海角大神

Are barely trained teachers just as good as education majors? Looks like it.

The schools of education not only have a poor academic reputation but emphasize rote memorization and conformity to the orthodoxy. That鈥檚 not a recipe for attracting our brightest minds. 

罢丑别听聽headline 鈥�Teach for America teachers aren鈥檛 any better than other teachers when it comes to kids鈥� test scores鈥� buries the lede.

础听聽comparing test scores among elementary school students who had Teach for America instructors and who had other teachers finds it鈥檚 a wash.

The leaders of the controversial organization, which recruits graduates of selective universities and places them in classrooms after only several weeks of training, are聽pleased with the results. Chief executive officers聽Elisa Villanueva Beard and Matthew Kramer聽聽that the other teachers had an average of 13.6 years of experience, compared to only 1.7 years among the Teach for America group.

That smart, motivated folks with a crash course in pedagogy are as effective as seasoned teachers with four-year Education degrees (indeed, many would have advanced degrees) is rather damning of the traditional method of selection and preparation. Indeed, Max Ehrenfreund, the author of the piece, acknowledges this beginning in the third paragraph:

Teach for America was established on the premise that highly qualified聽young people could do as well or better than experienced educators in the nation鈥檚 most disadvantaged schools after only minimal training. While the organization has recently聽lengthened聽its training schedule聽and begun recruiting older people to teach聽as well, the results are arguably another vindication of Teach for America鈥檚 model. The group has become a focal point in the larger debate over whether the existing system of聽education colleges聽and certifications are聽聽to meaningfully prepare teachers for the classroom.听

It鈥檚 a longstanding debate. While the requirements vary considerably from state to state, education majors tend to be among the weakest on campus, as evidenced by standardized test scores and performance in core curricula. Here, though, Ehrenfreund mixes apples and oranges:

On the other hand, the fact that Teach for America鈥檚 teachers did聽no better than their more experienced colleagues in this latest study points to聽how difficult it is to improve聽students鈥� test scores by improving the quality of instruction. Other research聽has found that while聽a year spent in a gifted educator鈥檚 classroom can have a profound聽effect on a child鈥檚 career聽prospects, identifying those talented people聽is hard.

That should be a non sequitur. Teach For America novices shouldn鈥檛 stand out as 鈥済ifted educators鈥� in a field of veteran teachers. That they do is a damning indictment of the latter.

The piece does got to some of the problems.

Seventy-six percent of the Teach for America staff had graduated from a selective college or university, as ranked by Barron鈥檚, compared to 40 percent of the regular teachers. Eighty-four percent had majored in a field besides education, compared to 26 percent of regular staff.

Teach for America鈥檚 teachers聽were also much less likely to say they felt prepared for their first job and less likely to describe their training as useful聽in response to a survey.

And the Teach for America staff were less satisfied with their work in a number of ways.听They were less聽likely to say that they felt camaraderie with their colleagues, and they rated the administrations of their schools and the professional caliber of the other staff less favorably.听They were more likely to say that their work did not offer聽prestige, an intellectual challenge or opportunities for advancement. An overwhelming majority said they planned not to continue in teaching for their entire careers, compared to just a quarter of the regular staff.

[...]

Teachers in both groups did give similar responses聽when asked whether they felt they had a chance to help students succeed, both in and out of school, and whether they thought the job was personally fulfilling. Broadly speaking, though, the dissatisfaction in the聽Teach for America corps points to the difficulty of attracting well qualified, ambitious young people to an occupation with limited pay and professional autonomy.

I鈥檝e been arguing for close to 20 years now that it鈥檚 shocking that we get as many talented people teaching in our primary and secondary schools as we do. The schools of education not only have a poor academic reputation but emphasize rote memorization and conformity to the orthodoxy; that鈥檚 not a recipe for attracting our brightest minds. Those traditions are carried on in the workplace as well, so the most creative, innovative personalities are driven out. Those who persist despite all that are alienated from their colleagues.

The pay, frankly, isn鈥檛 the main issue. While teacher pay was horrendous 30 years ago, a vestige of the fact that it had long been a field dominated by women (who were presumed to either be in it only long enough to find a husband or to have a husband as the primary breadwinner), it鈥檚 quite competitive now* and still has the lure of reasonable hours, substantial vacation time, and extremely good job security and retirement benefits. The lack of autonomy is a real issue, though, in attracting and retaining talent.

UPDATE: Actually, not so much. 聽While today鈥檚 salaries are indeed competitive, they have been for decades. 罢丑别听聽shows the national average salary rose from $8626 in 1969-70 to $15,970 in 1979-80, $31,367 in 1989-90, and聽41,807 in 1999-2000, to $$56,383 in 2012-13. But that鈥檚 purely an artifact of inflation. In constant dollars, the salary has been remarkably steady over that period.

My perception is based on my home state of Alabama, where I graduated high school, completed all three degrees, and taught college. There, there has indeed been a significant real increase in teacher salaries over the years since I was in high school. In other states, such as Alaska, there has been a marked decline in real dollars.

James Joyner is editor of the Outside the Beltway blog at http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/.