Fed's Stupid Teacher Prep Program Rules
The feds have released their rules governing teacher preparation programs, and they are just as stupid as they have promised to be all along.
How stupid? Kate Walsh of the impossible-to-take-seriously National Council on Teacher Quality saw the rules and pronounced them even "better" than she had expected, with extra-super-accountability.
The genius portion is the part that links college teacher program ratings to student results on the Big Standardized Test. Chris goes to Wossamotta U's teaching program, then gets a job at Struggling High School, where Chris is assigned the bottom rung on the remedial track. Chris's students do poorly on the BS Test, and therefor Wossamotta U's teacher program is downgraded, perhaps even loses some of its nifty federal grants. But wait-- it gets worse-- imagine that Chris is a shop or history teacher, in one of those states where Chris's VAM score is based on students Chris doesn't have in class taking a test about subject matter that Chris doesn't teach. And now Wossamotta U's teacher program still gets downgraded.
There are a couple of obvious outcomes of a policy like this, the most obvious and damning being that if Wossamotta U's program wants to survive, it has to avoid sending its graduates to low-performing (aka poor and under-resourced) schools. And since teachers most commonly teach CURMUDGUCATION: Fed's Stupid Teacher Prep Program Rules: