Early-Education Teachers Need Better Training

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Education Week:  Commentary Stevens, K. B. (2015). Early-education teachers need better training. Education Week. Online: https://www.aei.org/articles/early-education-teachers-need-better-training/ “Conventional teacher training comes with a lot of baggage, and relying on it to prepare early educators would be a mistake.” “A 2011 Thomas B. Fordham Institute study by Steve Farkas and Ann Duffett found that half of all education professors themselves think that “‘teacher education programs often fail to prepare teachers for the challenges of teaching in the real world.” That … Read More

Steps you can take

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Options for Parent and Citizen Action A school’s scores reflect your child’s risk of success or failure. At some schools, 90% or more of students have mastered reading by grade 3 and only 10% have not.  The national average, however, is around 33%.  Schools with a low percentage of proficient third grade readers will have a low percentage of proficient students in other grades and subjects. 1.  If it appears that your child is among those who are … Read More

States Compared to International Standards

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Phillips and AIR correctly argue that weak state standards serve to create a false sense of security about state educational outcomes.  In most states, school outcomes are distressingly weak compared to national and international standards.  In the past, the U. S. led international rankings. In recent decades, however, other countries have moved ahead despite American school reforms. Whether these facts argue for the nationwide adoption of the Common Core, however, is another issue.   The National Assessment of Educational … Read More

21st-Century Teacher Education

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Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education By almost any standard, many if not most of the nation’s 1,450 schools, colleges, and departments of education are doing a mediocre job of preparing teachers for the realities of the 21st-century classroom,” and “America’s university-based teacher preparation programs need revolutionary change, not evolutionary thinking. http://educationnext.org/21st-century-teacher-education/

Training our future teachers: Classroom management

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This report examines traditional teacher preparation in classroom management, which is a struggle for many teachers, especially new ones. It studies over 100 programs, both elementary and secondary, graduate and undergraduate. The report identifies the classroom management strategies that garner the strongest research support and looks at the extent to which programs teach and offer practice in these strategies in instructional and clinical coursework, as well as in student teaching. National Council on Teacher Quality (2013) https://www.nctq.org/dmsView/Future_Teachers_Classroom_Management_NCTQ_Report

Learning Requires More than Play

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Success in school requires schoolwork.  Ask anyone who has succeeded. Parents, teachers, and all others who work with young people can make a huge contribution to both their educational success and their lifelong habits by teaching them to put school work before pleasure.  The alternative of permitting young people to be irresponsible in matters such as schoolwork and then expecting them to become self-disciplined adults is utterly unrealistic. Stone (2004) https://education-consumers.org/pdf/ECF_LearningRequiresMore.pdf

Developmentalism: An Obscure but Pervasive Restriction on Educational Improvement

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Despite continuing criticism of public education, experimentally demonstrated and field tested teaching methods have been ignored, rejected, and abandoned. Instead of a stable consensus regarding best teaching practices, there seems only an unending succession of innovations. A longstanding educational doctrine called “developmentalism” appears to underlie this anomalous state of affairs. Stone (1996) https://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/epaa/article/view/631

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