Schools of Education Just Keep Fighting Change
Laura Stanner, right, technology integration specialist with Keystone Area Education Agency in Elkader, Iowa, works with kindergarten teachers Kris Hermsen, left, and Mandy Lindecker during a training session Friday, Jan. 30, 2015, at Lincoln Elementary School in Dubuque, Iowa. (AP Photo/Telegraph Herald, Jessica Reilly)
RCEd Commentary
The recent declaration of war by the group representing education schools against those who accredit them was stunning.
It was the most in-your-face move yet by a faction of institutions that train teachers that they’re going to fight any meaningful efforts to raise standards and impose accountability.
In February, the teacher educators' membership body Association of Colleges for Teacher Education issued a unanimous no- confidence vote in the very accrediting body, the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation, that it had helped to create.
What is AACTE's complaint against the accreditor?
Some schools of education are upset about “accreditation standards, [the] process for accreditation, costs associated with accreditation, the capacity of CAEP to implement the accreditation system and the representativeness of the CAEP governance structure.”
There are legitimate questions about the accrediting group’s ability to implement its more demanding standards, slated to go into effect in 2016. But the mechanics of that work can be addressed. The bigger threat is whether AACTE is genuinely committed to raising the stature of teachers and supports shutting down institutions that don’t prepare teachers well. That was reason for CAEP’s creation.
AACTE’s attack is a political blunder. Now its pattern of resistance to raising the bar is unmistakably obvious. Though AACTE would insist that its objections have nothing to do with an unwillingness to publicly disclose information about its programs and that it’s only protesting unfair accountability systems, that’s disingenuous. My guess is that if it had the organizational equivalent of a few stiff drinks, AACTE would confess as much.
The truth is that the association is a membership body whose only mission is to ensure that every dues-paying teacher prep program in the country stays open – even if it is failing students.
When schools of education, through AACTE, took aim at us, the National Council on Teacher Quality and our program ratings – that was predictable.
Of course they would say we’re wrong in our findings that teacher prep programs accept unqualified applicants; that too many of their courses lack rigor; and that aspiring teachers are too often assigned randomly, rather than to effective teachers.
But then when the U.S. Department of Education vowed to impose new and higher standards and more transparency, the association went after it, too. The regulations would be too expensive; using student test results to judge a program’s effectiveness is unfair; the new rules would make the teaching profession less diverse.
(That last complaint is particularly offensive: Do schools of education really believe that minorities can’t meet high standards for acceptance into their programs?)
And now it’s the accrediting agency’s turn to be in the line of fire. One. Two. Three. Mow ’em down. Mercifully, many teacher educators are embarrassed by the relentless refusal to acknowledge that some programs don’t deserve to be trusted with the privilege and responsibility of training teachers.
What’s next? AACTE will try to take down the much-lauded edTPA, even though it once was the biggest proponent of the tool.
The Teacher Performance Assessment – or edPTA for short – requires teacher candidates to create a portfolio, including a video where they teach multiple lessons. The work is then graded by school of education faculty as well as classroom teachers.
Though touted as a panacea by AACTE for all of teacher prep’s ills, it development was never really about imposing systematic standards for evaluating aspiring teachers. Rather, it was just another sideshow aimed at delaying outside attempts to insist schools of ed be judged by how well their students teach. How else to explain why so few teacher prep institutions are adopting it and the wrangling over common cut scores?
There is a long history of such deflective moves. Does anyone remember a decade ago the much-ballyhooed blue-ribbon commission announcing teacher prep’s intention to set a common national score for passing licensing tests? It never happened – because its real purpose was to get Congress to go away. The strategy worked then, and it’s brazenly on display again.
I can’t help but think back 100 years and compare AACTE’s approach with that of the American Medical Association to a scathing, now famous, analysis of its own medical training programs.
Harsh as the so-called Flexner Report’s findings were (with only one medical school in the United States rated as strong), the AMA embraced the critique and used it as the linchpin for sweeping change.
The result? The country got better-trained doctors, lives were saved and patient care became immeasurably better.
With so many new teachers being ill-prepared for the immensely difficult job of teaching, and so many thousands of students being ill-served as a result, shouldn’t something change?
