{"id":18605,"date":"2013-05-20T05:00:24","date_gmt":"2013-05-20T09:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/?p=18605"},"modified":"2013-05-19T22:27:40","modified_gmt":"2013-05-20T02:27:40","slug":"florida-plans-increased-scrutiny-for-education-schools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/2013\/05\/20\/florida-plans-increased-scrutiny-for-education-schools\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida Plans Increased Scrutiny For Education Schools"},"content":{"rendered":"
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John O'Connor \/ StateImpact Florida<\/p>

University of Central Florida elementary education students discuss how to incorporate books, maps, magazines and other materials into lesson plans.<\/p><\/div>\n

Editor’s note: This post was authored by Sarah Butrymowicz with <\/em>The Hechinger Report.<\/em><\/p>\n

Lee-Anne Spalding\u2019s Elementary School Social Studies class at the University of Central Florida had spread out over the room in small groups.<\/p>\n

One group of sophomore college students huddled over a set of poetry books, picking out ones they liked. Others gathered around the white board as Spalding demonstrated how to they could embed sounds in their presentations. Spalding had cut into strips a timeline of the civil rights movement and a third group, sitting on the floor, was putting the events back into chronological order.<\/p>\n

In part, Spalding was providing content to her students by introducing them to materials they might use \u2013 like National Geographic magazines and the poetry books. But she was also modeling teaching strategies, like small group learning, and introducing activities, like the timeline exercise, that she hoped her students would someday mimic.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou are more likely to use the instructional strategies I\u2019m proposing to you if you actually do it,\u201d she told her students.<\/p>\n

UCF is the largest producers of teachers in the state; the university\u2019s education school enrolls more than 2,000 students. It prides itself on being one of the strongest\u2014if not the strongest\u2014teacher training program in Florida, a position it has gained, school officials say, by nimbly responding to changes in the profession. But there is no real way to test that claim. The university, like many education schools across the country, often must rely on anecdotal evidence from principals and graduates to determine that its programs are working, rather than hard data showing students are performing better.<\/p>\n

Conventional wisdom holds that many, if not most, education schools are doing a poor job at training teachers; after all, they have a history of taking in some of the lowest performing students, and student achievement in the United States has stagnated. Nationally, education schools have been criticized for being far too easy and, as a result, pumping ill-equipped teachers into the system and harming student achievement.\u00a0Schools across the country are trying to mitigate the criticism by changing curriculum or increasing the amount of field experience teachers receive.<\/p>\n

Florida and several other states are also creating accountability systems so education schools will develop quantitative ways to measure their programs\u2019 success. But for now, teacher preparation remains over-saturated with options\u2015undergraduate degrees, master\u2019s programs, in-school residencies and online courses\u2015that provide little evidence of their effectiveness. And as thousands of Florida\u2019s baby boomer teachers prepare to retire, there is little consensus about how to best train the next generation of teachers.<\/p>\n\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know of any other profession that has this kind of uncertainty about the kind of preparation needed,\u201d said Arthur Levine, president of the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship program, which provides an alternative pathway to teaching for career switchers.<\/p>\n

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