Who’s Teaching Your Children?; Why the Teacher Crisis Is Worse Than You Think and What Can Be Done About It

by Vivian Troen and Katherine C. Boles

• ISBN13: 9780300097412
• ISBN10: 0300097417
• Format: Trade Book
• Copyright: 2003-02-08
• Publisher: Yale University Press

Summary

Many of the problems afflicting American education are the result of a critical shortage of qualified teachers in the classrooms. The teacher crisis is surprisingly resistant to current reforms and is getting worse. This important book reveals the causes underlying the crisis and offers concrete, affordable proposals for effective reform. Vivian Troen and Katherine Boles, two experienced classroom teachers and education consultants, argue that because teachers are recruited from a pool of underqualified candidates, given inadequate preparation, and dropped into a culture of isolation without mentoring, support, or incentives for excellence, they are programmed to fail. Half quit within their first five years. Troen and Boles offer an alternative, a model of reform they call the Millennium School, which changes the way teachers work and improves the quality of their teaching. When teaching becomes a real profession, they contend, more academically able people will be drawn into it, colleges will be forced to improve the quality of their education, and better-pre

Table of Contents

Foreword	xi
Seymour B. Sarason
Acknowledgments	xv
Prologue	1	(4)
Introduction	5	(8)
Your Children Aren't Getting the Teachers They Deserve	13	(12)
The Big Questions	14	(2)
The Big Picture	16	(9)
How Teaching Got to Be This Way	25	(12)
The American Teacher	25	(7)
Who Chooses to Become a Teacher?	32	(5)
Teacher Training: How Bad Is It?	37	(22)
Into the Leaky Pipeline	37	(1)
Teachers Receive Poor Preparation	38	(8)
Certification Requirements Are Nearly Irrelevant	46	(6)
Most ``Professional Development'' Is Weak and Ineffective	52	(7)
Mammas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Teachers	59	(30)
Take This Job	60	(7)
Teaching Is an Isolated, Dead End Job with No Career Path	67	(10)
Teachers Are Kept at the Bottom of the Power Structure	77	(4)
Ineffective Leadership Compounds Poor Performance	81	(8)
Band-Aids and Boondoggles: The Myths and Realities of ``Educational Reform''	89	(52)
More Testing	92	(7)
Smaller Classes	99	(4)
School Vouchers	103	(4)
Charter Schools	107	(6)
Schools for Profit	113	(2)
Incentives for Teacher Recruitment and Retention	115	(4)
Paying Teachers for Student Performance	119	(2)
Teacher-Proof Curriculum	121	(3)
More Homework	124	(5)
Homeschooling	129	(2)
Blaming the Unions	131	(10)
The Millennium School: A Total Approach to Solving the Fundamental Problems of Elementary School Education	141	(46)
A New Model for a New Era	141	(1)
In a Nutshell	142	(1)
First, Give Teachers a Real Career	143	(4)
Second, Make Teaching a Real Profession	147	(8)
Third, Improve Educational Leadership and School Management	155	(7)
A Day in the Life of a Typical Millennium School	162	(12)
How Much Will It Cost?	174	(9)
What Can We Do Now?	183	(4)
Epilogue	187	(2)
E Pluribus Unum
Notes	189	(16)
Bibliography	205	(6)
Index	211