by DANIEL COUPLAND
More than three years after Covid-19 began, explanations abound for ongoing “learning loss” in schools. But these discussions often miss one of the most obvious explanations: outdated and ineffective instruction.
It’s been repeatedly shown that teacher quality is the primary thing affecting student achievement. Shouldn’t teacher quality be our primary concern? Given how far behind we’ve fallen in teacher quality, you would think so.
If you aren’t convinced that teacher quality has gone down, I would ask you to “briefly state the result and effect of the battle of Waterloo.” If you’re anything like me, you could say something, right? It just wouldn’t be amazing. What is amazing, though, is that the question above was taken from Michigan’s public grammar schoolteacher-licensing exam in history from 1900. In other words, a competent high school graduate in 1900 was expected to know the answer and to teach the answer to eighth graders. In other words, teachers back in the day knew their stuff.
Teaching Without Studying
By 1997, the Department of Education was forced to admit that a staggering 59 percent of social studies teachers were teaching subjects they hadn’t even studied. Not surprisingly, that year 57 percent of high school seniors scored “below basic” in U.S. history, according to Diane Ravitch’s NAEP report. It’s like the blind leading the blind.
Fast forward to 2006: 62 percent of teachers agreed that their training didn’t prepare them well for their jobs. Teacher training programs have not only been a waste, but they may actually make teachers less competent at their jobs. That’s why no matter how much money you throw at them, modern teacher certification programs still do not improve teacher quality and student achievement.
So if teacher quality is so important, then why isn’t it at the forefront of every conversation about learning loss? Because, unlike calls to abolish the Department of Education, improving teacher quality is remarkably practical — but not easy.
Education Reform Begins with Teachers
No law, executive edict, funding package, or curriculum restriction will fix the teacher quality problem. In any case, you would still have teachers in the classroom who can’t do what you want them to do: competently teach their students. Telling a history teacher educated on Howard Zinn or Paulo Freire to teach a competent class on the U.S. Constitution from the framers’ point of view would be like telling a chef he can cook anything on the menu but only giving him the ingredients for pasta. You’ll get something, sure. It’ll probably be pasta.
Improving teacher quality in America’s schools will take much time and hard work. You would have to start from the ground up, training new teachers from scratch based on partially lost knowledge. You would have to raise college admission standards and require four years of academic work in the teacher’s core subject. Studies show that subject-matter knowledge is the best predictor of a student’s achievement. Educationally high-achieving countries like Finland have already taken such steps in that direction.
Education degrees and teacher licensing, by the way, should be done away with. They are expensive and ineffective. Undergraduate education licensing can be used to keep some people in the profession and other people out. It may also discourage the right people from going into teaching in the first place. In the end, teacher certification requirements may ultimately contribute to intellectual mediocrity in America.
Just recently a Christian girl was awarded a big case when her Class had kids take part in a Hindu Meditation. Here is what their doing with the kids in the School mediating a to a false religion t hat worships false Gods
All gods are false gods.
And the perfect example squeaks from the cheap seats
I think the primary difference is one thing: World War II. When I went to school, every teacher was either a young adult during World War II, served during World War II or was a child that experienced World War II. This was a period of unprecedented patriotism and dedication. The vast majority of those teachers took the job of preparing students to be citizens very seriously. Hell, even the coaches that taught subjects tried to do the best they could.
Now? For many (certainly not all) teachers, they think indoctrination is most important. They don’t want to teach you HOW to think but WHAT to think. These cretins should be sought out and deleted. They are the LAST thing we should want in proximity with our children. Some lunatic with blue hair ranting on social media about “trans rights” is, first, mentally ill and, most importantly, a threat to children.
The deterioration of discipline is also a major factor. Since students now think they can get away with just about any disruption (except, maybe, making a gun out of their fingers), teachers have to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to maintain order and constantly look out for disruptions… and defending themselves from assault. Simply put, many students simply need their asses kicked.
This is leftism at work. It destroys everything it touches.
In a 1998 interview, Howard Zinn said he had set “quiet revolution” as his goal for writing A People’s History. “Not a revolution in the classical sense of a seizure of power, but rather of people beginning to take power from within the institutions.”
In his introduction, Zinn writes, “I am not worried about disillusioning young people by pointing to the flaws in the traditional heroes.” In the afterword, “Rise like lions. Imagine the American people united for the first time in a movement for fundamental change.”
Well, he got what he wanted.
Dumb, pliable youths who will fall for anything.
Now people are history ignoramuses because they are “taught” thru books like his revisionist, anti-capitalism, anti-American, anti-white crap.
Altho he’s dead his legacy lives on.
Not just books are revisionist history, entire university History Departments are!
Waddya ya Mean Teacher quality has gone down? Have you Seen the mugshots of the women banging the 14 year old boys? You understand how gender fluidity positively improves the abilities of those teachers? They can’t read,write, do math,or know how to repair a flat on a bicycle, but they Know a long list of pronouns!
Yeah it’s gone to crap, by design.
The problem isn’t with the teachers.
An American woman said she was shocked to discover that Alaska isn’t actually an island, calling for an ‘overhaul’ of the school curriculum