The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that the School District of Philadelphia has further cheapened teacher certification requirements. (San Antonio and Denver school are doing the same.) Frustrated in their attempts to recruit more qualified minority teachers from traditional teacher prep programs — in part because pay and working conditions in Philadelphia really stink — they have chosen cut rate teacher preparation from the self-styled Relay Graduate School of Education.
What’s the situation? In Philadelphia only 31% of current teachers are minorities but 86% of the kids are. So what? Management asserts that the kids do better when their classrooms are led by people resembling themselves. Not necessarily “led by competent people resembling themselves” mind you. Apparently what matters is mere resemblance.
Anyway, in pursuit of their racially based policy, the School Reform Commission (a state take-over management body) just approved a contract with Relay to train 20 teachers for Philadelphia. (They plan to hire more from Relay later.) Why this particular cut-rate program? For three reasons. first, because more than half of Relay’s candidates are minorities. Second, it quickly puts warm bodies in classrooms. And third, its cheap.
Relay’s certification program is even easier than already anemic traditional teacher preparation. It has no buildings and only a handful of doctoral level faculty. And, by their own admission, they de-emphasize both theory and research.
They say that their focus is on the “how,” not the “why” of things. In other words, they teach you to do what you are told without knowing why. And, for good measure, they have also decided not to support research on whether their reasons are sound. Critics say this approach only prepares teachers to teach a lock-step factory style curricula. Relay counters that their graduates are prepared to teach anywhere.
Leaving out the why of things is entirely novel for higher education. So novel, in fact, that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania rejected Relay’s application to grant degrees, citing concerns abut the academic qualifications of their faculty and the lack of a research component. Oddly, though, the Commonwealth still awards a teaching certificate to Relay’s graduates. That is truly unusual. The institution is not qualified to grant advanced degrees, yet Pennsylvania still awards their graduates a teaching certificate. Can anyone spell “politics?”
The Relay training approach is standard fare for trade schools preparing semi-skilled hands for industrial trades. (If the widgits malfunction, replace their whatchamacallits.) It’s just that Relay’s students don’t want to learn how to fix air conditioners or household appliances. They want to help us raise our kids.
The entrance requirements for Relay are possession of a bachelor’s degree and a GPA of at least 2.75. There are no requirements in their online literature regarding one’s undergraduate major. Apparently it need not have any relationship to a career in teaching.
Here’s more about Relay’s training. Forty percent of it is online. (That often means someone else covertly does at least some of that work for you. I’m personally aware of several such frauds.) The rest of the formal training is at night, on weekends and on the job. Relay calls this “blended” learning. (This is the latest buzz word in education.) In addition to their how not why course work, candidates also spend one school year working with a practicing teacher; followed by a year in their own classroom where, by trial and error, they master the basics. How the cooperating teacher is selected, whether her she gets release time, how and how often the novice is supervised, and whether or not parents are informed their kids are being used for practice, is unclear to me.
Relay’s half-baked, anti-intellectual training stands in vivid contrast to that required in Finland — a nation that, since they dramatically toughened teacher education in the 1960’s, boasts some of the most outstanding student achievement in the world. How did they do it? Truly tough candidate selection and especially demanding preparation standards. The Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education Research Brief describes primary school teacher selection in Finland as follows:
“First, a group of candidates is selected based on matriculation examination results, the high school diploma issued by the school, and relevant records of out-ofschool
accomplishments.
In the second phase:
1. Candidates complete a written exam on assigned books on pedagogy.
2. Candidates engage in an observed clinical activity replicating school situations, where social interaction and communication skills come into play.
3. Top candidates are interviewed and asked to explain why they have decided to become teachers.”
Only 1 in 10 Finnish applicants are ultimately accepted for actual teacher preparation. And they must survive truly tough training which includes actually earning a Masters degree. Needless to say, there is absolutely no pernicious nonsense about teaching the how while eliminating the why. Both must be mastered, and mastered well.
In addition to excellent scholarship, Finnish teachers are expected to be exemplary in their dedication and deportment. This, plus their demanding selection and rigorous training, have resulted in Finns coming to regard teaching as a highly respected occupation rivaling other learned professions. Consequently, teaching has become a highly desirable career that attracts the best and the brightest. In short, in Finland, “those who can, teach.”
Meanwhile, in the U.S., despite widespread knowledge of how Finland dramatically improved their public education, we continue to exploit every avenue that cheaply and quickly turns out cannon fodder to “lead” our classrooms. Predictably, that results in certification standards that are only slightly more demanding than peeing a hole in snow. Only now, at Relay, more minorities are doing the peeing. Impressive!