This IAE Blog entry is based on the article:

Field, Kelly (9/29/2011).  Education Dept. to Propose New Accountability Gauge for Teacher-Training Programs. Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved 9/29/2011 from http://chronicle.com/article/Education-Dept-to-Propose-New/129220/?sid=pm&utm_source=pm&utm_medium=en.

Quoting from the article:

The Education Department will release a report on Friday calling for new regulations that would tie teacher-training grants to the test scores of the teachers' students.

According to sources familiar with the report, the department wants to hold teachers' colleges accountable for how well their graduates' future students perform on standardized tests. Under its plan, states would be required to report test scores for students taught by graduates of their federally financed teacher-education programs.

...

Mr. Duncan will also call on Congress to enact President Obama's plan to overhaul the Teach Grant program. In his budget for the 2012 fiscal year, Mr. Obama called for replacing the program with a new $185-million Presidential Teaching Fellows grant program for states. The new program would provide states with scholarship money for strong teacher candidates in exchange for better reporting to help determine which teacher-education programs work.

I shudder when I see such ideas. If this plan is enacted, our schools will not only teach to the test, but our teacher education programs will also teacher teachers to teach to the test. The tests, which will be tied to standards such as the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) will dominate our educational system.

 I really have trouble imaging how the leadership of our country can believe that this is a good approach to improving our educational.  (Of course, you might respond by suggesting that the leadership of our country is also playing political brinkmanship, nearly letting our federal government or major parts of it be shut down because needed budgets are not passed. However, I won’t go into that!)

From my point of view, it is highly desirable that students get a good education that helps prepare they for responsible adult life in our rapidly changing world. I have no confidence that the types of tests being used or planned are adequate measures of such a preparation.

As a “small” aside, currently about 21 percent of children in the United States are classified as living in poverty (NCCP, n.d.) We have lots of evidence that growing up in this environment is strongly related to doing poorly in school. I guess Duncan’s idea is that Colleges of Education should educate teachers to deal effectively with students growing up in poverty, because somehow or other it is the teachers’ fault that many children raised in poverty are poor students.

 Of course we could address the issue of poverty more directly. Hmm.

References

NCCP (n.d.). Child poverty.National Center for Children in Poverty. Retrieved 9/29/2011 from http://www.nccp.org/topics/childpoverty.html. Quoting from the Website:

Nearly 15 million children in the United States – 21% of all children – live in families with incomes below the federal poverty level – $22,050 a year for a family of four. Research shows that, on average, families need an income of about twice that level to cover basic expenses. Using this standard, 42% of children live in low-income families.