Do Teachers Need Education Degrees?

Current teacher training has a large chorus of critics, including prominent professors in education schools themselves. For example, the director of teacher education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Katherine Merseth, told a conference in March that of the nation’s 1,300 graduate teacher training programs, only about 100 were doing a competent job and “the others could be shut down tomorrow.” And Obama administration officials support a shift away from using master’s degrees for pay raises, and a shift toward compensating teachers based on children’s performance.

Should the public schools reduce the weight they give to education school credentials in pay and promotion decisions? Is this happening already, and, if so, what is replacing the traditional system for compensating teachers? Check out some responses from prominent visionaries in the education field here.

Inspire followers have long debated the issue of teacher training: Inspire asked readers back in December if they agreed with a report by the Education Trust that suggested students performed better in math if their teachers majored in math and 70% of Inspire voters agreed.

Check out similar discussions at Kitchen Table Math, The Sequel Blog. This is a group blog for parents, teachers and friends to discuss math, reading, writing and the politics of public education.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 17th, 2009 at 4:40 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.