ABCTE

I am rapidly becoming a tweenteacher reader based on excellent blogs like this one on technology in the classroom (the graphic is worth the look). It still seems pathetic that education is the one area that has not benefited from technology. In any other industry, when there is shortage of a critical resource (i.e. great teachers), technology creates efficiencies that allow us to fully leverage that resource.

Great article about the shortage of math and science teachers even affecting suburban schools now. These are schools that normally have a waiting list for jobs and now they can't find math and science teachers. Why is that?

Two articles this week on education research with no real winner or loser in either. Shocking. The first is the result of an exhaustive study of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. Ed Week says that the results show that “National Board Teachers found to be Effective”. Wow. Not exactly a resounding victory.

If you have not seen Flypaper over at Fordham – they have a lot of posts on their blog. They had a recent post about a study that will appear soon that says that teacher testing deters good people from becoming teachers. I posted the following response on their blog:

I have a second blog. It has the same content with one exception - the other blog has my running tally of the best restaurants in state capitals. I have now been to 28 different state capitals in the last 2 ½ years and had some pretty great food. I highly recommend Leo’s BBQ in Oklahoma City if you are ever there and save room for the amazing cake at the end. So enjoy this list and provide comments if you wish.

Education next has a great article on transforming schools. The authors describe the current systems in historical context as organizations invest in innovation/technology and see no return on that investment. Schools everywhere are experiencing this and it is because we are trying to “cram innovation into the existing operating model” which never results in improvements.

Not so shocking revelation from the Cleveland Plain Dealer on colleges of education. To me, it is amazing that this issue has not outraged more parents and students. (Note that there are always exceptions and there are many schools working to improve and all people who generalize are jerks). We do not have a lot of exceptional Education schools in the US and we cannot have a world class teaching workforce if we aren’t more selective of who gets in the classroom.

I received a great comment from tweenteacher on my recent post on alternative certification. She makes a very strong point about the quality of the courses at her Ed school and the fact that her on the job training is what really helped her succeed. During legislative committee hearings this year, I also heard that some of the courses teachers are forced to take have no value.

The Missouri Legislative session ended last Friday. It was not a great session. Only 147 bills passed out of 1,954 filed. That means they only passed 7.5% of the bills that were filed and the ABCTE bill was one of them. Pretty amazing and our thanks goes out to the Missouri Chamber, some outstanding legislators plus Kent Gaines and Nikki Strong who helped us get this done.

There is a great report on alternative teacher certification from the Center for American Progress. They get many things right in this article and are pushing lawmakers/decision-makres to think outside the university in order to get the numbers of teachers we need in this country.