NYU's Online Teacher Prep for the Poor

NYU announced last week that the university will begin selling an online teacher prep Masters program that is aimed at the poor and brown school children of America.  Not to worry, though, NYU's Steinhardt School will continue to provide real professional teacher undergrad degrees to those students who have plans to teach in Westchester County or some other white enclave within America's leafiest suburbs.

No doubt NYU plans to make a lot of money on this internship-based online program, and no doubt some of the millions of non-profit dollars that the University rakes in will be used to pay for the millions recently laid out for renovations and palatial treatments to NYU's presidential living quarters overlooking Washington Square in lower Manhattan.  The cash brought in from NYU's exploitative teacher prep for the poor will also be helpful in paying the $800,000 per year in retirement benefits when the current university president floats away on his golden parachute.

You may be wondering how an online Masters program will provide supervision for students dumped into schools without the benefit of any previous professional training.  No problem: NYU has partnered with of Silicon Valley's best white salesmen to provide digital connections, recorded lessons, and surveillance from afar.  All saved to corporate servers and ready to be used in whatever ways may be salable.  Protections for students and interns?  Data security? Informed consent?  Nonsense, this is the Steinhardt School, and these are poor kids, after all.

NYU Steinhardt will use Silicon Valley-based HotChalk’s technology platform, including an online video observation and collaboration tool provided by the New Orleans-based startup Torsh, Inc., to enable rigorous analytics designed to support, term after term, a continuous cycle of measuring, learning, and adapting to improve educational outcomes for students and teachers alike.

Gates Moves to Take Over Teacher Education, Part 1

The 2011 video below tells much of the story about the insignificance attached to research and scholarship by the corporate foundations that are trying to buy up university teacher preparation programs.  The woman on the left (in more ways than one) is respected scholar, Deborah Ball, whose scholarship and leadership as Dean of Education at University of Michigan adds the policymaker patina and research-vetted veneer to get the required respectability that the Gates Foundation is seeking to institute nationwide.

Watch the five minute clip below, and you will see Ball providing a rational, detailed overview of the work to be done on teacher improvement, and watch as she gets shut down when the Education Sector questioner steps over her to hear from the corrupt Kate Walsh, who, on cue, is there to promote the solution from the three states that were already in 2011 using value-added test scores to evaluate teachers.

You might say, Walsh was focused on the pre-determined outcome, even though Ball was pretending that the process that she was trying to initiate would somehow have an effect on that outcome.



Now four years later, Ball has completed her lengthy research, even though those same models used in Tennessee, Louisiana, and North Carolina remain the systems that CorpEd in Michigan seeks to emulate.  Even so, the elaborate plan was hijacked by a state senator last summer, who had the audacity to insist that teacher evaluation remain a local issue, rather than a state or federal one.

Undeterred, however, corporate foundation money continues to pour into Dr. Ball's operation at U of M.  This time, however, the focus is on revamping teacher preparation.  That will be the focus of Part 2.

Send More Fan Mail to Arne on His Teacher Prep Plans

The oligarchs and the education industry are pushing for teacher education to be turned into paternalistic test prep, and it will happen unless those who came up with this ill-advised plan know that to do so will be too dangerous or too expensive, or both.  

Help them to understand that by writing your own letter to let them know what will happen if reason (see the letter below) is not heeded.  Or add your name to the letter below here.

Plan B: 

• Computer breakdown and dumping of data
• Imaginary data reported
• Refusal of the mandated curriculum
• Refusal of the tests
• Undercutting official authority
• Instructing students on how to to sabotage the system
• Ignoring instructions and teaching what needs to be taught
• Organizing local, state, and national strikes
• Taking over buildings
• work slowdowns
• Offering real teacher preparation courses off campus
• political action
• public shaming of officials
• Malicious rumors circulated

Here is the letter that needs to be heeded to avoid Plan B, as posted by Valerie Strauss:

Open Letter to the Department of Education in Response to the Proposed Teacher Preparation Regulations under Title II of the Higher Education Act

Dear Secretary of Education Duncan and Department of Education Colleagues:

As university teacher educators (including faculty, researchers, and administrators), we strongly urge you to withdraw the proposed 2015 teacher preparation regulations. The proposed regulations do not reflect current research or up-to-date knowledge of teacher preparation, teacher and student assessment, or the purposes of education.

As elaborated in a comprehensive review of the proposed regulations, published by the National Education Policy Center and authored by Kevin Kumashiro, Dean of the School of Education of the University of San Francisco, there are five central flaws in the proposed regulations that should be addressed before their implementation:

• The regulations erroneously place unfounded blame on individual teachers for the perceived failure of the educational system in the United States. This analysis ignores important and well-documented factors that influence student success, such as the impact of poverty, the levels of trauma experienced by youth in urban areas, and accessibility of social services such as health care.

• The regulations include an over-reliance on value-added measures (VAMs), which purportedly identify a causal relationship between student achievement, as measured by high-stakes test scores, and teacher competency. This is a highly controversial form of measurement that several leading research organizations have declared invalid and unreliable. The proposed regulations extend this relationship further to link teacher preparation programs to student achievement; because teacher education programs will be judged by the scores of the students in their graduate’s classrooms, programs may be reluctant to place their graduates in the most difficult and highest poverty classrooms where standardized test scores are more likely to be low.

• The proposed regulations are an unfunded mandate that places an unreasonable burden on educational institutions, especially public institutions that prepare the majority of the nation’s teachers who serve in high poverty districts. The cost of collecting data on the placement and retention of teachers is substantial, especially when the validity of these data are in question.

• This program threatens funding sources, such as TEACH grants, for prospective teachers. Rather than providing this federal source of funding for teachers with financial need who are committed to teaching in high poverty areas, the legislation will reduce the number of institutions who have access to this grant. A consequence of this policy is likely to be that there is less incentive for new teachers of color to enter the teaching force.

• The regulations further narrow the conceptions of teaching and learning, rewarding teaching that is geared toward preparation for tests rather than toward deep engaged learning and preparation for participation in a democratic society.

We recommend that you develop a process for revising these regulations that substantively includes the educational community in advancing your goal of making teacher preparation programs more accountable for successful preparation of teachers. We suggest you convene classroom teachers and school administrators; academics with expertise in teacher education, teaching, learning and student achievement and assessment; and policymakers to develop accountability measures that more accurately assess program quality and the successful preparation of teachers.

Our country is founded on democratic principles that undergird our educational system and the very innovation we are known for throughout the world. The implementation of these regulations could mean that excellent teacher preparation programs and access to becoming and remaining a P12 teacher, especially among communities of color, is in jeopardy. For these reasons and because of our commitment to the future of our profession and the education and success of all children, we urge you to reconsider and significantly revise this proposed regulation.

As of January 26, 2015, the following California Teacher Educators signed this letter:

Katherine Schultz
Dean, Mills College School of Education
kschultz@mills.edu

Alfred Richard Schademan, Jr., Associate Professor, California State University, Chico
Amy Millikan, Director of Clinical Education, San Francisco Teacher Residency
Angel Valencia, Lecturer/Supervisor, CSU, East Bay
Ann Berlak, Retired, SFSU
Ann Schulte, Professor, California State University, Chico
Anna Richert, Professor and Faculty Director, Mills Teacher Scholars, Mills College
Annamarie Francois, Executive Director, Center X, University of California, Los Angeles
Annie Adamian, Adjunct Professor, California State University, Chico
Annette M. Daoud, Professor, California State University San Marcos
Antonia Darder, Leavey Presidential Endowed Chair of Ethics & Moral Leadership, Loyola Marymount University
Brian Gibbs, Lecturer, Claremont Graduate University
Christian Faltis, Professor & Director of Teacher Education, University of California
Christine Sleeter, Professor Emerita, California State University Monterey Bay
Christine Yeh, Professor and Chair, University of San Francisco
Christopher Thomas, Associate Dean, University of San Francisco
Cindy Cruz, Assistant Professor, UC Santa Cruz
Cristian Aquino~Sterling, PhD, Assistant Professor, San Diego State University
Danny C. Martinez, Assistant Professor, University of California, Davis
David V. Madrigal, University Field Supervisor, California State University, East Bay
David A. Stevens, Professor and Director of Clinical Experience, Pepperdine University
David R. Stronck, Professor, California State University, East Bay
Denise M. Fleming, Professor, California State University, East Bay
Eduardo F. Lopez, Faculty Advisor, UCLA
Elena Flores, Associate Dean, University of San Francisco
Elizabeth Fsy, Faculty: Liberal Studies and Child Studies, Santa Clara University
Elizabeth K. Baker, Professor of Practice, Director Mathematics and Science, Mills College
Elizabeth C. Reilly, Professor, Loyola Marymount University
Emma Haydée Fuentes, Associate Professor, University of San Francisco
Erica Hodgin, Research Director, Mills College
Franklin C. Pérez, Adjunct Professor, California State University, Fullerton
Gary Orfield, Professor, UCLA
Genevieve Negrón-Gonzales, Assistant Professor, University of San Francisco
Gilda M. Bloom-Leiva, Professor, San Francisco State University
Helen Maniates, Assistant Professor, University of San Francisco
Imelda L. Nava, Education Faculty, UCLA
Ingrid Seyer-Ochi, Visiting Associate Professor, Mills College
Isabel Nunez, Associate Professor, University of San Francisco
Ivannia Soto-Hinman, Associate Professor, Whittier College
J. Cynthia McDermott, Department Chair, Antioch University
Jaime Park, Faculty Advisor, UCLA
Janelle Scott, Associate Professor, University of California, Berkeley
Janet Irene Hecsh, Administrator in Charge, University Library, California State University, Sacramento
Jennifer Lucko, Associate Professor, Dominican University of California
Jennifer L. Ruef, Doctoral Candidate and Teacher Educator, Stanford University
Jenny Rikkers, MS Placement Coordinator and PT Instructor, California State University, East Bay
Jolynn Asato, Professor, San Jose State University
Joseph Kahne, Professor, Mills College
Karen Cadiero-Kaplan, Professor, San Diego State University
Kathryn Epstein, Professor, Holy Names University
Kelly Caufield Mogilefsky, Lecturer, California State University, East Bay
Kevin Baaske, Professor, California State University Los Angeles
Kevin Kumashiro, Dean, University of San Francisco
Kevin Oh, Assistant Professor, University of San Francisco
Leyla Perez-Gualdron, Assistant Professor, University of San Francisco
Lisa Edsall Giglio University Field Supervisor, California State University East Bay
Magaly Lavadenz, Professor, Loyola Marymount University
Maria Sudduth, Professor Emerita, California State University, Chico
Maren Aukerman, Assistant Professor, Stanford University School of Education
Margarita Berta-Avila, Professor, California State University, Sacramento
Margo Okazawa-Rey, Professor Emertia, San Francisco State University
Mary Howland, Professor, University of San Francisco
Megan Franke, Professor, UCLA
Megan Luce, Researcher, Stanford University
Michael J. Dumas, Assistant Professor, University of California, Berkeley
Miguel G. López, Associate Professor, California State University, Monterey Bay
Miguel Zavala, Assistant Professor, California State University, Fullerton
Minerva S. Chavez, Assistant Professor, California State University, Fullerton
Mónica G García, Assistant Professor, California State University, Northridge
Monisha Bajaj, Associate Professor, University of San Francisco
Nancy Harding, Professor, Pepperdine University
Nick Henning, Assistant Professor, California State University, Fullerton
Nicholas Meier, Adjunct Professor, Brandman University
Nicola McClung, Assistant Professor, University of San Francisco
Pamela Hunt, Professor, San Francisco State University
Pat Stall, Professor, California State University, San Marcos
Patricia Baquedano-Lopez, Associate Professor, University of California, Berkeley
Patricia Mitchell, Associate Professor, University of San Francisco
Patricia D. Quijada, Associate Professor, University of California, Davis
Paula M. Selvester, Professor and Chair of Senate, California State University, Chico
Peter McLaren, Distinguished Professor in Critical Studies, Chapman University
Rande Webster, Dean, Dominican University of California
Rebecca Akin, Visiting Professor, Mills College
Rebeca Burciaga, Assistant Professor, San José State University
Rebecca Fawns-Justeson, Associate Professor, California State University, Chico
Rebecca L. Loboschefsky, University Supervisor, California State University East Bay
Reynaldo Baca, Professor of Clinical Education, University of Southern California
Richard Kahn, Core Faculty in Education, Antioch University Los Angeles
Richard Stout, Program Coordinator/Instructor, California State University, Chico
Rick Ayers, Asst Professor, Teacher Education, University of San Francisco
Rita Kohli, Assistant Professor, University of California, Riverside
Roberta Ahlquist, Professor, San Jose State University
Rosa M Jimenez, Assistant Professor, University of San Francisco School of Education
Rosemarie Michaels, Assistant Professor and Chair, Dominican University of California
Ruchi Agarwal-Rangnath, Adjunct Professor, San Francisco State University
Sarah Capitelli, Assistant Professor, University of San Francisco
Shabnam Koirala Azad, Associate Dean, University of San Francisco
Sumer Seiki, Visiting Assistant Professor, University of San Francisco
Suresh Appavoo, Associate Professor of Education, Dominican University of California
Susan Roberta Katz, Professor and Chair, University of San Francisco
Susan Sato-Tenorio, University Field Supervisor, UCLA
Suzanne SooHoo, Professor, Chapman University
Suzie Abajian, Assistant Adjunct Professor, Occidental College
Teresa L. McCarty, Professor and GF Kneller Chair, UCLA
Theresa Montano, Professor, CSUN
Thomas M. Philip, Assistant Professor, University of California Los Angeles
Tonikiaa Orange, Instructor, Center X, UCLA
Tracy Lachica Buenavista, Associate Professor, California State University, Northridge
Tricia Gallagher-Geurtsen, Instructor, University of San Diego
Tyrone Howard, Professor, UCLA
Uma Madhure Jayakumar, Assistant Professor, University of San Francisco
Ursula S. Aldana, Assistant Professor, University of San Francisco
Valerie Ooka Pang, Professor, San Diego State University
William A. Sandoval, Professor, University of California, Los Angeles

Test Prep U. Will Run U of Memphis Program for Segregated Teacher Preparation

From the Memphis Corporate Appeal:

. . . .The program is scheduled to start next fall in classes taught by Relay Graduate School of Education, a New York nonprofit organization that offers master’s degrees to meet “today’s urgent demand for effective teachers,” according to its website.

Relay was founded by a group of charter schools and is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Carnegie Corp. and others. Neither The New Teacher Project nor Relay would respond to a reporter’s questions. . . .

Well, that's part of the story.  Per usual, Gates' reporter on the scene, Jane Roberts, leaves out a few things about Relay.  Here is some of the rest of the story by Carol Burris, and here is my original post from 2011 on Relay's teacher prep for segregated corporate reform schools:

re lay: an electromagnetic device for remote or automatic control that is actuated by variation in conditions of an electric circuit and that operates in turn other devices (as switches) in the same or a different circuit.

If you consider it either ridiculous, dangerous, unethical, unscientific, or simply stupid to fire and hire teachers based on gains or losses among invalid and non-reliable student test scores, you ain't seen nothin' yet.  Last Fall when the Oligarchs convened the leaders of the lonely hearts club of teacher accreditation outfits known as NCATE (National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education) to declare that teacher education needed to "incubate a whole new form of teacher education," those of us familiar with NCATE's fealty to the Business Roundtable knew something big was in the warmer. 

Now we know.  The first hatchling is christenend the Relay School of Education, a creation of political hack, David Steiner, who has created the neo-eugenics corporate model for training educational technicians to program poor children so that they can pass tests.   Bloomberg and Tisch, in turn, made Steiner New York's ED Commissioner, whose office just recently voted unanimously to approve the new school in a market already saturated by other programs. 

What makes Relay (think "remote or automatic control") a uniquely monstrous offspring of teacher education is that degrees are only awarded to those candidates whose student test scores show a year's worth of gains during the year that candidates are learning to teach on poor people's children.  Those who get their degrees based on student test scores, then, go into schools with the unquestioning acceptance of test scores as the only reason for schools or teachers to exist.  Flip the switch! 

This new model was designed with the KIPP/TFA ethos of anti-cultural imperialism by white elites clearly in mind.  In fact, KIPP co-founder, David Levin, is one of the three founders of this new Test U, and many of the 200 candidates getting underway this coming Fall will be Wendy Kopp's carefully-recruited Ivy League missionaries. 

So where does NCATE play a role in this fledgling corporation? From Elizabeth Green, who is quickly becoming the Oligarchs' go-to-girl to get their stories into print:

Teacher U [Relay School of Education] has received praise at the national level, including from a group that has defended traditional schools of education in the past: the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education. James Cibulka, the president of NCATE, submitted a letter to the Regents endorsing the Teacher U team’s application, citing a recent report by NCATE that cited Teacher U as an “exemplar” of needed efforts to “turn teacher education in the United States ‘upside down.’”

Yes, yes, upside down.  No evaluators sent out yet, but Cibulka knows quality before he sees it, apparently.  So top-heavy with cash, how could they fail to capsize teacher education!  In fact, one of the other three founders of Test U, aka Relay School of Education, is none other than hedge fund mogul, Larry "L-Train" Robbins. 

"L-Train Robbins"

It's worth recalling that everyone was not out to lunch on the eminent explosion of the bulging home mortgage bubble in 2008, leaving Wall Street in shambles and the hedge funders and other casino capitalist rats swimming for their offshore bank accounts.  Larry "L-Train" Robbins was one of those seers from the inside, who had the uncanny ability to make money when everyone else was taking a hit. 

When a Fortune Magazine interviewer in late 2007 asked L-Train how his Glenview Capital hedge fund was up 20 percent for the year when some other funds were getting creamed, part of his answer offered this clue:

  . . . . Second, we've maintained a short position in mortgages since late 2006. That gave us a hedge against liquidity contraction and it gave us early and valuable insights into the consumer lending market and its deteriorating conditions. 

Now we know the Fed could not have known was was going on because Greenspan said so, right?, or certainly not the media or anyone who read Fortune Magazine in 2007, but the L-Train had some remarkable insight, you might say. With quality leadership by such civic-minded swine, how can Test U fail? 

By the time David Steiner has completed his mission in Albany, Relay will likely have an endowed chair waiting for him.  Will they call it the Frederick Winslow Taylor Endowed Chair of Educational Efficiency?  Sounds good, doesn't it?

University of Memphis Plans to Establish Teacher Preparation Caste System

In the first decades of the 20th Century, the differentiated curriculum came into existence as a way to sort, segregate, and direct education programs that would ready the children of the most northern European and the richest for societal leadership roles, while preparing a docile workforce for the rest who could be contained, segregated, trained, and taught to value labor.  An efficient sorting machine was constructed by using primitive intelligence and achievement tests to undergird a long-established social darwinist ideology and a eugenics agenda aimed at maximizing social hygiene and efficiency.

As Faulkner said, "the past is never dead; it's not even past."  Today in Memphis, the University of Memphis is putting the finishing secretive touches on a teacher education program that will extend the hundred year old plan for separate schools for the poor by providing separate teacher preparation for the poor schools.  Having recently found themselves losing enrollment to the Gates, Broad, and Walton funded alternative certification plans based on the theory of total compliance paternalism, rote memorization, and cultural sterilization, the University of Memphis has decided that it would rather take the money and join the party than to fight.  The result, no doubt, will be more young white missionaries in schools that cry out for the most caring and professionally prepared teachers who know more than than teaching like a robot would teach a robot.

Continuing at the University of Memphis will be the regular teacher education for those going out to teach in the leafy suburbs where child development, curriculum development, storytelling, linguistic appreciation, writing instruction, etc. remain valid needs. 

To say this represents a miseducative crime against poor children specifically and humanity in general would be the purest and gentlest of understatements.

Some of That Junk "Theory" You Can Avoid by Going Through the Aspire Indoctrination

Here's some of the unnecessary frills you can avoid when you go through Aspire's Teach Like A Robot program.  

From Bank Street's catalog, but you will find similar offerings at other highly-regarded teacher preparation programs:

EDUC 500: Child Development
EDUC 505: Language Acquisition and Learning in a Linguistically Diverse Society
EDUC 510: Curriculum in Early Childhood Education (Grades N – 3)
EDUC 511: Curriculum Development through Social Studies (Elementary and Middle School)
EDUC 513: Social Studies as the Core of the Integrated Curriculum for Children with Special Needs (Grades 1 – 6)
EDUC 514: Curriculum in Early Childhood Education: Developing Learning Environments and Experiences for Children of Diverse Backgrounds and Abilities
EDUC 515: Curriculum Development and Sheltered Instruction in Dual Language/ Bilingual Classrooms
EDUC 517: Geography in the Social Studies Curriculum (Upper-Elementary and Middle School Years)
EDUC 518: School/ Museum Curriculum Development (K – 8)
EDUC 519: Educating Infants and Toddlers: Environments
EDUC 520: Educating Infants and Toddlers: Programs and Activities and Emergent Literacy
EDUC 525: Integrating Technology into the Curriculum to Support Student Learning and Inquiry
EDUC 530: Foundations of Modern Education
EDUC 531: Principles and Problems in Elementary and Early Childhood Education
EDUC 533: Seminar in Museum Education I
EDUC 535: Science for Teachers (Grades N – 6)
EDUC 536: Foundations: The Influence of Culture and Politics on Literacy Theory and Practice
EDUC 537: Foundations and Practice of Dual Language/ Bilingual Education
EDUC 540: Mathematics for Teachers in Diverse and Inclusive Educational Settings (Grades N – 6)
EDUC 542: Diagnosis of Learning Difficulties and Intervention Techniques for the Mathematics Educator
EDUC 551: Science Inquiry for Children in the Natural Environment
EDUC 560: Native Language Literacy for Spanish-Speaking Children
EDUC 561: Linguistics: Implications for Teachers
EDUC 563: The Teaching of Reading, Writing, and Language Arts (Grades K – 3)
EDUC 564: Language, Literature, and Emergent Literacy (A Focus on Grades N – 3)
EDUC 565: Children's Literature in a Balanced Reading Program (A Focus on Grades 3 – 8)
EDUC 567: Teaching Reading and Writing in the Content Areas for Elementary and Middle School Classrooms
EDUC 568: Teaching Literacy in the Elementary Grades (Grades 2 – 6)
EDUC 573: Storytelling with Children
EDUC 574: Folklore in Education
EDUC 575: Teacher-Made Materials for Reading and Writing
EDUC 576: Writing in the Elementary Grades
EDUC 590: Arts Workshop for Teachers (Grades N – 6)
EDUC 591: Music and Movement: Multicultural and Developmental Approaches in Diverse and Inclusive Settings (Grades N – 6)
EDUC 592: Singing in the Early Childhood Classroom
EDUC 600: Comparative Migration Experiences and Cultural Perspectives of Immigrant Groups
EDUC 601: Special Education for Linguistically and Culturally Diverse Children
EDUC 602: Assessment in Bilingual Special Education
EDUC 603: Assistive Technology in the Early Childhood Classroom: Developing Visual Tools and Strategies, the BoardmakerTM Example
EDUC 604: Family, Child, and Teacher Interaction in Diverse and Inclusive Educational Settings
EDUC 605: Designing and Managing Classroom Environments for Children and Youth with Special Needs (Grades K and Up)
EDUC 606: Block Building and Dramatic Play as an Integral Part of the Early Childhood Curriculum
EDUC 609: Classroom Management and Discipline in a Supportive Environment
EDUC 612: Infancy Institute: Infants, Toddlers, Families: Supporting Their Growth
EDUC 613: Understanding and Working with Families of Infants and Toddlers
EDUC 614: Exhibition Development and Evaluation
EDUC 616: Introduction to Research and Evaluation Practice in Museum Education
EDUC 618: Working with All Children and Families: An Introduction
EDUC 621: Introduction to Child Life Documentation
EDUC 625: Process Pedagogy: The Teaching Methods of the National Dance Institute and the Implications for the Teaching/ Learning Process
EDUC 629: Education of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders: Assessment and Educational Intervention
EDUC 650: Individual Study
EDUC 651: Special Study
EDUC 660: The Development of Spanish through Writing in the Content Areas
EDUC 800: The Social Worlds of Childhood
EDUC 801: The World of the Infant: The First Year of Life
EDUC 802: The World of Toddlers and Twos: The Second and Third Years of Life
EDUC 803: Developmental Variations
EDUC 805: Developmental Variations II: Emotional and Behavioral Issues
EDUC 807: Communication Disorders in School-Age Children
EDUC 808: The Study of Children in Diverse and Inclusive Educational Settings through Observation and Recording
EDUC 815: Seminar in Museum Education II
EDUC 820: Group Process for Child Life Specialists
EDUC 821: Child Life in the Healthcare Setting: A Family-Centered Care Approach
EDUC 822: Children with Special Healthcare Needs: In the Hospital, at Home, and in School
EDUC 823: Play Techniques for Early Childhood Settings
EDUC 826: Medical Aspects of Illness: A Child Life Perspective
EDUC 827: Weaving Creative Arts Modalities into Child Life Practice
EDUC 828: Loss in Children's Lives: Implications for Schools, Hospitals, and Home
EDUC 829: Therapeutic Play Techniques for Child Life Specialists
EDUC 850: Practicum in Teaching Science I
EDUC 851: Practicum in Teaching Science II
EDUC 852: Practicum in Teaching Science III
EDUC 860: Reading and Writing Problems of Children and Youth with Special Needs
EDUC 862: Assessment, Diagnosis, and Evaluation of Students with Special Needs
EDUC 863: Collaboration and Differentiation in the Instruction of Students with Learning Problems
EDUC 864: Emergent Literacy and Selecting Literature for Young Children
EDUC 865: Children's Literature for Grades 3-6
EDUC 866: A Developmental-Interaction Approach to Teaching Geography in the Upper-Elementary Grades
EDUC 867: The Teacher's Role in the Development of Reading Comprehension: Strategic Teaching (Grades K – 6)
EDUC 868: Current Topics in Reading and Writing Difficulties in Multicultural Classrooms: Approaches to Decoding
EDUC 869: Early Language and Literacy in Sociocultural Contexts: Supporting Development and Adapting for Disability
EDUC 870: The Teaching of English as a Second Language
EDUC 871: Writing Case/ Progress Reports
EDUC 873: Summer Practicum in Clinical Teaching of Monolingual and Bilingual Children and Youth with Learning Disabilities and Reading Problems
EDUC 880: Insights from Occupational Therapy: Understanding Children's Sensory-Motor Development
EDUC 891: Practicum in Developmental Assessment of Infants and Toddlers
EDUC 892: Developmental Systems I: Connecting Research in Early Development to Practice in Early Childhood Education
EDUC 893: Developmental Systems II: Approaches to Early Childhood Assessment
EDUC 894: Early Childhood Practicum I: Observing a Child through Family/ Cultural Contexts
EDUC 895: Early Childhood Practicum II: Collaboration with Families and Colleagues about the Cycle of Assessment, Planning, and Instruction
EDUC 941: Teaching Literacy Supervised Fieldwork/ Student Teaching/ Advisement
EDUC 942: Childhood General Education and Teaching Literacy Supervised Fieldwork/ Student Teaching/ Advisement
EDUC 946: Curriculum & Instruction Supervised Fieldwork/ Student Teaching/ Advisement
EDUC 950: Clinical Experiences and Supervised Fieldwork I and II: Children in Healthcare Settings
EDUC 953: Infant and Family Development and Early Intervention and Early Childhood Special Education Supervised Fieldwork/ Student Teaching/ Advisement
EDUC 954: Infant and Family Development and Early Intervention Supervised Fieldwork/ Student Teaching/ Advisement
EDUC 955: Early Childhood General Education Supervised Fieldwork/ Student Teaching/ Advisement
EDUC 956: Childhood General Education Supervised Fieldwork/ Student Teaching/ Advisement
EDUC 958: Early Childhood and Childhood General Education Supervised Fieldwork/ Student Teaching/ Advisement
EDUC 960: Dual Language/ Bilingual Early Childhood General Education Supervised Fieldwork/ Student Teaching/ Advisement
EDUC 961: Dual Language/ Bilingual Childhood General Education Supervised Fieldwork/ Student Teaching/ Advisement
EDUC 963: Early Childhood Special and General Education Supervised Fieldwork/ Student Teaching/ Advisement
EDUC 964: Childhood Special and General Education Supervised Fieldwork/ Student Teaching/ Advisement
EDUC 966: Dual Language/ Bilingual Early Childhood Special and General Education Supervised Fieldwork/ Student Teaching/ Advisement
EDUC 967: Dual Language/ Bilingual Childhood Special and General Education Supervised Fieldwork/ Student Teaching/ Advisement
EDUC 970: Early Childhood Special Education Supervised Fieldwork/ Student Teaching/ Advisement
EDUC 971: Childhood Special Education Supervised Fieldwork/ Student Teaching/ Advisement
EDUC 973: Dual Language/ Bilingual Early Childhood Special Education Supervised Fieldwork/ Student Teaching/ Advisement
EDUC 974: Dual Language/ Bilingual Childhood Special Education Supervised Fieldwork/ Student Teaching/ Advisement
EDUC 980: Childhood General and Museum Education Supervised Fieldwork/ Student Teaching/ Museum Internship/ Advisement
EDUC 982: Museum Education Supervised Fieldwork/ Student Teaching/ Museum Internship/ Advisement
EDUC 990: Extended Field Experiences with Diverse Learners (for students completing fieldwork as student teachers)
EDUC 991: Integrative Seminar in High Needs Educational Settings: Extended Field Experiences (for students completing fieldwork as head or assistant teachers)
EDUC 992: Summer Supervised Fieldwork/ Advisement for Early Childhood Special Education Head Teachers and Assistant Teachers
GSTD
GSTD 960: Studies in Education Supervised Fieldwork/ Student Teaching/ Advisement
LANG
LANG 760: American Sign Language: Module One
LANG 761: American Sign Language: Module Two
LANG 762: American Sign Language: Module Three
NSCI
NSCI 500: Topics in Science
SCIE
SCIE 510: Explorations of Nature


Leadership Classes

LEAD 501: Human Development I: Programming for Young Audiences
LEAD 502: Human Development II: Adolescents and Adults as Visitors and Volunteers
LEAD 503: Adult Development: Implications for Educational Leadership
LEAD 510: Leadership in Curriculum and Instruction
LEAD 511: Exhibition Development for Museum Leaders
LEAD 512: School Collaborations for Museum Leaders
LEAD 513: Museum Programming for Diverse Audiences
LEAD 514: Curriculum Development for Mathematics Leaders
LEAD 515: Community-Based Leadership Seminar Series
LEAD 518: Leading a Community-Based Initiative
LEAD 525: Technology and School Change
LEAD 530: Education Policy, Advocacy, and Law
LEAD 532: Foundations of Educational Leadership: Ethics and Philosophy
LEAD 533: Foundations of Educational Leadership: Law, History, and Economics
LEAD 534: Foundations of Educational Leadership: Adult Development
LEAD 535: Foundations of Educational Leadership: Organizational Development
LEAD 536: Foundations of Educational Leadership: Culture and Society
LEAD 537: Organizational Development: Implications for Educational Leadership
LEAD 560: Literacy and Leadership
LEAD 561: Supervising and Supporting Literacy Instruction in Diverse Settings
LEAD 581: Community-Based Action Research: Theory and Inquiry Methods for Community Educators
LEAD 600: Leadership Communications Seminar
LEAD 601: Team Building and Collaborative Decision Making: Practices of Democratic Schooling
LEAD 603: School Change: The Transformational Leader
LEAD 604: Development of Educational Policy
LEAD 610: Staff Development and the Consultation Process
LEAD 611: Professional Development for Mathematics Leaders
LEAD 615: Processes of Supervision and Professional Development
LEAD 616: Museum Management I: Organizational Development
LEAD 617: Museum Management II: Marketing and Audience Development
LEAD 618: Museum Management III: Professional Development
LEAD 619: Museum Management IV: Fundraising and Proposal Development
LEAD 620: Finance and Fundraising for Educational Leaders
LEAD 621: Fiscal Management for Educational Leaders
LEAD 622: Museum Management V: Shaping a Vision
LEAD 623: Organizational Theory
LEAD 630: Law for School Leaders
LEAD 650: Leadership Individual Study
LEAD 651: Leadership Special Study
LEAD 660: Research for Educational Change
LEAD 661: Research for Mathematics Leaders I
LEAD 662: Research for Mathematics Leaders II
LEAD 663: Research in Museum Settings
LEAD 770: Leadership Professional Seminar
LEAD 810: Leadership in Technology and the Arts Practicum in Clinical Supervision
LEAD 825: Child Life Program Development and Administration
LEAD 827: Leading in the Era of Data-driven Decision Making
LEAD 830: Early Childhood Leadership Practicum in Clinical Supervision
LEAD 831: Early Childhood Leadership Practicum in Organizational Development
LEAD 832: Policy Issues in the Design of Children's Services
LEAD 833: Early Childhood Leadership Policy Internship
LEAD 840: Practicum in Mathematics Leadership I
LEAD 841: Practicum in Mathematics Leadership II
LEAD 842: Practicum in Mathematics Leadership III
LEAD 850: Museum Leadership Institute I
LEAD 851: Museum Leadership Institute II
LEAD 861: Leading a School District I
LEAD 862: Leading a School District II
LEAD 863: Leading a School District III
LEAD 864: Leading a School District IV
LEAD 870: Special Education Leadership: The District Perspective
LEAD 871: Special Education Leadership I: Implementation of IDEA
LEAD 872: Special Education Leadership II: Leading Inclusive Communities of Learners
LEAD 875: Effective Management in an Educational Context
LEAD 900: Leadership for Educational Change Supervised Fieldwork/ Advisement
LEAD 906: Future School Leaders Academy Supervised Fieldwork/ Advisement
LEAD 908: School District Leadership Supervised Fieldwork/ Advisement
LEAD 910: Leadership in Technology and the Arts Supervised Fieldwork/ Advisement
LEAD 912: Principals Institute Supervised Fieldwork/ Advisement
LEAD 913: Practicum in Urban School Leadership
LEAD 930: Early Childhood Leadership Supervised Fieldwork/ Advisement
LEAD 940: Mathematics Leadership Supervised Fieldwork/ Advisement
LEAD 950: Museum Leadership Supervised Fieldwork/ Advisement
LEAD 951: Museum Leadership Seminar I: Theories and Issues in Museum Learning
LEAD 952: Museum Leadership Seminar II: Current Ideas in Interpretation and Education
LEAD 953: Museum Leadership Seminar III: History and Philosophy of American Museums
LEAD 954: Museum Leadership Seminar IV: Selected Topics in Community, Culture, and Policy
LEAD 985: Community-Based Leadership Supervised Fieldwork/ Advisement

Duncan Signals a More Activist Role in Destroying Teaching Profession

Since Team Obama came to Washington, ED has doubled down on support for alternative certification programs by handing out hundreds of millions of dollars to stock urban schools with unprepared beginning teachers who don't know John Dewey from Thomas Dewey, or an IEP from IED.  In fact, the less knowledge in the art and science of teaching that one of these Teach for America knock-offs emphasizes, the more likely they are to attract multi-million dollar teacher improvement grants.  TFA, alone, has received over $100 million in federal grants.

Obviously, this path has not led quickly enough to the thorough deprofessionalization and dumbing down of teaching to a state of utter disrepair and ignorance.  To remedy that, Team Obama has just announced plans to move more aggressively to destroy any vestigial signs of educational theory, history, or contextual understanding from teacher preparation programs.  In order to make the hundred year old policy of cram down racist testing seem plausible for another generation, it is necessary that new teachers know nothing of the long inglorious road to the thorough labeling, sorting, and segregating based on tests designed to do just that.

. . . .Duncan said one major problem is that teachers have too much education in history and theory, and not enough practical, hands-on experience.
 “Every school I go to, when I ask teachers if they were prepared, there’s a fair amount of nervous laughter,” he said.

 Duncan continued to say that teachers also don’t have the necessary experience with technology that’s used in the classroom.

 “At the heart of the agenda has been placing a great teacher in every classroom,” said Muñoz. “Teachers matter and a great teacher makes all the difference.”

Nervous laughter, I guess, is better than throwing up or crying.  Who could ever be prepared for the hell that Bush-Obama education policies have created for those charged with teaching our children?  

One thing that seems unchanging in the coming years is the violable and audacious lie about how much difference a teacher can make.  

The Cubberley Tradition Continues at Stanford and Pearson

One of the classics in the history of American education is Raymond Callahan's 1962 EDUCATION AND THE CULT OF EFFICIENCY.  In the free Chapter 5 available here, you can read about the various strategies and tactics that were devised a hundred years by the social control and social efficiency zealots who were attempting to take over American schools and run them like Henry Ford's assembly lines.  That's right--they largely succeeded.


If you have not read the history of American education, anyone could end up believing there is something new or reformy in the endless stream of corporate edu-solutions and testing insanity--when, in fact, today's efficiency cult represents the reforms of 100 years ago:  universal testing, sorting by test scores, segregation, centralized curriculum control, and governance by mayors--all of these modern "reforms" were popular among the eugenics-inspired visionaries of a hundred years ago.  


One of Stanford University's most devout eugenicists of the time, Elwood P. Cubberley, wrote the efficiency movement's version of educational history, and thus enshrined the social efficiency version of the past for more than a generation of education students.  By the 1960s when Callahan's book first appeared, historiography was changing big time, and since then it has changed even more, so that now we have rich and detailed histories that challenge the official view espoused by Cubberley and his white male protestant businessman cronies. 


If Pearson and Stanford U. have their way now, a hundred years after the first coming of social efficiency, learning the history or philosophy of education, or even child development, will become disposable froth for teacher education programs, or at least these course will be held hostage by a new technocratic assessment tool that teacher candidates must pass before they get a credential to teach.  


Because this generation's efficiency cult cannot control history, as their predecessors did through Cubberley's official tome almost a hundred years ago, the present generation of preservers of the status quo simply plan to make history irrelevant to the process of teacher preparation and credentialing.  Remember Margaret Spellings?  What gets tested gets taught.


And so it is with renewed vigor that everyone who cares about the education of  teachers, rather than training them like seals, should boycott Pearson--any Pearson products, any time.  From Education Radio:


Pearson's Teacher Performance Assessment: Exposed!

A Look at Finnish Schools and Teacher Preparation

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has an excellent piece on the Finnish system, including the video that you see below.  As you watch the short video, listen for how the special education teacher in the poor Finnish school talks about the basic skills that all their children get--it's a very different conception of what is "basic" when compared to  endless test-prep worksheets that non-privileged American children get:



Below is a chunk of the article by Erin Richards. Do go the Journal-Sentinel and have a look at the charts and searchable database:

. . . .Wisconsin's government and demographics differ from Finland in some important respects, but there are still lessons to be learned from the steps this northern European nation has taken to better serve all students and educators, including:

Improving teacher recruitment and training at colleges of education.

Offering a high-quality curriculum with pathways to high-quality vocational training at younger grades.

Emphasizing play and the arts in education.

In the current political environment, it's easy to fixate on the most tenuous aspects of Wisconsin's educational landscape: reduced budgets, teachers who feel like they're under attack, layoffs, larger class sizes, recall efforts.

But outside Wisconsin, there's growing evidence that American education as a whole has stagnated. Recent studies have shown the educational attainment of U.S. students has remained about the same while other countries' students have improved.

Several recent studies have sought to slice international achievement data in new ways. Adjusting for the differences in state, national and international tests, one report shows 56% of Finland's students perform at or above a level considered to be proficient in math, compared with 36% of the students in Wisconsin and 32% of U.S. students on average.

What is referenced just above is the NAEP test.  Note the ridiculousness of the norming of this test--even Finnish children, tops in the world on PISA (see below), just over half would be proficient on the NAEP.  Since the early 90s, the NAEP has been normed in such a way as to use scores to bludgeon teachers and public schools (click here for a recent example from the head of Chamber of Commerce in Knoxville). 

Finland has attracted attention largely because of its students' results on a respected exam known as the Programme for International Student Assessment. Also known as PISA, the test is given to a representative sample of 15-year-olds in participating developed countries every three years. In 2009, Finland's students scored third in reading, sixth in math and second in science out of 65 countries that participated in the exam.

American students scored 17th in reading, 23rd in science and 31st in math.

But looking at the Finnish system comes with caveats - some characteristics of the country head in the opposite direction from the way things are moving in American education.

For example, Finnish education and government leaders downplay standardized testing. They place more value on developing creativity and independent thought, and don't believe in judging schools by test scores. The country's internal testing of students is so light that the PISA scores came as a surprise for most; many teachers say they knew their students were doing well, just not that well.

Finland has a relatively homogenous population; the country is predominantly white and Lutheran. The U.S. has a diverse population of people from different cultures, with different values and priorities, especially when it comes to education.

Strong believers in equality, the Finns have long supported a system where wealth is distributed more evenly, making it nearly impossible to live in abject poverty. The income ladder ranges more greatly in the U.S., with intense wealth at the top and intense poverty at the bottom.

Some schools in Finland do serve a predominantly low-income population, and the pace of instruction at those schools is indeed slower than at the schools in middle-income areas. But the low-income schools are supported in other ways to try to give all students the tools needed to reach a basic level of education by the end of ninth grade.

Teacher training

Finland has been praised for the way in which it attracts, and subsequently develops, future teachers.

Education at the university level is funded by the government, but the openings are limited, which creates competition. Teacher-studies programs set a particularly high bar for applicants: At the University of Helsinki, a mere 6.7% of those who applied to be primary school teachers were admitted this year to the education school.

That's a lower acceptance rate than the 10% of applicants admitted to the University of Helsinki's schools of law and medicine.

By comparison, the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee accepted 96% of undergraduate students who applied for the 2011 year, and 88% of post-baccalaureate applicants.

Gail Schneider, associate dean of academic affairs at UWM's education school, said there's more going on behind the numbers.

"While our admission numbers may appear relatively high compared to Finland," she said, "considerable levels of self-determination and advising occurs prior to the application process to ensure that applicants hold high promise of becoming committed, exemplary teachers."

At Marquette University, the College of Education accepts only freshman students who rank in the top third of their high school class, Dean Bill Henk said. The college's three-year average shows an acceptance rate of 63%.

Henk is a proponent of making it more difficult to become a teacher. But he worries about whether the current teaching climate in Wisconsin would attract any of the best and brightest to the profession.

Being a teacher in Finland, by contrast, comes with a status of prestige - though not necessarily high pay. Adjusting for currency conversions, teachers in Finland make less in gross salary and pay more in taxes than the average American teacher.

Part of what raises the status of the profession is the rigorous training they have to undergo. Teachers who plan to teach seventh through 12th grade in a specific area, such as math or history or English, need a master's degree in that subject. Classroom teachers - the educators in the younger grades - need a master's degree in a general education field.

"Every teacher has to be a master of something," Nordberg said one afternoon in September in his office after class at the Normal Lyceum of Helsinki.

Nordberg got his master's degree in English. His thesis focused on the way English core modals (can, must, may, etc.) are portrayed in Finnish upper secondary school textbooks. He also had to do a thesis for his bachelor's degree. And another specifically for teacher training.

"It was agony," he recalls of his master's thesis. "But I did it."

Like other applicants to teacher-studies programs, Nordberg had to have high academic marks, pass an entrance exam and pass an in-person interview before he was accepted to the program.

Once in the profession, teachers have a lot of autonomy over their classroom. A national curriculum set by the local government - with input from the national teachers union - explains what should be learned but not how to teach it.
Teachers have control over that part.

"In Finland it's very common for us to write our own textbooks or choose the methods and curriculum or textbooks we want to buy," said Sepoo Nyyssönen, a philosophy teacher at Sibelius High School, an arts-based school in Helsinki.

"I think that's why I feel that teaching is good - you are like the king or queen of your own classroom," Nyyssönen said.

Curriculum

In the 1970s and '80s, Finland sought to eliminate a tracking system that divided students after fourth grade, at age 10. Children who seemed college-bound were offered a more rigorous curriculum, while others were ushered to less academic classes. The Finns instead implemented a comprehensive nine-year system of schooling that goes from age 7 to 16. At that point, students can decide for themselves if they want to go to the college-prep lukio to complete upper secondary school, or if they want to spend the next three years in the vocational high schools, where they can start to learn a trade.

Students can switch between the high school options, however, and choosing the vocational track does not preclude a student from getting into a university.

Recently, there's been more discussion in Wisconsin of breathing new life into vocational training options for high school students, and acknowledging that not all students need or want to pursue an expensive four-year bachelor's degree.

A bill batted around in Madison this legislative session called for more flexibility in substituting vocational classes for certain academic high school credits.

Local advocates of vocational education, such as Tim Sullivan, the former CEO of Bucyrus International Inc., have said that Wisconsin manufacturers have jobs to fill, but can't find qualified local graduates.

Play, social development

Just about everyone believes in the importance of getting children off to a good start in life from birth, but the Finnish government offers resources to make that happen. Taxes are high in Finland as a result: Income taxes are assessed on a progressive scale depending on income and range from 6.5% to 30%. Municipal taxes can range from 16% to 21% of a payer's income.

The trade-off: Parents can take up to about 17 weeks of paid maternity leave, and up to three years of unpaid leave if they wish to care for their children at home in the first years of their child's life.

There's a tradition of women working in Finland, encouraged by the fact that the government pays for day care from infancy to kindergarten. If parents decide to not enroll their child in day care, they receive an additional monthly child home-care allowance.

The government grants parents an allotment of child support money each month until the child turns 18, because it believes that raising children shouldn't be an undue financial burden for families.

Real academic learning doesn't take place until compulsory schooling starts in first grade. And even then, days for students include an emphasis on social skills and development. Being outside is also important - many schools in Finland are flanked by vast playgrounds and forests that allow children to spread out and play before, during and after school.

"If children don't have a good home background, we think they need sports and arts and other activities to help them feel good about themselves," said Irmeli Halinen, head of curriculum development of general education for the Finnish National Board of Education.

"If a child feels good, he learns better," she said.

Halinen said it's not just the education system in Finland, it's the whole support system that makes it happen.

"During the '72 through '77 reforms, there were parents who wanted their kids to have a better education," she said. "It was the time after the wars with Russia, and we were building and investing in technology and industry. We needed people to have a good education and knowledge."

The system is not perfect. Parents still complain about less-than-stellar teachers. School leadership still matters. High-flying students might get neglected in a system set up to improve the bottom and the middle.

But if steady overall improvement is the intent, the country is accomplishing it.

"It doesn't matter where you live here," Nordberg said. "You're going to get a good education."

Indiana's Corporate Education Reformers Get An Earful from Educators

Sanity breaks out in Indiana. From WISH-TV reporter, Deanna Dewberry:

. . . .University education leaders say a good teacher must have both a mastery of the subject he's teaching and knowledge of children and how they learn.

That's why university education leaders, those who teach teachers how to teach, say they oppose Dr. Tony Bennett's Proposed Rule Revisions for Educator Preparation and Accountability or REPA. Educators argue the proposed rules will erode the quality of preparation of teachers and administrators.

"Anyone can be a principal without any educational requirements," said Deb Lecklider, Associate Dean of Butler's College of Education.

Opponents argue the revisions greatly reduce the hours needed in education courses and classroom experience. The proposal encourages people from other fields, like business leaders, to become school administrators by granting temporary licenses to those with no education training.

"I think we need to consider the business community and what they have done to the United States of America and where we are with regards to that now and ask ourselves the question, 'Do we really want to turn our children over to these people?'," asked Elise Matthews of the Anderson Community School Corporation.

Matthews' comments were met with thunderous applause at Monday's meeting.

Then, a dramatic moment came late morning.

"We are delivering, as a part of public comment to REPA, 2,480 petitions," announced Jill Shedd of the Indiana Association of Colleges for Teacher Education.

At that point, a half dozen educators carried every petition to the front of the room and stacked them on a table in a dramatic show of what they said is public opposition to the proposals, giving Indiana Department of Education leaders plenty of reading to do.

A few weeks ago Indiana's Governor Mitch Daniels, one of the surviving specimen of the Bush years to successfully find a new political host, was crowing about finishing the work that Bush's old reading czar, Reid Lyon, had dreamed of for so many years--namely, to blow up America's colleges of education, where prospective teachers of the poor are poisoned with democratic dispositions and ethical commitments and caring attitudes and real teaching skills. Here is part of Daniels's rant:

“When the Professional Licensing Board begins starting next week to redefine what is required to get a teaching license in Indiana, the schools of education are going to have to make some major changes of their own. They are not going to need as many people teaching what to me is mumbo jumbo. We’re going to expect students who want to teach spending much more of their time studying the subject they are going to be teaching in the schools.”

Well, it is too early to tell if Indiana's corporate education reformers will prevail, but on Monday they got verbally hammered by a whole bunch of Indiana educators who have some crucial elements of their anatomies and who are no longer afraid to speak the truth to the know-nothing corporate clowns who want to destroy public schools and the teaching profession. From the Courier-Journal:

By Rick Callahan
Associated Press

INDIANAPOLIS — A proposed revamping of Indiana's teacher licensing standards that would reduce the amount of required courses on how to teach drew sharp criticism Monday from educators, with one teacher calling it “a slap in the face.”

The comments came at the last of three public hearings on the plan as more than 250 people filled a hearing room at the Indiana State Library to comment. The proposals by Indiana schools chief Tony Bennett would require elementary education majors to take no more than 30 college credit hours in pedagogy, or how to teach.

Education schools say the Department of Education moved away from dictating the number of classes taken in recent years and should not get back in the business of regulating a college curriculum.

The department says education schools have piled on too many how-to-teach classes and that limits are needed.

Bennett's proposals also would have prospective educators major in a subject area, such as math or English, and earn a minor in education.

Most of the speakers criticized the plan, telling Indiana Department of Education staff members who oversaw the hearing that it had been inadequately researched and would not improve the quality of the state's teachers.

Opponents delivered a foot-high stack of petitions signed by nearly 2,500 teachers, principals and other educators from around the state. They urged the state to hold more public hearings and allow public school stakeholders a chance to help shape the initiative.

Elise Matthews, an Anderson teacher who has taught for 31 years at Anderson Community School Corp., said the proposals, if approved, would leave people without the necessary expertise to teach.

“I think it's another slap in the face. We need to stop slapping teachers in the face,” Matthews said.

Matt Moll, a 10th-grade English teacher at Franklin Community High School, said the state was moving too quickly and without consulting stakeholders in the education community.

“I'm going to tell you the same thing I tell my students who run down the hall: Slow down. Someone might get hurt,” he said.

More than 120 people signed up to speak at Monday's public hearing, which followed hearings that drew hundreds of critics last week in Scottsburg and Rochester.

Bennett has said that elementary education majors need to take more classes in the subjects they'll teach.

But John Ellis, executive director of the Indiana Association of Public School Superintendents, said the proposal was wrongly targeting pedagogy instruction, which he said is crucial.

“You have to know how to teach,” Ellis said. “There are people who are extraordinarily bright, extraordinarily gifted in their areas of specialty but just simply didn't know how to relate to kids.”

Several college educators testified against the proposals, including staff members from Indiana University, Purdue University, Ball State University and Butler University.

Deb Lecklider, associate dean of Butler's College of Education, said many students who are failing classes in Indiana's private, parochial and public schools are low-income, blacks, Hispanics or those with special needs.

“What we don't need are unprepared teachers in our classrooms with that very group of students that need us the most,” she said.

Bennett has said his proposals could save college students money on tuition-based courses.

Department of Education spokesman Cam Savage said the Indiana Professional Standards Board, which would have to approve any changes in the standards, next meets Nov. 18 but will not be voting at that time on Bennett's proposals.

“The board members have indicated that they would like a couple of meetings to discuss possible changes to the proposals,” he said.

Will Duncan Offer Students, Parents, and Teachers a Refund for Buying a Phony Product?

This week found the Dunc at Teachers College, again bad-mouthing schools of education for not doing a better job at preparing the 21st Century classroom teacher. As Stephen Krashen suggested in a post at ARN this morning, perphaps we should begin to acknowledge it is the fault of business schools for the catastrophic collapse of the American economy. I think we may even draw a correlation between low life expectancy in poor neighborhoods with the quality of M.D. preparation in America. Damn those med schools!

It remains a mystery to me how the Dunc can criticize teacher preparation programs with a straight face and, at the same time, embrace entirely the kind of teacher non-preparation that occurs in the 5-week positive psychology "Fishful Thinking" creepy camps that Teach for America puts on to pretend a preparation for prospective Ivy League resume builders who are being sent in droves into the KIPP chaingangs. Where is the outrage about TFA's lack of methods courses, student teaching, history of ed courses, child development, classroom management, educational philosophy, etc.? Perhaps if schools of education followed TFA's lead and spent more on marketing and recruiting than on instruction, then their reputations would be much more unassailable.

Those ironies are entirely missed by the newspapers and magazines that love to talk about the mediocre ed schools and the crumby public schools. These are the same newspapers and magazines that are moving into their third week of ignoring a National Research Council warning to Duncan and his Gates-Broad-Walton lawyers and economists about the stupidity of their pay-per-score plan for teachers. Perhaps the story will never surface in the mainstream. Perhaps, in fact, we will have to wait for a few years for a lawsuit from disgruntled parents and school systems, who have finally come to realize that the education reforms they were sold by the Duncan and the Business Roundtable made their kids less attentive and dumber and their teachers more depressed and ineffective, much like Disney's Baby Einsteins, Mozarts, and the rest of the junk merchandise sold to parents looking for an edge in the dog-eat-dog world of elementary school test scores.

Explaining the Mumbo Jumbo to the Dumbos

The proudly-stupid Governor Mitch Daniels of Indiana had this to say the other day about that citified, new-fangled college talk that them there teachers is using on our kids in Indiana:

“Arne Duncan could not be superintendent or principal in Indiana,” Daniels said of Obama’s education chief and former superintendent of Chicago schools. “He doesn’t have the right credentials.” The governor enunciated “credentials.”

Asked about how the Ball State University teachers college will have to adapt, Daniels explained, “When the Professional Licensing Board begins starting next week to redefine what is required to get a teaching license in Indiana, the schools of education are going to have to make some major changes of their own. They are not going to need as many people teaching what to me is mumbo jumbo. We’re going to expect students who want to teach spending much more of their time studying the subject they are going to be teaching in the schools.”

There are good reason besides credentials that Arne Duncan should not be a superintendent or a principal, not the least of which is his promotion of an entirely unethical and abusive use of tests in schools. But this post is to offer the anti-education capitalists in charge of U. S. education policy a basic primer in some of the coursework regularly offered as part of accredited initial certification teacher preparation programs. Most of these course descriptions are from Alverno College, one of the top teacher ed programs in the country. A few are California Lutheran University. If Governor Mitch had his way, we would dispose of this kind of unnecessary mumbo-jumbo.

Social and Cultural Foundations in Education 3 credits

The historical, social and cultural foundations of American education, as seen through a historical narrative, with an emphasis on the diversity of contemporary schooling. Major philosophies of education which have informed American education and how they affect schooling in a society of multiple cultures. Fieldwork required.

Theories of Teaching, Learning and Development 3 credits

Theories of teaching, assessment and development of learning. The influence of those theories on content, methods, and classroom environment, including the use of technology, and their application in improving academic achievement for all students. Fieldwork required.

Human Development and Learning
(3 credits)
Students examine theories that address the development of cognition, emotion, and motivation as they apply to learners of various ages, cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds, and learning needs. Students evaluate the application of theories in diverse learning environments, building an understanding of the dynamic interaction between and among teaching, learning, and assessment in work with adolescents and young adults.

General Methods of Teaching
(4 credits)
Studying a variety of instructional models and learning theories, students plan and implement differentiated instruction and assessment, reflecting both the Wisconsin Model Academic Standards and the Wisconsin Teacher Standards. Students analyze multiple classroom settings to design model learning communities focused on student engagement and learning. They design, evaluate, and use technology to enhance learning environments, and they address the teacher as professional by developing an initial philosophy of education. To provide an opportunity to apply their learning with regard to instructional design, students are assigned a minimum of 20 hours in a field experience in which they work with diverse middle and/or high school learners.

Literacy in Early Childhood
(3 credits)
Students examine the scope of an early childhood literacy curriculum, focusing on emergent literacy, oral language, reading, writing, and literature. Among components integrated in this course are phonics, spelling, and sight vocabulary. Students learn to make sound decisions, teach literacy learning strategies, select appropriate materials, and design developmentally appropriate learning experiences and assessments for the early childhood learner.

Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment
(3 credits)
Prereq. LTM 611 ; LTM 612
Students learn to see the connections between large curricular goals and the assessment of student learning in the classroom. Employing a process called backward design, they identify performances that capture the big outcomes and design both appropriate instruction and meaningful performance assessment using specific criteria. They explore assessment-as-learning, a formative approach that includes criteria, self-assessment, and feedback to guide learning.

Fundamental Concepts of Mathematics 1
(4 credits)

This course, which integrates the learning of mathematics with methods of teaching, is designed for students who are preparing to teach at the elementary school level. Students study the mathematical structures and operations related to sets, whole numbers, integers, rational numbers, and real numbers. They use the properties of these systems to develop algorithms for the operations defined in each of the systems. They explore the use of manipulatives and technology in building understanding of concepts. Through the study of national, state, and local standards, and contemporary mathematics curriculum projects, they learn teaching strategies. They also gain experience with professional practices such as the development of lesson plans, unit plans, and assessment instruments designed for a variety of learning styles. Throughout the course, students evaluate themselves on their ability to analyze and solve problems as well as on their ability to communicate mathematics effectively.

Science and Social Studies in the Elementary Curriculum
(4 credits)
Prereq. LTM 611 ; LTM 612
In this course, students explore methods of teaching science and social studies at the elementary school level. Drawing upon previous experiences in lesson and unit planning, they incorporate science, health, social studies, and technological content knowledge with process skills and assessment strategies. Students design integrated learning experiences based on appropriate frameworks linking science and social studies to other content areas, including art, mathematics, and language arts.

The Learning Organization and Social Change
(3 credits)
Students draw upon a range of disciplines and theories to examine organizational culture, including patterns of leadership, authority, and communication and their impact on the climate of the organization. They analyze case studies of organizational change, identifying sources of success and failure. Critiquing varied approaches in particular settings, they develop proposals for achieving goals for ongoing growth and improvement.

Arts and Movement in the Elementary Curriculum
(2 credits)
Prereq. A 135 or MU 101
Students make meaningful and effective connections among the arts - music, art, dance, and drama - within the integrated elementary curriculum. They develop practical abilities in the integration of the arts and movement across the curriculum and apply teaching and learning theory in the design of developmentally appropriate lessons, the meaningful incorporation of technology, and the use of assessment strategies.

Literacy in Middle Childhood, Early Adolescence, and Adolescence
(4 credits)
Prereq. LTM 611 ; LTM 612
Students study the process, methods, and materials of literacy development in order to facilitate literacy in middle childhood and adolescence, recognizing the range of student needs they may encounter, including those of the non-native speaker of English. In addition, they develop approaches to the integration of language arts across the curriculum. Students learn to interpret standardized assessment information as well as to develop meaningful classroom assessments of literacy.

Portfolio Assessment
(0 credits)

The LTM 640 portfolio assessment demonstrates LTM students' readiness for student teaching. Students prepare a folder that documents their proficiency in the ten Wisconsin Teaching Standards and the Alverno graduate education abilities. The portfolio review process consists of two parts. First, an internal assessor (Alverno faculty member) and an external assessor (administrator, teacher) evaluate the portfolio against established criteria. Second, the assessors conduct an interview with each student in which the student highlights several artifacts, presents and comments on an electronic demonstration of teaching effectiveness, and answers questions on teaching, learning, and assessing in general and on portfolio contents in particular.

Educational Inquiry: Research in Action
(3 credits)
Prereq. AC 613
Students examine the nature of systematic inquiry by using an action research perspective as they address questions related to improvement of their practice. Focusing on the context of learning environments, they explore the assumptions and applications of varied methodological approaches. They develop skills in conceptualizing researchable questions and in designing research projects appropriate for their own professional practice and specific setting.

Student Teaching
(9 credits)
Prereq. LTM 640 ; Praxis II

Student teachers demonstrate the ability to apply their knowledge in the design and implementation of content-area lessons and in the establishment of appropriate relationships with learners that support growth. They develop a portfolio documenting their work and its impact on student learning as well as a professional development plan to guide their growth as beginning teachers. Student teaching is a full-time, full-semester commitment, based on the calendar of the local school.

If it isn't clear by now, Governor Mitch, how right you are about this mumbo-jumbo, perhaps it is time to visit one of these John Dewey Commie Camps to get a firsthand look at the indoctrination of American teacher candidates. Get some firsthand facts so that you can impress upon the people of your state how they would be so much better off with your cutting edge thinking on all matters educational. Who knows--you could be the next Republican Education President. Hard shoes to fill, Governor Mitch, but I think you have it in you.

Retiring Teachers and Brazen Fools

For those who have embraced the TFA/KIPP teacher "education" model, which promises an endless stream of well-intentioned temps "trained" over a 4-week period in 19th Century teaching techniques, there is a new report out by NCTAF that may present reasons to pause if you have not been entirely convinced by the anti-teacher education deformers. From the NYTimes:

Over the next four years, more than a third of the nation’s 3.2 million teachers could retire, depriving classrooms of experienced instructors and straining taxpayer-financed retirement systems, according to a new report.

The problem is aggravated by high attrition among rookie teachers, with one of every three new teachers leaving the profession within five years, a loss of talent that costs school districts millions in recruiting and training expenses, says the report, by the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, a nonprofit research advocacy group.

“The traditional teaching career is collapsing at both ends,” the report says. “Beginners are being driven away” by low pay and frustrating working conditions, and “accomplished veterans who still have much to contribute are being separated from their schools by obsolete retirement systems” that encourage teachers to move from paycheck to pension when they are still in their mid-50s, the report says. . . .

Now with the Dunc's $5 billion ready to hand out to those states willing to embrace the cheap teacher-temp model with its prominent pay-per-score features, you can bet that those teachers who have retirement plans will be eager to get out with their retirements while the getting is good. And those who want to teach, rather than become parrots in testing work camps, will forego the Business Roundtable's opportunity to oversee the stupidification of American children. And the unacknowledged loss of America's best teachers from the testing chain gangs that were formed when Bush came to town will continue, leaving those whose love of the teaching script offers the clearest proof for their lack of fitness to teach. Meanwhile, the poorest children will continue to suffer as the neoliberal reform agenda continues to distract from the problem of poverty that the oligarchs will not address.

But the Dunc has his own preferred solution that you will hear much more of in the coming months as more and more teachers jump ship and more and more benefits and collective bargaining agreements become null and void. It involves the corporate preparation of teachers to teach in the corporate welfare charter schools that the Oligarchy envisions for urban America. At the head of this pack of self-aggrandizing profiteers is, of course, the for-profit, American College of Education, owned by Texas snake oil salesman, Randy Best's Higher Ed Holdings. It will be a teacher preparation devoid of democratic philosophies, history, sociology or developmental issues but, rather, one based on classroom discipline and the gathering and analyzing of test score data.

Students at U Toledo Strike Back: Call for President Jacobs to Resign

Since the Inside Higher Ed piece appeared last week, University of Toledo students have begun to organize the fight the selling off of the UT's College of Education to Randy Best's diploma mill, the American College of Education. See yesterday's blog post for context.

Here is part of the message from a flyer being circulated in Toledo and, well, everywhere. Looks like President Jacobs and CFO Scott Scarborough have stirred up a hornet's nest. Students are mad as hell and they're not going to take it anymore:

Keeping your head down and working towards graduation won’t protect you!

There are very few “conventional students” at UT, many of us are commuters, or part-timers, or returning after years in the workforce. You, whatever your situation, need to take part.

Lloyd Jacobs’ decisions are going to haunt you whether you ignore him or not. If you take action you’re taking your future into your own hands and you have the opportunity to change what is happening.

Jacobs is working to turn the University of Toledo into a diploma mill. This will devalue your degree and make it harder for you to be competitive in the job market or go on to a higher degree. You have worked too hard to have that happen to you without a fight.

Since he was handed the office of the president Lloyd Jacobs has disregarded the will of students, faculty, parents, alumni and even dissenters within his administration in his quest to dismantle the University of Toledo and reform it in a business model. If you try to fix want isn’t broken Lloyd, you break it.

We need an academic as president, someone who values higher education and academic pursuits. Someone who will work hard to raise money and find funding-not just make cuts to every degree but his pet departments. You can make this happen. You have to take action for your future.

. . . .

This University will respond to the students, but only if we refuse to be ignored. Only if we make enough noise that they cannot make a decision without our input.

This won’t be easy. The Board of Trustees loves Lloyd Jacobs, they’re the group that hired him without looking anywhere else and just gave him a raise. But they are the only ones that can remove him. And you as a student are in charge of the decisions of the Board.

Call the Board of Trustees office today and tell them Enough Bullshit, Jacobs Must Quit!

Office of the Board of Trustees
419.530.2814

Send an email to SaveAandS@gmail.com to help organize!