While it’s hard to argue with the many of the basic claims this report makes about the quality of teacher education, the suggested solutions—which include judging teacher education results based upon the standardized test scores of teacher education graduates and shifting the focus of ed schools away from an arts and science research model—are wrong-headed.
Here are two stories about the Levine Report.
(1) Inside Higher Ed: New Critique of Teacher Ed
(2) Report Blasts Teacher-Education Programs as Outdated and Low-Quality
By PIPER FOGG
Most of the nation’s teacher-education programs are failing teachers, with outdated visions and embarrassingly low standards, concludes a report issued on Monday by Arthur Levine, president of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation and former president of Teachers College at Columbia University.
The report, “Educating School Teachers,” was released by the Education Schools Project, which Mr. Levine directs. It blasts faculty, admissions, and graduation standards, and calls curricula irrelevant, at a majority of teacher-education schools.
The schools have “not kept pace with changing demographics, technology, global competition, and pressures to raise student achievement,” a news release on the report says.
The report is the second in a planned four-part series, and is based on responses to a survey sent to 1,206 heads of American schools and departments of education, 5,469 education-school faculty members, 15,468 education-school alumni, and 1,800 principals of elementary, middle, and high schools. Response rates for the groups ranged from 34 percent to 53 percent. The research also included case studies of 28 schools and departments of education.”Any teacher-education program can be successful and there’s no excuse for them not to be,” said Mr. Levine in an interview on Monday. It will simply take “will,” he said. “It doesn’t cost anything to improve quality standards.”
The report calls for several steps to improve teacher education, including making student achievement in kindergarten through 12th grade the primary measure of the success of such programs, as opposed to teachers’ licensure scores. Achievement should be measured by gauging K-12 students’ progress from the start of school through high-school graduation, to determine what kind of direct impact a teacher-education program’s graduates are having in the classroom, the report suggests.
Five-year teacher-education programs that require four years of undergraduate study, including general-education courses and a major, followed by a year of study in how to teach the major subject, should be the norm, it recommends, and the number of programs at selective research institutions should be expanded.
The report also calls for giving accreditors a chance to revamp their system, and if they can’t make the necessary improvements, the current accreditation system should be scrapped, the report says. Mr. Levine advocates encouraging states to establish common, outcomes-based requirements for certification and licensure.
Already the report has raised hackles. While the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education agrees with some of the suggestions, it balks at the idea of doing away with the current accreditation system. “We would not support wiping out 50 years of forward progress in improving the quality of preparation programs,” said Sharon P. Robinson, the group’s president, in a written statement. Instead, she said, that progress should be built upon.
She also rejected the suggestion that programs be expanded at what she called “high-cost, highly selective, elite institutions that attract few teacher candidates.” Instead, she advocated what she called the more “inclusive” approach of improving quality at the less selective institutions, which train more of the nation’s teachers.
Arthur E. Wise, president of the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education, defended its accrediting process in a written statement. He said that the report ignores the fact that the council’s standards “are so demanding that many institutions have failed to meet them.” He also said that Mr. Levine’s report acknowledges that teachers from institutions accredited by his group pass licensing exams at a higher rate than other teachers do, and that students of teachers from accredited institutions have improved in mathematics and science more than other students have.
Copyright © 2006 by The Chronicle of Higher Education
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