Study Shows U.S. Educ. Schools Not Making the Grade
by Jim Brown
March 22, 2005
(AgapePress) - A new study suggests that America's school administrators are not being properly prepared for their jobs because most graduate education programs are deeply flawed.Arthur Levine is president of Teachers College at Columbia University and author of the report. He says graduate education programs suffer from irrelevant and incoherent curriculum, low admissions requirements and academic standards, weak faculty, and little clinical instruction. In fact, Levine adds, many programs are doing little more than dishing out higher degrees to teachers who are trying to qualify for salary increases.
According to Al Sanoff, the study's project manager, even at elite universities across the U.S., colleges of education need to improve significantly. While he and the other researchers were able to identify some strong graduate education programs around the country, he notes, none that they found in America could be described as exemplary.
The best education program the study found, the one that the research team could and did describe as exemplary, Sanoff points out, was actually in Great Britain. "It's a fairly new institution called the National College for School Leadership," he says, "and it's structured very differently from education programs here. Because Britain has a very different structure, it wouldn't be transportable in the form it exists there to the U.S."
Nevertheless, the researcher says it is essential that U.S. education schools and departments take steps to rectify their problems, and quickly. Groups of principals, superintendents, and education college administrators have agreed with many of the findings of the Teacher's College report -- especially with the finding that many graduate programs are disconnected to real-life school challenges.
Based on the research, Sanoff believes certain direct countermeasures are clearly indicated. For instance, he notes, "We're recommending that the salary structure that exists in most school systems -- whereby people get pay increases for credits and degrees -- be changed so that people are paid based on performance."
Also, Sanoff advocates establishment of a new degree called a Masters in Educational Administration. The suggested program would combine education, business, and management course work with intense field work or hands-on preparation.
Jim Brown, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
