Blue Ribbon Panel Comes Up With Innovative New Ways to Destroy Public Education

[Hannah Bell]

The Blue Ribbon Panel on teacher Accreditation is recommending that new teachers spend less time in university classes and more time in k-12 classrooms to get more “clinical” training, like in the medical profession.

What the panel neglects to acknowledge is that doctors spend years in medical school before they start their clinical training so that they have some understanding of what to look for in their patients and how to treat it. It seems self-evident that more classroom practice (i.e., observing and critiquing other teachers and student teaching) should be beneficial to teachers in training. However, if this comes at the expense of sufficient training in curriculum and content, educational philosophies, pedagogy and history, new teachers will lack a theoretical basis for their clinical practice....

According to the panel, “school districts will have a more significant role in designing and implementing teacher education programs, selecting candidates for placement in their schools, and assessing candidate performance and progress...”

The panel recommends that all programs use “data-driven accountability based on measures of candidate performance and student achievement, including gains in standardized test scores.” While this does not go quite as far as Reed Lyon had hoped when he argued that we should blow up the teacher colleges, it does imply that teacher training colleges will be punished if k-12 students fail their standardized tests.

One likely result will be a dearth of teacher training schools, as more and more lose accreditation. The vacuum will likely be filled by private for-profit schools such as American College of Education (started by Bush cronies Reid Lyon, Rod Paige and Randy Best). There will also be a dearth of qualified teachers as candidates who fail to bring up test scores will fail to be certificated.

The panel makes many other dubious recommendations. For example, they “urge states, institutions, and school districts to explore alternative funding models, including those used in medicine to fuse funds for patient care and the training of residents in teaching hospitals.” Schools are already running on bare bones budgets. Without extraordinarily large increases in school funding, this recommendation will result in money being reallocated from teacher compensation and classroom instruction to teacher training programs.

Eight states — California, Colorado, Louisiana, Maryland, New York, Ohio, Oregon and Tennessee — have already signed letters of intent to implement the new agenda. The two biggest teachers unions helped draft these proposals...

http://modeducation.blogspot.com/2010/11/blue-ribbon-panel-comes-up-with.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ModernSchool+%28Modern+School%29

[Angry Dragon]

1. The slow slide into the Bowels of Hell

I wonder when the selling of the soul of this country will stop

[Sabriel]

2. Our program is looking at adding more field experience

But not at the expense of coursework...in addition to what's already in place. At the same time, however, the Chancellor is after us to cut credits to degree, which means we'll eventually have to collapse or eliminate some courses. We don't have a choice in the matter, as it's mostly a budget issue.

The issue that's more troubling to me is the trend toward online teacher education models. What kinds of skills and ideas do these students pick up in that kind of format, as opposed to sitting in a class where the instructor models best practice teaching and classroom management?

Sometimes I feel like teacher ed colleges are participating in their own demise.

While I'm at it, Hannah Bell, thanks for your long-term advocacy for teachers and public education on DU. We need more voices like yours.

[Catshrink]

3. +1

:applause: for Hannah Bell!

[donco6]

4. +1 n/t