The Plan is Coming Together...
By: Dr. Mitchell Robinson
Careful readers have noticed a flurry of reformster activity over the past week or so, highlighted by two big announcements. First was the rollout of #TeachStrong, an education improvement scheme allegedly dedicated "to modernizing and elevating the teaching profession," and involving a murderer's row of reformer groups, like Teach for America, the Relay Graduate School of Education and the National Center for Teacher Quality. Never mind that none of these groups are actually interested in either modernizing or elevating anything, and are instead working to hasten the privatization of public education, and turning P-12 schools and college teacher education programs into profit centers. [As an aside, why is it that when the reformers name a new group they simply throw a bunch of words together that sound like they are good, but infuse them with the exact opposite of what those words mean (i.e., TFA is not about teaching for the good of America in any way; the RGS bears absolutely no resemblance to a real graduate school; and, the NCTQ wouldn't recognize a quality teacher preparation program if it actually set foot on a college campus--which it doesn't actually do in its attempts to evaluate teacher prep programs. So there's that...).]
Announcement #2 came today with the unveiling of a massive, $34 million grant bonanza from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that is designed to...stop me if you've heard this one before..."improve teacher-preparation programs’ overall effectiveness." This one looks for all the world like a college-targeted follow up to Mr. Gates' failed efforts to improve teacher quality, which has taken over a decade and billions of dollars. You've got to hand it to Bill and Melinda--they are persistent. Even in the face of overwhelming evidence that their reforms have not moved the needle on teacher quality, test scores, class size, small schools or student learning, they just don't give up.
This new project involves a rather motley crew of organizations, including TeacherSquared (which includes a slew of what are charitably referred to as "nontraditional preparation programs," such as our old friends from the Relay Graduate School of Education), a consortium of 6 Southern universities, the Massachusetts Department of Education, and the National Center for Teacher Residencies.
But perhaps the most curious partner in the Gates-funded consortium is TeachingWorks, a think-tank out of the University of Michigan, led by Dr. Deborah Loewenberg Ball, Dean of Badass Teachers Association:
Announcement #2 came today with the unveiling of a massive, $34 million grant bonanza from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that is designed to...stop me if you've heard this one before..."improve teacher-preparation programs’ overall effectiveness." This one looks for all the world like a college-targeted follow up to Mr. Gates' failed efforts to improve teacher quality, which has taken over a decade and billions of dollars. You've got to hand it to Bill and Melinda--they are persistent. Even in the face of overwhelming evidence that their reforms have not moved the needle on teacher quality, test scores, class size, small schools or student learning, they just don't give up.
This new project involves a rather motley crew of organizations, including TeacherSquared (which includes a slew of what are charitably referred to as "nontraditional preparation programs," such as our old friends from the Relay Graduate School of Education), a consortium of 6 Southern universities, the Massachusetts Department of Education, and the National Center for Teacher Residencies.
But perhaps the most curious partner in the Gates-funded consortium is TeachingWorks, a think-tank out of the University of Michigan, led by Dr. Deborah Loewenberg Ball, Dean of Badass Teachers Association: