Tougher Teacher Prep: An Absolutely Essential Reform

It might seem that the United States has already addressed the teacher quality issue. The No Child Left Behind law required every state to hire only “highly qualified teachers.” But the meaning of “highly qualified” was shrewdly left up to the states. And to avoid the expense and other difficulties associated with actually upgrading the teaching force, most states concocted very weak definitions.

California, for instance, allows aspiring teachers to earn a preliminary credential—called an intern certificate—at night and on week- ends while teaching, or at least trying to teach, in a full-time paid position. The interns are required to begin experimenting on students after the equivalent of just five weeks of training under the dubious guidance of “lead teachers.”2 The guidance is dubious because the novices themselves can become “lead teachers” after completing just 120 hours of pre- service training. That’s the equivalent of just fifteen days.

Are there enough of these interns to really matter? There sure are. In some years they constituted almost one-quarter of California’s new teachers.

California’s stated goal in adopting quickie certifcation is “diversifying the workforce and meeting the need for math, science and special education teachers by appealing to local residents and mid- career professional who can’t afford to go a year without earning a salary.”3 A more honest explanation would read something like: “Given present pay and working conditions, we can’t find enough math, science and special education teachers; so we are willing to have inadequately trained people practice on impoverished children in hopes they will, in some measure, fill the gap.”

How can rank beginners possibly be classifed as “highly qualified”? That miracle, akin to the Biblical loaves and fishes, was accomplished by an act of Congress. In late 2010 that majestic body approved legislation defining novices still in training as “highly quali ed” under the No Child Left Behind law. A federal appeals court found that preposterous action bogus (Renee v. Duncan).4 But Congress, with support from the Education Department, attached riders to two appropriation bills circumventing the court’s ruling.5

Although President Obama claimed to want the best possible teachers for America’s kids, he signed those riders into law. In the usual bullshit format, the former president said, “America’s future depends on its teachers,” but he added, “That is why we are creating new pathways to teaching and new incentives to bring teachers to schools where they are needed the most.”6 Those vaunted “new pathways” featured skimpily trained amateurs practicing on the most needy children who already have enough problems.

Despite much research evidence to the contrary, our former president seemed to think that traditional teacher training makes little or no difference.7 Perhaps he has been inuflenced by the 2002 U.S. Secretary of Education’s report titled “Meeting the Highly Qualified Teachers Challenge.”8 This influential Bush-era document asserts that teacher education and certification are unrelated to teacher effectiveness, that traditionally prepared teachers are academically weak, that verbal ability and subject matter knowledge are the most important components of teacher effectiveness, and that alternatively certified teachers are highly effective.

The Secretary of Education who presided over the creation of this report was Dr. Roderick Paige, a former Texas high school football coach and George W. Bush appointee who demonstrated his objectivity by calling the National Education Association, believe it or not, a “terrorist organization.” Paige rose to prominence as superintendent of the Houston public schools, where he presided over the so-called “Houston Miracle.” It was thought to have produced greatly improved high stakes test scores until widespread cheating was discovered.9 Now its known as the Houston cheating scandal.

The Department of Education’s own standards require reliance on scientific research for policy formulation. But “Meeting the Highly Qualified Teachers Challenge” cites a grand total of, get this, one peer- reviewed article. It relies instead on a mixture of news stories and position papers from conservative advocacy groups.10

After conducting an exhaustive review of this report, Linda Darling-Hammond and Peter Youngs concluded that its results are “fictionalized” and “not supported by scientifically based research.”11

As a matter of fact, the report is exactly wrong. Research demonstrates that tra- ditional teacher preparation is at least as important as verbal ability and content knowledge for teacher effectiveness. Moreover, traditionally trained teachers think they were reasonably well prepared, while recruits who “skirted the core features of teacher preparation” said they were underprepared. Also, principals and alternatively trained teachers are less competent and less effective with students. And they have a higher rate of attrition.12

Instead of making entry into teaching easier, it should be made more difficult. Let’s look at a nation that did just that. Finland, troubled by mediocre schooling in the 1980s, instituted rigorous, highly selective, tuition-free, graduate-level teacher preparation. In the ensuing years new teachers’ test scores zoomed from mid-pack to superior and school achievement soared. Meanwhile, America’s scores remained mired in mediocrity as our “reformers” moved in the exact opposite direction.

Failing to improve relatively weak undergraduate teacher education programs or to stop their being milked as cash cows by revenue-hungry colleges and universities, our reformers encouraged lax, low-effort, “alternative routes” into teaching. And, by disrespecting and disempowering teachers, they have been transforming a career in teaching into a third-rate occupation.

We should emulate Finland. Teachers are retiring at an accelerated rate, a development that presents an unprecedented opportunity to upgrade the nation’s teaching force. Here, specifically, is what needs to be done:

• Eliminate all alternative certfication. There should be no easy routes into teaching—if for no other reason than that children are precious and amateurs should not use them for practice.
• Phase out all undergraduate certification programs. Most of the youngsters in these weak-kneed programs lack the maturity, focus, and general education for professional training.
• Phase in teacher preparation in newly minted, two-year, post- graduate professional schools similar to those preparing individuals for occupations we actually respect. Existing under- graduate programs that cannot, upgrade could provide pre-professional instruction that prepares students to meet the professional schools’ demanding entrance requirements.
• Provide full federal scholarships to all teacher candidates who meet the tough entrance requirements. That opens candidacy, regardless of income, to those who qualify and makes an unmistakable statement regarding the importance now assigned to teaching.
• Require those who complete such rigorous programs to contract to teach at least five years or pay back the scholarship.

Is there sufficient consensus in the United States to support such radical change? Probably not. We are a much more numerous, diverse, and divided nation than Finland and we’re busily spending our treasure policing the world. On the other hand, no attempt was made to develop a national consensus supporting our current reform efforts or our single-minded focus on international competitiveness of the economic kind. They simply were imposed. So widespread agreement may not be crucial.

Of course, few will submit to truly rigorous teacher prep unless the payoffs match the pain. That raises the issue of teacher salaries. Would taxpayers be willing to pay three and one-half million public school teachers a salary commensurate with high-quality professional preparation? Perhaps they would not—but present pay and benefits might suffie ce if teacher preparation were fully subsidized and teachers were supported and respected instead of disempowered and bullied.

Remember, America has a history of disdain for teachers. (“Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.”) Replace those sneers with apprecia- tion and respect, and material rewards might be less pertinent.

What would it cost to give every qualifying candidate a full scholarship? Let’s very generously estimate the amount at $100,000 per candidate—$50,000 per year. That amount is similar to the tuition and fees of rst-year medical students in private medical schools.13 Right now the United States requires some 240,000 new teachers per annum, primarily due, by the way, to skyscraper-high attrition.14 (In 2011, 46 percent of new teachers left the profession within ve years at an estimated cost of $7.3 billion annually.15) That rate would diminish if teacher prep required more commitment and teaching enjoyed higher status.

At a replacement rate of 240,000 per year, the proposed scholarships would cost about $24 billion annually. Is that affordable? Consider this: A Nation at Risk, the pivotal 1983 report of Ronald Reagan’s National Commission on Excellence in Education, asserts: “If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. . . . We have, in effect, been com- mitting an act of unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament.”16

“War”? “Unilateral disarmament”? All right, let’s put our teacher- training expenditure in the context of national defense. The general outlay for defense in FY 2014 was $648 billion.17 That doesn’t include veteran’s benefits or funding for the Department of Homeland Security. Then there is the $6 trillion (yes, “trillion”) spent so far on our dubious wars in the Middle East. Twenty-four billion dollars for teacher professionalization is a mere pimple compared to those social carbuncles.

Of course the United States can afford to professionalize teacher preparation. It isn’t a matter of finding the funds, but of finding the wisdom.

Naturally, we are not going to convince each of the fifty states to rewrite its teacher education statutes. The federal government could, instead, reemploy its Race to the Top strategy of offering a big sack of federal dollars to every state that adopts the professional school model of teacher education.

An abundant supply of students on full federal scholarships would also motivate colleges and universities to establish the requisite professional schools for future teachers. Institutions now preparing teachers but not in a position to initiate professional schools could offer pre-education programs.

Now let’s discuss why this game-changing reform is unlikely. A change of that magnitude would send tremors through the entire educational system. Here are some areas in which problems might arise:

• Federal, state, and local of cials would have to reconsider their top-down “reforms” and become more respectful and consultative.
• School boards, superintendents, and principals would have to relinquish some of their power and authority to self-confident, well-trained professionals.
• The present practice of running factory-like schools, with teachers acting as semi-skilled labor, would have to be redone.
• Teacher union leaders would have to stop thinking organized labor and start thinking organized profession.
• College presidents, provosts, deans, and faculty would need to reevaluate their often exploitative and/or condescending view of teacher education.
• The more than one thousand undergraduate programs currently preparing teachers would face major change or dissolution.
• The current veteran teaching force would have to come to terms with a new breed of teachers.
• School districts serving impoverished children could no longer depend on a supply of alternatively certifed cannon fodder.

None of those eventualities are bad in themselves. In fact, most are highly beneficial. But expect significant opposition when so many vested interests are threatened. And there is one more thing to consider. Excellent schools generally require first-rate teachers. (Try imagining a first-rate school with lousy teachers.) But outstanding teachers are never sufficient. Positive school outcomes are the consequence of many factors, some of which are beyond educators’ control: sufficient funding; adequately sized and passably maintained school buildings; sufficient cient and up-to-date text books and electronic learning aids; adequate support services; the absence of gangs that usurp adult authority and turn neighborhoods into battle zones; the absence of abject poverty in the neighborhood served; and most important, the presence of loving, competent parent(s) who respect learning.

When all the factors influencing school outcomes are considered, it becomes obvious that low standardized test scores do not necessarily indicate “failing schools.” Many schools charged with “failing” are doing the very best they can, given their circumstances.

Would-be school reformers, typically politicians and billionaires, minimize the critical importance of non-school elements—perhaps because they are at least partially responsible for them. In fact, public school outcomes measure the nation’s injustice and social problems in much the same way that body temperature measures the severity of an infection. Right now, for instance, 22 percent of all American children live in families with incomes below the federal poverty line.19

Living in poverty devastates school achievement. In fact an extensive body of research demonstrates that poverty and its accompanying toxic stress actually stunt the development of children’s brains.20 In one such study, for example, Joan Luby of the Washington University School of Medicine found that poverty and toxic stress actually reduce the volume of a child’s hippocampus—the part of the brain that plays a critical role in conscious recollection and detecting novel events, places, and stimuli.21

None of the above is meant to imply that educators are never at fault. But in the Alice in Wonderland world of most school reformers, it seems that no student is ever so abused, neglected, emotionally damaged, hungry, unloved, anxious, or angry that a competent teacher cannot bring them to grade level. In like manner, no school is ever so decrepit, underresourced, or undermined by disorder and decay in the surrounding community that the educational process is short- circuited. That, of course, is utter nonsense.

Reformers do not have similar expectations for well- respected occupations. Take medicine, for example. Worldwide, the United States ranks 51st in infant mortality (behind Cuba) and 48th in maternal death (behind Iran).22 Despite those abysmal rankings, and many more like them, public offcials do not accuse physicians of failing. Nor do they institute accountability measures or promote alternative routes into medicine. (Try to imagine a “Doctor for America” alternative route to become a physician.) Reformers realize that the rankings reflect not the competence of American physicians but the appalling conditions in the other America.

Despite the promise of the Finnish model, the smart money says America’s school “reformers” will continue on their present course. The Finnish option threatens too many interests. Besides, even if it were adopted, serious school problems would remain. Pope Francis explains why: “As long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation, and by attacking the structural causes of inequality, no solution will be found for the world’s problems or, for that matter, to any problems.”23

Notes

1. Alfred North Whitehead, The Aims of Education and Other Essays (New York: Macmillan, 1929), 22.
2. For a succinct summary of this evidence, see Linda Darling-Hammond and Peter Youngs, “De ning ‘Highly Quali ed Teachers’: What Does ‘Scienti cally-Based Research’ Actually Tell Us? (Educational Researcher, Vol. 31, No. 9, Dec. 2002), 13–25.
3. California Alternative Route to Certi cation (Intern Programs), Com- mission on Teacher Credentialing, http://www.ctc.ca.gov/educator-prep /intern/
4. Kathryn Baron, Higher standards coming for state’s intern teachers (Ed Source) http://edsource.org/today/2013/higher-standards-coming-for-states -intern-teachers/28143 – .UsCNDv1VNiY
5. United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, No. 08-1661, D.C. No. 3:07-CV-04299-PJH, Order and Opinion, http://cdn.ca9.uscourts. gov/datastore/opinions/2010/09/27/08-16661.pdf
6. Jane E. West, “Possible New Teacher Preparation Regulations and the De nition of ‘Highly Quali ed Teacher,’” https://www.osep-meeting.org /2012conf/largegroup/Tues_SpecialEducationPerspectives/West.htm
7. President Barack Obama Remarks to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, March 10, 2009.
8. Darling-Hammond and Young, “De ning ‘Highly Quali ed Teachers,’” 13.
9. As Secretary of Education, Paige helped develop the No Child Left Behind Law.

Teacher Education: An Essential, but Highly Unlikely, Reform 51

10. “Rod Paige,” from Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod_Paige
11. For a rigorous, scienti cally based critique of this report see Darling- Hammond and Young, “De ning ‘Highly Quali ed Teachers.’”
12. Ibid, 23.
13. Idem.
14. AAMC, Tuition and Student Fees Reports 2012–2013, https://services .aamc.org/tsfreports/report.cfm?select_control=PRI&year_of _study=2013
15. “Predicting the Need for Newly Hired Teachers in the United States,” http://nces.ed.gov/pubs99/1999026.pdf
16. “High Teacher Turnover Rates Are a Big Problem for America’s Public Schools,” Forbes, March 8, 2011, http://www.forbes.com/sites /erikkain/2011/03/08/high-teacher-turnover-rates-are-a-big-problem-for -americas-public-schools/
17. http://www2.ed.gov/pubs/NatAtRisk/risk.html
18. National Defense Budget Estimates for FY 2014, Of ce of the Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller), May 2013, http://comptroller .defense.gov/defbudget/fy2014/FY14_Green_Book.pdf
19. “The War in Afghanistan: How Much Are You Paying?” http://www .huf ngtonpost.com/2011/04/18/afghanistan-war-cost_n_850293.html
20. Child Poverty, National Center for Children in Poverty.
21. Caroline Cassels, “Childhood Poverty Linked to Poor Brain Development,” Medscape Medical News—Psychiatry, http://www.med- scape.com/viewarticle/813470
22. Hippocampus Functions, Medical News, http://www.news-medical.net /health/Hippocampus-Functions.aspx
23. The World Factbook, United States Central Intelligence Agency, 2013, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/
24. Apostolic Exhortation: “‘Evagelii Gaudium’ of the Holy Father Francis to the Bishops, Clergy, Consecrated Persons and the Lay Faithful on the Proclamation of the Gospel in Today’s World,” para. 202 (emphasis mine), http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/francesco/apost_exhortations /documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20131124_evangelii -gaudium_en.html – The_economy_and_the_distribution_of_income

Gary K. Clabaugh, Ed.D., is Emeritus Professor of Education at La Salle University.