With states aflutter over how to meet NCLB's mandate that they must guarantee a "highly qualified teacher in every classroom," two recent reports are illuminating.
Last month, Education Secretary Rod Paige issued his second annual report on teacher quality ("Meeting the Highly Qualified Teachers Challenge" or see Gadfly's review of this report at http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=29#1444). Though not the conceptual equal of its predecessor (http://www.ed.gov/offices/OPE/News/teacherprep/AnnualReport.pdf), these 88 pages include edifying reviews of nine promising programs, three involving innovations in "traditional" teacher preparation and six utilizing "alternative routes." Also valuable is Paige's restatement of NCLB's trinitarian provision that, "to be highly qualified, teachers must: hold at least a bachelor's degree from a four-year institution; hold full state certification; and demonstrate competence in their subject area."
Much ink - in statute and report alike - has been spilled on how the last of these requirements can be met, i.e. how subject competence can be demonstrated, based on, in Paige's words, NCLB's recognition of "research findings that teachers' content knowledge is important" and that extant state procedures for verifying that knowledge "were not rigorous enough."
The Secretary's report also devotes several paragraphs to the sleeper issue in NCLB, the leg of the teacher tripod that few states have so far paid attention to: what does it mean to "hold full state certification?" It does NOT mean that Washington wants states to persist in their traditional approaches, long on pedagogy and ed-school attendance. As Dr. Paige reminds his readers, "the law was markedly less explicit about what it means to have full state certification. In fact, both the statute and the Department's regulations are silent on the issue. States have flexibility, then, ...to consider major revisions to existing systems. If states want to, they can dramatically streamline their processes and create alternative routes to full state certification that target talented people who would be turned off by traditional preparation and certification programs. In other words, NCLB gives the green light to states that want to lower barriers to the teaching profession."
That's worth repeating: "NCLB gives the green light to states that want to lower barriers to the teaching profession."
That doesn't mean letting anybody enter. Teachers still need to hold a college degree and to demonstrate subject-area competence. But they don't necessarily need to spend a single day in an ed school or pedagogy class and they certainly don't need to endure a conventional four or five year pre-service preparation program. States could, in fact, move to a wholly test-based certification system rather than a time-and-transcript-and-practice-teaching approach. Paige makes this explicit: "States could [for example] decide that individuals who pass the relevant sections of the American Board assessment would be considered fully certified to teach, regardless of where they learned the important knowledge and skills that were tested. These teachers could thus be considered 'highly qualified' under the law."
Talk about a stake through the heart of the ed school cartel! But Secretary Paige - himself a onetime ed school dean - isn't the only one driving such stakes today. From Denver, the mainstream Education Commission of the States recently issued a major report entitled "Eight Questions on Teacher Preparation: What Does the Research Say?" This substantial volume reviews 92 empirical studies that passed muster with ECS analysts as basing conclusions on "systematic observation rather than from articles that are based on opinion and use other studies for support."
ECS has done so thorough and dispassionate a review of the available evidence that it's worth restating the first five questions and summarizing the analysts' answers. (There was insufficient decent research on the final three questions to draw any conclusions.)
Q. To what extent does subject knowledge contribute to the effectiveness of a teacher?
A. The research on this topic...provides moderate support for the importance of solid subject-matter knowledge.... As important as strong subject-matter knowledge seems to be, teacher preparation programs do not appear to be doing an adequate job of ensuring that their graduates have it.
Q. To what extent does pedagogical coursework contribute to a teacher's effectiveness?
A. The research provides limited support for the conclusion that preparation in pedagogy can contribute significantly to effective teaching.... It is not clear from the research..., however, whether such knowledge and skills are best acquired through coursework, field experience (especially student teaching) or on the job.... Moreover, the uncertainty about the ability of preservice preparation to ensure the solid acquisition of core pedagogical skills opens the door to the consideration of alternative preparation routes, which emphasize on-the-job training and have a limited preservice component.
Q. To what extent does high-quality field-based experience prior to certification contribute to a teacher's effectiveness?
A. There is relatively little disagreement that practical experience is extremely important in learning to teach.... It remains unclear, however, what constitutes effective field experience and what impact it has relative to other components of teacher preparation programs...The research...fails to support any confident conclusions about the effectiveness of different kinds of field experiences.
Q. Are there "alternative route" programs that graduate high percentages of effective new teachers with average or higher-than-average rates of teacher retention?
A. Overall, the research provides limited support for the conclusion that there are indeed alternative programs that produce cohorts of teachers who are ultimately as effective as traditionally trained teachers.
Q. Are there any teacher preparation strategies that are likely to increase the effectiveness of new teachers in hard-to-staff or low-performing schools?
A. The very few studies that met the criteria for this report provide limited support for the conclusion that deliberate efforts to prepare teachers to teach in urban, low-performing schools can be beneficial.
What does this add up to? Most obviously, to a need for wide-ranging experimentation and additional research in teacher preparation. Frightfully little is known with any certainty about what knowledge, skills and experience work for teachers and even less is known about how best to ensure that they acquire these things. This should lead states to cast off the shackles that chain them to ancient ways of preparing and certifying teachers and bring them instead to a fresh appreciation of Secretary Paige's point: that NCLB leaves them free to define "fully certified" however they like, not necessarily as they have habitually done. Though confusedly reported in the press, this excellent ECS study, as I read it, vindicates those who say "teachers need subject matter knowledge and they need practical experience and they MAY also need some pedagogical knowledge, but nothing we know today is compelling enough to restrict us to accustomed ways of trying to provide new teachers with these things."
Though the General Accounting Office deplores such flexibility and craves more guidance and uniformity emanating from Washington (see review below), this strikes me as a grand moment for innovation and experimentation in teacher preparation and certification. The executive branch is encouraging precisely that. But how many states will have the vision and the gumption? How many will instead let themselves be mau-maued into submission by vested interests that don't want them to change? Or sit on their hands, waiting for Uncle Sam to tell them what to do?
