Sounding the Alarm on Teacher Preparation

ASEE Prism, Jan 2007 by Sanoff, Alvin P

K-12

IT'S NO SECRET that the nation's schools are suffering from a shortage of qualified teachers in math and the sciences, a situation that helps explain widespread student underperformance and lack of interest in these disciplines. But it is not just in math and the sciences that the qualification of teachers has come into question. A new foundation-funded report sounds a warning about the preparation of teachers in all disciplines. "Educating School Teachers," written by Arthur Levine, former president of Teachers College at Columbia University, concludes that the overwhelming majority of the more than 1,200 teacher preparation programs in the nation's colleges and universities range from mediocre to poor. Based on extensive survey research and visits to 28 education schools throughout the country, the report faults teacher education programs for being insufficiently engaged with the nation's schools, and, as a result, failing to prepare graduates for the realities of the classroom.

The report says that in education, unlike other professions, there is lack of agreement on what aspiring graduates need to know as well as on whether preparation should take place at the undergraduate level, graduate level or both. "At the moment, teacher education is the Dodge City of the education world," Levine writes. "Like the fabled Wild West town, it is unruly and disordered."

The report says that too many teacher education programs suffer from low admission standards and are used as "cash cows" by their parent institutions, which often care more about generating income than improving program quality. Standards need to be raised, Levine says, and teacher education programs need to be five years long and combine study in an academic field with work in pedagogy and child development.

Levine says that each state needs to rigorously assess how good of a job teachers who graduate from institutions within its borders do in enhancing the education of their students. This will require states to develop K-12 longitudinal data systems that track student achievement and growth in each classroom. Only a few states now have such systems in place.

Ultimately, says the report, teacher education programs that don't measure up should be closed, while promising programs are strengthened. If universities are unwilling to act, Levine says, then "the states must do so through their power to authorize academic programs." -ALVIN P. SANOPF