Should We Abolish Colleges of Education?

Is there any evidence that teachers trained in conventional school of education teacher training programs perform worse than those with a disciplinary major? Point #5, above, implies the existence of such evidence, but I suppose that since this is a “stylized fact” one needn’t worry about such matters.My guess is that within the current range of methods, how teachers are trained makes no difference for student outcomes, that if one eliminates the true incompetents, teacher quality is far less important than most would suppose (i.e., #3, above may be true, but the effect is very small), and that parents are far more important than teachers and schools in shaping student outcomes.

The fact is that the people we trust to prepare our children for college are not well prepared in many cases. I teach undergraduate chemistry courses, and the education students who are supposed to be preparing high school students for my classes have never had to take a class like mine. They are not held to a high enough standard, and it is the fault of the school of education.

This is an appalling poorly informed piece. Some of these “stylized facts” are quite simply false. The only people who think economists do the best education research are economists. The number of problematic assumptions that go into most econometric models in education would make most responsible researchers cringe. It is readily apparent that his knowledge of education research is minimal, yet he feels equipped to condemn it. Bravo.

should say “are ever conceptually useful,…”

While I don’t agree that the MAIN problem in k-12 education is teacher preparation*, I do see much room for improvement. I teach in two different graduate programs where k-12 teachers come to earn their Masters degree. Some of my students (graduates from colleges of education) cannot even identify parallel lines! How does one get out of high school without that knowledge?Yes, let’s look at teacher preparation programs and make sure that they are turning out excellent teachers.*My general belief is that the problem is NOT that our schools are failing our kids – rather it’s our society that is failing our schools.

Well, folks, it’s because the Chronicle has anointed Vedder–he doesn’t have to deal in fact, or research. We mere mortals are treated to his ill-informed, repetitive assumptions yet again.Ignore him, just as the world has ignored most economic research. How well do his students fare in dealing with reality? Other than their inflated salaries and egos.

1,2, 10, 12 – great points. Mr. Vedder is clearly trying to make a splash – did you get wet Mr. Vedder? I’m a brand new doc student in the school of education and can see such flaws in the discussion and logic of Mr. Vedder, that I can’t believe the Chronicle published this article. While I would not agree with much Vedder says, particularly point #4 he makes, which could easily be fact-checked, but I would offer that it is grossly overstated as a lot of teachers I’ve met over the years do have non-education majors. Maybe what they need is more generalists as numerous K-12 teachers (a group that should not be bundled together) are generalists (elementary teachers). The problem with Higher Education as I see it now (albeit limited in exposure as yet) is too much willingness to cast dispersions and little willingness to do meaningful research that will help address some of these issues. There may be some points Vedder could offer as potential problems, but he’s too busy using stylized facts to make a splash. After that splash I feel a powerful need to wash.

Yes, we should.

As a college professor who has spent 17 years teaching, and learning how to teach better, I worry a great deal when someone implies that teaching is so easy that anyone can do it, as long as they have knowledge of a subject matter. I’m sure many of us have had the experience of taking a class with someone known to be a brilliant scholar who couldn’t teach. While my teaching experience is at the college level, I believe that the basic principles of being a good teacher remain the same for K – 12.Teaching well is a great deal of work. And it is a job that requires ongoing adaptation to new students, coming in with new and/or changing cultures, and having a variety of issues and a range of skills and knowledge. If we believe that teaching requires us to care about learning outcomes – that is, did the student learn something, were they changed for the positive by the course – then we can’t accept the old model of teacher who is only responsible for being knowledgable and presenting that knowledge with a lecture and readings – leaving the responsibility of learning up to the students. The latter model means that we are satisfied that some will ‘get it’ and others don’t, and that’s just a reflection of a “natural” distribution of intellegence or something like that. Given the current focus on how many children are “left behind” with the “natural bell curve” model that does not account for the middle-class, white bias of our education system, nor the ability of anyone to really learn when material is not relevant (an issue addressed by John Dewey and many, many other education scholars), suggests that indeed, the conventional model of teaching – implied by Vedder’s focus on knowledge in the discipline – is inadequate.Just the same, I too share serious concerns about how we teach people to teach in education departments in many American colleges. The lack of theory, the “easy” classes, and the avoidance by these departments of training for the very real complexity and messiness in real life classrooms worries me a great deal.

Some points from someone who taught at a regional state university for many years.1. The education major attracts the weakest students. This is my experience as well as the conclusion of studies I don’t have at hand.2. Education majors are not particularly interested in gaining knowledge and then sharing it. Instead, they think of themselves as members of a “helping profession,” whose main qualification is love for children, not ability to communicate a subject. In other words, they are focused on all a student’s problems except ignorance.3. Education students are given uniformly high grades. As a member of the board of the campus chapter of Phi Kappa Phi, I faced this problem every year. Successful students in the sciences and engineering had lower grades, as a rule, than the run of education majors. And the education majors took what seemed to me, a humanities professor, to be undemanding courses.4. Both students and teachers in the field of education have a contempt for knowledge (“mere” facts) and a unquestioning devotion to a very few thinkers, ranging from Piaget to Paolo Freire. 5. Despite its failure in K-12 education, we are likely to see more of the outlook that dominates schools of education in academic departments on the college level. English departments below the elite level are becoming rhet/comp departments, that don’t teach a body of knowledge. Instead, they teach “how-to” courses–how to write, how to write creatively, how to teach people who to write, etc.6. To value education is not the same as valuing institutions that go by its name. Sadly, many do not see that distinction. In politics, anyone who questions the need for a federal Department of Education is summarily dismissed by people who couldn’t tell you what that body actually does. At universities (and in the state legislatures that fund them), devotion to education translates into creating schools of education, teaching and learning centers, and composition programs, even if those programs do not actually make it more likely that students will learn anything.

I see a lot of the commentary is the predictable squawking from those committed to the College of Ed model. Across the 4 major universities I taught in across my career, each with a College of Ed, Education courses were viewed as repetitive and overlapping, with low grading standards, born out by the kind of ridiculous GPAs this author notes in point 6. From my own experience, I distinctly recall meeting with a College of Ed group who were working on a computing certification track for the M.Ed., the most advanced computing course for which would not have been acceptable for freshman in a computing major. When I questioned this, the response was that students who actually knew something about computing would not stay in teaching. At a different University, the Dean of Education in effect admitted to me that the courses in their M.Ed. program had so little challenge that if a student could somehow schedule the entire program in one semester, they would probably complete the degree successfully. I also recall sitting on a graduate admissions oversight committee where the representative from the College of Ed argued strenuously that we approve his admission of a student whose combined GRE score was 410 (the argument being that if they didn’t admit everyone who applied, they wouldn’t have enough students to justify their programs). My all time favorite was the “advanced” graduate Education course, gospel truth, that consisted of meeting in a restaurant once a week to tell stories to each other, where if you showed up for the “final” you would get an A and if you didn’t you would get a B. One final point, as anyone who has gone into K-12 teaching in recent times knows full well, the typical undergraduate Education program not only has less content than any disciplinary counterpart, but it does not prepare students for the reality of today’s K-12 classroom. If there is a place for Colleges of Ed, I agree with the author that it is probably at the graduate level, where students learn content by pursuing a disciplinary major at the undergraduate level, with their graduate coursework focusing on the realities of dealing with today’s K-12 environment.

Having taught middle school for six years, after teaching at at the university level (math) for five years(during which I taught ‘Math for elementary school teachers’ ) I concluded: (1) although education departments could serve an important role in education generally they are in fact abysmally mediocre and should be thoroughly reformed or abolished; (2) nothing is more important than knowing your subject matter; (3) ‘teaching’ is best learned in the context of being supervised by a ‘master teacher’ (4) most students in the ed dept don’t even belong at a university.

As a student in the University of Florida’s College of Education (BSEd’61), I took the same mathematics, and science courses as did the students majoring in those areas. Twenty-four hours of mathematics and eighteen hours of physics. Before slamming all colleges of education, the author needs to engage in some proper research and sampling.During my masters studies in graduate systems analysis (operations research) at the Air force Institute of Technology in 1971 and 1972, my preparation in mathematics matched classmates having the BS in mathematics or in engineering from leading universities around the nation.Leland. G. Jordan

Kudos for a timely and thoughtful commentary. While I don’t agree with all the points the author has made, I absolutely agree with the problem of grade inflation. In my 11 years of experience as faculty in COE, students expect high grades. Most expect assignments that don’t require independent work, analytical thinking and in-depth research. A significant problem is that accredited Colleges of Education require PhD candidates to have been previously licensed to teach in a K-12 school with usually 3 to 5 years of minimum experience K-12 teaching. This leave very little room for innovative faculty who may have extensive experience in relevant disciplines and research interests.

@mchag12″…EDDs are easy to obtain, mostly without rigor, and quick.”Not the one at the University of Southern California (where I got mine)! Enroll in the Rossier School with that attitude and those professors will spank you hard!

Roughly correct, but not precise. Anybody who criticizes schools of education should try teaching K-12. It is not teaching at college level, you have to be coach counselor cheerleader educator actor. I have a Masters of education I taught in high school before returning to grad school finishing a PhD then going on in biology at college and grad level, so I’ve seen all sides to issues. Some random facts as Sowell would say:Most kids don’t read. Many parents don’t read. We have much more to learn in science nowadays, plus the conflicting views of religious zealots eroding our rational thought. Most students can’t do college. You don’t need a premed chem class to teach a elementary school group some science. Standardized testing is a joke, tells people what they already know. I think the science tests for high school teacher certification aren’t bad the content on most of the questions is good.

Has the whole national discussion that we’ve been having in this country been off-base? I am hardly in a position to critique and evaluate each separate point made by Mr. Vedder, but the general tenor of his article seems well in line with the concerns nearly ubiquitous in the media, academic discussions, etc. Students are ill-prepared, teachers are poorly qualified, and academic education of K-12 teachers is poorly alligned with the classroom learning needs of today’s students. Teachers better credentialled in their chosen area of instruction seems a good place to start the process of improvement.

Thx victori, for hyperlink. For those interested in expanded discussion of this article’s points, please read.Looks like great, well-balanced, well-thought-out study with concrete & realistic recommendations for improvements. Bottom line: while acknowledging many positive examples, makes this overall assessment – “Current teacher education programs are largely ill equipped to prepare current and future teachers for these new realities.” So, whether the ad hominem attacks on Vedder are valid or not (I join in questioning economic ‘analyses’), they are simply irrelevant to the points made.

Test

Should we abolish colleges of education? As Dean of The Patton College of Education and Human Services, my short answer is absolutely not. Is there room for improvement? Yes, there is always room for improvement. I believe that when you are talking about education and its impact on kids, being “roughly correct” is not acceptable. I agree with some of Vedder’s assessments – that “great teaching leads to better results than mediocre teaching” and that “most K-12 teachers have studied extensively in colleges of education” – but on the whole, his claims are grossly exaggerated and lack substantiation. He is incorrect in his statements regarding collegiate-prepared teachers’ effectiveness, their retention and their academic preparation, and he is misinformed in his depiction of the roles of colleges of education, the nature of their programs and their effects on the quality of the teachers they prepare.For example, in point no. 5, Vedder claims that “teachers not prepared in a college of education do at least as well, and often better, than those with certification gained by taking education college courses,” which research simply does not support. In a policy brief titled “Recognizing and Developing Effective Teaching: What Policy Makers Should Know and Do,” Linda Darling-Hammond points to a study conducted in New York City: “Fully certified teachers who graduated from university preservice programs and who had attended a competitive college were the most effective as beginners. Additional experience also had strong positive effects. In combination, improvements in these qualifications reduced the gap in achievement between the schools in deciles serving the poorest and most affluent students by 25%.” Additionally, a study sponsored by the National Center for Education Statistics purports that only 14% of teachers prepared through traditional educator preparation programs left the field after five years, compared with 49% of alternatively prepared teachers. A similar study titled “Does Teacher Preparation Matter? Evidence About Teacher Certification, Teach for America, and Teacher Effectiveness” found that 80% of Teach for America teachers in Houston left their jobs by the third year. Likewise, a study by Gene Glass titled “Alternative Certification of Teachers,” revealed that in Chicago Public Schools, less than half of the 100 Teach for America recruits hired annually stayed in teaching beyond the third year. In point no. 6, Vedder’s comparison of education students’ GPAs and university-wide GPAs is misleading. If the Teacher Education program is accredited, then the students have already undergone screening prior to entering the program. The National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) requires that students hold at least a 2.5 GPA on a 4-point scale, and some programs require a GPA of 2.75 or higher, on top of ACT scores. A more reasonable comparison would be the GPAs of junior and senior education students against the GPAs of juniors and seniors in a social science major program. In point no. 7, Vedder’s assertion that colleges of education “have fought to keep certification rules requiring students to take many education courses” is incorrect. Certification rules are developed by legislatures and state departments of education, not by institutions of higher education. Colleges of education are heavily inspected and regulated according to mandates that we do not control, but must follow. All colleges of education operate based on standards, which is something that is overlooked in Vedder’s critique. Schools and programs accredited by NCATE are required to undergo a detailed external review. During the review, the school or program must provide evidence that their teacher candidates meet the rigorous standards set for the teaching profession before they are recommended for licensure, including providing evidence of student learning. Another point that Vedder overlooks is that teachers in the classroom play multiple roles (facilitator, trainer, confidant, role model and even friend), so mastery of academic content is simply not enough, particularly for teachers of elementary students. Darling-Hammond points to a national study of 4,400 early elementary children that found “young children with certified teachers for most of their early school experience gained significantly more in reading achievement than students who had alternatively certified or uncertified teachers.” Darling-Hammond also notes a study conducted in North Carolina that found teachers “were more effective if they had completed preparation prior to entry (rather than entering without training through the state’s ‘lateral entry’ route), were licensed (or as it is commonly called, certified) in the specific field taught, had higher scores on the teacher licensing test, had more than 2 years of teaching experience, had graduated from a competitive college, and had successfully become National Board certified.”The laws require the education of all learners, including children who come from disadvantaged backgrounds and those with special needs. As Darling-Hammond points out “Preservice preparation and certification also matter in special education, where researchers have found ‘statistically significant and quantitatively substantial effects on the ability of educators to promote gains in achievement for students with disabilities’ in both mainstreamed regular education settings and in special education courses.” No preparation program for teachers that requires only the learning of academic content will ever prepare a teacher to deal with those students who have special learning needs or disabilities. In Vedder’s editorial, he seems wholly unaware of the innovative, transformative efforts happening in educator preparation programs around the country today. Colleges of education across the nation have been actively engaged in reform efforts, expanding partnerships with K-12 schools, strengthening relationships with arts and sciences and preparing non-traditional students for new careers in teaching. No other teacher preparation program is as uniquely positioned to deliver high-quality instruction to prospective teachers. Colleges of education have the expertise of the arts and sciences and research-based pedagogy at their fingertips. As Dr. Arthur Levine noted in his March 2010 presentation at AACTE, “There is no compelling evidence that any other provider of teacher education is more effective than universities in preparing teachers.”All educator preparation programs should be held to the same standards, including a rigorous clinical component, so that all prospective teachers are prepared to enact practices to educate every child effectively. All educator preparation programs should support deep content knowledge and content-specific pedagogical knowledge, as well as a thorough understanding of the emotional, social and physical development of children. Teaching is a difficult profession, and it takes years of practice to be an effective educator.

Considering that most professors do not have the one degree they should have, one of them in teaching, it would seem understandable we would finally see after all these decades an article of this title that goes along with the quote from one of my master in higher education courses; “College teachers are largely subject matter experts with few ideas on what causes student learning”. Showalter