Gary K. Clabaugh, Emeritus Professor of Education, La Salle University
I prepared teachers for nearly half a century. And, looking back, I fear I chose the wrong line of work. I took my job seriously. I saw it as morally imperative to protect children from the incapable and/or uncaring. But I was paddling against the current. No one of influence, from the institutional to the national, really cares about teacher prep.
Would demanding, high quality, research-based teacher preparation mean children will be protected from the above? Of course not. But it is still absolutely essential. These days state and national officials obviously view high quality teacher preparation as an impediment. Why? Because it interferes with securing cheap and compliant hired hands for our public schools. Policy makers know that the more plentiful the supply of certified teachers, the less they will have to be paid or respected. So, instead of making certification more demanding, they’ve been busy creating quickie routes to a teaching certificate.
In encouraging these routes they even embrace the idea that it’s OK for would-be teachers to learn their trade via ill-supervised trial and error. The assumption is that, over time, they’ll get it right. Maybe they will — in time. But what about the lives of the children practiced on?
I spent my career at a Catholic college run by a religious order whose founder is the patron saint of teachers. When I accepted the job I reasoned that senior staff would take particular pride in their teacher education programs. But I failed to adequately consider that this was a liberal arts college. That’s never been a particularly auspicious setting for teacher preparation. Many of the professors in such institutions, particularly the ones with august reputations, seem to think they were born learned. Why? Because they clearly are contemptuous of the people who prepared them for college.
At the time of my hire our college offered only secondary education and this as a weak add-on to the school’s traditional liberal arts programming. In this environment the education department was Thursday’s child. Fighting institutional indifference or bemused condescension from a dismaying number of senior staff and faculty, my colleagues and I slowly developed truly outstanding teacher education programming. It took many years of struggle, begging, cajoling, conniving and wheedling. But in time our programming actually gained a degree of national notoriety and became a model for overdue state reforms. Nevertheless, to my astonishment, senior staff remained largely disinterested.
For instance, we developed an innovative and demanding summer program that helped prepare graduate level career changers to become special education teachers. It was truly tough — our equivalent of basic training. The program served handicapped youngsters along with their siblings; and it was so successful parents were bringing children from a five county area. It even was featured on local television. But our Dean of Arts and Sciences, in whose school we were housed, could not be persuaded, despite repeated invitations, even to visit. Worse still, when we won national recognition as one of the nation’s best teacher preparation programs, we couldn’t convince the school’s public relations office to publicize the achievement locally oreven put it in the university’s promotional material. (This certainly was not true of our university’s occasional basketball triumphs.)
The excellence of our program’s graduates, widely recognized by school administrators across the region, was heavily dependent on our ability to select the best from the rather large pool of applicants who wanted to become teachers. For a time we were permitted to make this selection. But when a new university president came on board he declared, without consultation, that our ability to select candidates had been repealed. Henceforth anyone declaring an education major was to be accepted by default. Why did he expunge our right to be selective? He never said. But his goal must have been to increase tuition income. If so, it worked. Our department became one of the biggest earners in the school. I heard we were even referred to by management as a “revenue center” in their private meetings
Predictably, student quality declined and the quality of our program declined with it. Our faculty proved unwilling to commit professional suicide by flunking a large number of students. I flunked more than most, but still lightened my expectations and requirements. I was was the sole bread-winner and I didn’t feel I should risk the well-being of my family. Perhaps senior staff might have restored our right of refusal had we stuck to our guns and flunked those who failed to meet our previous standards, But none of us had the guts to try..
Our struggle to maintain program quality wasn’t merely a question of student selection. Year after year our budget remained static while our student numbers grew. In time we became the most popular program in the school of liberal arts. But the vast bulk of the revenue we generated disappeared into the general fund. Very little was reinvested to properly equip or staff our growing program. Key positions were staffed by adjuncts, and despite repeated pleas for instructional resources matching those of a typical public school, ours remained embarrassingly gaunt. For decades we depended on a blackboard, chalk, bulletin boards and whatever electronic gizmos we could borrow from Audio-Visual, load on a rickety card and precariously trundle to our far off classrooms. We were equipped for the 1950’s well into the 21st Century.
In time a new Dean of Arts and Sciences came on board who at least expressed interest in our programming. But every department was tugging on his coat tails, and the resources he controlled were meager. So the impact of having a professed friend in the deanship was minor.
Such was my experience. Was it an aberration? Are other teacher prep programs given much higher priority? I doubt that. Over the years I attended numerous national gatherings and compared notes with many colleagues. And none of them have ever boasted of an autonomy approaching that of even a school of podiatry.
To be fair, I shouldn’t just blame our school’s senior staff for their parsimony or even for their apparent unconcern. Indifference to the quality of teacher preparation is nearly universal in the USA. It bubbles all the way to the very top. Consider that former President Obama and his highly unqualified Secretary of Education magically transformed teacher interns into “highly qualified teachers” with a wave of their administrative wand. Why? To “meet” the teacher preparation standards of the No Child Left Behind Act. It required every state to employ “highly qualified” teachers. But that rule prevented states like California from finding sufficient cannon fodder to staff classrooms in their educational wastelands. So Obama and company fixed it so they could. So, probably for the very first time in history, rank beginners became “highly qualified.” This is not in the same league as turning water into wine, but it’s close.
In my next life I think I’ll choose a career the American people really care about. Selling pornography might be good. I would make piles of money and a lot of people are genuinely interested. Or perhaps I should become a divorce lawyer. You know, putting asunder what God has put together. The ones I know live like kings. I could even become a merchant of death. A guy I know is a sales rep for an armaments manufacturer, and he is extremely well off. (His luxury car is nearly as big as my apartment.) Moreover, unlike teacher educators, he doesn’t have to sell anyone on the importance of his product line. “Here’s a dandy line of napalm. It really sticks to flesh.”
Of course there is overwhelming evidence that first rate teacher education is an absolutely crucial ingredient of first rate schooling. How could it be otherwise? You can’t make prime rib out of pig snouts. Finland provides an absolutely compelling example of what high quality teacher preparation can accomplish. But what American of influence gives a damn about that? Certainly not Donald Trump — much less that pedagogically ignorant, religious zealot he crowned Secretary of Education. So, should I be granted a next time around, I will leave teacher prep to those willing to compromise or just too dumb to know better.
For more on this subject see www.newfoundations.com/EGR/Cannonfodderany