It is with concern that I write about the Gates influence on the University of Michigan’s College of Education and the new program called TeachingWorks. The Gates Foundation is giving $6.8 million to the U of M to influence how they will transform teacher preparation. The Helmsley Charitable Trust Grant also provided $1.1 million. This program will affect how teachers are made in universities across the country.
Valerie Strauss had an interesting piece by Kenneth Zeichner, a professor in teacher education at the University of Washington at Seattle, indicating that the new Every Student Succeeds Act has provisions to primarily support non-traditional, non-university programs such as those funded by venture philanthropists. Many of us see these programs rapidly popping up in colleges and school districts near where we live.
Both parents and educators should be concerned about TeachingWorks. It is taking place in a major university that once had a dynamic teacher education program, it focuses on novices, and it will affect the kind of teachers children will get for years to come.
They are using the worn out excuse that teachers are retiring, so they have to make teachers fast, but there has been a push by groups like The New Teacher Project, and others, to drive veteran teachers out of the classroom for years.
TeachingWorks is dancing the cha cha with Teach for America, Teach First (England) and the Relay Graduate School of Education, to name a few, claiming that teacher preparation failed in the past. These are all non-traditional teaching groups.
I never attended the U of M—I attended Central Michigan University a few hours away. But the professors that once taught there, in the area of special education, highly influenced my outlook on teaching, especially when I was a beginning teacher in the ’70s.
So when I watch great changes to, what I consider one of the most elite and best universities when it comes to teacher education, it gives me pause and makes me suspicious and sad.
First, I am trying to understand what the new beginning teacher program at the University of Michigan will actually teach beginning teachers. Like most corporate inspired programs, it seems unclear. I worry the program doesn’t build on past knowledge.
This is especially true in the area of reading and disabilities.
You know Common Core State Standards are going to be at the heart of everything—why else would the Gates Foundation fund this program? Data and assessment will rule.
True to what most Gatesian programs involve, TeachingWorks overuses jargon. The word “leverage” is used a lot, though it doesn’t tell you much about program details.
- They leverage practice.
- They have a commitment to a lever for justice.
- They have high leverage educational practices.
- And they promote high leverage practice and instruction.
They seem critical of coursework. But how many other real professions ignore coursework and go straight to practice? I doubt you can think of one.
Teacher practice experiences are important, especially when future teachers get to observe credentialed veteran teachers who are real teachers. But the heavy emphasis on practice with videos and journal reading seems incomplete.
Here is what really bugs me about the University of Michigan’s new teacher training. I am remembering distinguished U of M professors who influenced teacher education in the past. TeachingWorks is an insult to them.
I own a great book, Conflict in the Classroom: The Education of Children with Problems, co-written and first published in 1965 by U of M professor William C. Morse. William M. Cruickshank, also once a U of M professor, has too many books to list but, like Morse, was a giant when it came to teacher preparation concerning perceptual disabilities and brain damage in children. Fritz Redl’s career began at both the U of M and the University of Chicago. He is known for psychoeducation and his work with residential care and troubled teens. Ralph D. Rabinovitch M.D., who was an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the U of M, was well-known for his work in reading. He often reported his research findings to the Orton Society. How many parents familiar with dyslexia praise the multi-sensory Orton-Gillingham approach to teaching reading?
These are just a few of the wonderful past professors who helped prepare future teachers.
Great professions build on the good stuff done in the past. I don’t see that happening at the University of Michigan. I sure don’t see this program as a good example for other universities to emulate. I see teacher education becoming more corporatized.
RIP University of Michigan Wolverines teacher education—I only knew you from afar, but I’m glad I knew you when…I hope someday you will make good teachers again.
We have many ARL teachers at our school right now. They are struggling with classroom management and others (myself included) have had to come and intervene. And this is for primary classes. A teacher is not made over night or out of one mold. I wish these corporate type would quit thinking that this is the way to run education. I know that Nevada is finding out its not!
Rhonda, your story is not unique. It is a well-known fact that Teach for America novices often rely on veteran teachers for assistance, and they get the help from them, because that’s what teachers do.
But don’t you wonder what will happen when the REAL teachers are all gone?
Thank you for this comment. Great point!
ARL = Alternative Route to Licensure
Check! Thank you, Lisa!
Bill Morse was a great educator and one personable gentlemen. Bill Gates is not. Educators can not be fast tracked. I would be interested in plans. We are running out of good teachers. Make teaching the profession it once was, not just testing. Uof M was always theory based. EMU was more hands on and practical. I think Uof M is going in the wrong direction.
Thank you for your comment, Jim. Here is what TeachingWorks means by “leveraging skills,” but I don’t see anything different other than a lot of coaching is done online.
http://www.teachingworks.org/work-of-teaching/high-leverage-practices
Exactly why is Michigan bowing to the almighty dollar instead of God Almighty?…. Bout time a few real humans better stand up in the ranks, isn’t it?…. Or will we watch another state bend to the “commonality” of the manmade humdrums of the money hounds?…. Maybe they can go read a book, I heard a title called ‘unlikable’ ….myself I’ll stick to The Bible for my main education…..whatever blows your skirt…or so they say…..bet it’ll be cold in Michigan this year….:)
Michigan has problems with education now for a lot of reasons. Thanks for your comment, Dawn.
For years we hear that we should improve the performance of our students since other nations top our scores globally. So, in response, instead of improving our programs, we do everything to decrease funding, and weaken the skills of our teachers. We will reap what we sow. Keep bowing to those dollars!
The Principal of MLK high school in Detroit invited me to a Parent, student meeting for failing freshmen.
So I got to see people yelling that the parents to teach their kids the addition tables and the multiplication tables.
The fact is that the theoretically based Ed schools have abandoned rote learning, and commercial courses. And this has been a huge disaster for America… its the lower grades where the problem lives… the teacher telling me when I said that she ought to be drilling the kids on their math facts… “Why Noooooh Mr. Deekins, that’s your responsibility! We teach them how to think!” Horses!! Tell me about the unwed mother scrambling to feed her kids… does she have time to do that?
It is the Teacher’s responsibility!!! Kumon works because of it’s design!
Look at all those fashionable buzz words worn to death.
Acronyms upon Acronyms beyond belief of various groups and so called methods.
How about fine penmanship?
One of my cohorts was raised in Japan and he commented that I would be stunned by how much rote memory work there is.
When are we going to nail down the curricula? And demand the work be learned and practiced?