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Sunday, February 02, 2003

By Jane Elizabeth, Post-Gazette Education Writer

As a university president who travels the country, Nancy Zimpher hears complaints from professors about high school graduates who come to college with such poor reading, writing and math skills that they have to be sent to remedial classes.

Pennsylvania teacher training programs produce more than 10,000 new teachers a year, more than twice as many as school districts in the state are able to hire. One of the largest programs is at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Here, IUP student teacher Gretchen Wehr gets a strong appeal from first-grader Treshawn White at Martin Luther King Elementary School in Pittsburgh to choose him to answer a question. (Darrell Sapp, Post-Gazette)

"The flip side of that is, who produced the teachers who taught those students?" said Zimpher, chancellor of the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee.

In most cases, those teachers were produced by education programs in the nation's colleges and universities, and any debate about teacher quality must start there.

In Pennsylvania, chances are good that a teacher went through one of those schools at a time when the state liberally handed out teaching certificates, asking for little or no proof of expertise.

Many Pennsylvania teachers received their licenses before 1987 -- the year teacher-training reforms went into effect.

Before those reforms, just about anyone who graduated from an education school and filled out an application form could get a teaching license. The Praxis teacher tests that measure potential teachers' knowledge of the subject they want to teach didn't begin until the late 1980s.

Before then, teachers usually majored in "education" instead of the subject area they planned to teach. A student who wanted to become a math teacher, for instance, could graduate from college after studying just slightly more math than any other college student.

And in earlier years, there was less rigorous scrutiny of the quality of their colleges. Pennsylvania's current standards of evaluating schools of education didn't begin until 1977.

Even today, professors who are teaching the country's future teachers are sometimes behind in education themselves, according to U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige.

"Many of the [professors] in those universities haven't been inside a school in years," said Paige in a recent interview, "not since the Mississippi River was a creek. The [teaching] sciences have changed, and not too many professors are up to date on it."

For instance, there is considerable new research showing the best ways to teach children how to read, "but I'm not sure to what extent that has found its way into schools of education," Paige said.

Zimpher noted that some of today's teachers were trained during a time when education school officials "thought you could sit in a classroom with one professor [who could] teach teachers how to teach" without ever having to leave campus or deal with an actual child.

Good teacher education is much more complex than that, she said. "In my view, it is rocket science."

Bottom students

One problem that continues to beleaguer the profession is the quality of students who choose teaching as a major in college.

	Online Graphic: Pennsylvania's efforts to improve teacher quality

SAT scores for students planning to major in education -- the third most popular major for the class of 2002 -- scrape the bottom.

Of 23 possible majors, only three had lower SAT scores than prospective education majors' combined average score of 961 out of 1600, according to figures obtained from the College Board. Those choosing home economics as a major scored an average 914; public affairs and services, 915; and technical and vocational education majors, 892.

Some experts say it's tough to attract top students to teaching careers because the job is traditionally low-wage and populated by women, and therefore historically has been held in low regard.

The old saying, "Those who can, do; those who can't teach," has long haunted the profession.

Pat Palazzolo, an Upper St. Clair High School teacher who will be inducted this spring into the region's Teacher Excellence Hall of Fame, remembers that even her high school guidance counselor told her that she was "too smart to be a teacher." She is a graduate of Duquesne University.

John W. Butzow, education dean at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, knows that some people believe that education schools are "where all the people who are too stupid go," he said.

But he hasn't seen proof. "There is just some mythology about that."

College education programs also suffer from the reputation of being largely ignored, "cash cow" departments that accept and churn out large numbers of graduates without much investment.

Frederick Hess, a University of Virginia researcher, noted in a recent study that "teacher-preparation programs neither screen out nor weed out weak candidates."

Even the elite universities, he found, accept more than 50 percent of the applicants for their master's programs in education. But their average acceptance rate for medical schools is about 5 percent; for law schools, about 25 percent.

A few of the most prolific education schools in Pennsylvania are beginning to tighten their entrance requirements. IUP required this year's education students to have an SAT score of at least 950. Last year, it was 900.

Middle school push

Some aspects of teacher quality could improve in Pennsylvania because of the new federal education law.

	Online Chart: Just 20 schools in Pennsylvania account for two-thirds of recently issued teaching certifications

Middle-school certification is one rule that will change. About half of all states, including Pennsylvania, don't require subject-area certification for middle-school teachers. In other words, a math teacher in middle school doesn't have to be certified in math; most likely, he or she is certified in "elementary education."

Now, Pennsylvania education officials are gearing up to test and re-certify about 15,000 middle school teachers because of the new federal requirements.

Other federal requirements may be less effective.

For example, the U.S. Department of Education is now insisting that each state report to the federal government any colleges or universities that are doing a poor job of training teachers. The results are posted at www.title2.org

But the list now contains only 11 "low-performing" schools nationwide. Why? One reason is that the federal government allows state officials to set their own definition of "low performance" and many have managed to create a definition that can keep bad schools from looking bad.

In Pennsylvania, a measure of low performance is a school of education in which fewer than 70 percent of the students passed the teacher licensing exam two years in a row. Last year, nine Pennsylvania schools couldn't meet the 70 percent rule. Those included Waynesburg College, with a 57 percent pass rate, and Point Park College, with a 44 percent pass rate.

But there are no Pennsylvania schools on the low-performing list because the state has not yet measured two years' worth of performance.

Once a school goes on the list, the state will conduct an emergency evaluation -- normally, evaluations are conducted every five years -- and decide whether the school should be placed on probation or denied state approval altogether. As part of that evaluation, state investigators will interview school administrators who've hired teachers from the poor-performing college.

At Lincoln University near Philadelphia, only 25 percent of the students passed the teacher licensing tests last year. So this spring, state investigators will visit the campus to review Lincoln's program and make recommendations, said state certification director Frank Meehan.

The school of education could be put on probation, and if it stays that way, could lose some federal funds.

Good training

To seasoned teachers, it's obvious which new teachers have had a good education, said Sallie Peck, a teacher in the Fox Chapel Area School District who's been named one of the region's outstanding teachers for the past two years.

College students who are placed "in the classroom from day one" are the most competent, said Peck, a University of Texas graduate. When they're hired, she said, "You can't believe they're just in their first year."

West Virginia University is the site of a model program called the Benedum Collaborative. In the five-year program, students graduate with both bachelor's and master's degrees and about 1,100 hours of working with children in schools -- much more than the national average of about 400 to 500 hours, said program director Van Dempsey.

Although researchers will continue to study the Benedum model for years to come, an initial study by the RAND Corp. showed higher achievement rates in schools that employ the WVU students, Dempsey said.

Teachers also praise post-graduate programs such as those at the University of Pittsburgh and Chatham College, where students can earn a degree called a "master's of arts in teaching" that requires intensive training in public school classrooms.

In Georgia, state-supported colleges "guarantee" their graduates to school districts. If their teachers turn out to be inadequate in the classroom, they can be sent back to their alma maters for more training.

No such program currently exists in Pennsylvania, but superintendents can get a look at how graduates of certain colleges fare in the workforce by checking the results of the state's Professional Development Assistance Program testing. The PDAP test measures teachers' skills in basic math and English; results are online atwww.tcs.ed.-state.pa.us/PDAP/PrepInst.asp

In an effort to increase quality, the state will now require students to have a 3.0 grade point average -- up from 2.8 -- to get into an education program. They also will need a 3.0 GPA and six credits each of math and English courses to apply for a teaching certificate.

But there are loopholes that aren't well-advertised:

Colleges are allowed to accept up to 10 percent of incoming students who don't meet the academic requirements.

An SAT score of 1050 (at least 500 each on math or verbal) can be substituted if the GPA is too low.

Those requirements can be waived if school officials claim they can't find any other teacher who'll take the job.

If the teacher candidate doesn't have the math and English credits, he or she can still get a one-year temporary permit.

Linda Darling-Hammond, an internationally renowned education researcher who received her doctorate from Temple University in Philadelphia, said the new requirements are "a partial response" to improving teacher quality.

"Pennsylvania has ignored teacher quality for many years," said Darling-Hammond, a founder of the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future and now a professor at Stanford University. "Other states have required more [and] student achievement has improved.

"Pennsylvania was just not focused on that."

'Teacher lite'?

Some experts say another way to infuse new respect for teachers and improve quality is to allow professionals from other careers into the classroom. In other words, why not let a corporate chemist teach science in middle school, or an author teach literature to high schoolers?

But other experts argue that teachers need special training in how to teach before they enter a classroom -- that it's not just a question of having a lot of knowledge about a certain subject.

That debate is becoming more politicized, with many conservatives contending just about anyone with the proper knowledge should be allowed to teach, and learn classroom management and other skills while they are on the job.

The argument has picked up support as it becomes more difficult for schools to find teachers in certain fields, especially math and science. But such "alternative certification" is opposed by most union leaders, who derisively call it "teacher lite."

Still, in November, the Pennsylvania Board of Education quietly approved a program in which career professionals could move to a teaching job after taking a test to show they know their subject matter. The other parts of learning to be a teacher -- classroom discipline, for instance -- would be on-the-job training.

There are some signs, though, that these shortcut-to-the-classroom approaches don't always work well.

In the Boston Public Schools, the state recently decided to end a 4-year-old program in which non-educators were allowed to become teachers after some training in summer school. More than 350 Boston professionals have entered the program and become teachers, but about 45 percent already have quit.

While that turnover rate is close to the national average for new teachers, program developers had hoped that peer support and the new teachers' $20,000 signing bonus would have increased their longevity.

But teachers and principals said the "alternative educators" just couldn't handle the real-world problems in the classroom.

IUP's Butzow, on the other hand, said he sees education majors at his school who are aware of the problems they'll face in today's classrooms and as a result "we are getting some of the most committed students I've ever seen."

Weaker or less-determined students now are taking themselves out of the game, he said.

"One student said to me, you really have to want to do this" to put up with the frustrations that go along with public school teaching.

"They're very altruistic people. If they're not, they're not going to make it."