The National Council on Teacher Quality issued an evaluation of teacher training programs this week. They said USD, DSU, and Northern do a pretty good job of training high school teachers but that, like most teacher training programs nationwide, our other teacher training programs need improvement.
David Newquist points to Linda Darling-Hammond, education professor at NCTQ-hammered Stanford, who says NCTQ's ratings are barely blog-quality crap, based on inaccurate Web-searched data detached from educational outcomes.
Crap or no, the South Dakota Board of Regents respond by letting us know they are moving to improve teacher education at our public universities by expanding student-teaching internships system-wide to a full year:
While a traditional model requires candidates to spend a semester student teaching before they graduate and move into the profession, Black Hills State University has required year-long residencies for a number of years. More recently, with support from the Bush Foundation, the University of South Dakota worked to incorporate this requirement into its teacher education programs. USD and Dakota State University currently partner with the Sioux Falls School District to provide year-long residencies for a set group of students pursuing certification as elementary teachers.
“These changes have been supported by research and are promoted by a number of professional organizations,” said Sam Gingerich, system vice president for academic affairs. “While each of our universities is in varying stages of implementation, plans generally call for redesigned elementary education programs to come online at all institutions next year, followed by secondary and K-12 programs a year later,” he said [South Dakota Board of Regents, press release, 2013.06.19].
Full-year residencies will put greater demands on prospective teachers, who will now spend a full school year commuting to or perhaps living in communities away from their campuses. A full-time internship will mean one less semester available for teaching candidates to pack in their other required courses.
Full-time residencies will also put greater demands on cooperating teachers and schools. If they are being asked to divert resources to mentoring student teachers for a full year, they may feel pressure to limit the interns they accept to just the top candidates.
Maybe these longer residencies will improve teacher quality on both ends. The longer, tougher internship requirement may filter out less-qualified teaching candidates. The full-year internship will take the place of much of the trial-and-error of the first year of paid teaching.
But remember: these student teachers also provide useful labor to the schools where they practice. Another body in my French classroom, for instance, is another body who can lead small-group conversation practice, drill vocabulary, grade papers, and conduct lectures while I address a student question or an administrative matter. Student teachers can do the same work as regular teachers and provide value to the school... and that's exactly the rationale that a federal judge in New York used last week to rule that unpaid internships violate minimum-wage and overtime law. Hmm... is SDEA ready to unionize our teachers in training and advocate for pay for these year-long internships?
What about the kids?
I am hearing lots of things about teachers, but how negatively does accepting an intern student teacher affect the classroom learning environment of the cooperating district?
Some years ago when Israel made teacher education a five-year program with one year of internship, education colleges mulled over the idea for implementation here. At the time, there were shortages in some areas of teaching and the education colleges feared that the additional year requirement would increase those shortages.
I don't think anyone involved in education at any level does not think our programs need serious revision. I recall one academic counselor say that the education course requirements were in effect making students take the same course four times. The Israel plan was put in place to insure that academic courses in subject areas were not diminished in favor of the methods courses.
In the matter of evaluating teaching, we keep getting scores presented to us in terms of mean scores and medians. For us to make any sense of scores, we need to have them broken down into distributions, so that we can analyze the ration between the higher scores and the lower scores and established some kind of profiles of need among the students.
Your comments on compensating student teachers for the actual work they perform and benefits they make an important point. Internships are regarded by many as free or cheap labor, and that attitude has all but demolished their value to the students who serve them.
The unpaid internship analogy doesn't apply since the students are paying for the credit and it is directly related to education. The judge ruling was because they were not receiving an education. Dr. Melmer was pushing this and talked alot about a Bush grant USD had received. There were several concerns that I brought up when we met with him. The first is the financial burden on the student because they would be paying for credits and need to have one day off per week for additional classroom instruction. I think this may drive others out unless a costs of the tuition that students pay for the additional training is greatly reduced or paid for by the state/university.
There is a lot that can be gained from seeing all that education involves that is not just teaching a lesson. The other issue is, as a teacher, I worry about giving up control for an entire year when the evaluations of the students will fall on my head. I have had one student teacher that was with me part time because he was not possible of teaching by speech or debate classes. He ended up with 3 cooperating teachers so that he could student teach in a variety of fields he was qualified for. A whole year of that would have been a mess. (Not his fault, the university had a mess when his original cooperating teacher at a different school left the district.)
So does that mean that a teaching degree is now a 5 year degree? An extra full year of tuition, fees and housing coupled with opportunity costs? hmmm...someone seems to be on the losing side of this equation.
Given MJL's observation, there's also a risk and loss for cooperating teachers as well.
So in the legislature's eyes, this is a double win, causing pain to the students and the existing teachers.
But given the lucrative nature of the teaching profession in South Dakota, this shouldn't pose a problem ;^)
The press release said the intent is to keep the one-year residency within the 120-credit graduation scheme. That can still fit in four years... as long as kids don't dink around taking 12 credits a semester.
To keep it fit in the 4 year possibilities Dr. Melmer explained that students would be taking some of the theory classes normally taken the semester before student teaching while they were student teaching. They will not be allowed to hold a job outside of student teaching for the entire year (if I recall him correctly.)
Good news. My niece wants to be a teacher...but will they lose 1 year of other instruction that they normally would have had for a 'fully rounded' liberal arts education? Maybe I'm not understanding this right, but if there is a full year of student teaching, then something has to be cut from their class load.
The no part time job is a little disturbing though. So unless you can self fund or borrow your way into debt for a low paying teaching job...by government mandate...isn't that an opportunity cost?
The policy makers can probably afford to subsidize their kids through college, but that could present a real financial burden to most.
Cory, how many of your friends who went on to be teachers had part time jobs? And I'm guessing that was before the tuition and fees skyrocketed, grants were slashed and before the student loan program was converted into a for-profit operation.
My understanding was that during the semester before student teaching, you usually only have ed classes (or at least that is how it would be worked.) They would then take the education classes while student teaching (spending one day a week at a satellite site.) The amount of work getting through your student teaching and doing your classwork would be the thing to prevent the secondary job. I am not sure but no job might be mandatory. I don't know if a lot of students hold part-time jobs while student teaching now, but it is also just a semester.
In 1976 I did one semester student teaching, as it was called then, in Aberdeen. I was in no way prepared to teach following that experience.
In 1995-96 I did a full-year internship to earn a Master of Divinity degree and qualify for ordination in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. It was a great experience and so valuable to me. Churches had to pay interns $800/month and pay for a good health insurance policy the grad school offered.
Churches like my internship site thrived on interns. I was their one and only pastor, supervised by the pastor of a nearby church. Interns were considerably cheaper than a full-time pastor, due to savings on benefits and salary.
For me, it was a wonderful opportunity to learn in a boots-on-the-ground setting. I met with my supervisor at least weekly and he was available other times too. In addition to cost savings, little churches who use interns often feel a responsibility to do their part to prepare future pastors. It is seen as a calling, their contribution.
The graduate school program is set up for 4 years. Because there are many second career students with families, flexibility has been built in. If students really push it, they can complete the course work in 2-2.5 years and get started on internship sooner. Others who have a part-time job they can't afford to leave, also intern at a nearby church part-time while also taking classes. Those internships require more time, whatever is equivalent to one year.
I strongly support longer internships. I think that preparation is invaluable. Statistically, I believe most teachers leave the profession in the first 3 years. A full school year internship, followed by a substantial mentoring program for every teacher for at least the first 3 years would show a massive payoff.
(The next best thing for teachers and students is to reduce all class sizes to 15, no exceptions.)
Deb, I think the longer internships would be better as well. Same goes for nurses, doctors, pharmacists, mechanics etc. Experience is good.
My concern is that it places an extra hurdle and cost for students who choose to join the ranks of the teachers of our future generations.
MJL, how much would a student lose if they couldn't work 20 hours a week for 5 months...even at minimum wage. That's a Saturday and Sunday with a short shift during the week. That's $3200 @ $8 an hour. That's enough to cover a shared cruddy apartment rent, gas, big girl work clothes and a barely enough ramen noodles...not including tuition.
Thanks for your comment Jana. Nurses and doctors have 'clinicals' in which they go on site where they are taught, supervised and get hands on experience. Both do these clinicals and work closely supervised for more than a year.
The mentorships are nearly as important as the internships.
A one-year internship makes the experience more real. Being part of the show for the entire school year will give interns valuable experience at planning and executing curriculum from start to finish instead of just parachuting into the middle of the show, filling in for the teacher for three months, then bailing out and leaving the regular teacher to finish up. Just the increased level of commitment, knowing that if things get tough, an intern's exit is much farther away, will be a significant new hurdle... and perhaps a useful hurdle in weeding out the less qualified.
The cost, however, is a problem. I'm good with asking teaching candidates to make this one-year commitment. But when we demand that students abandon other source of income, we need to have a serious talk about adopting the ELCA model of financial support. If we are raising the bar for teachers to enter the profession and reducing their in-college earning power, perhaps we should revise the new teacher scholarship (this year's SB 233) to pay tuition for every teacher candidate during internship year, with the only string being completion of the internship.
I totally agree that these internships should be paid. That's what we do with science professional preparation, and have for many years, because it works; it allows a time for students to focus their energies on becoming experts in their field of interest, build relationships with their peers, and "learn the ropes" of their profession. I think this whole thing sounds good but without pay it is just another opportunity for the edu-for-profit industry to make more money. They'll find an opportunity here, mark my words.
I can see where a full one year internship can be beneficial, but speaking from experience (only 6 years ago), it was a huge financial burden to student teach. I understand that it will still be in the 120-credit graduation requirement range, but in "regular" school I was still able to work 35- 40 hours per week. As a student teacher, I barely pulled 15 because I was very concerned with learning everything I could and being a very good teacher. Luckily, I was recently married and my husband took care of a lot during that semester, but I don't know how I would have done it otherwise. I suppose I'd have had to live with my parents or take out another loan. This will be a significant financial burden for teachers and another loan to take out.
Samantha's story sounds like all the more reason for the state to pay for the work student teachers will do.