Wanted - New Standard Setters
Teachers Need New Standard-Setters, Not Just New Standards
by John E. Stone, Education Consumer's Clearinghouse
At the recent annual conference of the Urban League, President Hugh Price said too many schools “are imperiling our destiny by shortchanging our children.” He urged black parents to not “be snookered by excuses” for “schooling that comes up short.”
He’s right. Houston’s Wesley Elementary, Brooklyn’s P. S. 161, Kipp Academy in the Bronx, and many other schools in those same neighborhoods do a great job and without any special resources
Why do they succeed? Mainly because they disregard the educational doctrines taught to virtually all teachers and, instead, use proven traditional methods.
Their success isn't likely to spread, however. Flying below the radar of most citizens, National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future (NCTAF) is urging all states to adopt requirements that will insure more extensive training in the fads favored by education professors.
NCTAF is a self-appointed group of educators and education-friendly business and political leaders. The standards it recommends were developed by three groups that are represented on the commission: National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE), the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), and the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS). With the exception of NBPTS, they are the same interest groups that have effectively set teacher training and licensure standards for 50 years.
States approve teacher training and license teachers to protect the public. Standards should assure that teachers will use safe and effective teaching practices. Historically, they haven't. The public schools have lurched from one untested fad to the next--fads taught in fully accredited teacher training programs to individuals who become fully licensed teachers and administrators.
If training and licensure in medicine or engineering worked as badly, it would be a scandal. In education, it has come to be expected. Black parents aren't the only ones who have been snookered. In response to fads and failures, state regulatory agencies have repeatedly joined with NCATE in refining, reshuffling, and repackaging the same basic ideas, all the while blaming mediocre outcomes on poor parenting, bad neighborhoods, and stingy taxpayers.
The Commission’s newly recommended standards won’t defend against fads any more than the old ones and for the same reasons: The standard setters subscribe to the same flawed ideals as the faddists and they are blind to the same weaknesses. In fact, proponents of fads such as “whole language” and “fuzzy math” accredit training programs under the auspices of NCATE.
Most of the fads that have swept through schools are mutations of ideals that originated in the teacher training programs of the early twentieth century. Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms by Diane Ravitch (Simon & Schuster, 2000) describes their history. Initially they were called “progressive education.” Today they go by names such as “learner-centered,” “student-centered,” “constructivist,” and “developmentally appropriate.” They are the conceptual basis for fads from “self-esteem enhancement” to “fuzzy math.”
Learner-centered schooling’s top priority is assuring that the school experience is well received by the student. By contrast, traditional schooling’s top priority is to bring about learning. This is not to say that learner-centered schooling is unconcerned with learning or that traditional schooling is unconcerned with student enjoyment, but their primary emphases are distinctly different and so are their outcomes. Learner-centered schooling optimizes short-term enjoyment at the expense of long-term risk. Traditional schooling optimizes long-term benefit.
The training, licensure, and certification standards set by NCATE and the state agencies have acted as a perverse gatekeeper. Untested but learner-centered practices have been permitted. Proven but traditional practices have been discouraged. Here are recent examples:
Two years ago, schools in Prince Georges County, Maryland spent $150 million to build interior walls in schools that had been constructed to accommodate a learner-centered fad of the sixties and seventies called “open education.” Without walls, the schools were so noisy and disorganized that teachers couldn’t teach in them. Open education had been recommended by Maryland’s accredited teacher training programs and sanctioned by its state department of education. Following years of complaints from parents, a recent report by the congressionally mandated National Reading Panel determined that the learner-centered “whole language” approach to reading instruction is flawed and ineffective; yet it was and is taught to trained and licensed teachers in every state. In California, lawmakers responding to a sharp decline in reading scores mandated a return to traditional methods that teach kids how to sound out words. The state education agency and teacher-training programs are still dragging their feet!The teacher-training community’s doctrines are out of touch with what parents and policymakers want for children. Everyone wants school to be enjoyable but responsible adults know that children don’t always choose well and effective teachers can’t just be a “guide on the side.” Just as kids prefer ice cream to vegetables, most would rather go to recess than study. Parents and taxpayers value education because of its long-term benefits, not its immediate appeal. Just as they want kids vaccinated to prevent future illness, they want schools that provide improved skills, not “edutainment.”
Teaching that risks academic deficiencies is especially harmful to kids whose families and neighborhoods can’t fill in the gaps. Such schooling is negligent and irresponsible no matter how well intentioned or theoretically appealing. As underscored by Harvard’s Jeanne Chall in her posthumous The Academic Achievement Challenge (The Guilford Press, 2000), there is little question that traditional schooling methods are superior to student-centered ones for all students but especially for students who are disadvantaged.
If policymakers want public school teaching aligned with the public’s priorities, their policies must assure that independently and objectively measured achievement gain is treated as the primary indicator of teacher quality. Teacher training accreditation, teacher licensure, and advanced teaching qualifications must be geared to the same criterion. Just as war is too important to be left to generals, education is too important to be left to experts.