What Do You Think?
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"Alternative Certification: Intended and Unintended Consequence”
by Martin Haberman Questions concerning the cost-benefit of current teacher certification strategies ![]()
Teacher educators do not offer programs based on data. Like schoolfolk, their programs reflect custom, tradition and the convenience of faculty. We in teacher education quack about the need for making policy based on evidence but we act in ways which are not only baseless but frequently in contradition to the evidence. For example, as we speak, the folks in Las Vegas and in several other urban school districts are hiring new teachers with signing bonuses in the hope of getting better teachers who will stay. This is an example of policy based on delusion not fact. And it takes precious funds from very tight school budgets. N.Y.C. spends 12 million dollars per year for tuition for its teacher interns to complete masters degrees in education at local universities when the evidence indicates that completing these programs are not in any way related to increasing student achievement and that as teachers earn more advanced degrees they are more likely to leave the classroom. I know that N.Y.C. can find better use for this money since the classrooms I recently visited in Manhattan not only lacked computers but paper for the children to write on and chalk for the teacher.
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