Last night I copied and posted the following comment on my Facebook page from a teacher in Louisiana. The comment was from Diane Ravitch’s blog.
The graduate schools of education, doctoral programs and certification providers. Why are they silent [on education reform]?
It immediately generated some comments from friends. Most were in agreement that higher education, and more specifically, faculty in schools and colleges of education seem to be extremely silent during the war on public education. I blogged about this specific issue last year. I am reposting to see if my colleagues have started to wake up to the nightmare that our brothers and sisters in the public schools have endured for the last ten years. Please forward to any faculty member remotely involved in preparing teachers. We need to move them out of the “towers” and into the streets!
Dear Teacher Education Colleagues
Reports the Website “Schools Matter”: In recalibrating what information the Feds will require of ed schools, a graying and sallow Arne announced that his Gates and Broad handlers have come up with a scheme to reward and punish teacher preparation programs based on the scores from tests taken by students who will one day be taught by the ed school graduates.
HELP! Where are all the credible teacher educators? Where all of my colleagues? Do you really think that hiding behind your “research” agenda shields you from the reality of this new push to destroy the American public school system along with quality teaching and learning? WAKE UP! PAY ATTENTION! The corporate reform movement is coming for you and me now.
The NEA, NCATE, and as far as I can tell, our institutions of higher education that employ us now support “accountability” as defined by the Obama/Duncan Department of Education. As reported by Stephen Sawchuck, “Momentum appears to be gathering behind a U.S. Department of Education plan to hold teacher education programs accountable for the achievement of students taught by their graduates.” If you need to, go back and read that statement again and again until it sinks into your thick skulls.
We are now going to be responsible for the test scores of children that end up being taught by our graduates. In other words, if my son fails and his teacher was your student, it’s now your fault! And if you don’t make the changes needed to help your students “teach” my son how to do well on his standardized tests you, your department, your school, and/or your college will be slapped and eventually shut down. When that happens please tell me about how important your “research” was.
I’m sorry was I too harsh? Did I offend you (my colleagues)? Did I dare pick on your research? Yes I did. Now get over it and start speaking, writing and screaming about how “No Child Left Behind” for teacher education is at best a bone-headed idea and at worst an absolute assault on our academic freedom and an unethical attempt to make us do what we know is absolutely wrong.
Remember NCLB? Yeah, some of you complained and some of you even managed to turn it into a productive line of research. And what was it that you complained about and what did all that research reveal? You complained that testing would not do anything to the achievement gap, that the curriculum will narrow, that the “least among us” would be hit hardest, and that linking student test scores to teachers and schools was problematic. Then after years of conducting research you found out that all of your complaints were substantiated. The achievement gap still exists, public school children now receive little to no instruction in the arts or the humanities, the children of poverty are bearing the brunt of this misguided ideological attack on public schools and value-added measures of teachers are extremely unreliable and the public reporting of these statistics causes harm to all involved with public education.
It is our turn to join with the children, parents, teachers and public schools. All across the country there is an “Opt Out” movement occurring. Parents are refusing to allow their children to take standardized tests (here, here, here), teachers are refusing to administer the tests, administrators are speaking out against the negative consequences associated with the tests, and some schools have actually stopped administering the tests.
What should we do? How should we respond? Who’s willing to be the first teacher educator to say:
“No. I opt out too. I will not abandon everything I know about children, teaching learning and schools. I refuse to take part in a rigged political system designed to dismantle public education and thwart democracy.”
Isn’t it our turn to tune in and “opt out”?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/timothy-d-slekar/teacher-education-policy_b_1000306.html
Follow Timothy D. Slekar on Twitter: www.twitter.com/slekar
I really hope you are not too late but seeing as how the new 5-week teachers have their own “graduate schools” that consist of other 5-week teachers with maybe 2 or 3 years of experience acting as faculty ( no doctorate or research wanted, needed, or required!) and their “masters degrees” are based solely on test scores of their students’ students I’m afraid your replacements are already waiting in the wings.
Odd how the CCSS which is being used as the wrecking ball for public schools requires “college and xareer ready skills” yet teacher degrees are declared wothless. If you all don’t start screaming loudly and fighting like hell right now you will join us lowly public school teachers in the scapegoat pen and unemployment line sooner than you think. Good luck! We can do more fighting together!
Brian, So true! I am doing everything I can to get my colleagues to join in the defense of public schools. At The Chalk Face is committed to calling out all that hide from the struggle! Thanks for letting my colleagues know that they either get involved or suffer the consequences. Tim
You make a good point, Brian. What a despairing thought: two to three years in the classroom and they become teachers in their graduate school of education. And once the “in-house” revisions are made to primary and secondary test scores, or whatever describes their rubric, out pops their own version of a masters in education. A lot like a doctorate in divinity being conferred to one of their own at Oral Roberts University.
There is an attack by the federal, state, and local governments, in league with a bipartisan funded extremism, to abolish teacher education programs in colleges, eliminate college-trained teachers in the classrooms (and the protections of union contracts), reduce higher level administrator and other staff positions, and liquidate public education as we know it.
I have seen a growing trend toward privatization of public schools. I meet many new teachers, for example, who have just completed their TFA training (five weeks) and are now given waivers to take positions as special education and general teachers while just having completed their undergraduate degree (most often in subject areas unrelated to their placement). The public schools that have dropped into “zones of innovation” (read: Title I schools predominantly in high poverty areas in the process of restructuring and open to further outside agency scrutiny) have been instructed to fill existing teacher vacancies with a current minimum of 20% from TFA pools.
The University of Hawaii has revised their teacher education program to include online coursework for TFAs and others to complete credentialing as well as masters degrees in education. New TFAs have told me that their preparation for teaching is inferior, leaving them ill prepared to deliver classroom instruction: curriculum implementation, management plans, etc.
While I am retired from teaching and lecturing within university as well as public schools, my consulting work allows me to be in daily contact with current staff at these sites. Given the information provided me, it’s clear that future narrowing of teacher training programs at the university level will continue to the point where they increasingly coincide with the corporate training syllabi of privatized teacher education schemes.
Accountability for secondary student achievement imposed upon teacher educators will eventually eliminate teacher education staff in public universities. All done through government / private corporate collaboration and supported by privatization profiteers. Since the new charters replacing public schools will not have the same accountability mandates for learner outcomes, any consideration of higher education’s roll in these outcomes will be reduced to algorithms and the ever increasing growth of testing data. The imposition will be placed upon programmers and software developers via top down management directives in conjunction with guiding legislation from a unified and privatized federal or global department of education.
Today, teacher educators are holding on to what they have: positions, salaries, benefits, and accruing pension benefits when they choose or are forced to retire. No one I’ve spoken with would consider raging against the privatization machine. Feelings of uncertainty, disquiet, and anxiety are palpable. Tomorrow, they’ll all be part of the picture of a gone world.
Kuhio, Please tell me it’s not that bad. I still have at least 20 years in this field. Do you really believe there is no fight left in higher ed faculty? I mean after reading my piece how is it possible for any of them to keep their traps shut? Haven’t I inspired the revolution?
Sadly I tend to agree with you. Even the new faculty don’t get it. They blissfully do the conference circuit kissing the arses of the big researchers in their respective fields.
Sad Sad Sad
The balance sheets of many public colleges are as so much low lying fruit just as are public elementary and secondary schools (especially in low income, high poverty areas). A provost’s office–a grand statement of fine opulence and fixed capital with mahogany desks, French polished side boards and highboys, imported carpeting so smooth and true it would provide for the best of practice putting greens–tells a story of how corporate sponsorship is something to be held in the highest of esteem. A good friend and mentor comes to mind. He had learned the secret to success within the university ranks: lecturing on environmental ethics while consulting with Mobil Oil.
While I admired his divergent diplomacy, I am reminded of the strong bonds between universities and private corporations. In these economic times (I hate that phrase), all of education becomes vulnerable to transformation by privatization of the commons, and all the private profit it brings at social costs. I have yet to see the clamor to the hall doors by professors ready for the good fight. To avail themselves to the cause of dueling with educational privatization at the expense of their chosen career paths.
Were it only so easy, Tim. I’ve already raised the issues you raise with my Dean and the head of our teacher ed program. As they note, since our teacher ed program is required by the state education agency to comply with ALL of their directives the only choice universities have is to terminate their teacher ed programs or comply with the rules. In our case, here in TN where value added assessment began a decade or more ago, everyone hopes that good performance of our grads on the TVASS will allow us to keep preparing teachers. Other colleges, where the students of their teacher ed candidates didn’t do so well have to worry but not us. I remind everyone that at first they were came after other people so we weren’t worried but soon….
Sounds eerily familiar.