In a recent meeting of the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) to share ideas on how best to implement the Common Core, executive director of CCSSO Gene Wilhoit delivered a frank message: states need to take stronger positions on regulating teacher preparation and licensing standards within their jurisdiction and need to utilize their ability to collect and publicize data that show how well those programs are doing. Without such measures, the Common Core will fail.
“If we are honest with ourselves, we know we are not ready to deliver against this promise [of the Common Core]. The vast majority of teachers don’t have the skill set” needed to teach to the new expectations. In order to ensure that the new standards do what they are supposed to, teachers need support to improve both their pedagogical skills and their content knowledge, he said.
However, Wilhoit was quick to emphasize that states should not impose pedagogical methods on teachers, but empower them to attain the needed skills and content knowledge. Principal preparation needs particular attention as well, he said. Current educational programs do not prepare school leaders to “walk through classrooms and recognize the kind of teaching that should be taking place to reflect the new standards.”
Three key levers can be used by states as they begin to implement the Common Core. One is the power to approve teacher prep programs. In many cases, states give this authority to accreditation organizations “that too often emphasize process over content.” Second, states have authority over teacher-licensing programs, which gives them power to examine candidates fully. Finally, states can collect and publicize data about teacher and principal prep programs that will “show how well they are doing their jobs.” Programs that are not producing high-quality teachers should not continue to be sanctioned by the state.
The point of the Common Core, Wilhoit concluded, is to ensure that teaching and learning is improved “at scale” in state education systems, rather than for only a few. “The work depends on impacting all teachers, not just a few. This is systems work, and we are the system.”
To read more, please visit http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/curriculum/2012/04/call_to_states_revolutionize_t.html?cmp=ENL-EU-NEWS2
