Those who are genuinely interested in improving the quality of education for all American youngsters are faced with two fundamental questions: First, how long can school systems continue to pursue market-based reforms that have failed year after demoralizing year to improve the education of the nation’s most disadvantaged children? And second, why should a small group of America’s richest individuals, families, and foundations be allowed to exercise such overwhelming — and often such toxic — influence over the ways in which public school students are taught?
— Bob Herbert
(http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/10/the-plot-against-public-education-111630.html#ixzz3FSwmezxW)
Educators, parents, and students are more concerned than ever with improving the education our schools provide, but no one seems to know what to do. At this point anyone who is paying attention should know what doesn't work: charter schools, the small school movement, massive standardized testing, politicians deciding education policy, and "market-based reforms." Maybe we are looking in the wrong place. In "What we can learn from Finland’s successful school reform," Linda Darling-Hammond quotes studies about Finland's remarkable turnaround in its education system that credit much of the improvement to teacher training.
During the 1990s, the country overhauled preparation once again to focus more on teaching diverse learners higher-order skills like problem solving and critical thinking in research-based master’s degree programs. Preparing teachers for a research-based profession has been the central idea of teacher education developments in Finland.
Prospective teachers are competitively selected from the pool of college graduates — only 15 percent of those who apply are admitted — and receive a three-year graduate-level teacher preparation program, entirely free of charge and with a living stipend. Unlike the United States, where teachers either go into debt to prepare for a profession that will pay them poorly or enter with little or no training, Finland made the decision to invest in a uniformly well-prepared teaching force by recruiting top candidates and paying them to go to school. Slots in teacher training programs are highly coveted and shortages are virtually unheard of.
Teachers’ preparation includes both extensive coursework on how to teach — with a strong emphasis on using research based on state-of-the-art practice — and at least a full year of clinical experience in a school associated with the university. These model schools are intended to develop and model innovative practices, as well as to foster research on learning and teaching. Teachers are trained in research methods so that they can “contribute to an increase of the problem solving capacity of the education system.” (F. Buchberger and I. Buchberger, 2004, Problem-solving capacity of a teacher education system as a condition of success? An analysis of the 'Finnish Case,' in F. Buchberger and S. Berghammer (Eds.), Education policy analysis in a comparative perspective)
American teachers overwhelmingly are dedicated, responsible, and eager to be the best teachers they can be, but we have let them down by not investing in the kind of training education professionals need to be truly excellent. Particularly in schools with large numbers of at risk students, where educators face enormous challenges, we need to give those hard-working teachers all the tools they require. Thorough teacher training — designed and implemented by experienced and successful educators — can go a long way toward improving American education.
Welcome to the fall 2014 issue of Independent Teacher. As always, we have tried to include essays that speak to a number of disciplines and grade levels. Some topics included are:
- The benefits of using problem solving to teach mathematics;
- The importance of playing games in middle school classes;
- The value of sharing the dream of Summerhill with students;
- Helping students be close readers in our tech-heavy era; and
- Much, much more.
As always, we urge our readers to join the conversation by sending responses and comments to our essays to [email protected].