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 olleges
and universities in the United States by and large do a shoddy job
of preparing students to become teachers in the nation's public
schools. The public-school teachers return the favor by doing a
shoddy job of preparing their students for college.
Most Americans have gotten used to these little defects. Educational
mediocrity is the worn-out couch in the nation's living room
— the upholstery is stained and the stuffing may be coming
out, but it is still a familiar and comfortable place to sit.
Every once and a while, however, we get an urge to renovate.
Congress apparently felt that urge when it passed the Higher
Education Amendments of 1998. Among the provisions of the HEA
was one (Section 207f) that mandated state "report cards" for
schools of education. The idea was to require states to publish
the number and percentages of students in each teacher-preparation
program who pass that state's teacher-licensure examination.
In theory, with this information, the public would be able to
identify those schools of education that graduate the least
adept would-be teachers.
The first application of the rule, in 1998, worked exactly as
intended. Numerous schools of education across the country were
forced to divulge unpleasant facts: that, after two or more
years of study to become teachers, only 60 percent (or 50 percent,
or 40) of their students could pass the fairly simple examinations
for state licensure. The data were alarming, and the colleges
with the lowest percentages of passing students faced a crisis.
The shoddiness of their teacher-education programs was, for
once, on full display. For a brief moment the educational establishment
had to reckon with the serious possibility of raising its
standards.
No, just kidding. If there is anything at which schools of education
excel, surely it is finding misleading and self-serving ways
to count things. Congress had simply presented a worthy challenge.
The solution? Consider this a test. Can you think like an educationist?
While I tell you about Fitchburg, Massachusetts, home of Fitchburg
State College, see if you can figure out how to subvert the
intent of school-of-education-report-card law.
Fitchburg is an old mill town about 50 miles west of Boston.
It is named after John Fitch, who, along with his family, was
carried off by the Indians in 1748 but who escaped the next
year. The town, which once made paper, shoes, axle grease, and
chairs, perhaps reached its high-water mark in the last quarter
of the nineteenth century, when a Norwegian immigrant, Iver
Johnson, founded his "Arms and Cycle" works that combined handgun
and bicycle manufacturing. In 1908, Iver Johnson's company began
producing "Hammer the Hammer" safety hammer revolvers. But all
this is long gone. Fitchburg today is another struggling former
mill town, home to Alpha Rho, "New England's largest plastic
box manufacturer" — and to Fitchburg State College.
Fitchburg State College produced one of the classes that scored
near the bottom on the 1998 Massachusetts Teacher's Certification
Examination. Only 25 percent of the 80 Fitchburg State College
students who took the exam passed it. But, with a little help
from the Massachusetts Department of Education, teacher training
at Fitchburg is looking up? How?
Time's up. You win if you calculated that the best way to raise
a school of education's teacher-certification passage rate is
to redefine the category of "student." Fitchburg State College
and many other teachers colleges decided that students who come
to the college to take courses in education will be admitted
to the college but not officially to the education program until
after they pass the state licensure examination. Logically,
this will mean that 100 percent of Fitchburg's supposed cohort
of aspiring teachers will pass the test.
Ex post facto enrollment is an ingenious device with lots of
other potential applications. Only individuals who have been
awarded patents will be ex post facto recognized as engineering
students. Only students admitted to medical school will be ex
post facto recognized as pre-med. Only players with NBA contracts
will be ex post facto recognized as members of the college basketball
squad.
Something of the escaping spirit of John Fitch must linger in
the schist hills of Fitchburg, or something of old Iver Johnson's
fascination with revolving parts. In any case, rather than close
a self-evidently derelict program or perchance salvage it with
top-to-bottom reforms, Fitchburg simply revolved the students
temporarily out of the program and back again after they had
passed the examination. And the Commonwealth of Massachusetts
said: OK, works for us.
But doesn't this mean that Fitchburg's worst would-be teachers,
denied licensure, will not be joining the ranks — the unionized,
virtually unfireable ranks — of America's public-school
teachers? No, many of them will take the test several times
and eventually pass it. The national teacher shortage will ensure
that most of them eventually end up in the classroom. Public-school
teaching as a preserve for the incorrigibly incompetent is safe
for the time being. Fitchburg and colleges like it can continue
to enroll education students who are ill-suited to the profession.
Teacher training can continue along its desultory path of intellectual
inconsequence. And the rest of us can settle in our comfortable
old couch and not wonder about the quality of preparation
for the Fitchburg students who did manage to pass the test.
Whatever Fitchburg's faults, I should perhaps add that, on that
1998 report card, it bested one of the other Massachusetts teachers
colleges (Springfield — 22.2 percent passed) and better
than doubled Laselle College's score (nine students took it;
one passed). And I pick on Massachusetts colleges only because
the numbers are at hand. The same circus can be found in other
states.
Clearly Congress's effort to force the teacher-diploma mills
into the open didn't anticipate this kind of brazen nonfeasance.
No one will seriously believe that a Fitchburg State College
or Bridgewater State University has suddenly leapt past Harvard
College or Boston University in the quality of its programs.
But no matter. The real point is just to nullify the reform
by making the numbers seem meaningless.
Nor does the mischief stop with the colleges and their friends
in the state bureaucracies. Recently one of the major associations
of colleges and universities, the American Council on Education
(ACE), called the HEA-mandated report cards for schools of education
"far more difficult, complex, and costly to implement than anticipated,"
and it urged a series of steps that would bury the data in a
sea of obfuscation. ACE would have no institution "unfairly
categorized" merely because a large percentage of its candidates
for teaching degrees fail the test for state licensure. In short,
ACE is a Friend of Fudge.
President Bush is pushing ahead with education reform, but he must
deal with that coelenterate life form, Congress, as well as an educational
establishment that is out-and-out determined to prevent substantive
change. Colleges like Fitchburg State, compliant state bureaucracies,
embarrassed politicians with third-tier institutions in their districts,
and national associations such ACE, are poised to hammer into meaningless
fragments any serious efforts to improve teacher education. The
road to our educational Gehenna is paved with pulverized proposals
for reform.
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