Fallacies, realities about teachers and education schools
Every day when we come to work, we have the privilege of interacting with amazing young people. Many of them were among the top students in their high schools with average SAT scores above 1100 and an average weighted GPA of 4.4.
Further, they have college GPAs above 3.0, and many graduate magna cum laude. These young individuals perform a large amount of service work in the community and engage in international activities to learn more about the world around them. Most North Carolinians would like to work with such outstanding people and learn about the amazing things they are doing.
If we say we work at N.C. State, many people would wonder in what technical field we teach. But, actually, we work in the College of Education. And the wonderful people we are talking about all intend to be teachers. In fact, they are all future teachers, and the vast majority will serve schools in North Carolina.
Let us say this again: These amazing, smart and hard-working students all want to be teachers. N.C. State is a selective university, and these high-achieving students, who could choose from a variety of majors, choose to become teachers.
The current public discourse often paints teachers as ineffective, sub-professionals who likely had no other choice than to teach. These substandard professionals, the current discourse goes, need more and more accountability through testing, performance regulations and report cards to make sure they are performing their craft in an “effective” manner. After all, those who can, do; and those who can’t, teach – or so the current discourse is trying to prove. This image of a less-than-qualified student who goes on to become a low-performing professional does not match the reality we experience every day.
The current attack on public school teachers has expanded to attacking Colleges of Education. Or, as a Bill Keller recently put it in an op-ed in the New York Times: “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach. And those who can’t teach, teach teaching.”
Keller called Colleges of Education “an industry of mediocrity” and specified a laundry list of what