Mike Rose Sorts Out Debate about Quality of Teacher Education
This morning Valerie Strauss has published the second in a series of three articles by UCLA education professor and writer Mike Rose about college programs in teacher education. I blogged on the first piece in the series here.
You might think a series of articles about the education of teachers sounds boring, but stop and think about the hot debate these days on this topic. After all, Congress just re-inserted the Teach for America exemption into the continuing resolution on the federal budget and the President signed it into law. This is the provision that rates young people who have come through just five-weeks of summer training “highly qualified teachers.” And there are proposals to stop all pay incentives for teachers to earn masters degrees in the subject they teach or for taking courses to improve their teaching practices.
Personally I think this series by Mike Rose is Valerie Strauss’s holiday gift to us all. I urge you to read today’s article and also the one that preceded it. Today Rose addresses this question: What’s right—and very wrong—with the teacher education debate?
Should we make teaching programs more selective and close smaller programs in state universities and local colleges. Rose wisely notes, “I think we need to be cautious about conflating academic achievement with the ability to teach. The two are intimately related, but not one and the same.” He remembers the teachers he observed as the basis of his widely