Privatizing student teaching and Pearson making student teachers jump through hoops.
When I heard from my retired colleague Sandy Deines about how Illinois and other states were mandating Pearson’s edTPA as the official teacher certification process I immediately posted her article.
I had not heard about this.
It has been a long time since I was a student teacher. I remember the process as both a time of anxiety and excitement.
I was finally getting in front of a class, teaching lessons I had created and was being mentored by a veteran cooperating teacher as well as a university supervisor.
The system was not without its faults.
It always seemed a little odd to me that I had to wait four years of classwork before I started actually teaching. I believe firmly in the concept of learning by doing, whether it is my students I am talking about, or about myself learning to become a teacher.
Whatever the problems in the current system, not one problem will be solved by handing over the process to a private corporation like Pearson.
The response to my edTPA posts have been overwhelming.
The original article has received over 12,000 page views since I posted it late Friday.
On the one hand I have heard from some who have defended the new system. Their defense seems to rest on endorsements- one telling me it since it was developed by professors at Stanford and “people like Linda Darling-Hammond” it must be good.
I don’t know what that even means.
But a defense needs to rest on more than an endorsement, otherwise lets ask Privatizing student teaching and Pearson making student teachers jump through hoops. | Fred Klonsky: