History of IDEA
Jeannie Oakes, Founder and Former Director
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Education Secretary Calls for Improved Teacher Education While Schools Struggle to Meet Payrolls
- 11-13-2009
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By UCLA IDEA staff
Themes in the News for the week of Oct. 26-30, 2009
United States Education Secretary Arne Duncan called college teacher training programs “cash cows” that do a “mediocre job of preparing teachers for the classroom” (USA Today). He charged universities with diverting “profits” to smaller, more prestigious graduate departments such as physics instead of using resources on “research and training for would-be teachers.”
Duncan wants education systems to use data to link students’ achievement to their teachers and the colleges that trained and certified the teachers (San Francisco Chronicle). “We should be studying and copying the practices of effective teacher preparation programs, and encouraging the lowest performers to shape up or shut down," Duncan said. (USA Today).
Using data in this way has been a centerpiece of administration education policy. But such policies face technical problems. UCLA Education Professor Mike Rose offers an example of the limitations of using test scores as tools for reforming practice, “There are a host of factors that can affect scores: the non-random mix of students in a class, the students’ previous teachers, the lobbying of senior teachers for higher-scoring classes or the assignment of such classes to a principal’s favored teachers” (Truthdig).
Even if the necessary data-based systems were well developed, there is little evidence to show they would have a significant and timely impact on schools and training institutions. Linking teacher and student data does not, in and of itself, promote better teaching and improved student learning. Identifying problems and inadequacies in teaching is only one piece of the jigsaw, there must also be a commitment to provide the opportunities to learn that students and their teachers require.
Duncan’s call to base reforms on students’ and teachers’ performance comes at a time when schools are struggling to retain essential programs and keep teachers, counselors, and staff employed—even with the welcome infusion of federal stimulus funds. Those funds allowed schools to keep their doors open and avoid massive teacher layoffs—but month-to-month survival is a poor foundation for “revolutionary” reform, as Duncan called it, reform.
Well, not all schools are keeping those doors open. Recent news from Hawaii, which “already ranks near the bottom in national educational achievement” (USA Today) reveals that Hawaii public school children will have 17 fewer days of instruction. On most of the remaining Fridays in the academic year, schools will be closed. “…Advocates believe the plan will have a ‘disparate impact’ on poor families, ethnic communities and single parents” (USA Today).
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