New Study Claims Teacher-Training Programs Are Flawed

With many of us worried about the future of high quality educational standards, the results of a new study on student-teaching programs have generated an alarmingly large amount of unfavorable attention. Today, the National Council on Teacher Quality advocacy group released a report arguing that many of the teacher-training programs are seriously flawed. The group's report, "Student Teaching in the United States," identified 134 teaching programs around the country and deemed three-quarters of those programs as not meeting the five most basic standards required for such high-quality training programs. Of those 134 programs rated, about ten percent are considered to be the specific student-teaching programs used to help prepare elementary school teachers.

Kate Walsh, president of the advocacy group, states, "Many people would say student teaching is the most important piece of teacher preparation. The basic accrediting body doesn't even have a standard for how long a student teacher needs to be in the classroom. And most of the institutions we revised do not do enough to screen the quality of the cooperating teacher the student will work with." On the other side of the situation, there are many who do not find the council's report as credible or authentic. Of the nation's 1,400 schools that were reviewed, many have taken issue with the negative results as well as the unwanted attention the results have created. Sharon P. Robinson, president of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, is one individual who disagrees with the findings. She states, "We don't know how valid the analysis is. They ask for a lot of documents, reviewed by people we do not know, and against rubrics we are not privileged to see."

Furthermore, Robinson continues to explain that some of the standards on which specific areas of the report are ranked, such as the appropriate length of student-teacher placement, are completely subjective. Walsh explains, "Because some of the standards on which the education schools were ranked are subjective, some institutions [which had been] ranked "poor" said they disagreed with that rating." Fayneese Miller, dean of the College of Education and Social Services at the University of Vermont, is one individual who does not see eye to eye with the council's negative results. The University of Vermont, which is the largest teacher-training school in the sate and the only one that exceeds all state standards, was given a "poor" ranking, worse than two other Vermont teacher-training schools.

Appalled by its astonishingly low marks, Miller explains that the University of Vermont is the only school with national accreditation. "We have no problem about being evaluated, but I am not at all pleased about the way they conducted the study. This has major implications for us in terms of our ability to attract and place our students," she states. With some of the top schools in the country angered by the study's rankings, the National Council on Teacher Quality stands behind the validity of their report, hoping to reveal the flawed truth behind teacher-training programs nationwide.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/21/education/21teaching.html?_r=1&ref=education

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