Ed Schools
Ed schools seem to make an easy target in public policy debates over the quality of American public schooling and the American teacher workforce.
In many recent lopsided “ed school as the root of all evil” presentations, “Ed Schools,” are treated as some easily defined, static entity over time. In the book of reformyness (chapter 7, verse 2), “Ed Schools” necessarily consist of some static set of traditional higher education institutions – 4 year teachers colleges including regional state colleges and flagship universities – where a bunch of crusty old education professors spew meaningless theory at wide-eyed undergrads (who graduated at the bottom of their high school class) seeking that golden ticket to a job for life – with summers off.
In order to craft a clearly understandable (albeit entirely false) dichotomy of policy alternatives, pundits then present teachers who have obtained alternative certification as a group of individuals, nearly all of whom necessarily attended highly selective colleges and majored in something really, really rigorous and then received their certification through some more expeditious and clearly much more practical and useful fast-tracked option.
This was certainly the theme of a discussion (hashtag #edschools) at Thomas B. Fordham Institute actively tweeted the other day by Mike Petrilli and a few others. What I found most interesting was that no-one really challenged the assumptions that “ed schools” are some easily definable group of traditional higher education