Guest Post By Peter Smagorinsky: Response To The New NCTQ Teacher Prep Review
Sandy Coan does paperwork in her Van Asselt Elementary School classroom. Photo: Dan DeLong/Special To The Post-Intelligencer
By Guest Post by Peter Smagorinsky, The University of Georgia c/o Paul L. Thomas, Ed.D. | Originally Published at The Becoming Radical. June 17, 2014
By Guest Post by Peter Smagorinsky, The University of Georgia c/o Paul L. Thomas, Ed.D. | Originally Published at The Becoming Radical. June 17, 2014
National Council on Teacher Quality [NCTQ’s] announcement of its new edition of its Teacher Prep Reviewpredictably exalts its own role in improving public education by requiring colleges of education to raise students’ test scores through the instruction of its teacher candidates once they are members of school faculties. I will briefly respond to a few of the claims that they make, which rely on rhetorical characterizations about “success” and “achievement” that spuriously elevate their belief that standardized tests reflect the whole of learning, a claim that few teachers or teacher educators endorse. In contrast, most teachers and teacher educators believe that the NCTQ’s narrow focus on standardized “achievement” tests undermine an authentic education that prepares students for work or life.
The report claims that “The training that teachers receive has to set them up for success.” Well, who doesn’t want successful teachers and students? The question that many of us within the profession ask is this: How is success defined here? For NCTQ, teacher educators are successful when graduates of their programs teach students who do well on standardize tests. But it’s pretty well documented that the best way to have students get good test results is to teach kids from affluent families. The best way to be a successful teacher educator, then, is to encourage teacher candidates to teach the wealthiest kids possible, rather than those residing in impoverished communities. Given that social justice is inscribed in the mission statement of just about every college of education in the nation, being successful according to NCTQ means betraying the values to which we are committed as educators.
The recent judicial decision to eliminate teacher tenure in California may well negate the claim that tenure decisions will now include data from “student achievement.” NCTQ overlooks the fact that in many “Right to Work” states do not have tenure, collective bargaining, unions, or other job protection rights. In any case, the idea that the only measure of “student achievement” is standardized tests overlooks other ways in whicempathyeducates – Guest Post By Peter Smagorinsky: Response To The New NCTQ Teacher Prep Review:
