Education Week - June 12, 2013 - 39

EDUCATION WEEK
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JUNE 12, 2013 www.edweek.org
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tion will be judged. With the renewed focus
on teacher preparation across the nation,
this is an opportune time for CAEP and others
to influence changes in the states.
To many people, the most important outcome
of a preparation program is teacher
effectiveness—the extent to which program
graduates help their K-12 students learn.
High-quality instruction is the main in-
school driver for student achievement, yet
only a few states assess teacher effectiveness
in this way. Even so, about 20 states
are headed in this direction through federal
Race to the Top grants and other initiatives.
Whether university faculty and administrators
support this direction, analyses
and judgments will be made about their
programs based on the performance of program
graduates.
The classroom-teaching performance of
program graduates is a key outcome that
programs, accrediting bodies, and states
ought to use as a quality measure. No
single measure tells us everything about a
program or its graduates, and so we think
classroom-teaching performance is a second
key outcome measure. In fact, there
are two performance-related measures
here: the teaching performance of candidates
during the preparation program and
their teaching quality after graduating. As
the Measures of Effective Teaching, or MET,
project has reported, a system of classroom
observation must support fair judgments
based on reliable and valid findings for individual
teachers and for groups of teachers.
Currently, only a few classroom protocols
used by teacher education programs or
in schools meet standards of rigor.
Production of new teachers in high-demand
fields is highly relevant to the needs
of schools and their students. For this rea-
son, program accountability and accreditation
should judge how well each program
contributes effective teachers for shortage
fields and high-need schools.
Given chronic overproduction of new
teachers by some programs, states ought to
enact policies that cap the number of new
teacher licenses granted in low-demand
areas like elementary education and create
more incentives that attract students into
high-demand fields, such as mathematics
and the physical sciences.
Preparation-program accreditation and
accountability must take account of the
content knowledge and professional knowledge
of teacher-candidates and program
graduates. Praxis and similar educator
assessments have been used by states for
many years, but few outside (or inside) the
profession see them as credible indicators
of teacher knowledge or skills. According to
the National Research Council, these tests
are not designed to “predict the degree of
teaching success a beginning teacher will
demonstrate.” And the U.S. Department
of Education says 95 percent or more of
all those who take teaching exams in the
United States pass.
CAEP’s draft standards document calls for
80 percent passing scores for all program
graduates as a quality indicator. The draft
PAGE 40 >
EDWARD CROWE is a senior adviser to
the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship
Foundation in Princeton, N.J. MICHAEL ALLEN
is a Washington-based education consultant.
CHARLES COBLE is the co-director of the Science
and Mathematics Teacher Imperative initiative
of the Association of Public and Land-grant
Universities. The three authors are partners in
Teacher Preparation Analytics LLC, in Washington.
Teaching
Toward
Utopia
By Julie Gorlewski
O
RONALD THORPE
President and CEO, National Board for Professional Teaching Standards
Board certification [for teachers] needs to become the norm, not the
exception. It should be what every practitioner aspires to and what the profession
expects and supports. Every other profession has followed this model. In medicine,
more than 90 percent of physicians are board-certified. In education, the number is
less than 3 percent. Professions build the public trust and eventually their own status
through the consistency of skills and knowledge found throughout those who
represent the profession.”
ANNE UDALL
Vice president of professional development, Northwest Evaluation Association
It is clear to me that there is a growing need to introduce assessment literacy
in preservice programs. Assessments can be one of the most significant tools
available to a successful educator. But such a reality demands teacher-preparation
programs that teach assessment literacy.”
ne of the greatest challenges
for teachers is
preparing students
to live in—ideally, to
succeed in—a world
that does not yet exist.
Teacher PREP
In a democracy, teachers must prepare
students to participate in the creation of
that world. As teacher-educators, we seek
to prepare our students to prepare their
future students for this approaching
reality—a world that they must imagine
and construct, simultaneously.
Teaching future teachers, like standing
in a mirrored room, is endlessly reflective.
It is both fascinating and terrifying.
This work involves more than transmission
of content; it requires commitment
to a future
we cannot
fully
envision.
It requires
commitment
to the people in front of us, materially
and metaphorically.
A democratic society needs participants
who think critically and act
ethically. Teacher-educators, then, must
model these characteristics. It is not
enough to be compliant and obedient
policy implementers; we must critically
evaluate policies, advocate for our
students and their future students, and
work within the system to effect change.
We cannot expect to cultivate thoughtful
educators who are passionate about their
craft and devoted to their students if we
do not embody these qualities.
This is not linear work; it involves
knowledge, skills, and the proper dispositions.
It takes time and requires explicit
attention to every decision we make. It
cannot be standardized, nor can it be
measured by a standardized instrument.
Teacher preparation is a labor of love
that cannot be reduced to modules in a
training program.
Current reform movements aim to
improve teacher education by, among
other things, imposing a standardized
final assessment for certification. Regardless
of its particulars, this approach
denies what decades of research have
confirmed: High-stakes standardized
assessments have detrimental effects
on students and learning. Standardized
assessments promote competition, narrow
curriculum, and focus on lower-level
thinking. They undermine the trust that
is essential to the relationship between
student and teacher.
As teacher-educators, we confront
a version of the dilemma that K-12
teachers deal with every day: How can
we comply with mandates without
modeling submissive obedience? Where
is the space between cooperation and
resistance? We cannot ignore required
assessments. Because our students seek
certification, we are obliged to participate.
But, at the same time, we must
model active citizenship, critical thinking,
and advocacy for ethical practice. To do
this, we must remain steadfast in our
commitment to critical reflection and
continuous improvement.
I began my career in the field of
education as a secondary school English
teacher. The experience of working with
young people who hated school and
resisted the attempts of their teachers
to engage them made me wonder what
had happened between kindergarten and
8th grade. Why had such eager learners
become so disaffected? I earned a
master’s degree in elementary education,
through which I learned a great deal
about teaching, then spent over 15 years
as a classroom teacher, discovering, but
never perfecting, the craft of the practice.
Still seeking to understand the interconnections
among students, schools, and
society, I earned a doctorate and entered
higher education.
As a teacher-educator, I continue to
wrestle with the same enduring tensions
that I faced in my K-12 classrooms. These
tensions involve big questions, such as:
How can I develop meaningful, constructive
relationships with students? How
can I balance high standards with reasonable
expectations? What knowledge
and skills are essential, and what learning
experiences will support these? How
should student learning be assessed? My
concerns extend as well to what seem to
“
Teacher preparation
is a labor of love that
cannot be reduced to
modules in a training
program.”
be trivial issues: Should attendance and
participation count toward achievement?
Are group grades fair? Do late submissions
result in a lower score, regardless
of quality? Does this moment call for
pushing or patience?
All these questions emanate from one
guiding principle: How can I improve?
Not how can I improve my students’
scores, but how can I improve the process
of teaching and learning, a process that
is complex, multifaceted, social, and
intensely human. To improve my practice
requires critical, authentic reflection
wherein I consider what worked, and
what didn’t, and why.
PAGE 40 >
JULIE GORLEWSKI is an assistant professor
of secondary education at the State University
of New York at New Paltz and an incoming
co-editor of English Journal. Her published
works include Power, Resistance, and Literacy:
Writing for Social Justice (Information Age,
2012) and a forthcoming co-edited volume,
Left Behind in the Race to the Top: Realities of
School Reform (Information Age).
“
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