In June, Education Secretary Rod Paige issued an important report, the first "Secretary's Annual Report on Teacher Quality." What a splendid fuss it has kicked up-and hurrah for Paige for standing his ground.
Entitled "Meeting the Highly Qualified Teachers Challenge" (and previously noted by the Gadfly at http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=54#802), this report responded to two statutory stimuli. Title II of the Higher Education Act (as amended in 1998) created a national reporting system meant to address the quality of teacher preparation. Reports are filed by every teacher training program and then submitted by every state to the Secretary of Education, with the Secretary mandated to tell Congress what these reports show, what patterns he sees, what problems are evident, etc. (The first set of those institutional and state reports came in 2001 and was posted on the web in November. You can find them and more at www.title2.org.)
Additionally, the No Child Left Behind Act requires that, by 2005-6, every teacher of a core academic subject in an American public school be "highly qualified," with this defined as both possessing full state certification AND demonstrating mastery of the content of the subjects to be taught.
Paige's June report thus dealt both with the current state of American primary/secondary schools vis-??-vis NCLB's "highly qualified teacher" requirement and with the evidence yielded by the first cycle of the Title II reporting system. But it did more. It also offered a searching, critical and lucid discussion of the ways in which the current teacher preparation-and-licensure system is "broken" and the bold steps that, in the Secretary's view, must to be taken to rectify matters. These include "radically streamlining the system" by which teachers are prepared, recruited and certified to teach in public schools and opening numerous "alternate routes" into the classroom.
Others had pointed down similar paths, such as Rick Hess's persuasive paper for the Progressive Policy Institute, numerous recommendations from the National Council on Teacher Quality, even some work by this foundation. But nothing had the clout or visibility of the U.S. Secretary of Education telling the nation that our traditional ways of training and licensing teachers need top-to-bottom rethinking.
You may not be surprised by what happened next: Practically the entire public-education establishment rose up to smite Dr. Paige and his team for having the hubris to speak the truth, though it's a truth already widely grasped outside the self-absorbed precincts of that establishment.
Teachers College president Art Levine asserted that Paige's suggestion that "burdensome education requirements" be eliminated would doom poor and minority children to incompetent instructors. (Note that Levine presides over one of the most prominent suppliers of courses that comply with those burdensome requirements. Note, too, that poor and minority students are not terribly well served by today's requirements.)
Arthur Wise of the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education quarreled with many aspects of the Secretary's report, beginning with Paige's basic analysis of the Title II data. The Education Department judges that "teacher preparation programs are failing." Wise asserts the opposite. (Wise, of course, runs the group that accredits many of the programs in question.)
Outgoing National Education Association president Bob Chase huffed that Paige's proposals "demeaned" and "insulted" the teaching profession by suggesting (in Chase's formulation) "that inexperienced college grads can be as successful as formally trained teachers."
The American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education's Penelope Early attributed dark motives to the Education Secretary-that he and his colleagues were "using this opportunity...as a chance to promote their 'No Child Left Behind' Act and their alternative-certification agenda." AACTE also called for "an independent analysis of the Title II data, saying the report misrepresents information to argue a conservative agenda." (One need scarcely point out how much AACTE and its members stand to lose if Paige's approach to teacher preparation gains traction.)
The Education Trust's Kati Haycock didn't quarrel with Paige's policy conclusions so much as with the quality of the Title II data on which they were (partly) based.
Stanford professor Linda Darling-Hammond, doyenne of the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, charged that the Education Department's report was replete with information that's "inaccurate, misrepresented or badly out of date."
The American Federation of Teachers' Sandra Feldman lamented Paige's failure to call for "quality hands-on experience and access to ongoing professional development"-and, of course, for more money for teachers.
The American Association of School Administrators echoed Feldman, faulting the Secretary for not "solving a much larger problem, the retention of high-quality educators in struggling schools." (The AASA's preferred retention strategy: more federal cash.)
Gene Carter, executive director of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD), ticked off six major objections to the Paige report, centering on ASCD's contention that teachers "need to acquire a sophisticated body of professional pedagogical knowledge"-and disputing the research cited by the Secretary in making the case for reform.
Vince Ferrandino of the National Association of Elementary School Principals embraced the NCATE analysis and stated that "NAESP stands squarely behind strong teacher preparation programs" and abhors "hiring what some of our colleagues call 'Taco Bell' educators, i.e. if you can manage a Taco Bell, you can manage a school."
Had I time to persist in this depressing search, doubtless I'd find dozens more objections of this ilk, voiced by people and groups of this ilk: those who brought us today's K-12 education system and have deep vested interests in keeping that system more or less the way it is, except for infusions of more money.
It's clear that Paige not only has nerve but that he struck a nerve. A big, quivering, super-sensitive nerve that runs through nearly the entire body of the public-school establishment.
But he's sticking to his guns. Not out of cussedness but because he believes what he said in "Meeting the Highly Qualified Teachers Challenge." (His aides do, however, acknowledge that the Title II data are not what they should be, though this is really something Congress needs to rectify when it revisits the Higher Education Act. Some who fault the current data will also oppose attempts to make them better and clearer.)
In a policy world increasingly divided between those who subscribe to traditional modes of teacher preparation and licensure and want the regulatory screws tightened further, and those who would open up classroom entry and then judge teachers primarily by how much they know and how effective they are, the U.S. Secretary of Education has come out for openness and results. His definition of highly qualified teachers, it's now clear, is people who know their stuff and are good at teaching it. He doesn't seem too interested in the rest of the establishment paraphernalia nor much swayed by that establishment's claims that it has persuasive evidence that its approach works better. The fact is that much "scholarly" evidence in this field is complicated, conflicted and controversial. The fact is that the "deregulatory" approach has not had nearly enough of a test to have generated much clear evidence. To its opponents, that's ample reason not to try it. To Rod Paige, that's part of why it must be tried.
On balance, the Secretary did something courageous and important by slicing through the clutter and making clear what direction he thinks the country should take. Bravo for him. Sometimes one's convictions are strengthened by observing who opposes them. In this instance, I judge, Dr. Paige has had his own beliefs bolstered by this cacophony of self-interested criticism of his fine report.
"Meeting the Highly Qualified Teachers Challenge: The Secretary's Annual Report on Teacher Quality," Rod Paige, U.S. Department of Education, 2002
"Paige Uses Report as a Rallying Cry to Fix Teacher Ed.," by Bess Keller and Michelle Galley, Education Week, June 19, 2002
"Critics Claim Missteps on Execution of Title II," by Julie Blair, Education Week, August 7, 2002
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The National Association of State Boards of Education has issued a report embracing non-traditional paths to certification as a critical strategy for states in addressing teacher shortages and quality. "Moving Past the Politics: How Alternative Certification Can Promote Comprehensive Teacher Development Reforms," is available at http://www.nasbe.org/Front_Page/Press_Release2.html
In a powerful op-ed in Tuesday's USA Today, veteran teacher Patrick Welsh writes that "few things have been more frustrating than seeing my school system turn away extremely bright young teaching candidates simply because they did not have enough of the requisite education courses to be certified by the state. In their place, second-rate candidates who had jumped through enough hoops to gain certification were often hired." Welsh lauds the Education Department for taking on the education establishment in its new study. "System Snubs Qualified Teachers," by Patrick Welsh, USA Today, August 12, 2002
