EWA Seminar: How Well Is the U.S. Preparing Its Teachers?
How well are teachers being prepared for their jobs? How can colleges of education improve the quality of their programs and the effectiveness of their graduates? On Saturday, Oct. 27 at the University of Minnesota, the Education Writers Association will hold a one-day seminar for journalists that will tackle these pressing questions for the nation's school system.
We'll look at the groundswell for teacher preparation programs to overhaul how aspiring educators are trained, and how those programs are being held newly accountable for how well their graduates perform on the job. The keynote speaker with be Arthur Levine, past president of the Teachers College at Columbia University. And Kate Walsh of the National Council on Teacher Quality and Linda Darling-Hammond of Stanford University will discuss NCTQ's controversial plans to rate teacher training programs for the first time.
There are limited scholarships available to help cover your travel costs -- including airfare and hotel. However, time is running out so be sure to apply today.
Have a question, comment or concern for the Educated Reporter? Email EWA public editor Emily Richmond at erichmond@ewa.org. She also tweets @EWAEmily.
posted by Emily Richmond at
12:00 AM
1 Comments:
We are facing a societal challenges challenge that goes beyond mere reform. Teachers face wider disparities in behavior, parental support, and readiness to learn than ever before. Societal Challenge
We are attempting to reinvent a school system dismantled by the innovative forces of technological change and of globalization, schools, job descriptions, and lives are being redefined. Now schools/teachers are required to teach problem-solving and critical thinking (beyond basic skills) to ALL students and are being held accountable through state-legislated accountability laws.
Customarily, public schools have been least successful educating children of the poor, children of the chemically dependent, children of the single, underemployed parent, and children of color. Because of the imploding economy, over 20 % of America’s school-age children live in poverty .
During the industrial era, the school’s primary mission was to graduate the masses from high school. The classroom was (and in too many cases still is) the sacred, untouchable domain of the teacher who served/serves as the “soliloquizing authority” much like the foreman in a factory or a manager in an office.
In an educational civilization created during the social and economic context of industrialization, schools and teachers were neither required to nor needed to educate ALL children equally and well. Designed to prepare students for life in the prosperous, industrial economy, a “invisible curriculum” of rote memorization, rigid uniformity, punctuality, silence, and obedience was integrated into the daily classroom content. Teachers, too, were co-opted into a similar model. Obedient and punctual teachers with effective classroom management skills, (quiet students) low student failure rates, positive rapport with parents, peers, and especially the principal earned tenure, a pension plan, incremental pay raises, and a good life. Alas, this model is gone with the wind.
Newly elected governors, federal policy incentives, and legislative bodies working in concert across America have spawned an unprecedented wave of legislation designed to create an Educator-Effectiveness Reform Model. Through mandating ongoing student assessments and linking the assessments to decisions concerning tenure, dismissal of underperforming teachers, and workforce reduction, educators find themselves in a performance-oriented culture.
Now, teachers are viewed as accountable talent and are expected to perform like workers in profit-making industries. Their bottom line is students’ test scores (soul-wrenching assessments). However, corporate managers who supervise 50, 100, 150 or more personalities earn far more than the annual $40,000 to $70,000 of teachers. And they don’t run out of supplies/equipment needed to perform their jobs. Unfortunately, because of the high jobless rate, there is no taxpayer elixir to bail out schools which means today’s teachers are expected to do more with less.
However, the next iteration of capitalism requires that job descriptions for All stakeholders be reinvented: schools, teachers, parents, faith-based organizations AND students
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• Who will be responsible for birthing the character traits (maverick thinking, marching to a different drummer, curiosity, outhustling the competition, risk taking, irreverence, etc.) students need to compete with the billions of new capitalists who have entered the workforce since the fall of the Berlin Wall?
• How do we create a school /classroom culture where students learn to face failure, overcome mistakes, problem-seek, and confront conflict needed to thrive in an innovation-based economy?
Journeying down the paths of student test scores and teacher performance-based assessments without addressing a new, “invisible curriculum” means that all students, especially children of the poor, of color, of the chemically dependent, and of the single, underemployed parent, will be ILL-EQUIPPED to prosper in the new economy.
Lorraine Richardson
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