It's Love

A link in a comment on a discussion of Common Core at Jay Green's blog led to "How Long Before Duncan and the Media Speak Out Honestly?" by Sandra Stotsky at the Pioneer Institute. 

Legislators might ask questions like: Why are we doing this if there is no correlation between national standards and student achievement? Who is going to pay for this? What are the legal dimensions of states using a copyrighted set of standards? Who will amend the standards? What do parents, teachers, or institutions of higher education do if they find problems with the standards? Good questions one and all. ...Of course, Common Core proponents can’t say that lowering academic standards is their goal. ...Their major selling point is how poor our K-12 public education system is in too many states. The fault of the teachers in them? Of course not. The fault of education policy makers who enjoy being Lord High Central Planners? The fault of the education schools and the professional development “providers” that “trained” them for the last 50 years? These possibilities have been outside the bounds of public discourse and beyond the grasp of the media. Besides which, what could be done to the keepers of the “cash cow?” Prospective teachers need some pedagogical training.

Common sense this rare deserves deeper and wider appreciation. Links within the Pioneer site led to
4 Steps to Upgrade Teacher & Administrator Prep Programs.

The part of public education that has received the least attention for reform is the most important: whom our education schools admit and how they are prepared to be teachers, administrators, education researchers, and education policy makers. Although there is very little high quality research on these topics, useful information for reforming education schools came from the massive review undertaken by the National Mathematics Advisory Panel for its report in 2008.  

It found no relationship between student achievement and traditional teacher education programs, certification status, and mentoring and induction programs. That means that teachers who have completed a traditional teacher preparation program, hold a teaching license, and have participated in an induction program get no higher student performance on average than other teachers.