Are Teachers Prepared? A New Test Could Be the Way to Find Out

For many occupations, there is at least one overarching test that gives aspiring professionals the credentials to work in their respective fields. No matter the level of education received, if a lawyer doesn’t pass the bar exam, he cannot practice law.

In December, CNN published an article that discussed a report advocating an entry exam for all teacher candidates, like the bar exam taken by aspiring lawyers, issued by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT).

The AFT report, titled “Raising the Bar: Aligning and Elevating Teacher Preparation and the Teaching Profession,” included a statement by AFT president Randi Weingarten:

“We must do away with a common rite of passage, whereby newly minted teachers are tossed the keys to their classrooms, expected to figure things out, and left to see if they (and their students) sink or swim. Such a haphazard approach to the complex and crucial enterprise of educating children is wholly inadequate. It’s unfair to both students and teachers, who want and need to be well prepared to teach from their first day on the job. At a time when we are raising the standards for students through the Common Core State Standards, we must do the same for teachers.”

The report recommends that the exam be multidimensional and include subject knowledge as well as pedagogical knowledge. In other words, in addition to having to know the subject they teach, teachers would have to demonstrate that they had the qualities to be “caring, competent and confident.”

The test, which would be required of all future teachers nationwide, would be given to candidates regardless of whether they enter the profession through traditional means or “an alternative route.”

What do you think? If an exam like this were to exist, would it make a major impact on the preparedness of teachers in classrooms?

More Than a Paycheck: Teaching in New Orleans

What would you do if your class sized burgeoned to 45 and continued to grow and shrink as hurricane victims came and went? What would you do when you have a class full of students who may not have eaten that morning? What is your motivation?

For Katie Fone, a 3rd grade teacher in New Orleans, Louisiana, teaching was more than collecting a paycheck. We hope you enjoy this video about a teacher whose position is not just a job, but a passion.

Application to Be College and Career Ready?

Hi, readers. It's Jared Heath, here, and I came across something very . . . peculiar? odd? disturbing, even? . . . from a school district implementing the Common Core Standards.

It's an application to receive a College and Career Ready diploma, much like an honors, AP, or IB diploma. You can read the application here (and this is the article that describes the classifications and the "College Readiness Benchmark Scores").

Image courtesy of www.ucdthetatau.org

Here's my confusion: why are districts now preparing to put a "college and career ready" stamp on a diploma? Does a diploma not already indicate (in theory, anyway) that a student is college and career ready? If we are now indicating that a "special" group of students is college and career ready, then what does that mean about the others without that stamp--that they turned 18 and got kicked out?

And if we make college and career ready a classification, then that does nothing to encourage those students who aren't currently performing well to suddenly up the ante. What it comes down to is that college and career readiness is not the privilege of the elite few; it is the province of every child.

I find it peculiar, odd, and even a bit disturbing that "college and career readiness" is not seen as inherent in every class period, every homework assignment, and certainly every diploma. That's not just missing the boat--that's more like missing the entire ocean.

Apply to be college and career ready? Come on. Common Core Standards or not, being prepared for what comes after high school is the very reason that every student walks into a classroom, and it's why you and I do what we do.

Of course we've heard--and probably said--the opposite before. "100% is impossible." "What about the kids with lower IQs and the children in special ed classes?" "I'll never get 100% to pass my classes if they don't want to." But teachers aren't there to babysit these students. You're there to teach them. To prepare them. To make them ready. And no, they won't all go on to become Rhodes scholars, but that's not what anyone is asking for, is it?

I realize this has been a rather passionate post, and you may not agree--I'd love to hear where you stand on the issue. Each of you educators deserves a voice in this issue that is sweeping the United States. Let's sound off in the comments!

New Research Gives Insight to Teacher Training

The academic progress of students is linked directly to where their teachers attended college.

Not to say that if a teacher went to a low-ranking school that they couldn’t or wouldn’t be successful in the classroom, but rather that all teacher training is not created equal. According to the director of the University of Washington Center for Education Data & Research, Dan Goldhaber, the new research revealing that academic progress of public-school students can be traced, in part, to where teachers went to college is just the first step toward determining what kind of training — not where the training occurred — best prepares teachers for excellence in the classroom.

Washington state schools are among the first to see which teacher-training programs seem to result in the best student test scores, but 35 states now have the means to do similar research, according to the Data Quality Campaign, a national organization formed by education and business groups to track state progress on collecting data about students and schools.

Is the future of teacher training on its way up?

To read the full article, click here.