This week in Ed Week

Two articles in Ed Week [registration required] came to my attention in the past week.

The first, which was co-authored by my graduate school adviser Gordon Pradl, is called "Teacher Education's 'Black Hole'" [registration required].  The premise of the article can be summed up with this ...

Until schools of education can operationally and publicly define (a) what a teacher needs in terms of knowledge, skills, and attitudes to teach students successfully, and (b) how a teacher best acquires this set of competencies, the goal of systematically preparing highly qualified teachers will continue to be elusive.

Right now, there is no agreement as to what makes a good teacher.  Those who argue for more standards, standardization, and standardized tests are going to look at what makes a good teacher differently than those who argue for less of that nonsense.  Therefore, the best method of preparation is going to vary depending on what you see as a good teacher.  Schools of education, whatever their flaws, look at teaching and learning differently than school districts and politicians, who are mainly looking at 'numbers'.  For those of us who have come from schools of education and are currently involved in schools of education, we see learning as something larger than numbers in a spreadsheet.  We see it as an experience where one learns about themselves and the world they live in.  The kind of teacher needed to facilitate this kind of education is very different from the kind of teacher who needs to get test scores up (and I would argue that the first brand of teacher can do the same thing as the second in terms of test scores). 

Alter and Pradl begin their article citing that "study of 10,000 New York City teachers purportedly showed no relationship between their pathway to certification and their ability to raise student test scores only furthered the erosion of confidence in our current institutions. ("Path to Classroom Not Linked to Teachers’ Success," March 22, 2006.)" [registration required for that one, too]  My problem with that study is that it is basing 'success' on test scores.  Those of us in education know that standardized tests actually test very little and that which they do test is lower thinking skills.  It is not surprising then that it wouldn't make much of a difference which way the teachers came since teaching the skills tested (lower-order thinking skills) doesn't take all that much skill.  What of the other, higher-level thinking skills?  How would the results of that study be different?  What of helping lower level students gain confidence and mastery of being literate members of a community?  How would the results have been different?  What about getting students to enjoy school - and even more, learning! - and not just become robotic test takers? I wonder ...

I'm not one to believe that there is anything wrong with schools of education.  The best teachers I know came from schools of ed.  I question what we consider good teaching - perhaps this is what we need to change.

The second article is a short blurb called "'Boy Crisis' in Academics Overstated, Study Suggests" .  [you guessed it, registration required].  The headline made me shiver.  First reaction is that people are now going to argue that we don't have to worry about boys' performance.  I read on ...

The report, produced by the Washington-based think tank Education Sector, uses data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, commonly known as the Nation’s Report Card. The data suggest that boys have made progress or stayed about the same in most subjects, but girls have made improvements faster on some measures, such as in mathematics, science, and geography. As a consequence, girls have narrowed some academic achievement gaps, creating the appearance that boys are losing ground, the report says.

The whole conversation becomes different when we begin to look at vocabulary.  Here, the whole study hinges on 'improvement'.  I haven't read the whole study yet to know how they are measuring, but I'm going to.  Anecdotally, the top academic students in our school are all girls.  The lower quartile, mostly boys.  Who's written up to go to the dean the most?  Boys.  You can't tell me that the 'crisis' is overstated.

Links:
Ed Week [RR]
"Teacher Education's 'Black Hole'" [RR]
"Boys' Crisis in Academics Overstated, Study Suggests" [RR]
"The Truth about Boys and Girls" from Education Sector [no registration required!!]