Results of Poor Teacher Training

A couple of articles caught my eye recently. I've probably mentioned in previous posts that the greatest reason for the failure of American public education is poor teacher preparation. Teachers are not taught to teach correctly.

So students don't learn.

So standards are lowered.

So the next generation of teachers knows less than their predecessors.

So their training has to be dumbed down.

So students learn even less.

So standards are lowered.

So the next generation . . .

This became evident to me years ago when it was decided that spelling wasn't important. Teachers were instructed to reduce emphasis on proper spelling. On the State of Michigan's M-Step test, spelling doesn't matter on the essay portion of the test. Neither does grammar, because that too, along with punctuation no longer matters. Students shouldn't get bogged down in those non-essentials. They should merely express themselves.

There is no consideration for the fact that due to lack of writing mechanics, it's extremely difficult to understand what many students write. In some cases, the day after they wrote it, some students can't even understand what they wrote. And generally, these students can't understand what they read out of a grade-level text because the punctuation, which helps establish meaning is not read. They haven't learned it, so it has no meaning to them. For them, those commas, periods, question marks, and quotation marks don't exist.

Reading, writing, and spelling all go together. They are the elements of literacy. For some students, all three skills are missing.

Then there is the effect on school discipline. There are a lot of really bright students, who, because they were never taught in the way they need in order to learn, can't read. They are frustrated, and they act out. It gets worse as they get older and fall further behind every year. This doesn't apply to all students who are discipline problems, but I believe it applies to a large portion.

And education schools are going more and more in the direction of being the problem instead of the solution.

To anyone acquainted with the history and quality of American ed schools, this should come as no surprise. Education schools have long been notorious for two mutually reinforcing characteristics: ideological orthodoxy and low academic standards. As early as 1969, Theodore Sizer and Walter Powell hoped that “ruthless honesty” would do some good when they complained that at far too many ed schools, the prevailing climate was “hardly conducive to open inquiry.” “Study, reflection, debate, careful reading, even, yes, serious thinking, is often conspicuous by its absence,” they continued. “Un-intellectualism—not anti-intellectualism, as this assumes malice—is all too prevalent.” Sizer and Powell ought to have known: At the time they were dean and associate dean, respectively, of the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

More than three decades later, a comprehensive, four-year study of ed schools headed by a former president of Teachers College, Arthur Levine, found that the majority of educational-administration programs “range from inadequate to appalling, even at some of the country’s leading universities.” Though there were notable exceptions, programs for teaching were described as being, in the main, weak and mediocre. Education researchers seemed unable to achieve even “minimum agreement” about “acceptable research practice,” with the result that there are “no base standards and no quality floor.” Even among ed school faculty members and deans, the study found a broad and despairing recognition that ed school training was frequently “subjective, obscure, faddish, … inbred, and politically correct.”

A study from 2004, “Preparing Tomorrow’s Teachers,” examined the course syllabi used in the nation’s top-rated ed schools and found with distressing regularity one-sided curricula in which complex issues were trivialized and narrow ideological viewpoints treated as settled fact. Un-intellectualism seemed to have given way to anti-intellectualism: “The foundations and methods courses we reviewed suggest that faculty at most of these schools are often trying to teach a particular ideology—that traditional knowledge is repressive by its very nature—without directing their students to any substantial readings that question the educational implications of this view,” concluded the study’s authors, David Steiner, now executive director of the Institute for Education Policy at the Johns Hopkins University, and an associate, Susan Rozen.

And speaking of school discipline:

Valley Oak Middle School teachers were asked to answer two questions about the school's climate and culture.

Overwhelmingly, the teachers said the school's discipline model is broken.  

At a special meeting Thursday night, Visalia Unified School District teachers resoundingly agreed, saying there is a "crisis" in classrooms across the city. 

Parents backed them up on almost every concern. 

Just one teacher spoke in favor of the current discipline model. 

Like many campuses in California, Visalia Unified School District follows the Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports system when students misbehave or act out.

With PBIS, students are placed in intervention programs, counseling, and alternative programs before a suspension or expulsion is recommended. Teachers say it's rare that a student ever receives support to address their issues. 

In most cases, they're sent back to class after a brief trip to the office. In some instances, teachers say they are held to answer for why they sent the student, rather than dealing with it themselves. 

Visalia Unified began adopting the model in 2013. Teachers had high hopes. They've been met with disappointment. 

As incidents on campuses have worsened, teachers and parents are pushing back.

We implemented "Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports" or PBIS as it is known, at my school when the last principal I worked under came in. I was even one of the "fortunate" PBIS committee members. We went to regular off-site meetings throughout the year for four or five years, first to learn to implement PBIS, then to "recharge" PBIS, because wouldn't you know, it just never worked as advertised. Inbetween the offsite meetings, we had all day committee meetings in school, in which we collected and aggregated data on students' misbehaviors, came up with positive non-confrontational strategies to deal with students who misbehaved, wrote scripts to teach students (even fourth and fifth graders) proper behavior in all areas of the school, and decide on rewards for students who kept their noses clean.

We also received many binders full of many books and many papers throughout the years of offsite meetings that sat on shelves and in closets when we returned from these meetings. It was all a waste. The one aspect that wasn't considered and that is never considered is proper instruction so that students actually learn what they are in school to learn. These children are not stupid, but constant failure makes them think that they are. So they act out.

How difficult is that to understand?

At some point, a new discipline system will replace the failed PBIS. It too, will fail.