y Issues inTeacher Education

Changing the population ofpeople who enter the pro-

‘, fession - however importantthat may be - is not likely

to change the way they teachin classrooms, Ms. Kennedy

maintains. Each of thesevProroblems reauires its own

sepa;ate solution.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

BY MARY M. KENNEDY

IN THE UNITED STATES today,we face three distinct problemsof teacher quality. The first is aproblem of representation. Howdo we get people into the teach-

ing force who better represent the pop-ulation of students being taught? Thesecond is a problem of tested ability.How do we ensure that those who do en-ter teaching are of the intellectual cali-ber we want for our teachers? The thirdis a problem of improving practice.Even if we get the right people in thedoor - people who are representativeand capable - how can we improvetheir actual classroom practice?

MARY M. KENNEDY is a professor of ed-ucah’on at Michigan State University, EastLansing. This article is based on a speech de-livered in November 1989 at the Governor’sEmployment and Training Conference,Reno. Support for the preparation of thatspeech was provided by the National Centerfor Research on Teacher Education througha grant from the Office of Educational Re-search and Improvement, U.S. Departmentof Education. However, the opinions ex-pressed are those of the author.

., 1 ., I,\<\, LC‘\

These three problems are often con-fused with one another and with the sep-arate problem of just getting enough peo-ple into teaching. As a result, solutionsto one problem are often assumed to besolutions for the others as well. But solv-ing the problem of providing the requiredquantity of teachers will not solve any ofthe three problems of teacher quality.Moreover, I will argue here that solvingone of the three problems of quality willnot necessarily solve either of the othertwo. We must address all three, and wemust address them individually.

THE REPRESENTATION PROBLEM

By now the demographic projectionsfor the next several decades are widelyknown. The student population is chang-ing dramatically. In the near future, His-panics will replace blacks as the domi-nant minority in this country; the totalminority population will become a sub-stantial portion of the total population; insome states, whites will become a minori-ty group. Yet, despite these changes inthe student population, our teaching forceis still largely white, suburban, working-class, and female.

This is the representation problem.1

Our teaching force no longer representsthe population at large and – unless wework actively to change its composition– it will be even less representative inthe future. We need to recruit people intoteaching who better represent the studentsbeing taught.

But how serious a problem is it ifwe have mainly white, working-class fe-males teaching an increasingly black,Hispanic, and immigrant population? Itdepends on how you define the teacher’stask. After all, for decades we have al-lowed both girls and boys to be taughtmainly by women. Some people mightargue that it shouldn’t matter whether theteacher and the student come from cul-turally similar or dissimilar backgroundseither, if the teacher can actively engagestudents with important content. Theoret-ically, you shouldn’t need to be the samesort of person as your students are to havean impact on them.

Furthermore, as a practical matter, wecan never completely match students andteachers by their demographic charac-teristics. Simply from the standpoint ofprobabilities, many of the 30 to 35 teach-

660 PHI DELTA KAPPAN

Policy makershave paid moreattention to the

tested-abilityproblem than to

either of theother two problems.

ers a student encounters in 12 years ofschooling will be demographically differ-ent from the student, even if the overallpopulation of teachers is perfectly repre-sentative of the student population. Soeven if we solved the representation prob-lem completely, we would still havenumerous individual situations in whichteacher and student come from differentdemographic backgrounds. If our mainconcern is that minority students be ableto learn school material, we should wor-ry as much or more about the improve-ment-of-practice problem as we do aboutthe representation problem, for no mat-ter how representative the total popula-tion of teachers may be, individual teach-ers will still need to serve students froma variety of backgrounds.

On the other hand, teachers do muchmore than literally teach content. Theyalso personify content. They stand asmodels for what it is like to be an edu-cated person – to be a member of thecommunity of scientists, writers, math-ematicians, or political scientists. Theyalso serve as ex-officio parents, guides,and mentors to young people. If we wantstudents to believe that they themselvesmight one day become scientists, writers,or mathematicians or that they might bementors, guides, and educated people,then they need to see diverse examplesof such people, including at least one wholooks like they look.

This suggests that, even if better repre-sentation does not always (or even often)yield matched teachers and students, it isstill important that we solve the repre-

sentation problem, for students are awareof the full population of teachers in theirschools, not just of the teachers in theirown classrooms. And they need a varie-ty of role models.

THE TESTABILITY PROBLEM

There is evidence that those who en-ter teacher education generally score low-er on tests of academic achievement thanthose who enter other career tracks.Moreover, there is evidence that, amongthose who become certified, those withlower scores are more likely to taketeaching positions. And finally, thosewho stay in teaching tend to have lowerscores on academic achievement teststhan those who leave after a few years.Throughout the pipeline, then, we havecreated a system that routinely attractslower-scoring individuals.2

There have been numerous attempts tounderstand this phenomenon, but the ex-planations usually boil down to two: 1)teaching offers poor salaries and poorworking conditions, particularly whencompared with other kinds of employ-ment available to college graduates; and2) we are now offering many other, moreattractive employment opportunities towomen, who have traditionally soughtteaching positions. In the past, we had aspecial kind of captive work force, apopulation of educated women who werecapable of holding other positions butwho, for a variety of cultural reasons, en-tered the teaching profession. Many ofthem no longer do so, and thus we havea tested-ability problem in the teachingforce.

Policy makers have paid more atten-tion to the tested-ability problem than toeither of the other two problems. Theyfear that, by permitting low-achievingadults to teach, we are creating a situa-tion in which the blind are leading theblind. The statistics are reminiscent of theold George Bernard Shaw maxim: “Hewho can, does. He who can’t, teaches.”

The seriousness of the tested-abilityproblem is hard to estimate, for as asociety we do decide to some extenthow to allocate talent. The problem isalso complicated by the sheer size of theteaching population. We now use about10% of collegeeducated women and 4%of college-educated men as teachers; noother profession draws such a large pro-

portion of our educated adults.3 If wewere so successful in solving the tested-ability problem that all – or even most– of our best and brightest went intoteaching, we would soon be worryingabout a tested-ability problem in busi-ness, law, medicine, and other fields.The nation’s teaching force is simply toolarge to expect it to be filled entirely fromthe uppermost ranges of tested ability.

To decide how serious the tested-abilityproblem in education is, we need to dotwo other things. First, we need to de-cide the level and range of tested abili-ty that we are willing to tolerate in teach-ing, given the tradeoffs. We need to behonest about how many high-scoring in-dividuals we want to bring into teachingwhen moving them into teaching meansmoving them out of business, computerscience, and so forth. How many high-scoring teachers do we need? And howlow are we willing to permit the bottomend of the acceptable achievement distri-bution to go?

Second, we need to learn more aboutthe relationship between test scores andteaching practice. Tests measure a par-ticular kind of intellectual ability, one thatsome have argued is far too narrow. Ahigh score on an achievement test usual-ly means that an individual can choosethe right answer to verbal analogies, log-ic problems, or mathematical problemswhen several possible answers are pro-vided. It does not necessarily mean thata person could solve such problems in-dependently. Nor does it mean that an in-dividual can solve more complicated oropen-ended problems where no answeris clearly best. And it doesn’t mean thatan individual can explain to someone elsehow to solve such problems, as teachersmust do. Finally, a high score on anachievement test doesn’t mean that the in-dividual tested could create problems forsomeone else to learn from, as teachersmust do. Consequently, we don’t knowwhether adults who score moderatelywell on tests actually teach any less wellthan those whose scores are higher. Nordo we know whether adults who scoreonly moderately well are less acquaint-ed with the material that they actuallyteach.

I do not mean to suggest that tests don’tmeasure anything useful about teachers.Obviously they do. And we do know thatdifferences in test scores are relevant to

academic pursuits as well as to a varietyof other kinds of activities. Moreover, Ido not mean to suggest that we can getaway with a population of teachers who

Textbookstypically pay scant

attention to bigideas, offer noanalysis, and

pose no challeng-ing questions.

come entirely from the bottom of the test-score distribution. What I am saying,though, is that we don’t know how lowa score has to be before it makes a differ-ence to teaching.

So it is hard to say how serious ourtested-ability problem really is. Perhaps,if we took into account the other occu-pations that need to attract high-scoringindividuals and if we knew more aboutthe relationship between test scores andteaching performance, we would con-clude that our tested-ability problem isnot as grave as we have been supposing.

THE IMPROVEMENT-OF-PRACTICEPROBLEM

Virtually all of the blue-ribbon com-missions that have studied education inthe last decade have argued that we needa new and better kind of teaching: teach-ing that challenges students more than ourcurrent methods do, that expects moreof students, that demands higher-orderthinking from them, that prepares themfor the workplace of tomorrow.4 Morethan previous generations, today’s stu-dents must learn to work collaborativelyin teams, to solve problems, and to beflexible and adaptable. Yet our currentteaching practices encourage students towork in isolation and compete with oneanother, to learn discrete facts and skills

rather than to solve complex problems,and to follow fixed routines rather thanto experiment with novel tasks. Prepar-ing students for tomorrow’s workplacerequires a different kind of teaching.

Moreover, since the student body itselfis changing, teachers must learn not onlyto teach differently but also to teach adifferent kind of student, one who hastraditionally been alienated from schoolsand from academic subjects. This, then,is the improvement-of-practice problem.

Suppose we do solve the first two prob-lems , the representation problem and thetested-ability problem. Suppose we findways to attract people from diverse back-grounds into teaching, and suppose wefeel confident that those entering teach-ing have a satisfactory level of tested abil-ity. We would still need to find ways toalter their classroom practices so that theyteach differently, for solving the first twoproblems offers us no guarantee thatteaching practice will change. How canwe gauge the importance of the improve-ment-of-practice problem? Let’s look atsome recent findings from research.

First, national assessments in virtual-ly every subject indicate that, althoughour students can perform basic skills pret-ty well, they are not doing well on think-ing and reasoning. American students cancompute, but they cannot reason throughcomplex mathematical problems.5 Theycan write complete and correct sentences,but they cannot prepare arguments.”Nor can they reason through scientificproblems very well.7 Moreover, in in-ternational comparisons, American stu-dents are falling behind – not only be-hind students from developed countriesbut also behind those in many undevel-oped countries – particularly in thoseareas that require higher-order thinking,problem solving, or conceptual work.Our students are not doing well at think-ing, reasoning, analyzing, predicting, es-timating, or problem solving. That is ourfirst finding from research.

Our second finding gives a clue as towhy the first finding exists: textbooks inthis country typically pay scant attentionto big ideas, offer no analysis, and poseno challenging questions. Instead, theyprovide a tremendous array of informa-tion or “factlets,” while they ask questionsrequiring only that students be able to re-cite back the same empty list. Indeed, ourtextbooks often don’t even provide much

MAY 1991 661

in the way of organization or coherencefor these facts.8 So whatever real under-standing of subjects students develop andwhatever intellectual challenge they getmust come from their teachers.

Our third finding from research is thatteachers teach most content only for ex-posure, not for understanding.9 And ourfourth is that teachers tend to avoidthought-provoking work and activitiesand stick to predictable routines. Why?Because students are easier to manage –and student outcomes are easier to con-trol – when the tasks are routine.10

If we were to describe our currentK-12 education system on the basis ofthese four findings, we would have to saythat it provides very little intellectuallystimulating work for students and that ittends to produce students who are notcapable of intellectual work. These prob-lems are not, of course, all the result ofbad teaching. I have already pointed outthat American textbooks often don’t pro-vide intellectually defensible material,and I should add now that many featuresof school organization and school policycontribute to the problem as well. Still,these findings about what happens inAmerican classrooms help explain thefindings of national and international as-sessments, and they demonstrate why weface an improvement-of-practice prob-lem.

But our fifth finding from researchcompounds all the others and makes itharder to change practice: teachers arehighly likely to teach in the way theythemselves were taught. 11

If your elementary teacher presentedmathematics to you as a set of procedur-al rules with no substantive rationale,then you are likely to think that this iswhat mathematics is and that this is howmathematics should be studied. And youare likely to teach it in this way. If youstudied writing as a set of grammaticalrules rather than as a way to organizeyour thoughts and to communicate ideasto others, then this is what you will thinkwriting is, and you will probably teachit so.

We all learn about teaching through-out our lives. From kindergarten through12th grade, we observe our own teachers.Those of us who go on to college observeeven more teachers, and these teachersare not necessarily any better or anydifferent.12 By the time we complete our

undergraduate education, we have ob-served teachers for up to 3,060 days. Incontrast, teacher preparation programsusually require something in the neigh-borhood of 75 days of classroom ex-perience. What could possibly happenduring 75 days that would significantlyalter the practices learned during thepreceding 3,OOO?

The improvement-of-practice problemboils down to this: if we know that teach-ers are highly likely to teach as they weretaught and if we are not satisfied withthe way they were taught, then how canwe help them develop different teach-ing strategies? And how can we createschools and policies that will support theuse of these strategies?

How serious is the improvement-of-practice problem? I judge it to be veryserious. We are caught in a vicious cir-cle of mediocre practice modeled aftermediocre practice, of trivialized knowl-edge begetting more trivialized knowl-edge. Unless we find a way out of thiscircle, we will continue re-creating gen-erations of teachers who recreate gener-ations of students who are not preparedfor the technological society we are be-coming.

The good news is that it is possible tolearn more from teacher education thanpeople have tended to learn from it in thepast. We know more now about what isinvolved in teaching higher-order think-ing than we did even 10 years ago, andwe know more about the nature of theknowledge that teachers need than we did10 years ago.13 Teacher educators arenow experimenting with ways of gettingmore out of their candidates’ classroomtime.14 One way they do this is throughassignments that force prospective teach-ers to be more analytic about what theysee in classrooms: teaching them to raisequestions about what is being taught andwhat is being learned and to generate hy-potheses about better approaches. Teach-er educators are also experimenting withways of helping prospective teachers de-velop alternative teaching strategies.

POTENTIAL SOLUTIONS

I argued above that solving one of theseproblems would not necessarily solveeither of the others. Getting a more repre-sentative population of teachers won’tguarantee that we get higher tested abili-

ty in our teachers, getting higher testedability in our teachers won’t guaranteethat we get different and better teaching,and helping teachers learn to teach bet-ter won’t guarantee that we get a morerepresentative population of teachers toserve our diverse student population.

Each problem has its own etiology, andeach requires its own cure. I emphasizethis again, because I now intend to lookat some of the solutions that have beenproposed – and some of the most popu-lar solutions may not solve the problemsthey are intended to solve.

The representation problem. Themost immediately obvious solution to therepresentation problem is to provide fi-nancial assistance programs to help low-income and minority students completetheir college degrees. Note that these pro-grams, by themselves, don’t ensure thatany of the beneficiaries will actually en-ter teaching. Just as new employment op-portunities have opened up for women,so have they opened up for minorities.Taken alone, financial aid for collegewon’t necessarily solve the representationproblem.

Another idea, recently considered byCongress, is to revive some form of theTeacher Corps program. The originalTeacher Corps, initiated in the 196Os,provided financial assistance during col-lege to encourage students to teach inlow-income areas for some period of timeafter graduation.15 Those who supportthis plan don’t assume that these teacherswill remain in these schools forever, butthe incentives are designed to persuadethem to work there at least for a shortwhile.

The original Teacher Corps was de-signed to solve both a quantity problemand a representation problem. It was in-tended to get more people into certainclassrooms and to change the kind of per-son who came through the door. SomeTeacher Corps programs funded studentswhile they were in college and encour-aged them to go into teaching; somesolicited liberal arts graduates and gavethem graduate preparation in teaching.All sought candidates who came fromlow-income neighborhoods, in the hopethat they would return to those neighbor-hoods to teach. Whether a new TeacherCorps program could accomplish thisfeat, given the new job opportunities forminorities, is not clear.

662 PHI DELTA KAPPAN

Policy makersassume that thereis a strong rela-tionship between

tested abilityand improvement

of practice.

Such a program could also be used tosolve the tested-ability problem, if eli-gibility for the program were to dependon applicants’ having achieved someminimum test score. However, even if anew Teacher Corps helped with both therepresentation problem and the tested-ability problem, it would not necessarilysolve the improvement-of-practice prob-lem.

Tbe tested-ability problem. The mostpopular solution to the tested-ability prob-lem is to build some form of test intostate requirements for certification. Vir-tually every state now includes someform of teacher assessment in its certifi-cation requirements. 16 These assessmentsvary considerably from state to state;regardless of their particular features,however, most are intended to improvethe tested ability of the teaching popula-tion. Some may accomplish that goal –but, for a variety of reasons, most prob-ably won’t.

In order for a state assessment to real-ly raise the tested ability of teachers en-tering the work force, it would have tosatisfy three conditions. First, the testwould have to be a serious test – one thatincludes intellectually rigorous contentand that has a rigorous cut-off score. Sec-ond, it would have to be designed so thata lot of people fail it. If no one fails thetest, then it can’t, by definition, be rais-ing the tested ability of new teachers.And finally, it would have to meet legalcriteria for job relevance, for as soon asvery many people fail an entrance test,the state will face a lawsuit challenging

the relevance of both the content and thecut-off score to the tasks of teaching. Sofar, no state has been able to demonstratejob relevance.17 And to avoid these law-suits, most states design their assess-ments so that very few teachers will fail.That is, they adopt relatively high cut-offscores, and they provide ample opportu-nities for those who do fail to try again.Consequently, no state assessment systemreally contributes to solving the tested-ability problem. In the end, these assess-ment programs are more symbolic thanfunctional.

Another popular solution to the tested-ability problem is the alternative routeinto teaching. Thirty-three states nowhave provisions for some form of alter-native route to certification.18 What thismeans is that the state drops its normalrequirements for obtaining a teachingcredential and permits certain individu-als to enter teaching via a different path.

States offering alternative routes to cer-tification generally hope to attract morecapable people into teaching. Their rea-soning is that people with high tested abil-ity were, as college students, either de-terred from teaching by its curriculum re-quirements or attracted to higher salariesin other career lines. In either case, theymay have second thoughts later in life.So the state offers a way to become cer-tified without having to go back to col-lege and take a lot of courses. 19

We are starting to get some evidencenow about who enters teaching throughalternative routes. Unfortunately, the evi-dence suggests that these new recruitsdo not differ substantially in their testedability from conventional teacher educa-tion graduates.20 Many of the peoplewho acquire certification through thesesanctioned loopholes have been teachingalready in private schools where certifi-cation is not required and are now seek-ing more lucrative positions in publicschools. Others are new college gradu-ates with grades roughly comparable tothose of graduates who are already cer-tified. Even those who move into teach-ing from other jobs are moving fromlower-status technical and clerical jobsrather than from higher-status businessand science jobs.21

One surprising finding, however, isthat alternative routes are attracting amore diverse population into teaching.For instance, some alternative routes are

bringing more males and minorities intoteaching than traditional teacher educa-tion programs do.22 So even if this solu-tion doesn’t work well for the tested-ability problem, it may help solve therepresentation problem. This is one of thereasons that I emphasize the need to thinkabout each problem separately.

Another reason to think about theseproblems separately is that policy mak-ers often confuse the tested-ability prob-lem and the improvement-of-practiceproblem. They assume that, if alterna-tive routes solve the tested-ability prob-lem, they will also automatically solvethe improvement-of-practice problem. Inother words, policy makers assume thatthere is a strong relationship betweentested ability and improvement of prac-tice.

There are two reasons to doubt this as-sumption. First, have you ever heardsomeone say, “He is so smart, I don’t un-derstand a word he says”? Surely, that isnot the kind of high-ability person wewant in our classrooms. Knowing a lotor being smart is not enough for teach-ing, for the main job of the teacher is toget someone else to know a lot and to besmart.

The second reason to doubt the simpleassumption of policy makers is one thatI have already mentioned: teachers ac-quire seemingly indelible imprints ofteaching from their own experiences asstudents, and these imprints are tremen-dously difficult to change. The dominat-ing impulse in any new teacher is to imi-tate the behaviors of his or her own ear-ly teachers. And this impulse will re-main strong unless teachers are offeredan equally strong and compelling alter-native approach to teaching.

However, most alternative-route pro-grams offer only short-term training fornew teachers. They are not designed toshake loose the preconceptions teachersarrive with. Instead, they capitalize onthem; they expect teacher candidates toknow what teaching is all about, both be-cause they are smart and because theyhave observed teaching for some 3,000days. With only brief pedagogical train-ing, alternative-route candidates wouldbe more likely to emulate the practicesthey observed as children – the familiarpractices that seem almost second nature– than to develop new approaches toteaching. Even if alternative routes do

MAY 1991 663

raise the tested ability of the teachingforce or bring more minority teachersinto teaching, they are not likely to sig-nificantly improve teaching practice. Solet us now consider solutions proposedfor that problem.

The improvement-of-practice prob-lem. The most popular solution to theimprovement-of-practice problem thesedays is the induction program. Thirteenstates now require some form of induc-tion program beyond student teaching.By this I mean that school districts arerequired to provide first-year teacherswith some sort of guidance or assis-tance.23 Often this assistance appears inthe form of an experienced teacher whoserves as a mentor to the new teacher.There are numerous variations on thistheme. Mentors can work independent-ly in one-to-one relationships, or they canprovide a standardized orientation to allnewcomers. Districts can provide re-leased time for mentors, or they can ex-pect them to provide assistance in thecracks between classes.

But, like alternative-route programs,induction programs will probably not al-ter practice. They will help new teach-ers learn what the current population ofteachers knows; they will not help themlearn new or different approaches toteaching. If anything, induction programsfurther reinforce the same kind of teach-ing we already have – the kind that em-phasizes facts and skills rather than rea-soning and analysis, that rewards passiv-ity and compliance rather than active en-gagement with subject matter.

The second proposal often put for-ward to solve the improvement-of-prac-tice problem is the professional develop-ment school.24 There was a time whenmost colleges of education operated “labschools” in which their student teach-ers received some practical experience.It is often said that professional devel-opment schools are an updated versionof the lab schools. And in many respectsthey are. But in one important respectthey are not: the lab school was operatedby the university, not by the communi-ty, and its students tended to be facultyoffspring. Lab schools prepared teachersin a sort of ivory-tower environment: nopoverty, no poorly educated parents, fewchildren from culturally different back-grounds, and usually plenty of resources.

Professional development schools, by

664 PHI DELTA KAPPAN

contrast, are genuine collaborations be-tween the university and the school dis-trict. They serve children who attendpublic schools, not those who attend pri-vate schools. Moreover, their reason forbeing is not simply to provide a contextin which new teachers can learn to teach,but rather to allow all teachers to learnmore about teaching. In that sense, theyare truly laboratories.

Not many true professional develop-ment schools exist today, so I can de-scribe only their idealized features. Oneis that university faculty members wouldteach regularly in these schools. Anoth-er is that teachers from these schoolswould teach regularly at the university.A third is that virtually everyone asso-ciated with the professional developmentschool – university faculty members,teachers, and student teachers – wouldbe experimenting with new ways to teachchildren. And finally, the staffing pat-terns and the physical layout of profes-sional development schools would lookdifferent from those of regular schools.There would be private places for teach-ers to plan and design new strategies andmaterials, conference rooms where teach-ers could work together on new ideas,and observation rooms connected to class-rooms so that teachers, prospective teach-ers, and other visitors could observe teach-ing practices without disrupting the on-going classroom activities.

Getting a sense of the layout and of thekind of work that occurs in professionaldevelopment schools suggests some ofthe staffing and organizational changesthat would have to occur, for we can-not have genuine experimentation in thetypical egg-carton school, in which eachteacher is tied to one group of childrenfor the entire day, every day. Yet some-one must be with these children through-out the day, and the children must belearning throughout the day. To get aprofessional development school going,then, we would need to double the exist-ing staff, to be very creative in group-ing students and teachers, or to draw anew cadre of teaching assistants into theschool to free teachers to do the kind ofexperimentation and development that isneeded.

The proposed creation of professionaldevelopment schools is clearly intendedto contribute to the improvement of prac-tice, but it does nothing for the represen-

tation problem or for the tested-abilityproblem. However, since this is the onlyserious solution being proposed to solvethe improvement-of-practice problem, in-vesting in such schools is worth a shot.

My aim here has not been to providean exhaustive list of policy options andtheir relative merits. Instead, I havesought to offer a strategy for evaluatingideas that are promoted to improve thequality of teaching.

There are two important parts to myargument. First, we face at least threedistinct problems in this country with re-spect to teacher quality. We may argueabout the degree to which each of theseis a problem, about which is most impor-tant, and about how to solve each one.But virtually everyone agrees that allthree of these problems exist.

The second part of my argument is thatsolving any one of these problems willnot automatically solve the others. Thispoint is particularly important, for thereis a tendency among policy makers to as-sume that, if they alter the population thatenters teaching, they will automaticallyalter the practice of teaching. The chang-ing economy and the evidence from as-sessments both suggest a significant needto improve actual teaching practices, yetresearch suggests that teachers are high-ly likely to teach as they themselves weretaught. Thus changing the population ofpeople who enter the profession – how-ever important that may be – is not likelyto change the way they teach in class-rooms. Each of these problems requiresits own separate solution.

1. The American Association of Colleges forTeacher Education has documented these trends inTeaching Teachers: Facts and Figures (Washing-ton, D.C.: AACTE, 1987) and has developed astrong set of policy initiatives related to them. Fora discussion of both statistics and policy options,see Minority Teacher Recruitment and Retention:A Public Policy Issue (Washington, D.C . : AACTE,1987).2. A great deal has been written in an effort to sortout the flow of talent into and away from teaching.Three good overviews are Phillip C. Schlechty andVictor S. Vance, ‘Recruitment, Selection, and Re-tention: The Shape of the Teaching Force,” Elemen-tary School Journal, vol. 83, 1983, pp. 469-87;Donna H. Kerr. ‘Teaching Competence and Teach-er Education in the United States.’ In Lee S. Shul-man and Gary Sykes, eds., Handbook of Teachingand Policy. New York: Longman, 1983), pp. 12649; and Sandra D. Robertson, Timothy Z. Keith,and Ellis B. Page, “Now Who Aspires to Teach?,”Educational Researcher, June/July 1983, pp. 13-21.

3. Judith Lanier, ‘Research on Teacher Education,”in Merlin C. Wittrock, ed., Handbook of Researchon Teacher Education, 3rd ed. (New York: Mac-millan, 1986), pp. 527-69.4. Aspects of this argument can be found in a widerange of sources. For example, A Nation Prepared:Teachers for the 2Ist Century, the 1986 report ofthe Carnegie Forum on Education and the Econo-my, specifically addresses the problem of teacherquality; A Nation at Risk, the 1983 report of theNational Commission on Excellence in Education,addresses mainly the quality and rigor of Ameri-can secondary education; Everybody, Counts: A Re-port on the Future of Mathematics Education, the1989 report of the National Research Council, ad-dresses the issue with respect to mathematics edu-cation; and Tomorrow’s Teachers, the 1986 reportof the Holmes Group, addresses both teacher edu-cation and the attractiveness of the workplace toteachers.5. Curtis C. McKnight et al., The Underachiev-ing Curriculum: Assessing U.S. school Mathematicsfrom an International Perspective (Champaign, Ill.:Stipes Press, 1987).6. Arthur N. Applebec et al., The Writing ReportCard, 1984-88 (Princeton, N.J.: National Assess-ment of Educational Progress and Educational Test-ing Service, 1990).7. International Association for the Evaluation ofEducational Achievement, Science Achievement inI7 Countries: A Preliminary Report (New York:Pergamon, 1988).8. For a review of research on school textbooks,see Harriet Tyson and Arthur Woodward, “WhyStudents Aren’t Learning Very Much from Text-books,” Educational Leadership, November 1989,pp. 14-17.9. See Andrew Porter, “A Curriculum Out of Bal-ance: The Case of Elementary School Mathemat-ics,” Educational Researcher, June/July 1989, pp.9-15.10. Walter Doyle has been one of the main inves-tigators in this area. See Walter Doyle, “Academ-ic Work,” Review of Educational Research, vol. 53,1983, pp. 159-99; “Content Representationin Teachers’ Definitions of Academic Work,” Jour-nal of Curriculum Studies, vol. 18, 1986, pp. 365-79; and Walter Doyle and Kathy Carter, “AcademicTasks in Classrooms,” Curriculum Inquiry, vol. 14,1984, pp. 129-49.11. The reasons for this have been articulatedby several individuals. See, for example, MartinHaberman, ‘Can Common Sense Effectively Guidethe Behavior of Beginning Teachers?,” Journal ofTeacher Education, vol. 36, 1985, pp. 32-35; DanLortie, Schoolteacher: A Sociological Study (Chica-go: University of Chicago Press, 1975); and Shar-

on Feiman-Nemser, “Learning to Teach,” in Shul-man and Sykes, pp. 150-70.12. For a review of the nature of college-levelteaching in a variety of academic subjects, see G.Williamson McDiarmid, “The Liberal Arts: WillMore Result in Better Subject Matter Understand-ing?,” Theory into Practice, vol. 29, 1990, pp.21-29.13. Much of this knowledge has been developedthrough the work of Lee Shulman and his colleaguesat Stanford University and through the work of theNational Center for Research on Teacher Educa-tion at Michigan State University, Some profession-al associations, such as the National Council ofTeachers of Mathematics and the National Coun-cil of Teachers of English, are now incorporatingthese new ideas into their teaching standards. Someexamples of the work at Stanford include Lee S.Shulman, “Knowledge and Teaching: Foundationsof the New Reform,” Harvard Educational Review,vol. 57, 1987, pp. l-22; and Suzanne Wilson, LeeS. Shulman, and Anna E. Richert, “ ‘150 Differ-ent Ways’ of Knowing: Representations of Knowl-edge in Teaching,” in James Calderhead, ed., Ex-ploring Teacher Thinking (London: Cassell, 1987).pp. 104-4. Examples from Michigan State includeMary Kennedy, ed., Competing Visions of Teach-er Knowledge (East Lansing: National Center forResearch on Teacher Education, Michigan StateUniversity, 1989); G. Williamson McDiarmid, De-borah L. Ball, and Charles W. Anderson, “WhyStaying Ahead One Chapter Doesn’t Really Work:Subject-Specific Pedagogy,” in Maynard C. Rey-nolds, ed., The Knowledge Base for BeginningTeachers (New York: Pergamon, 1989); and Deb-orah L. Ball, “Research on Teaching Mathematics:Making Subject Matter Part of the Equation,” inJere Brophy, ed., Advances in Research on Teach-ing, Vol. 1: Teachers’ Subject-Matter Knowledgeand Classroom Instruction (Greenwich, Conn.: JAIPress, forthcoming).14. For examples of such work, see Pam Schrammet al., Changing Mathematical Conceptions ofPreservice Teachers: A Content and PedagogicalIntervention (East Lansing: National Center for Re-search on Teacher Education, Michigan StateUniversity, Research Report 88-4, 1988); SharonFeiman-Nemser et al., Changing BeginningTeachers’ Conceptions: A Description of an In-troductory Teacher Education Course (East Lan-sing: National Center for Research on TeacherEducation, Michigan State University, Research Re-port 89-1, 1989); and Deborah L. Ball, “Unlearn-ing to Teach Mathematics,” For the Learning ofMathematics, vol. 8, 1988, pp. 40-48.15. For purposes of this discussion, I am describ-ing a few general ideas. For a more detailed dis-cussion of a variety of other approaches to the

“It’s for the teacher's pet. ”

representation problem, see Minority TeacherR e c r u i t m e n t .16. For details, see State Education Indicators(Washington, D.C.: Council of Chief State SchoolOfficers, 1988).17. For a history of legal precedents in this area,see Matthew W. McDonough, Jr., and W. C.Wolfe, Jr., “Court Actions Which Helped Definethe Direction of the Competency-Based TestingMovement,” Journal of Research and Developmentin Education, vol. 2, 1988, pp. 37-43. For an ex-ample of a report questioning the validity of suchassessments, see B. Horner and J. Sammons, ANYPIRG Report: The Test That Fails (New York:New York Public Interest Research Group, 1988).18. See C. Emily Feistritzer, Alternative TeacherCertification: A State-by-State Analysis (Washing-ton, D.C.: National Center for Educational Infor-mation, 1990).19. Two recent reviews of current alternative-routeprograms are Nancy Adleman, An ExploratoryStudy of Teacher Alternative Certification andRetraining Programs (Washington, D.C.: PolicyStudies Associates, 1986); and Neil B. Carey, BrianS. Mittman, and Linda Darling-Hammond, Recruit-ing Mathematics and Science Teachers ThroughNontraditional Programs: A Survey (Washington,D.C.: RAND Corporation, 1988).20. Few studies actually examine the premises ofthese programs; most look instead at the numberand biographical backgrounds of recruits. Twostudies sponsored by the National Center for Re-search on Teacher Education, however, did exam-ine the test scores and grade-point averages ofalternative-route candidates. One is Karen Zumwaltet al., “Everybody into the Pool: Characteristics ofEntering Teachers in New Jersey,” paper present-ed at the annual meeting of the American Educa-tional Research Association, San Francisco, March1987. The other is Trish Stoddart, “Who Is Enter-ing Alternate Routes into Teaching and What ViewsDo They Bring with Them?,” paper presented atthe annual meeting of the American Educational Re-search Association, San Francisco, March 1987.Stoddart found that grade-point averages, for in-stance, were relatively high among alternative-routeEnglish teachers but were relatively low amongalternative-route mathematics teachers. Based ondata from the AACTE, I would guess that theseEnglish teachers have grade-point averages a bitabove those of graduates of traditional teacher edu-cation programs, whereas the math teachers havegrade-point averages a bit below those of traditionalteacher education graduates. See also TeachingT e a c h e r s .21. For a summary of findings from 64 alternative-route programs, see Linda Darling-Hammond, LisaHudson, and Sheila N. Kirby, Redesigning Teach-er Education: Opening the Door for New Recruitsto Science and Mathematics Teaching (Washing-ton, D.C.: RAND Corporation, 1989).22. Ibid.23. For aprograms,

discussion of the purposes of inductionsee Phillip C Schlechty, “A Framework

for evaluating Induction into Teaching,” Journalof Teacher Education, vol. 36, 1985, pp. 37-41.24. For further discussions of these schools andtheir role in improving teaching, see Tomorrow’sTeachers (East Lansing, Mich.: Holmes Group,1986); Marsha Levine, ed., Professional PracticeSchools: Building a Model (Washington, D.C.:American Federation of Teachers, 1988); and AMLieberman, ed., Building Professional Culturesin Schools (New York: Teachers College Press,1989). IKl

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