To the Editor:
Regarding the article “Task Force Formed to Sway Teacher-Prep Rules” (Aug. 22, 2012), it is no surprise that education schools would complain long and hard about any effort to reform their money-making diploma mills and provide a modicum of value. The rules proposed are typical baloney, and the response by the schools is baloney squared.
The measurement that makes the most sense is our scores on international achievement testing. The glaring weaknesses in the current education school training regimes are two-fold: teaching an anti-curriculum pedagogy that can’t work, as our current test results make abundantly clear, and not teaching rigorous subject knowledge.
Fix those two things and performance will improve radically, especially if they are coupled with teacher subject-knowledge testing for current teachers and new graduates that is required every two years for teachers to remain certified. No research is needed, as every country that beats us in the world uses direct-instruction pedagogy and requires strong teacher subject knowledge.
Paul Richardson
Colorado Springs, Colo.
