Post a comment about the budget cuts at your school on our interactive comment map. more »
GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools
Duncan dispatch
October 22, 2009
Test scores should be traced to ed schools, Duncan says
U.S. education secretary Arne Duncan speaking at a meeting of the Children's Aid Society at Teachers College this morning.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan called this morning for states to link student test data not only back to teachers, but also to the programs that trained them. New York State education officials said they are already working on it.
Speaking to a packed auditorium at Columbia University, Duncan criticized education schools for failing to graduate classroom-ready teachers. He said there needs to be a way to determine which programs are working.
“It’s a simple but obvious idea,” Duncan said. “Colleges of education and district officials ought to know which teacher preparation programs are effective and which need fixing. The power of competition and disclosure can be a powerful tonic for programs stuck in the past.”
Duncan said he will use the competitive stimulus package funds known as the “Race to the Top” program to pressure states to use student data to evaluate teacher preparation programs.
After Duncan’s speech, state Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch and education commissioner David Steiner said that Duncan’s speech was in line with their own visions of change.
“It was a clarion call to do what needs to be done,” Tisch said of Duncan’s speech. “The secretary articulated the vision that [Steiner] has been talking about.”
Plans are already underway to link student data back to teachers and their training programs, Tisch added. “It’s all done,” she said, noting that the state had already begun discussions with school districts, teachers unions, and universities.
Steiner cautioned that before the state began casting judgment on education schools, it had to revisit and perhaps rethink the state’s tests, which have been criticized for being too easy.
“The richer the data system, the more able we are to track back to the education schools,” he said.
Steiner noted that the purpose of linking student data to teachers and training programs is informative, not punitive. “The core of this is to give teachers tools,” he said.
Margaret Crocco, head of Columbia Teachers College’s department of arts and humanities, said that figuring out how to link teacher training programs to student achievement will be a complicated process. “It’s not a simple direct line of relationships,” she said. “But in the spirit of the secretary’s approach, we do need to understand what works and what doesn’t.”
Duncan also called for an increase in the amount of time teachers-to-be spend in class, praising programs that pair student teachers with mentors for year-long “residencies” in the classroom. New York’s first residency program was launched this year by Hunter College, and Columbia’s Teachers College will launch a similar program next fall.
Earlier this morning, Duncan gave the keynote address at the Children’s Aid Society’s Biannual Community Schools Practicum. Echoing previous comments, he called for community schools like the ones he helped develop in Chicago to be come the “norm.”
“The more our schools become community centers, offer GED classes, ESL classes, potluck dinners … the more families are engaged, the more schools become the heart of family life, the better our students will do,” Duncan said.
In districts that are fighting poverty and high drop out rates, schools can no longer operate from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. he said. Once regular school hours end, nonprofit after-school organizations such as the YMCA or the Boys and Girls Club have to keep students engaged and out of trouble.
Speaking to an audience of philanthropists, Duncan warned that community schools won’t work as one-time investments. “This has to become every school. This is not something you can invest in for three years. You have to stay the course,” he said.
In the question and answer session that followed, president of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, pressed Duncan on how the federal government would force local school districts to create community schools.
“There has to be leverage in the federal role or regulations pushing mayors or others who don’t want to do it,” Weingarten said.
“The number one issue that we’ve seen that stops the kind of work that you just talked about is not money and not the use of time but the lack of coordination,” Weingarten said. “I’m wondering, whether the department can find a way to incentivize that coordination so it’s not always coming from the bottom up.”
A tired-looking Duncan, who was minutes away from delivering his speech on teacher preparation, said that part of the solution could be installing mayoral control in more cities. “Thinking through that is a really important thing for us to do,” he said.
-
October 22nd, 2009 6:28 pm
Will Preznut Obushma and Secretary Arne trace the test scores back to the parents too?
Oh, right - you can’t just shut down or fire a parent.
Must be the teachers’ fault.
-
October 22nd, 2009 6:29 pm
Becoming a good teacher is a combination of a solid college education and experience. These educrats need to stop with the Big Brother accountability stuff. This is terrible and I will not take part in any program that asks me to throw my “French Films of the 60’s” professor under the bus!
-
October 22nd, 2009 6:54 pm
Yeah, mayoral control will fix everything. That’s deep thinking there, Arne!
-
October 22nd, 2009 6:57 pm
I want Arne Duncan to sit in my classroom and teach to the students who come to class 60% of the time, unprepared to learn with absolutely no supplies or notebook, and who always scream at me because they don’t understand lesson #20 when the last lesson they saw was Lesson #3. Or maybe Arne will have all the students in American take credit recovery programs online and every child passes these bogus credit recovery programs and NCLB will be a thing of the past. Why isn’t Arne looking into the issue of student attendance and the truancy rate? Hey Arne, if you want students to succeed then get more parents involved. Make them accountable, too! If Arne wants to keep blaming teachers for student failure, then I’ll keep blaming him for the murder of that student in Chicago. I want point a finger at you, Arne, as long as you don’t point a finger at teachers.
-
October 22nd, 2009 7:31 pm
I have to agree that blaming the teacher and his/her school is over the top. I especially think parents need to accept responsibility for kids being unprepared. The teachers and schools simply can not do everything. It isn’t the fault of the school or the teacher if the child is dealing with family issues, divorce, abuse, etc.or has drug and behavior problems, which, duh, effect school performance. This is bizarre.
-
October 22nd, 2009 7:47 pm
shouldn’t we really blame the elementary/middle/high schools that these bad teachers attended?
-
October 22nd, 2009 8:05 pm
the real problem is that teacher colleges convince new teachers that we (me? a 20 year vet) are the problem. they’re going to go out into the school system and “fix it.” while telling high school teacher candidates they’re learning how to prepare kids for college, they’re actually preparing them for kindergarten. when does anyone do group-work/group assessment in college? why is a lecture bad. direct instruction is efficient and effective. the only group work i did in college was when i went into the teacher credential program. don’t even get me started on merit pay. based on what? a standardized test that the kids don’t care about because it has no effect on their future. i’ve seen kids marking answer number 30 when their book is open to question 10. the only test kids care about in ca in the exit exam. and yes, by the way, i do know what to capitalize. i simply choose not to as a tribute the the free-thinker e e cummings.
-
October 22nd, 2009 8:06 pm
Listen Trace It, what are you insinuating?! Be more specific. Otherwise, keep your fingers off the keyboard. Or is it that you have a child that you can’t control at home and your parenting skills are horrible so now you want to blame the teachers for your child’s failure. So you need to be specific!
-
October 23rd, 2009 12:42 pm
Relax people. Why is it that when someone says a teacher is inept, some posters jump like they are being personally attacked? As in every profession, there are duds, and there are gems. Great teachers can do wonders to motivate kids.. By the same token, incompetent teachers. effect even the most devoted students; taking the joy out of learning.
Let’s face it, some kids are lousy students, some parents suck at parenting skills, and, some teachers just cant teach. -
October 23rd, 2009 1:56 pm
“Gee, Officer Duncan, we’re down on our knees,
No one wants a teacher with an ed school disease.
It’s just all the testing that outta be curbed.
Now we’re all pedagogic’ly disturbed!”
– Apologies to Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim -
October 23rd, 2009 2:25 pm
Thank you Secretary Duncan!!!!
Finally someone who calls a spade a spade. Education schools and education degrees are worthless! Worthless! How about someone who knows their subject matter thorougly and then adds on the child abuse/psychology classes. -
October 23rd, 2009 3:16 pm
I don’t think education degrees are a waste, nor do I think it’s appropriate to blame the colleges of the teachers if their students aren’t performing well. It’s a deeper problem. I’m fine with accountability if it’s done right, but this seems to miss the target and scapegoat teachers. I think Krugman’s opinion piece a week or so ago regarding education being one of the first to face cuts and hence, not valued in America, is really the issue. Instead of saving Goldman Sachs et al, perhaps the caveat should have been “We’ll save you, if you all forgo your billion dollar bonuses and channel the dollars toward education.” While I respect Obama and Duncan, this program doesn’t address the complex issues that go beyond the classroom.
-
October 23rd, 2009 4:40 pm
[...] Gotham Schools summed up the reactions of the New York leaders, “It was a clarion call to do what needs to be done,” Tisch said of Duncan’s speech. “The secretary articulated the vision that [Steiner] has been talking about.” [...]
-
October 23rd, 2009 5:08 pm
I came to teaching late, after knocking around the world of work and performing a wide variety of jobs. I also read and studied eclectically. I feel that all of these factors have made me a better teacher. It also meant that I had a fairly wide and deep range of life experience and content knowledge before I went to get my certification. I always saw the ed classes as little more than a means to the end of teaching.
Education schools are mostly bad, and for many reasons. There’s the old saw about TC and Columbia, and how “120th Street is the widest street in the world.” When I went to grad school in TESOL at NYU, it was appalling, but not for the reasons given by most ed deformers. It was awful largely because, of the 12 classes I took, all but two were taught by part-time TAs who ranged from OK to dreadful. It was a clear indication of the university’s disrespect for teaching, and it was obvious that the ed school was little more than a profit center for the university.
Why was this? Sorry, deformers, you can’t blame this one on the union. The program was academically impoverished, despite it exorbitant cost, because of the revenue-intensifying labor relations policies of the university, which valued the hiring of cheap part-timers instead of full-time tenured faculty. It is also testimony to the fact that, as I’ve pointed out here before, NYU is a real estate development company with an academic subsidiary.
So yes, the ed schools are pretty bad, but that’s not what this is about. No, this is about the fact that the college education programs, despite their many shortcomings, are still holdouts, where the values of teaching humanistically and teaching the whole child still control some physical and ideological space. The ed schools have not fully joined the New World Order in education, have not fully embraced the market, and must be brought on line and on message. Money aside, this is also a reason why senior teachers are often targeted, since they are less likely to be entranced by the Magic of the Marketplace in education.
Sure, corporate ed deform is about current and future profits/compensation, but it’s also about control and the social engineering that education inevitably involves. The schools are there to replicate the kind of society the overclass wants, one filled with alienation, tedium, stress, insecurity, overwork, and under perpetual monitoring and surveillance by its managers. This is also the society where they reap most of the benefits. The kids are being socialized and prepped to endure the same conditions their parents face, if they’re lucky enough to be employed at all, and the schools and teachers are on a forced march to take them there.
And by the way, while we’re busy blaming universities and teachers for the Decline and Fall of Western Civilization, where’s the outrage at the MBA programs, which have trained the looters and sociopaths who have cannibalized the US economy and brought it to its knees. But then again, look offstage while Duncan and Co. do their cheap soft shoe routine, and in the wings you’ll see many of the same people preparing to cannibalize the public schools.
-
October 23rd, 2009 8:50 pm
Huzzahs to Michael F.!
I would love to see a tally of how many up-and-comers in Tweed have MBAs and how many have experience teaching. Or how many in City Hall have degrees in Public Policy. -
October 23rd, 2009 11:56 pm
I know Bush took a lot of flack for the junk science his agencies engaged in. Did they try anything as silly as this?
-
October 24th, 2009 4:20 pm
Michael Fiorillo: Wow, that is the most insightful and well written comment I have ever seen posted on a public message board. Your students probably are blessed to have you as their teacher, but I hope you retire early enough to become our next Frank McCourt.
-
October 24th, 2009 4:21 pm
(… even though you did neglect to punctuate a question — still the best.)
-
October 26th, 2009 3:53 am
Excerpt From an Open Letter to Arne Duncan from Herb Kohl
“…I discovered then, in my early teaching career, that learning is best driven by ideas, challenges, experiences, and activities that engage students. My experience over the past 45 years has confirmed this.
We have come far from that time in the ’60s. Now the mantra is high expectations and high standards. Yet, with all that zeal to produce measurable learning outcomes we have lost sight of the essential motivations to learn that moved my students. Recently I asked a number of elementary school students what they were learning about and the reactions were consistently, “We are learning how to do good on the tests.” They did not say they were learning to read.
It is hard for me to understand how educators can claim that they are creating high standards when the substance and content of learning is reduced to the mechanical task of getting a correct answer on a manufactured test.” (Summer 2009)
For additional information on high stakes testing, Arne Duncan, merit pay and RTTF, check out:
http://seattle-ed.blogspot.com/
Leave a Reply
Mapping the Budget Cuts
19 Comments
Subscribe to comments with RSS or TrackBack