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Illinois School Board Journal
March-April 1999

Educating educators

By Debi S. Edmund

You cannot pick up a newspaper or magazine, or turn on a radio or TV talk show, without getting this chilling message: Teachers are often incompetent to teach in today's classrooms. Part of the problem, according to by-now-conventional wisdom, is that teacher education programs themselves are inadequate -- turning out poorly trained teachers who are ill-prepared to cope with the changing needs of students. Meanwhile, momentum continues for imposing tougher standards on the teaching profession. The Illinois State Board of Education has adopted a new teacher certification system.

Is there any truth to the allegations of teacher incompetence? And what impact would tougher standards have on teacher education programs? Administrators at three university teacher education programs were asked for their thoughts on teacher preparation and standards. They include: Sally Pancrazio, dean of the College of Education at Illinois State University and chair of the university's Council of Teacher Education; Mary Polite, associate dean of academic programs at the School of Education at Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville; and David R. Taylor, dean of the College of Education and Human Services at Western Illinois University. Their consensus: While there's always room for improvement, both teachers and teacher education programs do a better job than their critics give them credit for. Here is a summary of their thoughts.

What are universities doing to make sure teacher candidates meet the Illinois Teaching Standards adopted by the State Board of Education?

Pancrazio: Illinois State University has already committed to the INTASC [Interstate New Teacher Assessment Support Consortium] standards established at the national level for beginning teachers. The Illinois Teaching Standards incorporate the INTASC standards. We at Illinois have made a commitment to establishing Illinois Teaching Standards. Our faculty were learning about what several states who were far ahead of Illinois were already doing in this area. Our programs are committed to meeting those standards as part of state approval, and as a part of national accreditation. We are already experimenting with various modes of assessment in our programs.

Polite: The teacher and administrator standards were aligned with the NCATE [National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education] standards, so in meeting NCATE, we can meet the new state teacher standards.

Taylor: We are an NCATE accredited school. We just received our accreditation, and it's a standard state model. All our students have to demonstrate that they can meet those standards. So it's infused throughout the entire program. Students know what those standards are. They have to meet those standards, or they're not recommended for certification.

What are your thoughts on Education Secretary Riley's proposal to create a national teacher licensing system?

Pancrazio: To the extent that a national teacher licensing system would reflect the highest professional standards that we can expect for and from teachers, and teacher education programs, I would be fully supportive. If, however, the teacher licensing system was just another set of bureaucratic, lowest common denominator standards, I would be opposed. Having a national, rather than federal, set of standards that are comparable across states would certainly facilitate portability and mobility, would assure that the quality of a candidate was not a function of the institution or the state in which that candidate was prepared.

A national system would have to represent the very highest quality of standards with appropriate assessments associated with them. Conceptually, I would be interested in hearing further discussions of it. The problem with having 51 different licensing systems that are state-specific is that it lacks rationality -- it lacks agreement on what is absolutely essential for stating what the teacher's performance ought to be. The quality of teaching clearly is a national interest, not merely a state interest. The standards must be high. They must be agreed upon across systems.

Polite: I prefer local autonomy and control of certification standards. We are an NCATE institution, which lets us know that we are in line with what professional associations say nationally about what teachers need in various areas. I would prefer that approach to a national license.

Taylor: I think that if the federal government would pay less attention to testing, we'd all be a lot better off. We already do that type of testing here in Illinois. I dare say Illinois standards are as good, if not better than, any federal standard we'll see, for the simple reason that you tend to put the standard at its lowest common denominator. I'd rather see the federal government do what Illinois is doing, which is to match up the state standards with our accrediting agency, which is the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education. I'm not sure a federal unfunded mandate will do anything to really help. It might help some of the states that are at the bottom of the barrel, but I don't see it having a very positive effect on the state of Illinois.

What are teacher colleges doing to help teachers keep up with changing needs -- for example, technology and the increasing diversity of today's students?

Pancrazio: We have identified technology competencies or expectations that all beginning teachers should have. We have been informed as to those standards by work at the state level as well as the national level. Teachers leaving teacher ed programs must be technologically literate. We have also established a task force designing a master's degree for instructional technology. We have signaled the Illinois Board of Higher Education that we are designing a curriculum in that area at the graduate level.

Preparing teachers for the increasing diversity of students is a very critical problem here in Illinois. Demographics tell us that our classrooms in K-12 schools are in fact becoming more diverse in terms of linguistic differences, ethnic differences, as well as children with a variety of disabilities. We have an absolute and total commitment to being sensitive and responding with respect to those issues. For us, this means incorporating multicultural, linguistic, disability concerns in courses that all of our students take. It also means providing opportunities for white students to teach with, work with and bond with children who are not white, and for our nonwhite teachers to have experiences working with white students.

We need to develop a talent pool to begin identifying students who can consider teaching as a profession, so that we have students in the pipeline who represent all these diversities. We need to build that talent pool at a very early age. Obviously, as we expand responsibilities for teachers and for professionalizing what teachers do, we must compensate them appropriately.

Polite: Part of what we've done is try to use the ISTE standards and the national technology standards that the state is now looking at for both on-campus and field experience. Our requirements for our students include on-line assessment of those technology standards, and some of our programs are piloting on-line portfolios for students who are in the process of developing and experimenting with different ways that technology can be used as a tool for teacher education.

In coping with increasing diversity of students in classrooms, I think part of it is to make sure that we're doing a good job in teacher preparation, including a background on special needs and at-risk learners. That occurs not only in terms of course work, but in making sure that students have field placements in settings that have a diverse student population.

Taylor: Are teachers prepared to go into the diverse classrooms of today? I don't think we're doing as good a job as we need to be doing. We need to do a lot more, because the classrooms of today are increasingly diverse, but we also have to make certain that our teacher candidates are flexible enough to know how to deal with the issues that are facing teachers today. There's a world of difference from when I started teaching. In my day you had a discipline problem in the classroom if you caught a kid chewing gum. Today, it's a whole different ballgame. So we need to continue to look at ways to improve classroom management techniques. We certainly need to teach our teachers how to more clearly communicate with parents and the public as to what we're doing in the classroom and why we're doing certain things.

As far as technology is concerned, at Western, we've focused on that issue for the last 12 years. We have had a Star Schools grant from the U.S. Department of Education to infuse technology into the teacher preparation program. We've also received significant amounts of money from the Ameritech corporation to allow our students to learn how to use technology as a tool for teaching. So we're way out in front of the pack on that one. I think we're doing a better than adequate job.

How would you respond to allegations -- in the news media and elsewhere -- that teachers are incompetent and ill-prepared to teach in today's classrooms?

Pancrazio: I think that the media criticism is true in some cases, but not in the majority of cases. I look at the pass rates on the state tests, and there is a small percent that do not pass the basic skills test, but clearly the majority do. I looked at the number of teachers, for example, in Chicago, who had gotten notices that they would not be rehired. In a school district that has, I believe, at least 30,000 teachers, that number was very small -- 150 or something like that. That is a very small number of teachers who have been judged in a variety of environments who have not been competent.

So to some extent, while the media criticism is fair for certain individuals, it is not fair to the profession or to the majority of teachers. And I think the data bear that out. Nevertheless, I believe that we in teacher education must do more to assure that those who are entering teaching meet the highest professional standards, that our programs meet the highest professional standards.

Polite: I'm not interested in spending my time or my effort and energy trying to convince people who don't want to be convinced about quality in terms of teacher candidates. I'm very proud of the people in my profession. The critics obviously don't know teachers. They don't know the rigor of teacher education programs or the requirements of teachers for continuing professional development. If they did, they wouldn't have a question about competence, because it far exceeds any other profession that I know of in terms of required continuing education.

Taylor: How many of those critics have actually been in classrooms or visited colleges of education to determine whether or not what they say is true? I just outright reject the implication that the students who are graduating from colleges of education are ill-prepared, that they are not prepared to move into the classrooms of today. This canard has been going around for the last 20 years. We did a study of teacher education programs at our own university and throughout the state. We found that our elementary education majors were doing as well as or better than majors in other fields. Our elementary education students have to have the equivalent of 72 hours of general ed, plus they have to have field experiences with highly professional teachers out in the field that begin as early as their sophomore year and continue through their student teaching period. Finally, they have to be tested on statewide tests right now. If they flunk the test, they don't get certified. With all secondary education majors, those that are going to teach high school, their majors are exactly the same as for nonteaching majors. They aren't taking the "easy courses," because they don't exist. As far as colleges of education being the easy route out, that is simply not true. I'm pretty passionate about that.

Debi S. Edmund is contributing editor for the IASB School Public Relations Service and a frequent contributor to the Journal.