I think ponderosa is right, in fact, sometimes I feel like Teach For America is trying to trick people into being teachers. Let’s put you in a room with a bunch of kids, teach, and if you are good, maybe you will do it forever. Then again, I’m pretty sure TFA is grounded less in creating lifelong teachers (where other alt. certification programs such as the NYC teaching fellows cater more to that) and instead more focused on creating people who are dedicated to education change. TFA wants everyone to end up like Michelle Rhee, or in a position like hers at least. So when TFA teachers leave the class where do they go? The hope is into a field that supports/changes education for the better. Maybe that is more of the response HFA would be looking for, less shelling out big bucks and lots of time to go to med school but inspiring people to go into public health policy.

I think such graduates, with excellent grades, would do more for the long-term health of the country were they to become teachers. The primary barrier to becoming a doctor is long, complex, and thus expensive training. Unlike ed schools, however, the value of medical schools is not open to debate.

Now, doctors themselves could benefit from some on-the-job nagging. Just appointing someone to the job of encouraging hand washing among medical personnel would do a great deal to improve patients’ health, particularly in hospitals. The Naggers could then investigate hospital kitchens (obesity). In order to improve patients’ health, patients need to be cared for by well-rested medical staffers, doctors, nurses, and orderlies. This calls for a reassessment of staffing decisions. Physician, heal thyself.

I fear he is largely right, and that is a real disgrace.

It may be a disgrace but it’s also a rational response to the situation.

Since teaching skill isn’t valued by the public education system there’s no pay differential that results from graduating from the best ed school in the country versus graduating from any other including the lousiest. Ed schools don’t have to teach teaching so, largely, don’t.

Again, check out edtweak.

Operate for America has “minimized out-of-field doctoring and the use of ‘long-term substitute surgeons.” After years of “nuerosugery being performed by dermatogists” and “multiple cases of cardiac procedures being performed by podiatrist” it is an improvement to staff wards with substitute surgeons with five full weeks of intensive training.

The entire study can be found at edtweak.org.

tim: I’ve posted about it before, but the compensation system for teachers makes it too sacrificial to move around. Many experienced teachers would work in high poverty schools if they knew they could do so without taking a 25K/year pay cut either on their way in, or on their way out when burnout started to get to them.

My ideal ed school would consist mostly of courses that went over the state standards or curriculum IN DEPTH. So, for example, if you were training to be an English teacher, you would study the grammar, rhetoric, poetry, novels and other literature we want our kids to learn, but in a super-thorough way and, of course, going beyond to more advanced level (e.g. learning about the evolution of rhetoric from the ancient Greeks through the Renaissance to today). Part of the assessment for these courses might be to create lesson plans to teach what you’ve just learned –in a way that would be intelligible to kids.

Teacher preparation in America is an embarrassment. Japan trains teachers in a respectable and competent fashion.

I fear he is largely right, and that is a real disgrace.