Steep Drops Seen In Teacher-Prep Enrollment Numbers

[Smarmie Doofus]

Posted this to GD yesterday... hoping for some illumination; found none from the general DU public. ( OK: Some, but not much.)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025744212

Isn't the absolute BEDROCK premise of the ed "reform" movement the assumption that the *quality* of US teachers is deficient? We need to attract the "best and brightest"? How 'bout this: "The single most important variable in educational outcomes is not poverty or SES but rather THE QUALITY OF THE TEACHER IN THE CLASSROOM."?

Point: if their aim is actually to raise the quality of teachers... wouldn't the strategy include a way to INCREASE enrollment "in the pipeline" so to speak? ( Then you have a bigger pool from which to select the "best and brightest" among them. No?)

But Obama era "reforms".... onerous, if not odious, to active teachers and ( it would seem to follow, onerous as well to "high quality" candidates that would otherwise be interested in replacing them) .... appear to have turned the flow of ALL candidates DOWN to a trickle. Inevitable result: LOWER, not HIGHER quality teachers. ( Because there's fewer candidates to choose from. That follows. Right?)

In short, if Obama/ Duncan/ Gates and the crew are... as they purport.... trying to "improve the quality of the teacher in the classroom", they SEEM to be going about it the HARD way.

Maybe I'm missing something GLARINGLY large here. ( Or maybe *they* are. Or perhaps they speak with ""forked tongue"?)

Comments and analysis welcome. What's ACTUALLY going on here?


>>>>Steep Drops Seen in Teacher-Prep Enrollment Numbers

California and other big states particularly hard hit, raising supply concerns

By Stephen Sawchukrticle



Fresh from the United States Air Force, Zachary Branson, 33, wanted a career with a structured day and hours that would allow him to be home in time to watch his kids in the evening. But just a month into his online teacher-preparation program at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, he had something of a crisis of faith.

It was brought on, he said, by the sense of being in the middle of an ideological war that surfaced in everything from state-level education policy on down to his course textbook, which had a distinct anti-standardized-testing bent.

"I feel like teachers are becoming a wedge politically, and I don't want anything to do with that," Mr. Branson said.
He's not alone in having qualms about entering the teaching profession.

Massive changes to the profession, coupled with budget woes, appear to be shaking the image of teaching as a stable, engaging career. Nationwide, enrollments in university teacher-preparation programs have fallen by about 10 percent from 2004 to 2012, according to federal estimates from the U.S. Department of Education's postsecondary data collection.

Teacher-Prep Enrollment Trends by State
Enrollments in teacher-preparation programs (including alternative-route options) have fallen dramatically in some states in recent years, while holding steady in others.

Source: U.S. Department of Education, Higher Education Act Title II Data Collection
Some large states, like heavyweight California, appear to have been particularly hard hit. The Golden State lost some 22,000 teacher-prep enrollments, or 53 per>>>>

the rest at: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2014/10/22/09enroll.h34.html

[QED]

1. Time for TFA to the rescue!

Those highly qualified ivy league kids will save the day! Watch those test scores soar once the old-dead-wood-of-lazy-veteran-teachers-waiting-for-their-pensions-to-kick-in are eased out.

(<-- just in case)

[MisterP]

2. they baldly admitted "it doesn't matter if it doesn't work, we're going to do it anyway"

(ditto Iraq, deregulation, privatization, and trickle down)
what would we do anyway? not keep pulling the lever like good Skinnerian rodents?

[LWolf]

3. What a shocker.

Why aren't all those sentient college students rushing to enroll in teacher prep programs? Everybody knows that teachers work short days for big pay, and get tenure which allows them to do whatever they want without consequences.



It's probably good that Mr. Branson saw the political problems early on and shifted his career goals. That "getting home in time to watch his kids" might be a bit problematic. If they aren't enrolled in the school he would teach at, hanging out with him for those after school hours, if they are waiting eagerly at home for him, they might find him a bit exhausted and less attentive and communicative than expected after a normal work day.