The attack on teacher education and teachers

Radical Teacher, Fall, 2002 by Frinde Maher

This essay is adapted from a talk given at a conference on the right-wing attacks on our education system last fall, co-sponsored by Radical Teacher and Teachers for a Democratic Culture. Topics at the conference included the privatization and corporatization of both public and higher education, and this talk was about how the field of teacher education is being transformed by these same forces.

How do high stakes testing, school choice, voucher schemes and low funding work together? If you privatize and "outsource," if you make individual schools, parents and teachers solely responsible for their kids' progress with fewer resources to go on, then there has to be a bottom line, a measure of "who wins" in the educational market. Tests allow comparisons between schools so we know who wins and loses, and can blame teachers, kids and their parents for their failures. The notion of public responsibility for education, even the assumption of the need for public and civic spaces and communities, is eroded, but administrators and teachers and parents and children scrambling for their own places on the ladder may hardly notice.

Where does teacher education fit into this picture? Concern about higher education's capacity to prepare quality teachers has reached unprecedented proportions. Federal policy makers have responded by passing Title II of the Higher Education Reauthorization Act of 1998, which purportedly seeks to improve teacher quality by requiring states to report institutional pass rates on certification exams and denying federal aid to institutions that lose state certification. The result: a decrease in the supply of qualified teachers, especially to working class and minority schools, another excuse for not dealing with what schools need, and a blaming of the female victim, in this case teachers and teacher educators, for school problems rooted elsewhere.

Title II requires all institutions that prepare teachers to report the "Pass Rates" of their own "Program Completers" on state certification exams to their states. The states in turn are required to report this data annually to the federal government. Although Title II requires institutions to demonstrate that their programs meet standards by reporting their pass rates on certification tests, it does not require states to demonstrate that their tests meet national standards for testing. Each state is allowed their own testing policy. (1) Absent validation by independent experts, it is not clear what it means to achieve specific pass rates on these tests. The Massachusetts test has never been professionally validated, and the governor of Massachusetts has twice vetoed funding for the validation process.

Many states use different tests, and even states that use the same test impose different passing levels, or "cut scores." Thus, according to the National Research Council (NRC), "It is virtually impossible to make meaningful comparisons of passing scores across states when states use their own tests." Furthermore many institutions will simply require every student to pass all requisite tests before entering their education programs, giving themselves an automatic 100% pass rate. But 100% pass rates attained in this manner are meaningless because, as the Tide II reporting guidelines note, they "do not reflect how well the institutions have prepared all the students enrolled in their programs to pass state assessments." Nevertheless, Title II requires that states rank their institutions according to pass rates, without taking this issue into account. The public will not know whether an institution attained its 100% pass rate by educating all, or by screening out some (perhaps many), of its students.

But that's not all. Title II will also decrease the supply of quality teachers. Institutions which adopt the 100% strategy--and many will--inevitably force their students to take state certification tests early in their college careers. This will prematurely push out of teacher preparation those students who, with hard work and good teaching, would pass these tests later in their college career. Furthermore, the national teacher shortage is already dire in some states. For example, this year Texas needs 30,000 new teachers, but its colleges of education produced only about 16,000 graduates.

When superintendents and principals are compelled to choose between placing a warm body and no body in a classroom, they invariably select the warm body--even if that warm body has not passed all required tests. Two thirds of the states have waiver policies which permit schools to hire college graduates who have not passed their tests. Title II seeks to discourage such waivers by requiring states to report how many they grant. Nevertheless, by pressuring schools of education to prepare fewer teachers in order to achieve higher pass rates, Title II will increase the numbers of waivers offered.

Consequently, instead of having a fully licensed reaching force, we will get a two-tiered one. There will be a fully-licensed cohort for more privileged schools and a temporary, unlicensed and undereducated teaching force for the students in large urban districts, students who get the fewest educational resources already. Finally, Title II is threatening the very existence of institutions dedicated to working with under-prepared and first-generation college students over their whole four years. Some institutions will respond by adopting the 100% strategy and quietly abandon their mission. Others will stay, and risk being labeled as low-performing or even closed. The results: high turnover, teachers with poor or no training, and the chance to blame teachers and teacher educators for school failings.