Most observers agree that a quality classroom teacher is critical to a child’s ability to learn and achieve in school. There’s not as much agreement about whether North Carolina’s teaching colleges are turning out graduates who meet that benchmark. Dr. Terry Stoops, John Locke Foundation director of education studies, discussed the issue with Donna Martinez for Carolina Journal Radio. (Click here to find a station near you or to learn about the weekly CJ Radio podcast.)
Martinez: How prevalent are teaching colleges in North Carolina?
Stoops: We have 47 approved teaching colleges, teaching programs in North Carolina, serving about 11,000 students. And that ranges from our largest universities that serve the most teaching candidates, like East Carolina and Appalachian State, to small, private colleges that may enroll maybe 20 or 30 teaching candidates.
Martinez: How many teachers are these colleges turning out every year?
Stoops: They’re turning out a few thousand teachers every year, and they’re not turning them out in ways that will fill all the needs in every subject area. So, for example, we’re turning out a lot of social studies and language arts teachers, but not necessarily a lot of teachers in special education and other areas where there’s usually a high need for teachers.
Martinez: All of those folks wouldn’t necessarily apply for and get a job in North Carolina, would they?
Stoops: That’s exactly right. You certainly have individuals that will go to other states, that will leave the state to get a job, or who will work part time until they get a full-time position.
Martinez: If I decided I wanted to be a teacher and I applied and was accepted, what would I learn in a North Carolina teaching college?
Stoops: Well, the curriculum is pretty well set by the state, and you would learn a variety of things. You would essentially get a general overview of education — of educational technology, of special-needs students, of classroom practice, of curriculum, and a number of other areas. So it’s very general, very hands-off in the coursework, and you really don’t get into hands-on teaching until you get into student teaching.
Martinez: If I wanted an expertise in a particular core subject — say I wanted to just teach math and advanced math — do I minor in that subject? How does that work?
Stoops: You would major in mathematics education. You would take prescribed courses both in the education school and in the college of arts and sciences, in mathematics, that would prepare you to do classroom teaching in math and have a general background in mathematics. But more than just a general background in the subject area, you would be taught how to teach that subject area.
Martinez: The reason I ask you about what people are learning in schools is because of a Wall Street Journal story that had what I think is really a startling statistic. And this was actually talked about by the U.S. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan. He said that nearly two-thirds of new teachers — not just in our state, but across the country — nearly two-thirds report feeling unprepared to run a class. Oh, my!
Stoops: Yes, this is a real problem. And this, I think, is part of the problem. What we are doing is we’re forcing them to do student teaching in isolated and easy situations, where we’re not really getting teachers into the classroom early to learn how to be a teacher. And this is the real problem — the amount of hands-on work that teachers do in preparation to become a teacher is not enough to prepare them for the classroom. So you would think that schools of education would try to set up a situation where they had, perhaps, a campus school where teachers would participate in that school, or greater opportunities to student teach. But it’s just not happening.
Martinez: Secretary Duncan posed a very interesting question in response to that statistic. He said, “What if 62 percent of our new doctors felt unprepared to practice medicine?” Terry, shouldn’t we be very, very concerned about that statistic?
Stoops: Yes, absolutely. And certainly Arne Duncan is right. But solving the problem is easier said than done. I mean, we have been trying to reform education schools for decades now. And, in fact, here in North Carolina, when Erskine Bowles was the president of the university system, one of the things he set out to do was to reform our education schools. By the end of his tenure, he did nothing to reform education schools. And there are a couple of reasons for that. They’re powerful entities with lots of faculty that bring in a lot of money, and it’s hard to reform things that are as powerful as education schools.
Martinez: In response to the question of how do we produce quality teachers, the Obama administration has proposed spending $185 million on a competition. Tell us about the proposal and what you think of it.
Stoops: Well, this is a competition to get states to reform their education schools, especially those low-performing education schools that basically exist in every state but are never closed. This is a competition very much like the Race to the Top, where selected states would get some money to be able to go ahead and reform their education schools. This is a model that the Obama administration has used several times, and if Race to the Top is any indication, we’re not probably going to see much reform.
Martinez: Here in North Carolina, the Department of Public Instruction, do they know about the schools they have certified? Do they know the quality of the teachers that are coming out?
Stoops: They get a yearly report called the IHE report. That stands for Institutes of Higher Education. It’s a fairly comprehensive report that details each of the 47 education schools here in North Carolina, and it gives various data about the students that are coming in, about the students’ performance while they’re in there, and where they go to teach afterwards, and what percentage of them are teaching in schools. So we do get some indication of which of our education schools excel and which ones fall behind. Unfortunately, we have all of this data, and the State Board of Education doesn’t do much with it except to accept the report with a smile and to say, “We need to keep turning out quality teachers.”
Martinez: Do you think that teachers and administrators in this state are going to react positively or negatively to the Obama administration’s proposal? Are they going to want to apply for this money? Do they want the scrutiny or not?
Stoops: It depends how many strings are attached. If there are lots of strings that are attached, they’re not going to like it. If there aren’t many strings attached, they’re going to like the money. So I think it will depend on just how serious they are about reforming schools of education, because if they’re doing what needs to be done to reform schools of education and to attract better-qualified individuals into the teaching profession, then the Obama administration is going to ruffle a lot of feathers in these education schools.
Martinez: What would you recommend for reform of teacher colleges?
Stoops: Well, it starts by getting those who have a mastery of subject areas into the teaching profession. I think that means more of an emphasis on drawing individuals from programs in the arts and sciences and perhaps giving them a capstone education experience — a five-year program. So, for example, a student would graduate with a degree in English after four years and use that fifth year to learn what they need to know about becoming a teacher. That’s one of many models that can be used that would be more effective and would draw more highly qualified individuals into the profession than what exists now.
Martinez: I have a relative, Terry, who works in the business world, is highly successful, but at his core he’d really love to be a middle-school math teacher. But he says he’s looked into it, and it’s just too darn hard — too many hoops to jump through to try to even pursue it. So is that a problem as well?
Stoops: Yes, that’s an absolute problem because the certification requirements in North Carolina essentially mean that some people can teach and the people who don’t have that certification truly can’t teach. Now, they can go through a three-year program that requires them to make up all the education coursework they missed. But you can have a Ph.D. in chemistry and be a great teacher and talented individual and not be able to teach in our schools. And that’s a shame.