To be allowed to teach (in most states), an individual must go through an education-school program where he or she supposedly learns at least the basic elements of pedagogy. Unfortunately, education schools were long ago captured by “progressives” who use them to impart dubious educational theories and toxic philosophies.
In today’s Martin Center article, Sandra Stotsky argues that it needn’t be that way. One major problem she identifies is that education schools attract weak students:
One reason for ineffective professional development is the quality of our teaching force itself. As Jonathan Wai has reported, education majors consistently had the lowest academic aptitude on five independent tests from 1946 to 2014. He concluded, “These data show that U.S. students who choose to major in education, essentially the bulk of people who become teachers, have for at least the last seven decades been selected from students at the lower end of the academic aptitude pool.”
Federal funding to improve education schools has proven to be a failure, Stotsky reports.
What should be done?
Stotsky has a number of recommendations, such as: “States should require prospective teachers of grades five and higher to earn either a master of arts in teaching (MAT) degree in the subject they plan to teach, which typically includes real graduate work in that subject as well as an apprenticeship in the schools, or a master of science (MS) or master of arts (MA) degree in the subject (a common requirement for secondary-school teachers in Europe), followed by an apprenticeship in the schools.”
A great idea — make prospective teachers have command of a body of academic knowledge. Currently, many are weak on content, but have their heads full of approved ideology. That’s not good.