newteacher

Even More on Teach for America

Reposting from another interesting education blog...check it out.  More and more research is coming out on the limitations of these seemingly "miracle fixes" in education reform.  How is that policy makers can keep ignoring the facts?  While certainly these are good folks trying to do good work, this can't be the answer AND it's an expensive diversion from what really works.

LINK: A new look at Teach for America

Around the country today thousands of young Teach for America recruits are getting a crash course in how to teach students in low-income urban and rural schools, a job they have promised to do for the next two years.

The recruits are recent graduates from elite colleges, most of whom do not have a background in education, and they have been the subject of a running debate about how well they can serve needy schoolchildren.

Teach for America began in 1990 with 500 teachers in six communities and has grown to more than 8,200 individuals teaching in 39 rural and urban areas, including the San Francisco Bay Area, Chicago, the Mississippi Delta, and the Washington D.C. region.

Following are highlights of a new review of independent researchvidence on the program, an analysis conducted by Assistant Professor Julian Vasquez Heilig of the University of Texas at Austin and Assistant Professor Su Jin Jez of California State University at Sacramento.

They conclude:
*More than 50 percent of Teach for America teachers leave after two years and more than 80 percent leave after three years. [About half of all teachers nationwide quit after five years, according to the National Education Association.]
-Teach for America proponents say that the program is aimed not only at supplying teachers to needy schools but also improving the teacher labor supply and shaping individuals who will care about education in their future jobs on Wall Street, in Washington, or elsewhere outside the classroom.

*Studies indicate that students of novice Teach for America teachers perform significantly less well in reading and math than those of credentialed beginning teachers.

*Most studies find that those Teach for America teachers who stay long enough to become fully credentialed (typically after two years) appear to do about as well as other similarly experienced cedentialed teachers in teaching reading, and do as well as, and sometimes better than, a comparison group in teaching math.
--The study said it is difficult to know if that is a result of additional training and experience or from attrition of less effective Teach for America teachers.

*About a third of Teach for America’s operating costs are paid by the public through federal, state and local funds. For example, in 2008, the program was funded this way: 33 percent from public funds, 26 percent from foundations, 20 percent from individuals, 15 percent from corporations, and 6 percent from special events.

*Teach for America teachers make up about 0.2 percent of the country’s several million teachers.

The analysis concludes that proponents who see the program as providing urban and rural schools with “outstanding recent college graduates,” and opponents who see it as only a short-term remedy that “may not even be better than what it aims to fix” are both correct. It says:

“The studies reviewed in the previous section indicate that, in the short-term, when compared to other underprepared teachers hired into many high-need schools, they may compete well with similarly trained and situated non-TFA teachers (even if just marginally better and only in mathematics).

"However, TFA opponents are correct, too. TFA teachers appear less effective in both reading and mathematics than fully prepared entrants teaching similar students, at least until the TFA teachers become prepared and certified themselves.

"While the small number who stay this long are sometimes found to be more effective in mathematics than other teachers, their attrition rate of more than 80 percent means that few students receive the benefit of this greater effectiveness, while districts pay the costs of high attrition. In addition, TFA provides only a (small) fraction of America’s teachers to a small number of America’s schools, and likely has little to no impact outside of its participating schools. Unless it starts admitting larger swaths of college seniors and potentially watering down the quality of its corps members, it will not ever comprise more than a small fraction of America’s teachers.

"Finally, even in the limited cases when TFA has a positive impact, it is consistently small; other educational reforms may have more promise such as universal pre-school, mentoring programs that pair novice and expert teachers, eliminating tracking, and reducing class size in the early grades."

It recommends that policymakers and school districts:

*Support Teach for America staffing only when the alternative hiring pool consists of uncertified and emergency teachers or substitutes.

*Consider the significant recurring costs of Teach for America, estimated at over $70,000 per recruit, and press for a five-year commitment to improve achievement and reduce re-staffing.

*Invest strategically in evidence-based educational reform options that build long-term capacity in schools.

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By Valerie Strauss  |  July 11, 2010; 6:30 AM ET

Defending Teachers in Dangerous Times

In Defense of Public School Teachers in a Time of Crisis - Henry Giroux

Powerful, thoughtful words from Henry Giroux--returning to the idea of "teachers as intellectuals"--in response to wide-ranging attacks on teachers and teacher training.  Take a look, post a comment.

"We need to take them [teachers] seriously by giving them the dignity, labor conditions, salaries, freedom, time and support they deserve. This may be the most important challenge Americans face as we move into the 21st century."

There has been a long, though declining, tradition in the United States in which public school teaching was embraced as an important public service. It was assumed that teachers provided a crucial foundation for educating young people in the values, skills and knowledge that enabled them to be critical citizens capable of shaping and expanding democratic institutions. Since the 1980s, teachers have been under an unprecedented attack by those forces that view schools less as a public good than as a private right. Seldom accorded the status of intellectuals that they deserved, they remain the most important component in the learning process for students, while serving as a moral compass to gauge how seriously a society invests in its youth and in the future. Yet, teachers are being deskilled, unceremoniously removed from the process of school governance, largely reduced to technicians or subordinated to the authority of security guards. Underlying these transformations are a number of forces eager to privatize schools, substitute vocational training for education and reduce teaching and learning to reductive modes of testing and evaluation.

READ MORE:

Alternative Certification & Democracy

More troubling developments in the preparation of teachers.  The business model of turning over education to just anybody still prevails with potentially disastrous consequences.  Why these policy makers and the media refuse to acknowledge the research on these programs is boggling to the mind.

Most disturbing to this former social studies teacher is that the statement that “the role of school in democracy”  is part of the problem.  Abandoning the role of public education in preparing kids to function in a democratic society is not only wrongheaded but against the thought every Founding Father we have--this is so very dangerous.

 

Alternate Path for Teachers Gains Ground
Officials in Washington, D.C. and New York have stepped up criticisms that teacher education schools are still too focused on theory and not enough on the craft of effective teaching. This week, the New York State Board of Regents will vote on whether to expand the role of the alternative organizations by allowing them to create their own master's degree programs. While alternative programs now operate in most states, only a few, including Rhode Island and Louisiana, allow these programs to effectively certify their own teachers.

 

....Susan H. Fuhrman, president of Teachers College, said she had another concern — the potential separation of teacher training from what she called an “explosion of new research” into how children learn. Teachers College has chosen not to team up with alternative programs, in part because of philosophical differences over the concept of anointing a neophyte to be the “teacher of record” — the one responsible for a classroom — from the first day of school. “We’re at a huge frontier when it comes to understanding learning,” she said. “Divorcing teacher preparation from this research would suggest to me that you would prepare doctors with hands-on tools without their benefiting from medical research.”

 

A powerful point....Thoughts?

 

(New York Times, 04/19/10)

 

Read More: LINK

Reinventing Teacher Education

Interesting times in teacher education but the problem it seems to me is that many programs already do these things.  My student teaching was quite different too but that was over 15 years ago and things at the school of education I know the most about do most of this and has for several years.  Many classes are taught in the public schools, students have field experiences working with real kids from the get-go, and all theory is talked about in the sense of how to put it into practice.  I'm glad we as a nation are having this conversation, I just wish was a little more informed.  Thoughts?

America's teachers' colleges are facing some pressure to reinvent themselves.

Larry Abramson/NPR

Education Secretary Arne Duncan has been leading the assault, with a series of speeches calling for better teacher training. Duncan says it's crucial that education schools revamp their curricula so they can help replace a wave of baby boomers who will soon retire from teaching.

One university is trying to rebuild its teacher-training program from the ground up.

At the University of Michigan School of Education, Dean Deborah Ball and her faculty have taken apart their training program and reassembled it, trying to figure out what skills teachers really need.

Katie Westin, a senior at the University of Michigan and a student teacher, says that when she compares notes with teachers-in-training at other schools, it's clear that her program is more hands-on.

"We expect people to be reliably able to carry out that work. We don't seem to have that same level of expectation or requirement around teaching," Ball says.

Teacher Education Initiative

The program overhaul — an ongoing process that began five years ago — is called the Teacher Education Initiative. It will cut the number of classes students must take, and it will turn time in the classroom into an experience that is tightly focused on problem solving.

"Image the difference between learning about child development, which is unquestionably helpful, and learning how to have a sensible interaction with a child, which permits you to know exactly what's going wrong right now with that child's reading, or why is this error occurring over and over again in math. That's actually being able to do something with that knowledge," Ball says.

The program stresses what teachers have to do, not simply what they have to know.

Professor Robert Bain says that when the effort is finished, the education program will no longer be a series of courses students have to take, "but rather a program that's building on these experiences, much like most professional schools, like a good med school or law school."

The university has also picked up an idea from medical school: rounds.

You can see the idea in action at North Middle School in Belleville, Mich. Teacher Steve Hudock is talking to four University of Michigan student teachers before seventh and eighth graders arrive for a class on comparative religion.

This is one of several schools these budding teachers will visit as they learn to analyze various teaching problems in different settings. Here, it's how to deal with students in small groups.

Bain says that before class, he demonstrated how the teachers-in-training might approach this challenge.

"What their job is, is to practice the experience with actual students, but then also look to see how Mr. Hudock, a skilled teacher, does the exact same sorts of things," Bain says.

Student teacher Katie Westin says that when she compares notes with teaching students in other programs, she notices a big difference.

"We take on more of an interactive role, I think, than some of the other programs do, because we actually lead lessons, and we get to work with the students in group activities."

Hands-On Training

Once the religion class is over, the group sits down with Hudock and talks about what worked and what didn't.

Hudock says this is a lot different than the student-teaching experience he had 15 years ago.

Learning More about Teach for America

An interesting article and new study on Teach for America (TFA) that challenges much of the conventional wisdom of this and other alternative certification programs.  Key points here are that 31% stay in the classroom after the program (note: much lower than traditional teacher training) and that the grads don't see themselves as social servants but rather as part of "climbing up the elite ladder — it’s part of joining the system, the meritocracy.” This shouldn't really be surprising if you know anything about how it works and is marketed (most don't BTW) but these programs are continually touted as the answer to contemporary challenges in education....but the data just isn't there.

Of course, one can't help but wonder if we'd have higher retention rates with these very well-educated folks if they actually had some teacher training before dropping into classrooms...perhaps this is something we should look into.

January 4, 2010

Gauging the Dedication of Teacher Corps Grads

By AMANDA M. FAIRBANKS

Teach for America, a corps of recent college graduates who sign up to teach in some of the nation’s most troubled schools, has become a campus phenomenon, drawing huge numbers of applicants willing to commit two years of their lives.

But a new study has found that their dedication to improving society at large does not necessarily extend beyond their Teach for America service.

In areas like voting, charitable giving and civic engagement, graduates of the program lag behind those who were accepted but declined and those who dropped out before completing their two years, according to Doug McAdam, a sociologist at Stanford University, who conducted the study with a colleague, Cynthia Brandt.

The reasons for the lower rates of civic involvement, Professor McAdam said, include not only exhaustion and burnout, but also disillusionment with Teach for America’s approach to the issue of educational inequity, among other factors.

The study, “Assessing the Long-Term Effects of Youth Service: The Puzzling Case of Teach for America,” is the first of its kind to explore what happens to participants after they leave the program. It was done at the suggestion of Wendy Kopp, Teach for America’s founder and president, who disagrees with the findings. Ms. Kopp had read an earlier study by Professor McAdam that found that participants in Freedom Summer — the 10 weeks in 1964 when civil rights advocates, many of them college students, went to Mississippi to register black voters — had become more politically active.

“There’s been a very clear and somewhat naïve consensus among educators, policy folks and scholars that youth activism invariably has these kinds of effects,” Professor McAdam said. “But we’ve got to be much more attentive to differences across these experiences, and not simply assume that if you give a kid some youth service experience it will change them.”

Teach for America is nearing its 20th anniversary. Of its 17,000 alumni, 63 percent remain in the field of education and 31 percent remain in the classroom. (This reporter took part in the program from 2003 to 2005.) READ MORE

Arne Duncan on Teacher Education

An article from Time magazine a while ago revolving around Arne Duncan's comments about teacher education.  This is troubling of course and particularly dangerous in the sense that folks with very different political agendas will use it as part of larger efforts to dismantle public education (i.e. see Indiana).  I certainly can't speak for every school of education but the ones I've been involved in have a very real focus on practical experiences for preservice teachers; and, of course, I reject the idea that theory and practice are exclusive--thinking differently is practical.  It's also pretty easy to see that this is more blame game politics that obscures cuts in funding, resegregation, and the shameless rebirth of tracking.  Thoughts?

Are Teacher Colleges Turning out Mediocrity?

There has been a mantra of sorts going around education circles over the past few years: "Nothing matters more to a child's education than good teachers." Anyone who's ever had a Ms. Green or a Mr. Miller whom they remember fondly instinctively knows this to be true. And while "Who's teaching my kid?" is an important question for parents to ask, there may be an equally essential (and rarely remarked upon) question — "Who's teaching my kid's teachers?"

On Thursday, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan went to Columbia University's Teachers College, the oldest teacher-training school in the nation, and delivered a speech blasting the education schools that have trained the majority of the 3.2 million teachers working in U.S. public schools today. "By almost any standard, many if not most of the nation's 1,450 schools, colleges and departments of education are doing a mediocre job of preparing teachers for the realities of the 21st century classroom," he said to an audience of teaching students who listened with more curiosity than ire — this was Columbia University after all, and they knew Duncan wasn't talking to them. It was a damning, but not unprecedented, assessment of teacher colleges, which have long been the stepchildren of the American university system and a frequent target of education reformers' scorn over the past quarter-century.

But Duncan's speech raises another question: If most teacher colleges are "mediocre," does that mean the teachers they produce are equally lackluster?

One of the major problems with answering that question, says David Steiner, New York's education commissioner, is that we simply don't know, can't know. It is nearly impossible in many states to tell which teachers produce the best student outcomes, let alone which teacher colleges. "And if we can't identify the skills that make a difference in terms of student learning, then what we're saying is that teaching is an undefinable art, as opposed to something that can be taught," says Steiner. Until recently, Steiner served as dean of Hunter College's School of Education, where he was a vocal critic of the typical ed-school approach, in which teachers-in-training study theories and philosophies of education at the expense of practical, in-the-classroom experience. Steiner maintains that institutions need to turn their eyes toward the practical and away from the hypothetical.

Which brings people like Steiner to a central concern: What good are teachers' credentials if we can't tell how much their students are learning?

To that end, Duncan said, "I am urging every teacher-education program today to make better outcomes for students the overarching mission that propels all their efforts." He suggested that more states mimic a model currently being used in Louisiana in which student test scores in grades 4-9 are traced back to their teachers, who are in turn traced back to their place of training, whether it be an ed school or an alternative certification program like Teach for America.

"If you want to get more-effective teachers, one of the obvious places to begin is to look at the supply side," says George Noell, a researcher at Louisiana State University who has worked for several years on the state's Teacher Quality initiative. "You need to know who's coming into teaching, how they were prepared and where they were prepared. Then you can make a link between who taught a kid, who trained the teacher and the overall efficacy of that teacher." Although such measures may seem a prelude to punitive measures on ed schools, "we aren't seeking to close people down," says Noell. "That's not the point." Rather, the ideal situation would be to have schools use the feedback to improve the quality of their instruction. The University of Louisiana at Lafayette, for example, increased admissions standards and added other programs after data from the initiative alerted the school to its weaknesses.

Concern over the ability of teacher colleges to produce effective teachers has long existed and only increased as the focus of education policy has turned to accountability and data. As Duncan points out, one of his predecessors, Richard Riley, put ed colleges on notice a full decade ago. The difference, as Duncan never misses an opportunity to say, is that the Federal Government now has financial incentives through which to effect change — a $4.35 billion pot of competitive innovation grants and $43 million to support "residency" programs that put budding teachers in classrooms for longer periods of time under the watchful eye of a veteran teacher, in much the same way that medical residents are supervised by seasoned staff for their first few years out of med school.

Smart as they may be, trace-back programs are still likely to meet resistance. "Who wakes up one morning and says, 'I want to be publicly accountable?' " says Noell of teacher colleges. "That's kind of scary for anybody. Nobody wants to be embarrassed."

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1931810,00.html#ixzz0Yr9Ly7Rc

Taking Educators to School

is it me, or is this guy making a lot of sense?  someone recently suggested we adopt a Doc-for-America plan to help with the need for more general practicioners....seems to be the same idea as a lot of this so-called "reform"  Thoughts, gentle readers?

Taking educators to school by Dan Carpenter

I can't remember the last time a politician told Indiana's medical school or law schools they had too much say in how doctors and lawyers were educated.  Or that we needed to make it easier for laypersons to become doctors, lawyers, even chiefs of surgery and judges.

The idea is that unsatisfactory student achievement is the fault of a closed teaching society that is loath to change with the times and dedicated to the welfare of salaried adults rather than the needs of children.

Refutation of these presumptions is ample. Innovation and self-criticism are staples of teacher education and are reflected in state accountability law that predates Bennett. Dedicated teachers, even those protected by unions from arbitrary firing, are not the exception. If one accepts these truths, then one faces a political problem in seeking to paint schools as the culprit in children's failure, and punitive school "reform" as the simple solution. If education colleges know what they're doing, and teachers are earning their pay, then low scores and high dropout rates indicate societal dysfunction too deep-seated to repair in the place where children spend seven hours a day for half the year. 

While they pay token homage to the challenges society lays at the schoolhouse door, "reformist" politicians and their media choir keep returning to the "failed schools" mantra and the scared straight strategy. Read their lips and their articles closely, and you'll find precious little in terms of substantial suggestions, even less recognition of changes already made and virtually no concession that education costs don't stand still.

The reason medical and law schools do not endure this kibitzing is that teachers in America are not regarded as professionals. Bennett's proposals to fast-track lay people with "content knowledge" into teaching, and to dilute formal requirements for administrators, may make perfect sense to him as applied science -- schooling for the real world. Nor is the "establishment" entirely hostile, in concept.

Try to imagine, though, such a sweeping and unilateral "improvement plan" being presented to another professional community by a representative of the general public. He'd be coolly thanked for his interest by practitioners and their mentors who, unlike teachers, are not doing work every guy with half an education thinks he can do.

A teacher friend reminded me, during a recent discussion of the reform brouhaha, that there are some lazy and lousy teachers out there. Yes, I replied, and some bad doctors and lawyers too. I don't feel qualified to fix any of them; and if I could, I wouldn't guarantee us a smart, healthy, law-abiding Indiana in the bargain.

Read & Comment: LINK

Teachers....this is what we do

I'm afraid that $500 test, or a degree in Chemistry, or an unfortunate layoff doesn't help you get anywhere near understanding this:

Preparing Teachers (cont.)

The conversation continues on how to best prepare teachers.  What you might miss here is that Art Levine has also highlighted many highly-effective Schools of Education and has been working with them to produce more Math and Science teachers (hint: there's one in downtown Indianapolis). Of special note here is the fact that these other programs of alternative certification don't have any research behind them that point to success--it makes you wonder what all the vitriol is about if they don't actually have any facts, eh?

What Should Go Into A Teaching Degree?

byCLAUDIO SANCHEZ

Listen to the Story

All Things Considered

[7 min 50 sec]

The vast majority of classroom teachers are trained in traditional colleges of education. That training, however, has come under intense scrutiny. Critics say too many teachers leave poorly prepared for the enormous changes taking place in the real world of teaching. At Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Va., like most traditional, university-based teaching degree programs, students enroll in a five-year program and receive both classroom instruction as well as student-teaching experience. It's those "real life" classroom experiences that VCU bases its curriculum on, professor Leila Christenbury says. "I went back to teach high school English because I was concerned about being out of touch. And when you go up and down this hall in this school of education, you're going to find people who are in the schools every single week," she says. "We're not out of touch. Every person is a veteran elementary, middle or high school teacher."

READ MORE: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113349924

What Makes a Good Teacher?

After attending the panel discussion last night on proposed changes to teacher licensure, I'm equally frustrated and encouraged.  The discussion was a good one and the panel seemed fair yet pointed.  Dr. Bennett didn't really answer any questions and presented a muddled view of what he's trying to do and a very muddled batch of "research" that he says backs up the proposal.  In fact, alot of what he said in public seemed in contradiction to what the proposal actually said.  He talked a good game about "listening" and collaboration but this hasn't been how we've seen the department behave so far (I do give him credit for showing up and asking folks to formally comment on the DOE website.  There are just so many unanswered questions and contradictions that frustration seems to be the general mood.  Real questions remain about teaching kids with special needs, kids coming from poverty, kids learning english and a general sense on just what makes a good teacher.

Sadly, the big question now isn't "is this bad for Indiana's kids?" but rather, "just how bad is it going to be?"

Panel debates what makes a good teacher

Updated: Tuesday, 22 Sep 2009, 11:19 PM EDT
Published : Tuesday, 22 Sep 2009, 11:18 PM EDT

• Eric Halvorson

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) - Indiana's superintendent of schools said the state can do more by opening teaching positions to people with experience outside the classroom. But, to the people there now, outside experience may not be enough. Read More: http://www.wishtv.com/dpp/news/education/Panel_debates_what_makes_a_good_teacher_20090922