School of education

Schools of education have been blamed for low academic standards and "Mickey Mouse" courses,[6] suggesting that earning an advanced degree in education, specifically a master level degree, doesn't seem to actually make someone a better teacher.[7] George Pólya quoted a typical pre-service secondary school mathematics teacher, "The mathematics department offers us tough steak which we cannot chew and the school of education [feeds us] vapid soup with no meat in it". Polya suggested that a college instructor who offered a methods course to mathematics teachers knew mathematics at least on the level of a master's degree and had some experience of mathematical research.[8]

In her book The schools we deserve, Diane Ravitch suggested that "it would be preferable if there were no education majors at the undergraduate level, if every would be teacher majored in some subject or combination of subjects". She claimed that more than one third of bachelor's degrees in education were awarded to future elementary teachers, followed by physical education teachers, special education teachers, and teachers "of such specialized areas as home economics, vocational education, prekindergarten instruction, and health education." She pointed out that "less than three percent of the education degrees went to secondary teachers, which suggests that those who want to teach in high school take their baccalaureate degree in the subjects they want to teach and get their education credits on the side or in graduate school".[9]

Former president of Teachers College, Arthur Levine, found in his 2006 report that "taken as a whole the nation’s teacher education programs would have to be described as inadequate"[10], while former U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said that "by almost any standard, many if not most of the nation's 1,450 schools, colleges and departments of education are doing a mediocre job of preparing teachers for the realities of the 21st-century classroom"[11].

Throughout the 20th century American schools of education promoted progressive ideas in education, including hands-on projects, group work, development of social skills, and de-emphasis of textbooks. One of the aspects of progressive education is reading instruction based on recognizing an entire word or phrase as a picture, known as "whole word" or "look-say" method, instead of decoding words by recognizing individual letters. Since 1920s, progressive educators warned against "too early attention to alphabet, phonics, or any other kind of analysis of words". To ensure children can memorize all the words in a story, the "look-say" readers like Dick and Jane got rid of traditional stories and fairy tales, and instead introduced simple and repetitive texts that consisted of "controlled vocabulary".[12]

The stance of schools of education in regards to teaching of reading changed little in 21st century. A 2018 APM report revealed that "ill-informed, ineffective reading instruction is the norm", and many schools of education still promote "whole word" method under the guise of "balanced literacy" despite that it has been discredited long ago. The report quotes a 2016 research that claims, "faculty [of schools of education] have ignored the scientific knowledge that informs reading acquisition. As a result, the pre-service teachers who are being educated at these institutions fail to receive the necessary training". According to 2016 report of the National Council on Teacher Quality, only 39 percent of teacher preparation programs appeared to be teaching the components of effective reading instruction.[13]

Some people, including E.D. Hirsch, Jr., Diane Ravitch, Chester Finn, and Lynne Cheney[14] criticized schools of education for left-wing political bias, for favoring socialist philosophies such as Paulo Freire's critical pedagogy[15] and the "Teaching for Social Justice" movement, for creating academically, professionally, and socially inhospitable environment toward students whose political views do not conform to the left-leaning ideology.[16][17][18][19]

Other critics like Lyell Asher argued that Paulo Freire may be more revered than read, for ed schools pushing "an already left-leaning academy far in the direction of ideological fundamentalism".[20] Their interest in educational equity sometimes crosses over the line between academic research and political activism,[4] intimidating even the social strata meant to be protected by the ed schools' ideology, so that "small differences of opinion are seized on and characterized as moral and intellectual failures, unacceptable thought crimes".[21]

Abraham Flexner called courses like "the supervision of the teaching staff", "duties of school officers", "awareness of situations and planning of behavior", "reflective thought as a basis for teaching method" to be "absurdities and trivialities". He admonished the attention "devoted to tests, measurements, organization, administration—including administration of the teaching staff and how to organize for planning the curriculum".[22]

Lyell Asher blames the surge of residential life "curricula" on the selfish motives of the ed schools' administrators to present themselves not as resident advisers but as residence-hall "educators". According to him, campus administrators "talk not just about social justice 'training' but also about social justice 'literacy'", which must be learned "beyond the classroom". Mr. Asher says that there might be "nothing wrong with training students in equity and social justice were it not for the inconvenient fact that a college campus is where these ideals and others like them are to be rigorously examined rather than piously assumed".[20]

He supports the argument of E. D. Hirsch that professors of education, "surrounded in the universities by prestigious colleagues whose strong suit is thought to be knowledge, have translated resentment against this elite cadre into resentment against the knowledge from which it draws its prestige".[23] Mr. Hirsch warns that it is "never a healthy circumstance when people who are held in low esteem exercise dominant influence in an important sphere. The conjunction of power with resentment is deadly".[23]