Sherman Dorn

Duncan's talk at Teachers College: first impressions

Some quick impressions of the text of Arne Duncan's speech at Teachers College today: 

Historical quibble: Duncan said he was speaking at a place where "giants like John Dewey played such a formative role." No, he didn't, or at least not at Teachers College. When Dewey moved from Chicago to Columbia, he moved from education to philosophy, which is south of 120th Street. At Teachers College at the time, Edward Thorndike was far more influential. And after Dewey left Chicago, Charles Judd ruled the roost there. Correction to the quibble: In comments, Aaron Pallas points out that Duncan's speech was sponsored by Teachers College but held in a lecture hall south of 120th St. (i.e., on the Columbia side of the Academic Gorge of the Upper West Side). I stand corrected.  Or I blog corrected.

Right: Duncan is correct that teacher education in the U.S. is currently inadequate. Duncan is correct that colleges of education do not teach everything that teachers need, and the reports he hears (about the inadequacy of preparation for classroom management and use of student performance information to improve instruction) is consistent with plenty of other information.

Wrong: Duncan wrongly implies that teacher education can easily fill the holes that teachers see from the classroom. Many years ago, I remember seeing the surveys for one absolutely solid program that taught about behavior management and using student performance data in a rigorous manner, and the primary complaints of alumni/ae was ... that the program didn't prepare them adequately in classroom management. On some things there is no substitute for experience, I suspect. 

Right: Duncan argues that teacher education programs (and states) have not looked sufficiently to what happens with their graduates and the students of their graduates. He points in contrast to Louisiana's longitudinal analysis of teacher preparation programs, and he is right to do so. In contrast with all sorts of self-aggrandizing projects, George Noell has built a team whose reporting is relatively careful with methods and conclusions.

Wrong: Duncan baldly claims that he knows what good teacher education looks like.  Dear Secretary Duncan: don't you remember the other part of the speech where you said that we don't look sufficiently at outcomes? Either we need to look at data carefully to figure out what works and what doesn't, or we know everything right now. I suspect that we know plenty of stuff that does not work, but that doesn't say much about the inevitable tradeoffs--whether it's more important to put resources into giving teachers detailed assessment classes or putting principal and specialist candidates through those classes, whether it's more important to make teacher-ed students spend their entire last year in schools (as happens with one of the programs Duncan praises), or make them spend more time learning content. By highlighting and praising a few current fads in teacher education, Duncan is falling into the same pattern he criticizes schools of education for. 

Right: Duncan did not try to point fingers in politically-convenient directions. He did not try to claim that all teacher-ed programs are alike in content or structure. In contrast to Arthur Levine's semi-ahistorical report, Duncan did not claim that a major problem somehow lies with those of us on the margins of teacher education (as if all colleges of education are run by philosophers and historians). He correctly pointed to the institutional environment within which teacher-education programs operate:

It is far too simple to blame colleges of education for the slow pace of reform. In fact, universities, states, and the federal government have all impeded reform in a variety of ways.

Minor quibble here: One could legitimately claim that colleges of education have been on the forefront of reform plenty of times in the past century, sometimes but not always on the side of  improving education. See my note above about Dewey, Thorndike, and Judd. And Diane Ravitch is correct about Teachers College in one very important way: William Bagley was on the right side in the early 20th century, against the conventional-wisdom of the day about reform. 

But the reasons why elite schools of education headed in the wrong direction at the time fits with Duncan's institutional context: for universities, the easiest money in the early 20th century was in collecting school administrators and administrator wannabes into graduate programs, at the beginning of a trend that no one who reads Duncan's speech text should be surprised about: for decades, education and chemistry regularly vied for the highest number of doctorates granted in the country. 

I teach at a college of education, one of the larger ones in the country. At first blush, Duncan's criticism strikes me on the whole as reasonable, and far more reasonable than the more venomous attacks I've seen before. I would love to trade the double standards and incredible micromanagement of programs we currently experience in our state (and I could tell tales of some of the idiocies we experienced in our last joint state-NCATE review--and this comes from one of the faculty members who had relatively little time sucked away for this) for a requirement to pay attention to what happens to our graduates and their students after they leave us.