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Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2009 > November > 20 > Entry
Guest column: Overhaul colleges that flunk teacher prep
This commentary is written by Gregory Bernhardt and Thomas J. Lasley II. Bernhardt is dean of the College of Education and Human Service at Wright State University. Lasley is dean of the School of Education and Allied Professions at the University of Dayton.
It’s time for Ohio to get tough with colleges that aren’t making the grade when it comes to preparing future teachers and turning out graduates who know what works in the classroom.
Getting good new teachers in Ohio classrooms is an essential goal. Underperforming institutions, whose graduates show a pattern of failing to get their students to make at least one year of academic growth, should be closed or reconstituted with new leaders, new curriculum and better instruction.
That’s a severe punishment, but a necessary one if Ohio wants its kids to compete against the rest of the world, which is where today’s bar is now set. To make this work, the state will need a system that tracks and compares new teachers and their impact on student test gains over time in such a way that allows the colleges they came from to be fairly compared.
Other states are now beginning to recognize this need. Wisconsin and Texas recently joined Louisiana as the only states with a mechanism for tracking the effectiveness of their teacher-preparation programs.
Ohio, which has moved toward such a system, must join that group.
Problems of funding, individual privacy and a viable testing and data-collection system have slowed progress. The state is still not close to implementing what is needed to assess the impact the state’s teacher-preparation programs have on student learning. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has called for reform of teacher preparation. Critical to his approach is to ensure effective teachers for all classrooms. He wants to measure that, in part, by studying the connection between student achievement and teacher performance.
Duncan says the nation must ensure it has effective teachers — those who know their subject matter, can create a classroom where learning can occur and are committed to a career of professional growth.
At Wright State University and the University of Dayton, we have taken steps to ensure graduates know their disciplinary content well and have the clinical experiences necessary to manage the classrooms they will encounter when they leave school. Both Wright State and UD require their students to begin classroom clinic and field experiences early. They both have a long history of creating critical partnerships with schools that ensure student teachers will have academically rigorous experiences. These experiences are not simple exposure; rather, they focus on learning how to teach content in ways that foster student academic growth.
Both UD and WSU place a premium on recruiting and graduating quality students. The average ACT score for teachers in Ohio is about 21, while at UD, the average is 25. At WSU, students preparing to teach grades 4 through 12 must earn a bachelor’s degree, then spend a year working in a school while earning a master’s degree.
Both institutions also are involved in the Teacher Quality Partnership, an initiative to identify teacher education practices that most effectively promote student academic growth. Both also are part of a national research effort through Stanford University that seeks to create a performance-assessment system for new teachers.
UD and WSU are deeply committed to being part of Ohio’s effort to turn out new teachers who can help kids grow academically.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment | Categories: Education, Guest Columns, Higher Ed
Comments
By Really?
December 3, 2009 10:32 AM | Link to this
Do you really want the state to evaluate teacher prep programs? As a UD graduate, I can safely say that you may be surprised with the results.