I'd ask my friend the charter school principal, but she's out of town running a teacher training institute for the summer.
It is amazing, how unanimous teachers are in their hatred for all 21st-century school reforms.
Well, my teacher training program was epic terrible (which is basically why I'm not teaching) but I finished right around the time NCLB started, so it had nothing to do with test scores. It was just a terrible program, and if I saw a young person today getting kicked around as I was, I'd walk them over the the dean's office and raise a godawful fuss.
I had always assumed that teacher-training programs generally were pretty terrible, though, but perhaps this is not the case?
(There are lots of good teachers in the world - I'm not impugning teachers!)
3: Partly because 21st century school reforms have tended to be mind-buggeringly stupid in actual practice, no matter how good they sound to politicians and think tank wonks.
I'm not opposed to testing or to basing teacher compensation at least partly on the outcome of testing, but I have yet to see such a scheme implemented in a way that makes any sense at all.
3: If only they would heed the reasonable voice of Michelle Rhee all would be well.
I'm amazed they would align their survey with the U.S. News ranking system, which is wildly considered a malign force in higher education. No wonder they got boycotted.
When you consider, it's always good to do it wildly.
I wonder if the passive-aggressive resentment style of Methods writing would work for other fields of inquiry.
"The field of outpatient surgical recovery has much to gain from a clinical trial intent on spotlighting useful medications. And since most of the patients in our sample cooperate with our partner, Pfizer, in using its other great products, we anticipated that they would work with us as well.
As it turned out, we faced a nationwide boycott of our effort. Ultimately, only 114 patients chose to freely cooperate with the GOOSEPOOP protocol (meaning that they provided us with the samples we needed upon request without us having to resort to kidnapping). The Institutional Review Board received 39 letters representing approximately 700 patients taking issue with our methods and goals. Other individuals either sent terse declines or did not respond at all to our repeated entreaties."
My friend said she was actually planning on using the report in her class she's teaching today, so she'll get back with me, but both her current institution and her grad institution boycotted the survey.
The report is complaining that it's too easy to get into a teaching program, suggesting that they be restricted to the top 50% of students or something like that. I do think especially at the elementary level, there are a lot of teachers who go into the profession because they like kids rather than because they are interested in helping kids learn. I've heard so many horror stories out of math ed classes in particular that I worry, but I know lots of good teachers too.
Most teacher ed programs have a GPA requirement of 2.8-3.2 to get in, I believe.
The elementary school math ed thing is a real problem, but I don't think anyone knows how to solve it. It's not a failure of ed programs to implement well-understood pedagogy.
12.2 fits my beliefs, too. 12.1's norms seems to vary a lot by location, at least if I trust the state data on this NCTQ State Policy website.
Did you hear that little story on TAL this weekend about the highly decorated teacher who was quitting on the day he received some huge science teaching award? He sobbed like a baby when Ira asked something like, "It must feel like you're groveling. [...long pause...] Sorry, maybe that's not the right word?" Teacher, bawling: "No! That's *exactly* the right word!" It sounded like it was a lot more complicated than the interview let on--something about money, something about supplies, but probably other things too--but it was sad.
That's true, I'm really speaking from a-little-knowledge-is-dangerous territory. I have no sound idea besides over-generalizing from the schools I've been at.
The report is complaining that it's too easy to get into a teaching program, suggesting that they be restricted to the top 50% of students or something like that.
Isn't this more a problem of teaching as a profession not drawing the best possible candidates? If teacher pay was doubled tomorrow, there would be a huge increase in the number of candidates trying to get into these programs, and it would be a lot easier to only take people in the top 50%. But as long as the top 50% have more appealing career options, that's going to be reflected in the makeup of the pool of folks applying for training programs. So blaming the training programs for lack of quality in the applicant pool seems wrong.
When you consider, it's always good to do it wildly.
In an effort to gain younger listeners, NPR is changing the name of it's evening news program to All Things Wildly Considered.
It's amazing that the market worshippers can't seem to get 16. Rather than think low pay, low status, and long hours are the killers, they'd rather think it's some sort of Leftist conspiracy to find and promote mediocre teacher candidates.
There is also the concerted campaign to make teaching less appealing as a profession. Creativity and flexibility the classroom are discouraged in favor of ridged curricula and preparation for high-stakes tests. This is supposed to attract talented professionals, how?
21: I believe the idea is that talented professionals now are turned off to the career by the emphasis on job security and seniority rather than wages. So the new system under which people are pitted against each other, and frequently fired and/or given bonuses of up to 10% of base pay will be more appealing to these go-getters.
21: they're not supposed to attract talented professionals. They're supposed to break a profession that's unionized. Drawing talented candidates into teaching is not a goal--that just draws talented workers into union jobs. Note that you do not see conservatives making these same criticisms of teachers in private schools or charter schools, where suddenly the fact that you have to pay teachers well and not treat them like shit if you want to attract talented and motivated employees becomes self-evident and accepted without question. They're non-union.
I had always assumed that teacher-training programs generally were pretty terrible...
It's a big part of the reason I'm now a lawyer. (Yeah, not unambiguously the right choice.)
Most teacher ed programs have a GPA requirement of 2.8-3.2 to get in, I believe.
This is what the ed school I went to told a friend who got rejected. His GPA was like 3.8, but he decided against explaining the math.
private schools or charter schools, where suddenly the fact that you have to pay teachers well and not treat them like shit if you want to attract talented and motivated employees becomes self-evident and accepted without question.
Does it? I thought teachers in private and charter schools were generally paid poorly and often treated poorly as well. Administrators, perhaps?
I thought teachers in private and charter schools were generally paid poorly and often treated poorly as well.
Oh, sure--except in very prestigious schools, they are definitely poorly paid--usually paid less than public counterparts, is my (anecdotal) understanding.
Private school teachers are more poorly paid than public school teachers, partly due to unionization.
On the other hand, private school teachers have more academic flexibility, smaller classes, better behaved kids, and opportunities for joining the profession that don't necessarily involve having to go through teacher training programs.
My experience of M.Ed. students is pretty uniformly awful. (N=40 or so.)
However, I think the awfulness is an artifact of the dumbness of the system they are in, more so than anything else. (Eg existing teachers being pushed to go back to school for credentialism.) Some of them may in fact be pretty good teachers, even if you can't tell it from how they behave toward other adults.
In general, my level of suspicion toward the kinds of surveys mentioned in the OP has skyrocketed to conspiracy-theorist levels.
This comes from empirical observation over the past three years. Every time I think something in the K-12 world is too staggeringly corrupt to be plausible, it turns out to be true -- and worse.
The credentialism is unbelievable. Aside from the union contracts where your compensation "lane" is specifically tied to number of credits, a lot of state teacher licensing requires that you keep taking certain classes and maintain a certain amount of experience or you lose your license. Do many other professions make you keep taking formal training and threaten to take away your license if you don't? Probably doctors; do lawyers have to do any kind of continuing ed to keep their bar certification?
Yes. Lawyers have to take continuing legal education. Doctors have to take continuing medical education. Requirements vary by state, especially for the lawyers.
Lawyers have to do "continuing legal education" to stay in good standing, but it's kind of a joke. There's no set curriculum or exam requirements, you just need to passively listen certain number of units, which you can get from things like online videos or attending conferences. My favorite is "traffic school for lawyers," which (if you have to go to traffic school anyway) gives you CLE credit AND keeps a speeding ticket from being a point on your license! Smell the professionalism.
Come to think, I have about twelve hours of videos I have to affirm that I sat in the same room with while they were playing before my next license renewal. I hate CLE requirements.
Doctors can get continuing education credit for attending conferences as well.
My grandmother, bless her heart, is very, very disappointed that I didn't become a teacher. Last time I saw her, she asked whether I was taking any classes. I explained that I'd finished school and was done with classes. She asked, "But then how do you stay on top of new developments in your field?" Oh, we'll, that's this thing I call doing my job.
At least at my institution, you have to meet continuing education requirements in order to be eligible to be a Responsible Investigator (the person who gets approval from the IRB) to do human subject research.
If your certification as a Responsible Investigator lapses, can you continue work as a Mad Scientist?
37: The usual human subjects/privacy/next-time-we-will-treat-syphilis stuff or something more?
you just need to passively listen certain number of units
Some state, either PA or NJ, requires that a portion of the hours be in a classroom.
God I hate hate hate CLE. DC doesn't require it at all, and neither does Maryland, which amounts to treating us like grownups. Montana is 15 hours a year. Idaho is less, and I've mostly been able to get by with my (endless) Montana hours. Both have limits on how much you can do with video, though, and require more in-person attendance than not. Hate.
And SAMI. Interesting the first 3 times, but on and on . . .
38: If your certification as a Responsible Investigator lapses, can you continue work as a Mad Scientist?
At some point I will get tired of linking this.But until then I will accomodate all straight lines.
37: The usual human subjects/privacy/next-time-we-will-treat-syphilis stuff or something more?
Right, and then on and on forever -- you can keep redoing the basic course (urgh) or take various more specific modules, on, like, genetic research, or research involving prisoners, or records-based research, or whatever.
We recently had a change in requirements where we're required to undergo annual evaluation for depression, anxiety, and a crazy questionnaire that assesses whether an employee is a risk to others. (Do you like obeying rules? Even when you think they're stupid? Rate from 1-5 how much you like safety!) It's a huge time and money investment for what I think is probably a pretty rare problem, but I guess now they can say how safe we are. I guess I'd rather go to a 3 h lecture on best practices or something.
We recently had a change in requirements where we're required to undergo annual evaluation for depression, anxiety, and a crazy questionnaire that assesses whether an employee is a risk to others. (Do you like obeying rules? Even when you think they're stupid? Rate from 1-5 how much you like safety!) It's a huge time and money investment for what I think is probably a pretty rare problem, but I guess now they can say how safe we are. I guess I'd rather go to a 3 h lecture on best practices or something.
Does double-commenting make one more or less likely to observe safety standards? This calls out for a study!
Well, it means my hand-eye coordination leaves something to be desired. however, I was trying not to be anxious or depressed about it, so maybe I'm OK?
If a full year goes by without somebody reminding me that withholding effective treatment for fatal diseases wiithout informed consent is not ethical, I'm totally going to try it.
Moby, can't you just say it's a natural history study that adheres to a local standard of care?
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Would you lawyers agree in judging it bad statutory practice to refer to some particular sections of law "as those sections read on [day, month, year]"? That imposes a new level of detective work on a reader of laws that will get harder and harder over time.
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Yeah, sure, we have to do annual safety training, training on new research regulations, whatever, but I'm thinking about classes that teachers have to actually pay for- a few schools cover it with the generic "professional development day" but there are some that are ~$300 that you have to take every couple years. But maybe those count for getting paid more by being BA+15, MA, MA+15, etc. so in theory you get the investment back.
MY school is bragging about how well it did on this test. Because of what a stellar pet store we are.
I'm technically in the Education department, which I often find embarrassing. I have nothing to do with the teacher training classes, though!
Do many other professions make you keep taking formal training and threaten to take away your license if you don't?
We have to do 40 hours a year, but it can be anything from classroom time to shooting. Our dept. is pretty good about putting together decent trainings to fill those hours.
I imagine, gswift, that getting cops to go and get some rounds down on the range is fairly easy? See also, advanced driving.
54: Watching The Wire doesn't count for credit?
We have to do 40 hours a year, but it can be anything from classroom time to shooting.
Oh, would that shooting counted toward CLE!
56: I know there's a David Simon/NSA/MOOC joke in there somewhere, but it's hard to hit all the targets at once.
This (long) blog post is pretty on topic for this and other subjects we've discussed in the recent past. It's about the destruction of the university, how it happened, and what can be done about it. Apologies if it's already been posted.
55: Actually, I've heard reports (from gswift?) that there is often a hard core of 5% or so of any police department that has to be dragged kicking and screaming to the range to do their minimum qualifications every year. Takes all kinds, I guess.
54 -- Do they pay you for that, or do you pay them? IME, content of CLE is trivial, cost isn't. Hate hate hate.
OTOH, you get credit for putting one on. Maybe a shooting CLE would be fun. Gswift, you want to help design a Gunnery for Lawyers course?
I'm waiting to hear whether I can get credit for attending foster parent trainings I'm creating. (We only need 12 hours/year for our level, I think.) I can understand why they wouldn't think it fulfills the requirements, but on the other hand it would be kind of stupid to claim I don't have a mastery of the material if I'm going to be the presenter.
54 -- Do they pay you for that, or do you pay them?
Wait, you guys are paying out of pocket for those hours? Fuck that. All our stuff is on the clock, and they don't want to pay overtime so it's either during your regular shift or you get the hours adjusted.
getting cops to go and get some rounds down on the range is fairly easy?
Usually, but as Natilo says, there's always some useless twit who can bitch about anything. Our most recent trimester training was some basic firearm malfunction drills and scenario training in the morning, 90 minute lunch break, then active shooter training with simmunitions in the afternoon. Totally awesome and we were done by 1600 so we could avoid traffic. But god forbid one of those morning scenarios be a functional team building PT that took less than ten minutes. One female cop said something to the effect that PT during these trimesterly trainings was bullshit because the department doesn't pay for her workout clothes.(we do in fact get a yearly uniform allowance of $450) Other stuff I've done for training hours in the last year have been a full day of basic handgun (indoors, free ammo, pure awesome) and an eight hour class on outlaw motorcycle gangs. The three day bike certification class counts for 30 hours. I did it a couple years ago and it was three days, on the clock, of obstacle course riding and rides around the city and local canyon in idyllic spring weather. And the dept. provided the bikes.
Maybe a shooting CLE would be fun. Gswift, you want to help design a Gunnery for Lawyers course?
I would think it'd be pretty easy to do a class at a range where you got to crank some rounds off in between discussions of local concealed and open carry regs, restrictions on possession by felons and other restricted people, prohibited firearm modifications, use of force, etc.
I had to do NSF-mandated ethics training a couple of weeks ago. I'm all for ethical research, but oh my god stab stab stab. The training was just astonishingly poorly constructed at every possible level: redundant content, with little or no editing, with stupid and inconsistent web design, badly kerned. ARRRRGH.
My ed friend sent me this, which pretty much decimates the NCTQ report. For example:
NCTQ's methodology is a paper review of published course requirements and course syllabi against a check list that does not consider the actual quality of instruction that the programs offer, evidence of what their students learn, or whether graduates can actually teach.
and
The field's concerns were reinforced last month when NCTQ published ratings of states' teacher education policies which bore no relationship to the quality of their training systems or to their outcomes as measured by student achievement. In this study, the highest-achieving states on the National Assessment of Educational Progress -- including Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, New Jersey, and Minnesota -- all got grades of C or D, while low-achieving Alabama got the top rating from NCTQ.
and
In addition, the degree of inaccuracy in the data is shocking. Columbia was rated highly for the selectivity of an undergraduate program that does not even exist. Stanford received low scores for the reported absence of courses in secondary mathematics education that do in fact exist (indeed candidates must take three full courses in mathematics curriculum and instruction) and are prominently displayed, along with syllabi, on its website. UC-Santa Barbara's three courses in elementary mathematics education, four courses in the teaching of English learners, and full year of student teaching were also entirely missed, along with its entire secondary credentialing program, all prominently displayed on the website. California State University at Chico was rated poorly for presumably lacking "hands-on" instruction, even though it is well-known in the state for its hands-on learning lab and requires more than 500 hours of clinical training during its full year of graduate level preparation.
So I guess that settles that.