{"id":212,"date":"2009-08-17T10:12:46","date_gmt":"2009-08-17T16:12:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/minkhollow.ca\/beckerblog\/?p=212"},"modified":"2014-09-12T11:48:57","modified_gmt":"2014-09-12T17:48:57","slug":"do-teachers-need-education-degrees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/minkhollow.ca\/beckerblog\/2009\/08\/17\/do-teachers-need-education-degrees\/","title":{"rendered":"Do Teachers Need Education Degrees?"},"content":{"rendered":"Approximate Reading Time: <\/span> 2<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>

Saw this on the New York Times<\/a> (Opinion) today:<\/p>\n

http:\/\/roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com\/2009\/08\/16\/education-degrees-and-teachers-pay\/?8ty&emc=ty<\/a><\/p>\n

Do Teachers Need Education Degrees?<\/strong><\/p>\n

By The Editors<\/p>\n

Robert Stolarik for The New York Times<\/p>\n

In a Room for Debate forum in June on the value of liberal arts master\u2019s degrees, one group of readers \u2014 teachers and education administrators \u2014 generally agreed a higher degree was well worth the investment. They pointed out that pay and promotion in public schools were tied to the accumulation of such credentials and credits, specifically from colleges of education.<\/p>\n

But current teacher training has a large chorus of critics, including prominent professors in education schools themselves. For example, the director of teacher education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Katherine Merseth, told a conference in March that of the nation\u2019s 1,300 graduate teacher training programs, only about 100 were doing a competent job and \u201cthe others could be shut down tomorrow.\u201d And Obama administration officials support a shift away from using master\u2019s degrees for pay raises, and a shift toward compensating teachers based on children\u2019s performance.<\/p>\n

Should the public schools reduce the weight they give to education school credentials in pay and promotion decisions? Is this happening already, and, if so, what is replacing the traditional system for compensating teachers?<\/p>\n

Here are my initial thoughts:<\/h2>\n

<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Pay based solely on experience and apparent credentials rewards those who simply put in their time. It doesn’t encourage effort.<\/li>\n
  2. Most teachers are merely adequate. Few are actually good.<\/li>\n
  3. Most of the best teachers did NOT get that way from anything taught to them during teacher ed.<\/li>\n
  4. Pay based on student achievement, while a nice idea, is likely to further entrench traditional styles of testing rather than promote other forms.<\/li>\n
  5. The school of education I am most familiar with can not be counted among the ones doing an adequate job, either in their version of the B.Ed (optimistically called “Master of Teaching” – I have not come across a single working teacher who has anything good to say about the program), nor in its graduate degrees (for example, there are no pre-requisites for any of the grad courses, which means there is a great deal of duplication and almost every course turns out to be an intro level course). If it is typical, then what Katherine Merseth says about schools in the US is probably also true about schools in Canada.<\/li>\n
  6. One of my former students in CS suggested that all teachers should have to take acting courses. I think he’s onto something…. (Thanks! PB)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n