While Mike has quickly filed the National Council for Accreditation of Teachers' report issued yesterday in the Unimpressive folder, I'm not so eager to negatively judge. Maybe I'm star-struck after attending the blue-ribbon panel's press briefing yesterday morning?and hearing Arne Duncan praise the report and cite our own Cracks in the Ivory Tower in the same breath. But maybe, it's just that the commission has taken a giant leap toward a more productive model of teacher training. And when something that sedentary shifts, the reverberation felt actually is seismic.
Now, I haven't supped the NCATE Kool-Aid here. There are definitely a lot of questions left unanswered in the report. One insightful audience member during yesterday's briefing, for example, pointed out that it strongly stresses collaboration between district, state, higher education, and union leaders. But, it also fails to address on even a basic level how these partnerships can be cultivated within the constructs of current state statutes and collective bargaining agreements. (When faced with a question to this effect, the panel offered no more than a generic answer about how ?these things take time.?)
Rick Hess, a discussant at the briefing, went four steps further in bashing the report. (For a good run-down of Rick's points, check out his blog post from yesterday.) His thoughts on the scalability and cost-effectiveness of NCATE's ideas, especially, are worth considering.
But, in the end, we have a group not typically on the forefront of education reform stirring up some pretty big waves. The teacher training paradigm shift to clinical preparation is noble, as is its push toward measuring outcomes to determine accreditation, rather than inputs. The report?a mere thirty pages?might have some policy gaps to fill in and it might not be earth shattering to those already knee-deep in education reform. But, on the whole, it provides a solid starting-off point, from a group that I for one am excited to have on my side of the teacher-quality debate.
What will come of all this, of course, is a completely different monster. Let's see if NCATE can't do something productive with this momentum they've created?or if I'll end up eating my words.
?Daniela Fairchild
