If administrators are not completely satisfied with the education-school graduates they hire from Doane College in Crete, Neb., they can call on the equivalent of a one-year warranty.
Under a policy started in the fall of 1982, the private 650-student college is guaranteeing elementary- and secondary-school principals that the graduates of its teacher-preparation program will perform well in the classroom. If the new teachers do not, the college will provide free inservice training. Also part of the deal is the use of Doane faculty members to help supervise the teachers’ first year. Doane faculty members also serve as substitute teachers so that a full-time teacher can help as a “master teacher” in the early part of the school year; that teacher, a Doane official says, acts as a “support system” to new teachers.
Richard Dudley, professor of education and chairman of Doane’s education department, said no schools have yet asked to cash in on the guarantee. But he said he expects “some day” to have to honor it.
A five-year-old program designed to create “indigenous leadership” for the Puerto Rican education system, Pennsylvania State University’s graduate-level program in education for officials of the territory’s department of education has entered a new phase.
Joseph O. Prewett-Diaz, assistant professor of education and coordinator of the program, said the 37 students enrolled this semester will all work directly with schools in Puerto Rico to deal with problems created by “return migration” of students.
About 80,000 of the territory’s 750,000 students each year are students who migrated to the states and recently returned to the island, Mr. Prewett-Diaz said--a situation that wreaks havoc on the system’s ability to monitor students’ academic progress.
This semester’s project will rely more than ever on the graduate students taking trips to Puerto Rico for field studies, Mr. Prewett-Diaz said. The master’s degree and doctoral programs at the university are the only continental training programs for Puerto Rican school officials, said Mr. Prewett-Diaz. The programs, started five years ago, now train primarily high-level officials for the territory’s education department. Mr. Prewett-Diaz said the training will be expanded in coming years to train more school administrators and teachers.
A major controversy at Trenton State College over the college president’s endorsement of Gov. Thomas H. Kean’s proposal to modify teacher-education requirements apparently has subsided.
Harold Eickoff, president of the 8,400-student public institution, last fall faced censure by the faculty senate when he praised Mr. Kean’s proposal to allow liberal-arts graduates to become teachers without formal training in methodology. The leader of the faculty organization called Governor Kean’s plan a “back-door” attempt to break the college’s tenure system.
But a spokesman for Mr. Eickoff said the controversy “has blown over.” He said faculty members at the school--where about one-third of the students are education majors--were originally upset because they thought Mr. Eickoff had been speaking for the entire college.
Two other presidents of colleges in the state have endorsed the Governor’s proposal, which was developed by Commissioner of Education Saul Cooperman.--ce
