Education. Fixed. No wait. Now it's fixed. Now. Seriously this time.

Teachers are frustrated. Reformers are disgruntled. Parents are at their wits end. No one can find the elusive magic bullet that will solve all of our education problems. In our quest for that solution, society seems to be grasping at a number of different solutions. While I take issue with many of the proposed solutions, I think that the process of proposing, seriously, many dichotomous solutions is part of that problem.

Often in education, teachers will tell you that the left hand doesn't even know that the right hand exists, let alone what the right hand is doing. I could provide literally dozens of examples of this from my experience. 

Some of them are hilarious (a school firing it's literacy coaches before the meeting in which it declares its intention to participate in a "year of literacy"), some of them are sad (schools blocking websites that let kids learn by playing educational games simply because they are "games") and some of them make you shake your head (schools blocking programs they paid to buy).

I would attempt to blame the schools themselves, but that isn't fair. You see, they are simply reflecting the larger educational climate in America. That climate is, to put it kindly, scattered and divided. 

Most people in education agree that No Child Left Behind was a terrible law. Naturally, most states and the feds are still designing tests that are in line with the basic philosophy of NCLB. The vast majority of teachers will tell you that a larger class is harder to teach and that kids in larger classes tend to learn less. Nevertheless, class sizes continue to rise. 

Today, we revisit a topic near and dear to the BlazeBlog - teacher training. This topic is generally ignored by educational commentators, but recently there were two stories which both illustrated the basic differences in philosophy between educators and outsiders and were diametrically opposed to each other, which nicely illustrates how divided the nation is on questions of education.

In the last two days (editor's note: this was up to date in December of 2012, but we take a laizze faire kind of approach to deadlines here at the BlazeBlog, so the stories are more like "in the last two months" now), two different stories have come across my desk. They are both about what you have to do to become a teacher in this country. You almost certainly saw the first story.

In that story, the American Federation of Teachers calls for a more stringent national test for prospective teachers to take to determine their fitness for service as teachers.  They refer to it (in order to get more headlines) as a "bar exam" for teachers. This is hardly new. This very blog has called for an even more stringent system of teacher training (I thought about a link here, but I linked to it two paragraphs ago, so I'm not really interested in linking to it again).
If you're too lazy to read that post, the basic gist of it is that I don't think that teacher education is very good, and I want it to become not more like lawyering, but more like doctoring. While a stringent exam is a good idea, most states already have those. They go by names like the PRAXIS, PRAXIS II, and CBEST. The problem with those tests isn't that they aren't very good tests (they aren't), but rather that a multiple choice test is a pretty poor indicator of how a teacher will work in a classroom full of young people. In short, there is no " option C " to choose in front of a room of maniacal 12 year olds. That's why I have advocated, and will advocate again, a system much more like the internships of teaching hospitals, where student teachers will be given semi-autonomy but be under closer supervision than standard first-year teachers. 
 
So, that's hand number 1: make it harder to become a teacher


Hand number 2, naturally, calls for the exact opposite.

The day after that article was published, a story popped up in my facepagespace news feed about my home state of Indiana. Indiana, facing unemployment of recent college grads and a wave of teacher retirements, is looking to make it easier to become a teacher. Don't believe me? Fine, read it for yourself. I'm going to let you read that. Now, let's ask a compare and contrast question (studies show that C&C questions lead to a 22% increase in retention over straight rote memorization): What is different between the two articles?

Obviously Indiana has a problem, and they've proposed an innovative insulting solution. The basic outline makes the outrageous claim that a person who has a bachelor's degree and spends three years (probably getting observed 2 times a year) in a school with decent reviews can become a professionally licensed teacher. That's like telling me I can go practice law as long as I have 6 good evaluations from a lawyer who watches less than 1% of my time in trial. I'll just watch enough Law and Order and I'll be good to go. 

This basic idea is hardly new. Hell, it's the basis of Teach For America, a program I'm hardly in love with. (This is a subject for another day, so here's my argument in brief: TFA basically says that all of the pedagogy and content I spent 4 years learning can be mastered in a summer retreat. It also places teachers in intentionally temporary placements, which leads to higher teacher turn-over. If learning is all about relationships, which I think it is, then this undermines those relationships, especially at the high school level, where kids are savvy enough  to see that the young person they idolized (we hope) is now leaving for a higher paying gig. That sends a message to those students who we most need to reach that they aren't important enough to stick around for. Again, there is a full-length rant on TFA in my brain, I just haven't spewed it onto paper the Interwebs yet)

So you're going to take someone off the (college educated) street and put them in a classroom with minimal training. This proposal must have been made by someone who hasn't actually worked in a classroom. Obviously these people will have the content (actually, based on the writing of some college grads I know, I'm not even sure about that) knowledge to teach middle and high school. The problem with this is that only about 10% of a teacher's job involves content. The vast majority of this job is about managing kids. Convincing them that this material is important. Helping them grow. Fostering their maturation. 

These are not skills that are inherent. Ask anybody who works with kids. They'll tell you that it takes concerted effort to really work with kids. I suspect that these BA to 1st hour teachers will struggle and leave the profession quickly. High teacher turn-over doesn't solve any problems. 

So, to summarize: AFT thinks we need to make it much harder to become a teacher. States like Indiana want to make it much easier. Obviously they're both right. Or wrong. No, right. Wrong. Whatever they are, they send a confusing message. Do teachers need more training or less? 

I suppose we could look at these two stories as being isolated ideas on the fringes. However, both of them are serious proposals from people in education today. It really is the perfect picture of why we're struggling as a system. We can't agree on the most basic things, like how to put the best people in front of a class; let alone the complicated things, like how to teach that class effectively. 

In the end, I suppose it doesn't matter, because at the end of the day, no one is ever happy with the solution, so we shouldn't even attempt to make anybody happy.   

Hi, I'm a Student Teacher, er, Teaching Candidate, er......

I work at a school which has a partnership with a local university. The university sends us what they call teaching candidates. These are students near the end of their university education in education. They come to us and observe for 16 weeks. Actually, they observe for 8 weeks with us, and 8 weeks in a middle school in our district. They do this in the fall. In the spring, they receive an assignment and become "student teachers".

They spend their spring paying to "teach". In reality, they'll get about two weeks of really flying free, and even then, the licensed teacher can step in at any point. As education programs go, this one is pretty good. Candidates observe in classrooms that are the same subject as that which they will one day teach. They watch for a long time before they teach.

It's still a terrible program. "Wait, what?", you're asking; you said this was a pretty good program. I did. As teacher ed programs go, this one is pretty good, but it's still pretty terrible. Teacher education in this nation is abhorrent. When I student taught, I taught for 8 weeks, was observed by my cooperating teacher daily, and by my university supervisor 3 times. Together, they decided that I was ok, and I got an A. I ended up interviewing against my university supervisor for jobs. I had superior qualifications to teach economics than the teacher who was my "mentor" in that class. All in all, I sank or swam on my own. Very rarely did I learn anything from the adults who were supposed to teach me. I learned mostly from experience, who is a bitch of a teacher.

I think we need to blow up the teacher education model we cling to in this nation. If we, as a society, want to pay more than lip service to the importance of teaching, we need to treat aspiring teachers, and their preparation, more like the way we teach another group of young people who get practice prior to their license, but after they get their degree; doctors.

That's right, I want teachers to be trained like doctors. Before I even explain, let me address the concerns that have immediately sprung to your agile minds.

1. You're worried that teachers will have debt comparable to doctors, without the upside of big pay later. This is true, but my plan attempts to address this problem. (we could just pay teachers like doctors, but that's crazy talk!)

2. You're worried that these "interns / residents" will need supervision in the schools, and that means more staffing. Ah, read on, I've come up with a clever solution, I think.

3. You're worried you'll be eaten by zombies. I can't help, but will remind you that zombies lead an active lifestyle, so cardio is important. 

Ok, on to the plan

I think that we should keep what we have now, observation, followed by "student teaching". Those student teachers that discovered that teaching was too hard / not what they expected / early in the morning / whatever, could get their degree and quit. They could go sell insurance. However, if you wanted to get a license to teach, you would apply to "teaching schools" which would operate like teaching hospitals. Teachers; selected by peers, or administration or the University (or a combination of the three) as master teachers would be in charge of a "resident teacher"

(These master teachers would not be selected by level of education, since a masters from the University of North Nowheresville's Online Masters in Instructional Modelling has never made someone a more effective teacher. More pay, yes, better in the classroom, no).

Now, I teach in a school with 8 hours, which makes this plan work. It would need some changes for those schools teaching in the straight 7, or the trimester, or the straight block. But, we run a modified alternating block, so this is what we would do:

1. In a year, a department of 8 people couldn't have more than one student teacher and one resident teacher. This prevents the school from being overrun by novices.

2. The resident teacher would get 3/4 of a normal load (right now, I teach 6 of 8 as a regular teacher. In this system, the resident teacher would teach 4 of 8). However, the resident teacher would also be required to complete reflections, observe teachers in other classes and disciplines, observe administrators, shadow the support staff, and be engaged in an extra-curricular activity. This would help them to experience the school culture.

3. There would be a master teacher (to keep with the medical analogy, an attending teacher). This teacher would also work 4 of 8 (though I would accept 5 of 8 to placate the schools and unions). The schedules of these teachers would be such that the attending would have planning hours during the resident teacher's classes, and would be required to observe, and to mentor this teacher.

4. As the department of Health and Human Services finances much of the salaries of residents in teaching hospitals, perhaps we could use some of that Race to the Top money to pay for resident teachers. They would receive a 3/4 salary and still be eligible for student loans and grants. Also, the University would waive all or most of the tuition for administering the program. 

For what it's worth, my first year teaching, I made less than the average medical resident in the United States, so I hope we can find money for 75% of that. Perhaps the Department of Education could do something useful and support this financially. In reality, the best we could hope for is probably going halfsies with the feds and the districts.

5. Once they finished their "residency", these teachers, now with a year of real-world teaching; the total experience, the hours, the grading, the extra stuff which student teachers are often excluded from like coaching, these people would have a true feeling of what teaching is and takes.

6. Obviously this puts huge pressure and responsibility on "attending" teachers. We would need to develop a program to help select and teach these people. They would need to be impeccably qualified, and would have to be passionate about both teaching, and teaching teachers. These people exist. I can name 10 in my building. They would have to be talked into it, but that extra planning time would help.

There are a myriad of benefits for a program like this. Since this is a post full of numbered lists, let me introduce another:

1. We increase the number of sections offered from 6 to 8 at a minimal cost to the district (Because the attending teacher would have had 6, but now the attending + the resident offer 8, or 9 if you force the attending to teach 5 of 8).

2. Teachers are better prepared, having actually honed their craft for a year under the supervision of people who have experience in the field.

3. With increased sections, class sizes shrink, which is shown over and over to improve test scores. It also, anecdotal evidence suggests, increases learning.

4. There are more adults to supervise, and to shine as role models for students. Different types of teachers reach different students, so the more types of teachers you have (and young teachers often connect very well with students), the more possible engagement. The more engagement, the more students learn.

5. New teachers, operating as peers bring the newest ideas to the classroom. This rubs off on older teachers. Student teachers are overwhelmed by being short-term visitors. Residents would, one hopes, feel like members of the team, and would share their knowledge with the permanent staff. This would lead to professional growth for all.

To be perfectly frank, I think that a system like this could, for minimal effort, make a fundamental change in both the quality of teachers we produce and the quality of the schools they work in. It would happen not just for the empirical reasons stated above, but for the much more subtle message sent by making it harder to get a teacher's license than it is to get a hairdressers license.

If we say to people, that to teach, you will spend a year of your life teaching, and being evaluated on that teaching, and then you may get your license, we have sent a powerful signal that we only want the best and the best qualified to teach. 

People will live up to that expectation.