The Human Cost Of Teacher Education Reform

By Patricia H. Hinchey

Julie's mother called me the first day of last semester. At first, I thought she wanted to know why her daughter had received a D in my educational-foundations course the semester before. It took about 30 seconds for me to figure out that the point of the call wasn't to discuss Julie's performance, but for Mrs. James to call me names. "I know about you, lady" she informed me. "A lot of us know about you. Your class is impossible; students drop it all the time. That university ought to get you out of our kids' way."

In her assessment of the situation, Mrs. James is at odds with most would-be education reformers. Everyone, it seems, wants better teachers. They may disagree on what kinds of programs will produce better teachers, they may disagree on what good teachers do, but everyone seems to want teacher-educators to "clean up their act." If those of us working with tomorrow's teachers would just be smarter, tougher, more demanding, more inspiring, more ... more everything, then K-12 student performance would improve on a level as miraculous, apparently, as the loaves-and-fishes transformation. If teacher-educators and their programs would just start working harder and smarter to do a better job, everyone could breathe a sigh of relief about the supposed catastrophic state of American education.

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