Date sent: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 00:28:19 -0800
From: LindaP (Texas)
Subject: Alliance - Tucker 2

>Subject: Alliance - Tucker 2
>
>The long-held belief in the intrinsic value of a college education is
>beginning to be
>questioned. As college tuitions rise and the competition for state funds
>increases,
>Americans are demanding more proof that higher education is worth the
>expenditure.
>For example, a recent study notes that, on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being
>the highest level of
>proficiency, only 8 percent of college graduates were at level 5 in working
>with documents;
>only 10 percent in working with prose; and only 12 percent in quantitative
>skills. The study
>declares that 56.3 percent of "American-born, four-year-college graduates are
>unable
>consistently to perform simple tasks, such as calculating the change from $3
>after buying a
>60-cent bowl of soup and a $1.95 sandwich. Tasks such as these should not be
>insuperable for people with 16 years of education.''
>The report also excoriates colleges for weeding out students rather than
>cultivating them,
>noting that half fail to earn a degree within five years.
>Negative information like that helped precipitate the crisis in precollegiate
>education a
>dozen years ago. Now, it is eroding confidence in higher education. And the
>doubts are
>likely to multiply because there is no way to determine the academic
>contributions that
>higher education makes to a student, no way to measure the "value added.''
>This has
>provoked calls for a higher-education measurement similar to the National
>Assessment of
>Educational Progress or the National Adult Literacy Survey.
>"If you had [a college-level NAEP], you could really drive not only higher
>education, but a
>K-16 reform effort,'' Ms. Haycock says.
>More than any other count in the reformers' indictment against colleges and
>universities is
>their shortcomings in training teachers for the nation's schools. If
>universities showed the
>same disregard for the education of physicians or lawyers or architects that
>they do for
>teachers, critics charge, their programs would be shut down.
>In a 1991 special Education Week report, Kenneth I. Peatross, the executive
>secretary of
>the Minnesota Board of Teaching, said: "There's a lot of tension about the
>fact that
>teacher preparation is not in tune with practice, that, somehow, preparation
>is not keeping
>abreast of the advances that are being made in teaching and learning; that
>veteran
>teachers are out there floundering around and learning on the job; and that
>teacher
>education is blithely going along preparing people for 1950.'' Despite a lot
>of reform
>rhetoric by education school officials, not much has changed since then.
>A report issued last July by the Education Commission of the States notes
>that most states
>allocate funding to their public college teacher-education programs on a
>per-student basis,
>not on the basis of any relationship to the state's reform goals or
>achievement objectives.
>"Institutions have balked at a closer relationship with the schools because
>of the costs
>and faculty loads involving campus responsibilities,'' says the report, "A
>Shared Vision:
>Policy Recommendations Linking Teacher Education to School Reform.''
>"Hence,'' it says, "many universities hire graduate assistants or part-time
>staff to visit
>student-teachers and work with cooperating teachers, while regular faculty
>teach campus
>classes, do research, and write.''
>John I. Goodlad, a professor of education at the University of Washington,
>has called for a
>"simultaneous renewal'' of teaching and teacher education, with schools and
>colleges
>working hand in hand.
>But the E.C.S. report observes: "Undertaking 'simultaneous renewal' is seen
>as disruptive
>... and too costly. Critics counter by claiming that in most cases teacher
>education
>programs are really 'cash cows' or income producers for the universities.
>College and
>university governing boards and administrators are often unaware of or aloof
>to state
>goals for improving elementary and secondary education.''
>Despite such indifference, in no other area is the fate of school reform more
>directly linked
>to colleges and universities than in teacher preparation. Successful learning
>in the
>elementary and secondary school depends heavily on well-prepared,
>professional
>teachers. By recruiting the best students available and providing them with
>the tools they
>will need to help all children achieve to their highest levels, some
>observers point out,
>higher education would be investing wisely in its own future.
>In fact, what exists are fragmented teacher training programs that have the
>least status of
>any university programs, the least support from the administration, and a
>structure that
>rewards research--much of which is mediocre--not teaching.
>"The place where we're softest,'' says David Imig, the executive director of
>the American
>Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, "is institutional
>policies--changing
>promotion and tenure.''
>Moreover, those promotion and tenure policies reflect how faculty get ahead
>throughout
>the university, leading to tension between research and teaching that calls
>into question
>what aspiring teachers are learning about teaching in their classes in other
>disciplines.
>What is needed, says J. Ivan Legg, the provost at Memphis State University,
>is not the
>abolition of tenure, which he says allows professors to excel and be
>creative, but rather a
>refocusing of the faculty on teaching and learning. He sees the need to stem
>the
>proliferation of substandard research that tends to flow not only from the
>majority of
>education schools but from other areas of the academy as well.
>"We're seeing too much second-class research published in second-class
>journals that will
>never get read,'' the provost says. "We need to keep that first level of
>research, but also
>give rewards for academic involvement in K-12.''
>Reflecting the status of teacher education on the nation's campuses, Arthur
>Wise, the
>president of the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education,
>points out that
>only about 500 of the nearly 1,300 education schools are willing to be
>scrutinized
>according to NCATE's high standards.
>Those standards focus on such areas as faculty, resources, what students are
>taught, the
>relationship between what they are taught and the world of practice, and what
>and how
>students learn.
>"That's one barometer of the readiness of that world to change,'' Wise says.
>Another will come this year, when the new president of the A.A.C.T.E.,
>Richard
>Wisniewski, the dean of the college of education at the University of
>Tennessee at
>Knoxville, will challenge its members to become accredited by NCATE or have
>their status
>reduced to associate members. Such a challenge is the best way to bring
>education
>schools closer to the teaching front lines, Wisniewski said in a recent
>address to the
>A.A.C.T.E.
>Wise also notes that education schools are the only professional schools in
>which
>national accreditation is optional. Similarly, most states provide alternate
>routes to
>licensure that enable people to enter the classroom who have never completed
>teacher
>education programs. The same would never be true for doctors or lawyers.
>"I think this is both a product and a symbol of the low status of teacher
>education in this
>country,'' he says.
>Even education schools that have moved to improve the quality of their
>programs often
>fail to calibrate them to the changes that are taking place in public
>schools.
>Michael Kirst, a Stanford University professor of education, says that a
>recent survey
>conducted by his department found that none of the five teacher education
>programs
>studied in California, including Stanford's, was training new teachers
>according to the state
>curricular frameworks that have been mandated in California's elementary and
>secondary
>schools.
>"It means that higher education pours out teachers who are trained to teach
>the old ways
>and the same students when we're trying to push new ways of teaching and the
>teaching
>of a diverse population of students,'' Mr. Kirst says.
>What makes higher education's disregard of school reform especially puzzling
>is that
>colleges and universities have a strong vested interest in the success of
>K-12 students:
>Well more than half of America's high school graduates eventually become
>college
>students.
>For years, professors and administrators have complained about the
>preparation level of
>incoming college students. Organizations representing colleges and
>universities have
>issued reports on the increasing need for remediation in college and the high
>cost of
>providing it. State lawmakers have questioned the efficiency of providing
>duplicate
>courses on two levels.
>But beyond the rhetoric, there has been little action. To prove that they
>recognize their
>self-interest, their obligation to community, and their investment in the
>public trust, college
>officials point to individual collaborations and partnerships that dot the
>higher-education
>landscape: A school of education has adopted a local high school; a
>distinguished science
>professor is consulting with science teachers in the public schools; the
>academic vice
>president's office sponsors a summer institute that brings high school
>students to campus
>for a weeklong stay.