Control is defined as the power or authority to regulate or restrain. It also limits freedom. If I want to stay in control, I never allow those who disagree with me any power or authority. Controlling the philosophical view assures the continuation of individuals in control. There is nothing new about this strategy, but individuals outside the clique need to be aware of the power play.
When it comes to teacher training and teacher education programs, there are a few folks who tend to be control freaks. Of course, these are the same folks who want to be in control of the education establishment blob. Recently I obtained a partial list of overlapping officers, directors, and members of six powerful education organizations — the National Education Association, the National Education Association Foundation for the Improvement of Education, the American Federation of Teachers, the National Commission of Teaching & America’s Future, the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education, and the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.
For example, Sandra Feldman is the president of AFT, on the board of NBPTS, founding continuing member of NCTAF, and on the executive board of NCATE. Arthur Wise is a founding and current member of NCTAF, president of NCATE, former board member of NBPTS, and former NFIE chairman. Reg Weaver is the president of the NEA, on the executive board of the NCATE, and a former board member of NBPTS. Shari Francis is vice president for state relations for NCATE, on the board of NBPTS, and a former senior policy analyst for NEA. Even former North Carolina Gov. James Hunt, who is chairman of the Hunt Institute for Educational Leadership and Policy, is chairman of NCTAF and the founding chairman of NBPTS.
One of NCTAF’s central recommendations is “no teacher should be allowed to teach without having been trained at an NCATE-accredited school.” Hunt’s ties to NBPTS suggest why North Carolina teachers get a 12 percent pay increase for National Board certification. Other states do not have these mandates or overvalued pay increases.
The public education system is virtually a monopoly of the K-12 grades, while teacher unions, state boards of education, and a few policy makers erect another monopoly of teacher education accreditation, licensing, and certification.
Remember that underlying all of this accreditation and certification are the issues of control and money. A dean of a small private university recently told me the cost was more than $25,000 to comply with these mandates. If all the schools of education in the country were mandated to obtain this private accreditation, the organization would receive about $3 million annually with a bonus of about $4 million every five years for recertification. If all teachers were required to obtain National Board certification, NBPTS would receive about $6 billion.
Does all this accreditation make effective teachers in the classroom? At this time there is no conclusive data to link student achievement with teacher college accreditation or National Board certification. The other concern is the control of teaching methods. Education historian Diane Ravitch documents how the ideology of “progressive education” has controlled the teaching pedagogy for most of the 20th century.
It is understandable why the control of the teaching profession is important. Monopolies at any level are a cause for concern, and control of the teacher education market doesn’t lead to education freedom.