The Adequacies and Inadequacies of Three Current Strategies to Recruit, Prepare, and Retain the Best Teachers for All Students (original) (raw)
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Author(s): Gutierrez, Emanuel | Abstract: This research is about reforming the teaching profession in the United States of America. It explores varying aspects about what is plaguing the teaching profession from tenure reform to a merit-based system. There is also research from other countries and how they have overcome their challenges to create a better learning environment. The structure will go as follows: introduction, main discussion, and finally the call to action. This is an important topic, because there is a lack of quality educators in the United States public education system. This paper will go into detail about how to fix and reform the system to work better for teachers and students.
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This paper depicts the perspectives of preservice U.S. teachers towards diverse learners and shows how these create barriers to equitable and just schooling for many children. It reviews national reports calling for changes in teacher education with regard to their attention to the teaching of "Other people's" children and reviews teacher education program el?orts at reform for diversity; finally, it provides analyses of these efforts that point the way for further struggles for change.*
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The results in this paper are part of a larger project prepared for the Pennsylvania State Board of Education, and funded by the Board, the Vira I. Heinz Endowment, Grable Foundation and the Frick Fund of the Buhl Foundation is gratefully acknowledged. Ms. Lori Bowes, Ms. Mindy Marks, and Mr. Mark Plesko provided significant research assistance. Responsibility for this paper, its opinions, and any errors rests solely with the author. Teachers in most states, however, must earn educational credentials, have a college degree, and pass certain standardized tests. By and large, a college degree, which reflects some sort of course work on pedagogy and the content area in which the prospective teacher will teach, in conjunction with passing scores on standardized tests, are all that are required to become certificated. The degree is typically from a state approved program of teacher preparation, and standardized tests are devised by national testing firms such as Educational Testing Service or National Evaluation Systems. These are, as will be indicated below, rather minimal requirements, and often do not attract the most academically talented individuals. Changes in student and teacher demographics, as well as rising expectations for student performance, are creating new classroom needs and opportunities for substantially renewing many district's teachers. In the older, industrialized states, school age children will be relatively older in the next ten to fifteen years, thereby requiring relatively more secondary than elementary classroom teachers. At the same time, classroom teachers are, much like the rest of our society, getting older, and retirements will provide an opportunity to hire younger, less expensive teachers, and hopefully those able (or better able) to ensure that students can achieve high learning standards. Some have commented that these demographic changes should be recognized by teacher preparation institutions so they prepare teachers with the right skills for the classroom needs of the next century. However, higher education faces its own financial incentives, and also has its own rigidities towards change. Colleges and universities with sizable education schools find it difficult to alter the activities of their own highly tenured Core Battery Score General Skills Percentile General Knowledge Percentile Professional Knowledge Percentile Specialty Test Score Math Percentile Biology Percentile Chemistry Percentile Physics Percentile (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (
Teacher Education at the Crossroads: Burning Questions That Just Won't Go Away
2012
Worldwide, the call and the need for highly qualified teachers is relentless, perhaps greater than any time in our history, and, concomitantly, the pathways to becoming a highly qualified teacher are more diverse than ever before-the traditional university model, alternative certifications, on-line programs, and standardized tests waiving course work have an unprecedented presence. It is hardly news there is a crisis in recruiting and educating future teachers. This is in addition to the crisis of retaining the teachers we currently have: 20% of new teachers leave the profession within their first three years; 50% of them in urban districts alone. Therefore, it is estimated that over the next ten years the United States will need over two million teachers (Guggenheim, 2004). So, not only are we producing too few teachers, those who do enter the teaching profession are often ill prepared for the challenges associated with an increasingly rigorous and testdriven curriculum and an also increasingly culturally and linguistically diverse student population. These challenges are further intensified by instructional conditions marked by a scarcity of resources. Finding new sources and strategies for recruiting teachers, while helping existing teachers stay committed to the profession will be no easy task as conflict among various constituencies escalates. Schools of education today face pressure to improve from all directions. A flurry of new studies challenges their ideological bias and low admissions standards. Critics now question their very existence, with competition from fast-track routes to certification threatening their long-held monopoly on training teachers. The soul-searching has accelerated in the United States with the Federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001, which demanded a "highly qualified" teacher-state certified, with a bachelor's degree and proven knowledge of subject-in every classroom by the end of the 2005-06 academic year (Hartocollis, 2005). How has the US reacted to the challenge? Teacher Magazine (August 5, 2007) has explored already existing alternatives to teacher recruitment and preparation focusing on fast tracks to certification. Prospective teachers across South Carolina, for example, have an opportunity for a new shortcut to getting certified to go into classrooms. The program targets career changers and can certify would-be public and private school teachers in all 50 states. The Passport to Teaching program was approved by state legislators in 2007 and can get people into classrooms faster than the traditional four-year college route. South Carolina was the seventh state to approve a streamlined fast-track certification program from prospective public school teachers. The program requirements for being certified as a teacher vary among states. Teacher candidates using the program in South Carolina can be certified to teach after passing two tests and being mentored for 10 months. More importantly, their training requires no in-classroom experience or coursework. The example from South Carolina highlights the state of Teacher Education in the country: state departments of education and local school boards are looking for a quick fix and are not planning educational policies in view of the changing demographics of school population and the teaching profession. In order to not only prepare but retain teachers in the profession and offer 66 Alter & Naiditch-At the Crossroads them the necessary support to develop and improve their teaching skills, more long-lasting solutions are needed. Schools of education have long established themselves as think-tanks where ideas or suggestions on how to approach our educational challenges are generated. However, they do not seem to have demonstrated concrete solutions, either. In fact, schools of education today have the additional challenge of proving themselves still relevant and necessary. Moreover, according to Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan, schools of education also need to be made accountable for student achievement (address on October 22 nd , 2009, at Teachers College). In this article, we identify some critical areas regarding teacher education that need to be addressed by any institution responsible for educating teachers. We outline some of the paradoxical pressures that constitute the context for this crisis in teacher education and specify the kinds of basic questions that need systematic answers in terms of what teachers might be expected to know. These questions serve as a worldwide call for teacher educators to provide evidencebased programs that employ the knowledge needed to be a teacher as the basis for actually educating a teacher. We examine the example of one school of education and how it has shown that adapting to local needs and circumstances without having to alter the essence of your work can be an effective strategy in keeping your program meaningful and up-to-date. We also raise a number of questions that we believe reflect the evolving nature of the field of teacher education and remind us that there is much more involved in becoming and preparing teachers than our current teacher education programs would like to think.
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Hiring quality teachers that best meet localized needs to provide students with authentic learning opportunities is crucial to both school and student success. Despite the clear importance of teacher hiring, especially in the current teacher labor market, a review of literature that synthesizes the full body of teacher hiring literature has long been missing from the field. This integrative literature review of 71 empirical studies in an era of federal accountability (2001-2020) provides a full portrait of K-12 teacher hiring research. In so doing, we identify what is known while also unearthing the many knowledge gaps that exist due to factors such as sample and methodological limitations. As such, this review of the literature provides practitioners and policymakers with a number of guideposts to help them with hiring decisions. This review also shows how much more there is to learn and signals to researchers where and how they might build off of the current knowledge base.