teaching) and focus on creditials at the graduate certificate level. In addition, I firmly believe that teachers need to be in the classroom while learning about education. Some may argue that it's unfair to the student, but there is a firmer practicality in the teaching and it's real, it matters, and I believe teachers care more in that situation. So many people I have encountered that came from traditional teaching programs have this us vs. them attitude (vs. the children, the parents, the administration, etc.) that impacts the humanity of teaching.

Now don't get me wrong, teacher education programs at universities are important (TFA and other Teaching Fellows programs work for certain types of people best), but it needs to be revamped. Our teachers need stronger content knowledge, whether they are teaching Pre-K or Pre-Calculus, and the more theoretical background that traditional teacher education programs lack.

test

Note: when I say teachers "care more" in the alternative certification situation let me clarify, I think they may be a bit mor humble, cognizant of the fact that they definitely don't know anything.

My humility in my teaching was one of my strongest assets, along with my continued desire to do better to serve my kids better.

Obviously the coffee has not kicked in....credital = credential

mor = more and anything = everything

I want to echo the calls to rid ourselves of the undergraduate education major. Teachers should attend a postgraduate professional school like doctors, lawyers, physical therapists, etc. Admittance to such a program should require a normal B.A. or B.S. And of course the base teacher salary needs to be increased dramatically.

I've long suspected that the Ohio Department of Education and the teacher preparation colleges/universities are in cahoots with marketing these absurd classes, which are also known as "College/School of Education" departments. I hold Ohio licensure in Middle/High School English, Mild-Moderate Special Needs, and Moderate-Intense Special Needs, so I'm very familiar with the hoop jumping necessary to renew a license. When I first became interested in teaching English, I held a BA Degree in English; this seemed to count for nothing, but after spending countless hours taking "Education" classes (most of which had very little to do with running a classroom), I was now considered "highly qualified". Are any of the other 49 states or 6 territories able to think outside the box in this regard?

Professors and instructors of teacher education program need to observe and be involved with teachers in the field. Often their memories of teaching in the classroom are obsolete because many things have changed such as technology, family values, student behavior, administrative actions for discipline, etc. The NCLB law have also affected the classroom with so many schools teaching to "pass the test". I have listened to teacher in-services of presentation by professors who have sat in their "ivory tower" with research from decades past. Most of the presentation is irrelevant or dated. The minimum teacher education should include content and classroom management. Educational administrators need to be wary about "new" ideas and constantly changing teacher expectations. Stick with what works, aim high, and be realistic. WKawakami

Response to cmcclain: Yes, the school I work for is a publicly funded special school for gifted/talented students grades 10-12. The students take a college level curriculum.

The development discussed in this article is, sadly, indicative of two larger ones which are not necessarily within the control of the universities and teacher-preparation programs themselves.

ONe is the growing disrespect for and abandonment of the teaching profession: while I can remember a time when the "best and brightest" were encouraged to become teachers, now, the opposite advice is given, for many reasons. No surprise, then, that such programs cannot afford to be too choosy (or feel that they can't).

The other sad trend is the overall declining quality of undergraduates across the curriculum, coupled with financial pressures on higher-ed institutions to retain every single student, get their financial aid, and so on -- which often means sacrifcing standards, accountability, and all those other things required for professional preparation.

And, yes, students in primary and secondary schools pay the price, as do school districts, as does the rest of society -- but I doubt that the schools themselves, or even state legislatures, can fix the problem by themselves.

While our Ed. students( at a state school in PA) have to carry a 3.0, often their courses are watered down specifically for them. I was told that Elem Ed majors only needed to know as much math, history, etc. as grade school students because that is what they would be teaching. What about making them educated human beings with as much education as other college graduates?

My concerns about public education have grown more intense as I have grown older and continue to see the devastating failure of public schools as currently organized to educate children from low-income communities, rural or urban, regardless of race/ethnicity. Focusing responsibility for this educational disaster on teachers and teacher education programs seems to me to be unfair, even though teachers and teacher education programs share responsibility for this disaster with other members of our society.

Let's be honest - Honore @ 15 states the truth by pointing out, "As a society, the U.S. does not value "education" as highly as it does athletics, celebrity, American Idol or buns of steel videos. So can we really expect our SEDs to change the world views, level of motivation and perceptual value placed on education held by its students? These students are a very accurate reflection of our society and the values found in it." So, lots of parents and other community members whose indifference to educational excellence share responsibility for this situation.

I recall watching more than a decade ago a PBS documentary about educational challenges facing our nation. The documentary compared educational systems in the USA, Germany and Japan. At one point, the extent of parent involvement in educational matters was examined in each nation. In Japan and Germany, it was clear that parents interviewed were involved and took seriously their children's education while the couple interviewed in the USA, when asked it they attended the regular parent meetings at the school indicated that they did not because it conflicted with their bowling night. While that is an anecdotal account, I believe it none-the-less captures the essence of Honore's statement.

So, what are we going to do as a society to really put the kind of emphasis on the value of education that will contribute to improving the education of our children? When will our actions match our words? I doubt high stakes testing, merit pay schemes, more mandates from federal and state governments, and the like will do it.

Rachelski @30 recounts experience as a TFA'er. While I admire the gumption of those who join TFA (I know personally several individuals who served in TFA, one who will join it this summer, and several students who hope to do when they graduate in a few years) I remain skeptical about its real value and impact to improve education. In recent years, I am aware of TFA's efforts to improve its positive impact by engaging high-priced, high-power consultants (e.g., McKinsey & Co.) to do research on their work. What are the key things TFA is learning (now that its Ivy League hubris has been humbled by actual experience in poor-performing schools): teacher professional preparation is important; commitment over time is needed (a 2 year stint by an individual does not make much difference); and, additional resources are required (primarily in the form of $ used to do research and then pay for the professional development of teachers that the research suggests is needed.) What TFA is doing is re-inventing the wheel from what I can tell. The need for improved teacher preparation (what the study cited in the article above calls for) is clear and perhaps if TFA can catalyze that improvement on a broader scale, then it will have done something significant with respect to improving the system. Otherwise, its impact is limited to those lucky few students who interact with those TFA'ers who are actually successful during their teaching stint (TFA data indicate that not all of their teachers are effective, which is what we could expect and not a particular deficiency of the TFA model.) But what most concerns me about TFA is that it lends weight to the idea that any intelligent and well-educated person can teach with just a little preparation (the summer before they start.) That betrays a fundamental misunderstanding about teaching and how it is a craft that can only be perfected by intense, long-term and continuous professional development. It also stands in contradiction to what TFA is learning from its research.

So, I agree with cmcclaim @ 34 - teachers should be prepared in the same professional manner as medical doctors, lawyers, and clinical psychologists. A strong grounding in a liberal arts discipline followed by strong professional preparation seems to be one way to enhance the quality of our teaching corps.

The problems in our educational system are complex and require the kind of comprehensive effort that successful school reform efforts are taking in some cities. It's not just teacher training nor the quality of teacher candidates; it's not just curriculum. I think Geoffrey Canada captured the challenge well when he said teaching is not rocket science, it is harder than rocket science.

I have no illusions about a miracle change in our society or schools in my lifetime. But I sure hope, for my grandchildren's sake (they are now pre-schoolers) that improvements begin to happen sooner rather than later. Our nation's future, as Linda Darling-Hammond has cleary demonstrated (The Flat World & Education) is at stake.

All these concerns will, I believe, be accommodated when we in time realize that the costs of education including dubious administrative salaries and the, do not forget costs of, teacher retirement. When confronted with all the misgivings expressed above by others, it will become evident that commercial forces will see lucrative markets in producing winning materials. Most of the classroom control that is the administrators' holy grail will no longer be necessary. Individualized, engaging programs will make the students themselves accountable for their success and not the teacher. Not long ago, it was observed that the average teacher left teaching within three years. With this economy, they may stay longer but only out of economic desperation. Most of k12 (k14?) is not unlike stoop labor. Anyway,when commercial interests can afford the likes of Steven Spielberg to engages the minds of young learners...It really gets down to motivation. What is there in American life today that motivates? Certainly not learning for its own sake.
Your further indulgence: After I retired, my very young wife and I moved to remote Highland County, Virginia where we had eight children and they homeschooled themselves in an hour and a half each day. It cost me nothing for each of them to go through major colleges very successfully. I was away from home days at a time and, truth be told, my wife could think very creatively, but her mastery of school content certainly did not rise above the fourth grade. I recently revisited Beverly Hills where I ran an experimental program for students who otherwise would not have come to school at all. Most of them found engaging new paths in life and their affectionate recollections are astonishing. Unfortunately, we seem to have an image of Procrustes' bed when we subject them to schooling. I THINK THAT TEACHING IS LARGELY AN ART FORM THAT REQUIRES SEVERAL YEARS OF APPRENTICESHIP.

I don't know whether to be bemused by or bemoan most of the preceding posts. Few demonstrate an insider awareness of what routinely transpires in the better teacher preparation programs. In these programs of which I speak all students are required to complete an undergraduate major. Some have long since eliminated the education major; others have added a post-bac fifth year program for those without prior education coursework. Nearly all require at least one practicum experience, usually in the third year of study and another semester of student teaching, or residency, based on the school calendar. In addition to the required methods course, the vast majority of these students have completed coursework that accompanies the classroom experiences. These are admittedly of widely varying duration and quality.

It is far from adequate to have majored, let's say, in English and then entered full-time teaching without the usual series of courses intended to assist students in applying that knowledge to the classroom. Praxis is essential and many if not most teacher educators clearly recognize this need. All of these same said programs require their faculty to have taught for at least three years, others for as many as five. The problem arises when a faculty member has not set foot in a classroom in many years, which happens when programs does not require him/her to engage in regular field supervision.

Try as she might to the contrary, our dear Rachel is not so humble when describing her peers who pursued a more traditional path to teaching. I encountered this elitist mindset often as a Faculty Mentor for Teach for America in the 2nd Summer Institute at USC in 1991. While some were indeed humbled by their lack of experience, they were not so forthcoming in acknowledging what their peers in traditional education cohorts had learned. While nearly all of the students I mentored attended top-ranked colleges and universities, few demonstrated the capacity to teach effectively. What they lacked in pedagogy could not be made up for in enthusiam, with some exceptions. Most saw it as an altruistic diversion, a sort of Peace Corps for the American classroom, rather than a serious long-term commitment. What classroom management skills they picked up came after their very brief internships. Some profited from these workshops; many more I suspect did not. Alternative certification is hardly a guarantee of teaching competence.

I've been at this profession for 25 years and I've learned that its three parts mastery, one part artistry, and one part stamina. Idealism carries one only so far in this "business."

If we really are serious about getting a handle on this situation we will need to require all instructors of methods courses to conduct regular field supervision. We will require English and other subject departments to collaborate as equals with schools of education and fully integrate English education into more than a token course or two. We will demand that all programs include at least two pre-residency experiences for comparison's sake. Will get serious about dropping from candidacy those students who cannot hack it, or show a poor attitude toward teaching in general. We would also provide funding via the state and colleges of education for more than token reimbursement of cooperating teachers and draw on their experience by inviting them to teach or co-teach content sessions on campus. And we would mandate coursework which teach the nuts and bolts of instruction, including the gamet of assessment tools, mutli-media applications, and student-centered classroom management.

Many of us opted to go into teaching not by default but design. We have grown tired of the usual complaints about teacher preparation programs from those who extrapolate from isolated facts and anecdotal evidence, and generalize from one program to all programs.

Correction: "it's three parts...." My coffee is de-caf btw

Generalizing from my own experience of more than sixty years in clasrooms, teaching, training teachers, running innovations institutes for teachers of teachers, and for college presidents both here and abroad, among many other factors it is our practice of hiring principals who demonstrate business and administrative skills, usually with a coaching or business ed background. They too often don't wish to hire faculty more educated or sophisticated than they are. Somehow, to save money we expect that same person to have the liberal arts education sufficient to qualify him to be an educational leader, the equivalent of a headmaster, who demonstrates a love of learning and epitomizes the educated person with requisite intellectual humility.

redbird19, in post #26, actually called into question my earlier assertion that all members of the faculty at an institution of higher learning are directly involved in education. I don't even know how to understand that denial. What does redbird19 think we're doing in the classroom? Does redbird19 really think that we are not called upon to inspire our students to think in new ways, or that, so called upon, we are unable to do it? If that's the case, my teaching evaluations are inexplicable to me. They may not say much of real value, but, coupled with my own measures of student performance, they do tell me that I'm inspiring my students and teaching them content at the same time, in spite of the fact that I've never taken a single course in "education." So, redbird19 has some definition of "education" that may differ from my own, but I go with the classical understanding articulated by Plato, for example, in his "Republic".

One more thing: One commentator says that most parents are not competent to educate their own children, and thus, that homeschooling is not the answer. But that opinion runs counter to the government's own studies, according to which homeschooled students outperform students from any other educational setting on every measure, including "socialization." This outcome holds true regardless of the parents' own educational level. WHY this is the case may be a legitimate question, but THAT it is the case is a fact, and we should be concerned (here I take leave of Plato) with a default suspicion of the ability of parents to, as one commenter said, "raise" (as a synonym for "educate") their own children.

I'm not sure why teacher preparation programs get all the blame for creating teachers who lack basic skills in writing and critical thinking. Don't most of them spend the majority of their first two year under the tutelage of professors who hold "rigorous" doctorates in the arts, sciences, and humanities? If anything, teacher education professors should blame their colleagues for passing students who lack the skills or for their failure to develop those skills in all their students. Then, perhaps, teacher educators could better prepare their students to become teachers rather than fill the gaps in their preparatory education.

Intellectuals... sometimes have a rough time of it....

I have seen and observed ... (how do I say?) a group of schools of education under the same state governance / university system; for example, in one state there are geographically spaced universities with schools of education. There are 80-100 miles apart and are each part of the same state system. I have seen these individual schools / departments act like they do not know each other, act like they do not want to know each other, each acting as if they are in their own bubble where they may re-invent the wheel and have their fiefdom with petty abuses and posturing within said fiefdom where the career admin. types take control and make rigid or remove, or change, or malign, or put on the hot seat the core faculty. At each of these institutions and most definitely at the lesser, the university president is a political hireer who makes a big to-do with "Action Plan" etc. and so on, as if the whole thing just gets more disconnected, weird, and abstract. I have seen these schools of education basically thwart students who want to transfer or move. These refuse to accept, transfer, or recognize courses of the other regional schools. If a students begins in one of these programs, they are captive until completion. If they move, they are expected to start over. In this seedy jumble, I have seen a department self publish a binder and call it a text book and charge students (hundreds of students?) a stiff fee for the binder. Even though these departments are each current with their official outside agency accreditation review (oh yes, much emphasis there), there is zero coordination between these schools and each seems like a trampoline for the admin. "stars" to bounce upon and exert their will.

Suggestion that maybe the teacher-training criteria of the fierce accreditation agencies is not a relevant criteria, likely a criteria to force or re-inforce the corporate textbook agenda and corporate testing agending, while being vacant of what might be considered real criteria for a quality program- like well-being or core professors, how many adjuncts used, if their are courses in sociology, LGBT, history of education, and contemporary educational theorists recognized on a world level. Some education schools get their fresh minty accreditation and are still places that are miserable as hell, except for the few power players that have sacrificed some others on the block and then positioned themselves to highest advantage to advance an "exciting experience" for all, where the studies and numbers are followed and anything printed less than five years ago is cause for contraband and suspicion.

Yes, go visit the intermin-department head who is working for the interim-dean that reports to the interim-president of the school to see if you can be an interim-instructor though you might make more income and benefits doing the night shift at a pizza restaurant, or even better yet, just buy a scooter and work tax free as an illegal immigrant laying concrete block to build the new Walmart store.