New Commentary From Roger Soder

(5/28/10)
Roger Soder's latest commentary discusses the question of what I would call enlightment in comparison with training as the purpose of education.

Just in case you think this is a settled question, I would remind you of a speech I heard a few years ago given by a CEO in Arkansas who emphasized that his company wanted his workers educated -- but not so much that they began to think of relocating or of challenging his way of doing business.

There are still those who think a little education is ok, but only a member of the priviliged class should be entitled to a full education.

Read what Roger has to say on his commentary page on the issue and share your thoughts by commenting below.

Roger continues his thinking about the regularities of schooling in his 8th commentary posted on May 13, 2010.  He gives us insight into how to think about these common characteristics.  If we agree with his comments would we accept all regularities as being equally good or would we be in a better position to understand them and consider whether to support or change them?  After you read his remarks share your comments below.

In his 7th commentary (Posted May 7, 2010) Soder provides some helpful information about the issue of university faculty reward systems.  He concludes by observing:

"Can we change the reward structure and norms beyond the superficial? Perhaps, but only when the participants themselves conclude that the change is of value, and only when that conclusion is reaching in a tipping point way across the board."

It is my view that the tipping point is here -- even if many in the Universities do not realize it.  The survival of the institution as they know it is not assured and, in spite of the persistence of the long-term but dysfunctional approach to promotion and retention, changes must be made. 

Improving Our Schools

(Posted 5/25/10)
As an author who has had textbooks adopted in Texas I am not surprised at the action taken to adopt new standards for the social studies curriculum. The Texas commission attempts to write history as they believe it should be written and learned by students in Texas.

What do you think?


(posted 5/3/10) For a balanced story regarding charter schools check out New York Times for May 3, 2010.  They continue to have a record of mixed success.


For an insightful commentary on issues state's confront when deciding whether to "Race for the Top" see blog entry by Valerie Strauss from the Washington Post  (posted 4/20/10)

(April 12, 2010)
Racing to the Top and Leaving No Child Behind don't begin to repair the damage being done to children's education as states (e.g. Hawaii) and  urban systems (See LA Times ) such as the mammoth Los Angeles Unified shorten the school year.

(April 8, 2010) In a recent Blog posting Sam Chaltain offers some ideas about an approach to assessing schools that he says should be considered as a replacement for the approach taken under No Child Left Behind.  For more or his thinking about improving education check out his new book (see Amazon link).

Click on comments below and let us know what you think of Sam's suggestions.

(Posted April 12, 2010)
There are many different opinions floating around concerning charter schools.  Frequently they are presented by people with a particular investment in support of or opposition to charters.  Howard Blume  and colleagues at the LA Times have a history of examing such schools closely and objectively.  My take on what they have found is that whether students (and/or their parents) want  a school and what is done in the school make a difference -- not whether or not a school is called a charter.

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John Goodlad has also commented on current school improvement efforts.   He has told us that "the political and business leaders who have taken on the mantle of “school reform”… have let us down. Their linear input-output model of change has proven itself bankrupt through repeated failure. The time has come for a new model—born of inquiry and grassroots trial—new players, and the dawning of a new day for our schools. The time has come for the centers of conversation, policy, and action to be in the towns and hamlets of this broad land."

Meanwhile there has been a lot of buck passing.  Since the mid 1980’s politicians, supported by a variety of educational critics, have demanded accountability for schools. They have insisted that if higher standards are adopted and students are tested frequently that all of the educational problems in the nation will disappear. Increasingly they have argued for moving determination of what is taught and how it is taught further and further from the classroom. They continue to argue that district standards, state standards, and now national standards accompanied by externally prepared and scored tests are the tools that will improve learning for all children.

This approach to improving education hasn’t worked.

Educating Teachers

(May 25, 2010)
Valerie Hill-Jackson and Chance W. Lewis recently released, their book, Transforming TeacherEducation: What Went Wrong with Teacher Training and How Can We Fix It (Stylus, 2010) at the American Educational Research Conference (AERA) in Denver.


Anybody have any comment on it? Is it old wine in new bottles or do these authors have some new insights into what should be done to strengthen teacher education?

(April 30, 2010) 

NCTQ has released a study highly critical of teacher preparation in Texas.  Purporting to be objective and non-partisan, the National Council on Teacher Quality finds that 67 Universities in the State have teacher education programs that are substandard.  Check it out at  NCTQ Report on Texas .  You may also be interested in the differences between the standards they use and the 20 postulates used in the study discussed below.

Meanwhile, Ed Week reports that there is no difference between various pathways to teacher certification based on a National Research Council report .  According to the article, there are more differences within types of programs (alternative certification, undergraduate preparation, etc.) than between them.  And, more importantly, legitimate research on the quality of such programs in lacking.


(April 14, 2010)
20 Conditions required for successful teacher education.

In 1990 John Goodlad published Teachers for Our Nation's Schools, one of three books reporting on an extensive study of the education of educators conducted by him and his colleagues at the University of Washington's Center for Educational Renewal.  In the next few weeks I am going to revisit the 20 Postulates that emerged from that study and follow-up efforts.  As we view the national priorities on improving the quality of teachers, these conditions, stated in the form of postulates seem even more important today than when they were first issued.  Unlike some of the current popular approaches to strengthening teacher quality that encourage minimal advanced education for teachers, these postulates spell out what needs to be done to be sure that preparation programs are good.  They would provide a good starting point for a new, comprehesnive study of the education of educators.

Here is the ninth one:

"Programs for the education of educators must be characterized by a socialization process through which candidates transcend their self-oriented student preoccupations to become more other-oriented in identifying with a culture of teaching."

A number of people have indicated they find this condition hard to understand. In its most simple form it is a reminder that teachers can't be focused on themselves but must concentrate on helping students learn. The challenges include what should be done during the education of a teacher to produce this "other-orientation" and how one would know that the desired orientation had been achieved.

What do you think of this as a necessary condition for teacher education and do you see it attended to in the programs with which you are familiar?



 Here is the eighth one:

Postulate eight


Programs for the education of educators must provide extensive opportunities for future teachers to move beyond being students of organized knowledge to become teachers who inquire into both knowledge and its teaching.

What do you think this means?  Do the programs you are familiar with provide such opportunities?