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Editor Called Ignorant Racist Elitist

Subject: Poorly Educated Teachers

[No Salutation Line],

While researching a paper for my doctorate, I came upon this remarkable piece of educational knowledge. The first question I ask is what research you looked at to come up with this brilliant opinion. It goes against any of the research that I have come across. This opinion seems to be part of the elitist nature that our country is embracing. Is that what you are Mr. Coulson? Or are you a racist? It is ignorant people like you who are causing young people to have no respect for their teachers, or to even think about entering the profession of education. You want change, why dont you get yourself a teaching credential and make a difference. If not, shut your ignorant mouth.

--A California Public Shool Teacher

The Editor's Reply

Dear California Public School Teacher,

What a strage invective. What on earth do elitism or racism have to do with the academic abilities of teachers? And why would you call me ignorant and then ask me to educate you? Asking the advice of people you think are ignorant does not seem an especially reliable way of expanding your knowledge.

Still, buried in your angry little missive were two points worth commenting on.

1)

The first point regards the education of teachers. Though your tirade wants for clarity, I infer that you read some statement of mine to the effect that public school teachers are, on average, poor academic performers. You say that you are shocked by this statement, which apparently "goes against any [sic] of the research" you have come across.

I am shocked that you are shocked. I know of no research to indicate that teachers as a group are strong or even average academic performers. Much to the contratry, there is ample evidence indicating their very poor level of academic achievement. Consider the following quote from my book Market Education (140-141):

Part of the anti-academic attitude of many teachers may be explained by the fact that education majors are less academically able, on average, than most other college students, usually scoring lower on standardized tests of mathematics, reading comprehension, and vocabulary. When high-school seniors take the Scholastic Assessment Test they are asked to specify the field they plan to study in college, with the option of choosing "undecided." This allows their test scores to be tabulated according to intended field of study. The results of these tabulations show that prospective education majors received the lowest mathematics scores out of all ten discipline choices—including "undecided"—every year between 1978 and the present. They fared only slightly better on the verbal portion of the test, sometimes rising from last to next-to-last place. It is possible, of course, that the scores of actual education majors were higher than those of the high-school students who planned to enter that program. Not every college-bound high-school senior, after all, knows for sure what major they will eventually pursue. There is in fact some evidence of such a difference prior to the mid 1970s. By 1975, however, there was no significant difference between the scores of education freshmen and those of the high-school students who had intended to major in education the year before.

Unfortunately, this is not the end of the story. A decade-long study that followed more than a thousand college education students through the first part of their careers found that those with the least academic aptitude were the most likely to enter the teaching profession immediately after graduating from college, and to stay in it once there. The brightest candidates were more apt to delay entry into the profession, to quit early, or never to practice as teachers at all, even though they became certified to do so. Many other studies have corroborated these findings, revealing that the vast majority of the brightest teachers leave the profession after brief careers.

In an effort to raise academic standards within the teaching profession, the state of Massachusetts began requiring would-be teachers to pass a basic test of literacy and communication skills in 1998. The level of achievement expected from teaching candidates was not high. John Silber, head of the State Board of Education, admitted, "It wouldn't surprise me if it (the test) were at about the eighth-grade level." State Education Commissioner Frank Haydu characterized the test as easier than the one taken by 10^th-graders.

Remarkably, the results were still disappointing. Fifty-nine percent of all test takers failed, and thus failed to quality for teaching licenses, under the test score cutoff recommended by a panel of educators. According to Associated Press reporter Leslie Miller, "the samples showed some test-takers, when trying to rewrite sentences, misspelled words a 9-year-old could spell—although the words were right in front of them. Some wrote at a fifth- or sixth-grade level. Many wrote sentences lacking both nouns and verbs." Commissioner Haydu called the outcome "painful."

The sources for the information cited above are listed below. Note that the SAT data are published in the Digest of Education Statistics, a readily available federal government publication, and not the work of an organization hostile to government schooling.

National Center for Education Statistics, Digest of Education Statistics, (Washington, D.C.: Author), 1995, 129.

Timothy W. Weaver, America’s Teacher Quality Problem: Alternatives for Reform (New York: Praeger, 1983), 49 & 164-165 & 42-46.

Ernest L. Boyer, High School (New York: Harper & Row, 1983), 171-172.

Anne Hafner and Jeffrey Owings, research report, Careers in Teaching: Following Members of the High School Class of 1972 In and Out of Teaching (Washington, D.C.: National Center for Education Statistics, 1991).

Timothy W. Weaver, 49 & 61-63.

Geraldine J. Clifford and James W. Guthrie, Ed School: A Brief for Professional Education (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 32.

Murnane, Singer, Willett, Kemple, and Olsen, 69.

Leslie Miller, Associated Press, "More than half of would-be teachers make the grade," The Boston Globe Online, June 22, 1998.

Leslie Miller, Associated Press, "One third fail statewide teachers test," The Standard Times (online), June 20, 1998.

The Boston Globe, "The Higher Standard for Teachers," editorial, July 2, 1998, A18.

However, as I stress in Market Education, the poor academic performance of public school teachers on average does not mean that all public school teachers are poorly educated. Many are intelligent, well-informed, and competent in their fields of expertise. It is all the more disheartening, therefore, that these excellent teachers are shackled by our defective public school system into typically receiving no greater recognition, freedom, responsibility, professional advancement, or compensation than their less-able counterparts.

The second point regards my decision not to teach in a public school. I have every respect for capable teachers who strive to do their best within the public school system. However, having performed a five-year historical and international comparative analysis of school governance structures, I have found that state-run monopoly schooling is among the least effective ways of serving the public's educational needs. Given that finding, I can clearly do the most good by conveying the evidence to the public and encouraging the adoption of more effective school governance structures--namely free educational markets supplemented with financial assistance for low income families.

There is certainly honor to be found in a sailor willing to go down with the ship, but there is more value in a shipwright who can prevent it from sinking at all.

Andrew J. Coulson
Editor, www.SchoolChoices.org

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