'Different Drummers' And Teacher Training: A Disharmony That Impairs Schooling

By J.E. Stone

Public Agenda's recent poll of education professors offers an answer to a question that has troubled citizens and policymakers for more than a decade. How can it be that we pile dollars upon dollars and launch reform after reform yet have so little impact on student learning in our public schools? Instead of results, we get fads and failures.

"Different Drummers: How Teachers of Teachers View Public Education" reveals what may be the heart of the problem: The public's aims are not achieved because teachers are taught that other educational aims should come first.

According to Public Agenda, there is a "staggering" disconnection between the educational aims of parents, teachers, and students and those of the professors who train teachers. The public wants schools with orderly classrooms that produce mastery of conventional knowledge and skills. Teacher-educators, by contrast, consider the public's expectations "outmoded and mistaken." They want classrooms in which the top priorities are positive attitudes toward learning and the presence of activities intended to encourage "learning how to learn." In their view, learning how to read, write, and do math is secondary to whether students find their classroom experience a satisfying one. Their ideal...