Commenters on the AJC Get Schooled blog had a range of reaction to National Council on Teacher Quality ratings of teacher training programs. No Georgia programs earned four stars, and many that train elementary schoolteachers earned one star. Here is a sampling of comments:
Broch: The entire public education system is an industry of mediocrity, not just the colleges and universities churning out new cannon fodder for the system.
Jeremy: We cannot expect teachers to come to us fully formed and expert like some Athena from the head of Zeus. In any field, there is a learning curve at the beginning. We need to build teachers after the basic training of education schools instead of dumping on them, and we need to support them in their professional growth. Maybe then, we would keep more of the best around. Another important note about all those other countries we continually say we are competing against: They pay their teachers to go to school, they pay their teachers well when they graduate, and they treat them like professionals. Who among us is willing to do that?
MiltonMan: Those countries also obtain their teachers from the top 33 percent of all graduating college students. Does the U.S. do this? Nope. U.S. education is geared toward teachers being in "education" majors. I never, never saw teachers being recruited in the engineering programs.
Pride: We need qualified candidates and quality teacher programs in colleges and universities. We need to stop funding programs that don't get three or four stars.
3rdGradeTeacher: It's time to stop defending teacher prep programs and start the process of making significant changes. I graduated from a "good" program with the expertise of being able to discuss child development theory, multicultural issues, special ed issues, and the names and purposes of all of the "councils on (fill in the blank)." After two months in my first classroom, panic set in as I realized that my ability to discuss educational issues was not going to help me teach kids to read or multiply. Thank goodness I had an undergraduate degree in English, as I fell back on the content I learned in those college classes to help drive my language arts instruction. I ultimately immersed myself in professional development to learn a combination of research-based reading programs. This spring, I was part of an interview panel for new hires. The recent college graduates could not speak coherently about a reading program or process, let alone Common Core.
April: Much of this is fixable. Training can be improved, standards can be raised. That said, I fear that if schools restrict entrance to their programs to the highest achievers, the programs will have insufficient students to continue. Generally speaking, high-paying/highly esteemed fields attract high achievers.
TryReason: It's worth noting that any organization that has "reform" in its mission has a vested interest in portraying current practices as insufficient and in need of substantial improvement. If that is not the message it consistently communicates, then its mission of reform would have no rationale and would thus go unfulfilled.
