In a recent Gadfly (http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=13#305), I sketched the main findings of Hoover's Koret Task Force in Our Schools & Our Future: Are We Still at Risk?, a reflection on what's happened to American education in the two decades since A Nation at Risk was issued in 1983. What I didn't make clear is that this new Hoover volume contains not just the group statement but also special-focus chapters by each of 11 task force members. There you will find Diane Ravitch on A Nation at Risk's place in history; Paul Peterson on gains in student achievement; Caroline Hoxby on what has and hasn't actually changed in U.S. education during this period; Paul Hill and associates on minority students; Eric Hanushek on the economic contribution of school quality; Terry Moe on the politics of ed reform (with special reference to teacher unions); Bill Evers (and Paul Clopton) on the curriculum; E.D. Hirsch on the early grades; Herb Walberg on "real accountability"; John Chubb on "real choice"; and yours truly on "teacher reform gone astray." To whet your appetite for this collection of original essays, here's the gist of mine:
Teaching was a top concern of the National Commission on Excellence in Education, which found that "[N]ot enough of the academically able students are being attracted to teaching; that teacher preparation programs need substantial improvement; that the professional working life of teachers is on the whole unacceptable; and that a serious shortage of teachers exists in key fields."
To solve those problems, the Commission made numerous recommendations, including higher standards for teachers, demonstrated competence in an academic discipline, performance-based pay, actions to "improve or terminate" weak teachers, career ladders and alternative certification, especially in math and science.
A Nation At Risk took an instrumental view of teachers as crucial workers in an underperforming industry, namely U.S. schools. It issued no clarion summons to "empower" them, place them in charge of key education decisions or reinvent schools around them.
Almost before the commission's ink had dried, however, Americans were presented with a very different view that emphasized "teacher professionalism." Originating in the Carnegie-sponsored report, A Nation Prepared: Teachers for the 21st Century, its most notable feature was a shift from teachers-as-instruments-of-school-improvement to teachers-as-architects-of-school-improvement.
Accompanying that power shift were different ideas about schooling itself, away from the view that teachers should impart specific knowledge and skills to youngsters and toward the constructivist view that the teacher's foremost mission is to help the child become a learner.
Unlike the Excellence Commission, which detonated its report and then went out of business, the Carnegie task force had powerful allies with great staying power and political clout. The campaign that it launched also had access to ample private and public dollars. Hence we oughtn't be surprised that this "teacher professionalism" campaign gained far more traction than the recommendations concerning teachers contained in A Nation At Risk.
Among the professionalizers' organizational progeny are the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS), the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (INTASC), the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future (NCTAF) and a strengthened National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE).
Today, those entities wield much leverage over how one gets trained for teaching, becomes licensed to teach, and advances within the field. Sixteen states have created "teacher professional standards boards" that are largely beyond the influence of elected policymakers, voters and taxpayers. Nearly every state now has a "partnership" with NCATE and in many that accrediting group wields joint power in determining which preparation programs are approved for purposes of teacher certification. As for NBPTS, half the states now offer financial bonuses to board-certified teachers, as do several hundred local districts.
Considering all this activity and the immense political, legislative and budgetary resources that it has consumed, one might say the teacher professionalism agenda has functioned like a "black hole" in space, sucking in much of the available energy, attention and funds and leaving little for other education changes.
That would be okay if we were confident that such moves will yield the desired results for students as well as teachers. But there is no basis for such confidence. Professionalizing turns out to be a weak if costly strategy for addressing the problems at hand. Worse, it keeps running afoul of today's two dominant education-reform strategies, both the standards-based kind and the choice-based kind. Worse still, it tends to inflame other education ills. Notably, the push to "raise standards" for entry into the classroom does little to ensure quality control while aggravating teacher shortages and boosting opportunity costs for career-switchers.
These are heavy burdens for the professionalizers and they haven't gotten any lighter in recent years. Indeed, resistance is widening as alternative certification spreads, as heterodox programs such as Teach for America demonstrate their success, and as charter schools (which are usually free to employ whatever teachers they like) proliferate. Because most such schools are also free from mandatory collective bargaining, their popularity weakens the unions, ed schools, and other cartel institutions from which the professionalizers draw most of their political oomph.
Skeptics are multiplying, too. They now include U.S. Education Secretary Rod Paige, whose 2002 report on teacher quality must be seen as a major setback to the professionalizers. "Raising teacher standards," he said, "is only half of the equation.... [S]tates must also tear down the wall that is keeping many talented individuals out of the profession." It turns out that's very similar to the advice of the Excellence Commission almost two decades earlier. Perhaps this time we'll heed it.
You can find the full text of this essay at http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/publications/books/fulltext/ourschools/211.pdf.
The table of contents of the entire Koret volume can be accessed at http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/publications/books/osof.html. And you can obtain shorter versions of many of the essays from the most recent issue of Education Next, available at your newsstand, by subscription, or at http://www.educationnext.org/.
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Earlier this week, Secretary Paige restated his view that we need to create new options for individuals who would be discouraged from teaching by the hoops and hurdles of traditional certification programs. Endorsing the new American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence, which will certify teachers based on their knowledge of their subjects and their excellence in the classroom, Paige praised the program as "radically better than the system we have now, a system that drives thousands of talented people away from our classrooms."
"Paige backs reform in certification of teachers," by George Archibald, The Washington Times, March 19, 2003