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Recall that teacher training programs in the U.S. state back to
1839 in the first normal school opened in Lexington Massachusetts.
The adjective normal meant standard setting.
In the sense of a norm.
Normal Schools purported to set standards for teacher training.
At the turn of the 20th century
about 127 state supported normal schools were in operation,
though their offerings amounted to a high school education.
As we've seen, progressive era reformers in cities dismantled
ethnic ward based school boards in the 1800s and 1910s.
The administrative progressive disestablished patronage systems whereby
ward politicians favored local constituents with teaching positions.
By the end of the Progressive Era many states were
requiring licenses to teach in public schools.
Normal schools became training grounds for meeting
the course and internship requirements for these licenses.
By World War II normal schools had evolved into
degree granting four year teachers colleges.
A bachelor's degree had become obligatory for entry into teaching.
By the 1960s most of the teachers colleges had
evolved into multi-purpose regional state universities.
Thus, in North Carolina Appalachian State Teachers College
and Western Carolina Teacher's College.
They became the present day Appalachian State University and Western Carolina University.
Both now members of the University of North Carolina's system.
Nationwide, Regional State Universities have
schools or departments of education as do the state flagship universities.
The University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill which opened its education school in 1913,
the University of California at Berkeley
and the University of Wisconsin at Madison are just
several of the numerous examples of flagship institution with schools of education.
Many leading private universities are also in the business of teacher training.
Penn for example established its school of education in 1914.
All of these institutions offer courses and
internships required by the State Departments of Education.
The award of a bachelors,
masters or certificate indicates to the state that a graduate is qualified for licensure.
The historian David Labrie makes a persuasive argument that
a teaching credential is a devalued commodity in the national marketplace.
Following Labrie's suggestion, let's look at the situation.
As of 2012 according to the U.S. Department of Education,
approximate 3.3 million teachers
hold full time instructional positions in public schools.
They work in a field that has a chronically high turnover rate at present
17 percent for all of the U.S. and 20 percent for urban schools,
meaning that every year school districts have to recruit a lot of new teachers.
There's a high demand for teachers and more than 1,200 public and private higher
education institutions with teacher education programs competing to fulfill that demand.
Given the comparatively low salaries teachers receive
vis-à-vis their peers in other professions,
the lack of professional autonomy that marks teaching as a semi profession,
the low status attached to working with children and the wear and
tear of dealing with often recalcitrant young people and their problems
day in and day out makes teaching a less attractive option for all
but the most idealistic and socially committed of the nation's brightest young adults.
That's not a formula for a high status position.
Nor is the fact that 46 percent of new teachers are out the door after five years.
Nationally, teacher training programs are pitched to the best and brightest college
students.They can't be as most of
the top students have other more promising career options.
We also need lots and lots of teachers.
Nationwide, most education schools have notoriously low standards for teacher education.
To impose rigorous standards would mean losing students to other institutions.
On many campuses, Ed schools are regarded as cash cows by
the central administration and they are derided by the academic departments.
In the best critical appraisal of Ed schools to date.
David Labrie argues trenchantly that Ed schools are repositories of
progressive education rhetoric that accomplishes
nothing and on rives in the air and education practice.
Yes, the credential they offer has high user value.
Graduates holding the certificates ultimately find employment if they seek it.
But the credential lacks exchange value if
the bearer's goal is to enter a field outside education.
The Ed school's monopoly on teacher education is now under siege.
Alternative teacher training programs have taken root.
The most famous, some would say notorious is Teach For America.
Founded in 1989 by Wendy Kopp,
a graduate of Princeton University who first proposed the idea in her senior thesis.
The education historian Jack Snyder has written the best history of TFA
to date and our episode draws heavily from his excellent analysis.
When the Kopps originally made
an establishing Teach For America was to attract recent graduates of arts and sciences
departments at elite colleges and universities who were
willing to teach two years in poor rural and urban public schools.
Over the next two decades,
Kopp received tens of millions of dollars from
private corporations and the federal government's Corporation for National Service.
By 2000, TFA had trained and placed 6,000 corp
members in disadvantaged rural and urban schools serving one million children.
TFA established offices and orientation programs in major cities across the country.
Kopp was determined to get top college graduates to teach in failing schools.
Excellence for all is Jack Snyder notes was her unfailing creed.
Kopp reckoned that what was good for elite new England
boarding schools was good for children in low income schools.
The elite boarding schools hired teachers for
their subject matter expertise without regard for certification,
Kopp got this kind of teacher.
And large city school districts like New York,
Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston and Philadelphia embraced TFA.
Kopp made a tradeoff to attract TFA teachers.
She recognized that schoolteaching was an unlikely career choice
for high flying performers at an elite institutions.
She pitched TFA as national service.
It was a two year moratorium for a young adult before embarking on a high status career.
TFA played to graduates egos whereas schoolteaching was low status,
TFA was high status.
Only the best and brightest survived a rigorous competition.
A TFA appointment was padding for a resume,
a badge of superiority something to brag about in the cafeteria.
There's no denying that most TFA-ers are well versed in their subjects.
They are confident, bright and motivated.
Yet, they are only sketchily prepared in pedagogy or classroom management skills
and they often find themselves in situations where their content expertise is irrelevant.
As one former TFA teacher recounted quote,
"I was a literature major at Yale.
I knew how to deconstruct texts.
I had no idea how to help someone learn to read."
TFA's biggest liability is a two year commitment.
Between 60 and 70 percent of participants leave teaching after two years.
Critics, among them Linda Darling-Hammond and
Diane Ravitch have hammered Kopp on this point.
They rightly argue that it takes years of experience to become a top quality teacher.
That is to say a practical and tacit knowledge
that can't possibly be acquired in so short a time span.
You can't transform school in with
rookies or build organizational excellence with constant turnover.
Never mind that this criticism deflected
public attention from the egregious shortfalls of many schools of education.
Sensitive to this criticism perhaps acknowledging its merit,
TFA has transformed its mission in recent years.
Rather than seeking to reinvent public education directly
through an infusion of ivy garlanded though inexperienced young teachers.
The organization now aspires to galvanize
lifelong commitments on the part of TFA-ers to improving
public education from positions of leadership and
their chosen professions and to build leaders active in politics.
Kopp has some shining examples of former TFA-ers who've dropped
bombshells on the education status quo since leaving TFA and teaching.
The most famous is Michelle Rhee,
Cornell University graduate and TFA-er in the early 1990s.
Arguably not very successful in that role.
Rhee later achieved notoriety as the no excuses,
some say tyrannical chancellor of the District of Columbia Public Schools.
Between 2007 and 2010 the length of her tenure,
she streamlined the district's bureaucracy,
fired hundreds of underperforming or uncertified teachers,
closed schools and strengthened teacher evaluation.
At the district's achievement gains under Rhee have been challenged by charges
of widespread cheating on standardized tests and the sick morale plummeted.
Rhee's aggressiveness was hotly controversial and she resigned after
the mayoral election of 2010 which ousted the mayor who had supported her.
Undaunted, Rhee founded Students First,
a nonprofit advocacy organization dedicated to ending
teacher tenure in the United States with a fundraising goal of one billion dollars.
Whether TFA which now trains in places
only a minuscule fraction of the nation's school teachers about two for every
thousand will be able to cultivate a critical mass of future business and
political leaders to work on education reform remains a very open question.
Whether schools of education or
newly formed alternative providers can transform teacher preparation will depend
largely on whether the profession itself ever grows beyond
its semi professional status and unattractive working conditions.
Dr. John L. PuckettProfessor of Education
Dr. Michael Charles JohanekSenior Fellow
