The other day, when I asked where is the demand for better teachers, I was mainly thinking about college teaching. But what’s really disturbing is to consider whether one might ask the same question about K-12 teaching. Obviously, there are entire departments devoted to training K-12 teachers so I’m not talking about the demand for training versus no training, as with grad students who go on to be professors, but there is a lot of complaining out there in the world about the quality of that training. To be fair, I do research in education policy and teacher labor markets so I probably hear more of such complaining than the average person, but there is no doubt that many people perceive the K-12 teaching force to include both amazing individuals and some major duds. But given that K-12 teaching does require at least a year of very specialized training, how does anyone even get to a K-12 classroom without really knowing how to teach? One reason might be that, other than meeting the basic requirements to be accredited, there isn’t really much incentive for any particular credentialing program to produce great teachers. Given the constant demand for teachers of any quality, most programs do not need to worry too much about placing their graduates (as long as they can pass the appropriate courses and tests), and most applicants to credential programs are more concerned about location, convenience and costs than the whether the program will make them an outstanding teacher. I’m not saying that there aren’t some great programs out there; I’m just saying that there is nothing about the market for teachers that gives less-than-amazing programs any incentive to improve. And as every Econ 101 student learns, when markets do not work, there is often a role for government to improve outcomes…
By now, you may have heard about the biology professor at Louisiana State (Baton Rouge) who was removed from teaching an intro course where "more than 90 percent of the students... were failing or had dropped the class." The majority of the comments on the Inside Higher Ed story about it are supportive of the professor, particularly given that it seems like the administration did not even talk to her about the situation before acting. I tend to fall in the "there's got to be more to the story so I'll reserve judgment" camp but the story definitely struck a nerve with me, partly because I recently spent 30 minutes "debating" with a student about whether the last midterm was "too hard" and the whole conversation was super-frustrating. To give some background: I give three midterms and a cumulative final, plus have clicker points and Aplia assignments that make up about 20% of the final grade. I do not curve individual exams but will cu
Comments
Post a Comment
Comments that contribute to the discussion are always welcome! Please note that spammy comments whose only purpose seems to be to direct traffic to a commercial site will be deleted.