As a professor in a school of education, I have a big stake in how this question is answered. I also have a response to the question asked by Dr. Cheney’s friend. Her friend pointed out that the most important issue is not whether education schools can be saved, but how they have managed to survive in the face of such withering criticism. There is a simple answer to Dr. Cheney’s friend. Education schools survive because they bring in so much money. This makes them quite popular with university presidents. Education school classes have large enrollments, they do not require elaborate and expensive equipment, and education school faculty are always among the lowest paid in a university. This makes education schools the most profitable unit in a university. Education schools also bring in lots of external funds. At the University of Louisville, the college of education is second only to the medical school in this respect. No university president is going to get rid of a school of education that does these sorts of things.
Education schools are certainly going to survive. The more important question is whether they will be relevant. To answer this question it is necessary to define two distinctly different belief systems in education. The first of the two asserts that the most important purpose of education is the enhancement of academic achievement. The public, legislatures, governors and the No Child Left Behind legislation (NCLB) all support this position. Proponents of this view want students to increase their reading comprehension, become more skilled at performing mathematical computations, know history, and understand science. The operational definition of academic achievement is performance on academic achievement tests. The adoption of academic achievement as the primary purpose for our schools is an assertion that schools are best evaluated in terms of how their students perform rather than by what teachers are doing. The selection of instructional method is determined through an examination of their effectiveness in terms of academic achievement. Education schools and the national organizations that support them have a different focus. They believe that instructional methods should be evaluated in terms of their fidelity to a progressive philosophy of education. Their focus is on "learning" rather than academic achievement. While the terms "academic achievement" and "learning" may appear to refer to the same activities, the instructional methods designed to enhance "learning" are primarily child-centered and may not only fail to increase academic achievement, they may actually degrade it. Instead of teachers teaching students, they believe that it is the role of a good teacher to create the proper environment for learning and if this done properly, students will "learn" by constructing their own meaning. "Learning," unlike academic achievement, is evaluated in terms of what the teachers is doing. It does not require an examination of what is happening to the students in the classroom.
Every state except Iowa has adopted a program of standards-based educations reform (SBER). This means they have defined a set of content standards, adopted an assessment system, set performance standards (cut scores), and implemented an accountability system in which schools, districts, and/or students receive rewards and sanctions depending on their academic achievement. About half of the states either have implemented a high school exit exam or have one scheduled to go into effect in coming years. Across the states, SBER comes in many forms, but the overwhelming message the adoption of SBER sends is that academic achievement is important. If you were to poll principals over the summer and ask them what their number one priority is for the coming year, almost all of them would say that it is increasing their student’s performance on academic achievement tests. Many would say that this is not their most important goal it is their only goal. While there is some opposition to an obsession with test scores, the focus on test results becomes more understandable with awareness of the power and pervasiveness of the forces that oppose the idea that educational effectiveness can be measured by assessing how much students have achieved.
While it might seem surprising that there are educators who deemphasize the importance of academic achievement, this is a common practice within the educational establishment. Education schools are committed to teaching their students how to create student-centered classrooms in which students are expected to teach themselves and each other. There may be reasons to adopt this approach to instruction, but even its strongest adherents would agree that increased academic achievement would not be among them. There is a group of national organization devoted to the promotion of goals congenial with those espoused in education schools. These organizations include the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (INTASC), the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE), the National Board of Professional Teacher Standards (NBPTS), the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future (NCTAF), and the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE). Each of these five organizations has close ties to education schools. Their governing boards are interlocking and their standards and policies are complementary. INTASC has adopted a set of standards for new teachers that describe teacher characteristics that will lead to "learning." These standards focus almost exclusively on the characteristics, dispositions, and activities of the teacher. There is little concern about what students are doing while the teachers display these desired teacher attributes. NCATE is the accrediting body for schools of education and it urges education schools to adopt the INTASC standards and the values upon which they are based. The NBPTS certifies practicing teachers who have mastered the INTASC standards at a higher level than that required for initial licensure. NCTAF is a general advocate of the values promoted in education schools. It asserts that new teachers should meet the INTASC standards and that initial teacher licenses be awarded only to student who have graduated from an NCATE accredited education school. NCTAF strongly supports NBPTS certification and urges state to support this organization. AACTE is the professional organization for the education school professoriate. It was instrumental in the establishment of NCATE and it espouses policies that are congenial with those of the other four organizations. A review of the voluminous literature produced by these five organizations, reveals scant mention of academic achievement, but it is replete with references to "learning." The context of the these references makes it clear that "learning" is defined as teaching practices that are progressive and teacher centered.
Every state has laws mandating the statewide assessment of students, which implies the importance of academic achievement. Simultaneously, the education schools and various state agencies promote a student-centered instructional philosophy that is incompatible with this emphasis. Currently, forty-eight states have a cooperative agreement with NCATE that calls for the joint accreditation of education schools. An examination of the NCATE standards makes it clear that the primary quality that is deemed necessary for accreditation is commitment to the principles of progressive education and student centered instruction. NCATE standards not only do not include any requirement that an education school prepare its graduates to increase the academic achievement of their students, they demand practices that are more likely to decrease it. An education school that demonstrated a commitment to preparing its students to implement instructional methods that led to enhanced academic achievement in the classroom might not be accredited. Likewise, many states provide bonuses to teachers who obtain NBPTS certification. They do this with the belief that this certification is indicative of a higher skilled teacher who can lead his or her students to higher academic achievement. What they do not realize is that this program demands practices that are antithetical to student academic achievement. A primary requirement for this distinction is that the teacher avoids any form of direct instruction. The entire focus of the certification process is on the teacher. The impact of the teacher actions on his or her students is deemed irrelevant. In responding to questions about the effectiveness of this certification, its leaders have steadfastly denied any connection between program effectiveness and the academic achievement of students enrolled in classes taught by national board certified teachers.
Another way that state legislatures have tried to increase the quality of teachers and thereby enhance the performance of students on state accountability tests is to raise the standards that teachers must reach on exams for new teachers such as PRAXIS. Thirty-eight states require candidates for teacher licensure to pass one or more PRAXIS tests. The other 12 states use either tests developed at the state level or contract with NES to develop tests tailored to their state. The Educational Testing Service (ETS) publishes PRAXIS, which consists of 147 separate tests. Each state must choose which tests teacher candidates take and the score they need to obtain in order to be eligible for licensure. These tests cover both content knowledge and pedagogy. The high school tests emphasize content knowledge and the early and middle childhood tests contain more items measuring pedagogy.
Raising the cut-scores needed to pass the PRAXIS tests is unlikely to lead to higher academic achievement. In designing the test, ETS had to decide whether to emphasize the pedagogy covered in the curriculum of education schools, or the pedagogy likely to lead to the higher academic achievement demanded by state legislatures. An examination of the content of these tests suggests they chosen the student centered pedagogy espoused by education schools. Now the ETS is joining with NCATE to bring their tests even more in line with the NCATE standards. This will lead to tests that are even more at odds with the goal of enhancing academic achievement.
I was at a luncheon for our faculty last year when another professor showed up late flushed with excitement. He teaches the math preparation classes for students seeking certification as elementary school teachers. Everyone of course wanted to know what had gotten him so excited. He told us he was so worked up because he had just taught his best class ever. We asked what happened. He said that for the entire class he did not say a word and the student had taught each other. He believes that instruction in an education school is successful to the extent that students can be convinced to do this in their own classrooms. This is a good example of the sort of instruction students are getting in education schools and why such instruction is not going to lead to better performance on academic achievement tests. This professor’s view of instruction is compatible with the INTASC standards and how NCATE expects prospective teachers to be taught to manage their classrooms. What these practices do not address are the problems faced by the principal in danger of losing his job because of his school’s low test scores. All of the endorsements by national organizations will be of no help to students who need to be explicitly taught how to do the computations that will be assessed on their state’s accountability test. Nor will they help the principal trying to raise scores in order to keep his job.
There are two major competing philosophies in education. One asserts that teachers should focus on increasing their students academic achievement. The other dismisses the importance of academic achievement and instead defines good teaching as the creation of a classroom atmosphere that eschews explicit instruction in favor of giving responsibility for learning to the students. The two approaches are incompatible and there is really no way to create a compromise between the two. The question left unanswered is who gets to decide between the two. Legislatures, governors, and the federal government through NCLB have declared that academic achievement should be paramount. The faculties of education schools and the national organizations that support them have decided otherwise. We will have to await the outcome of this contest, but it looks like the education schools already are ahead on points.
