Does the Root Problem Lie with Colleges of Education?

by Jonathan Robe

Last April, Richard Vedder suggested (here and here) that there might, just might, be a connection between low-quality collegiate instruction at colleges of education (notorious across campuses for providing routinely easy A's) and the abysmal performance of those elementary and secondary students the graduates of such colleges teach. Some of the evidence unearthed in Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa earth-shattering new book, Academically Adrift, brought this back to mind. As Kevin Carey puts in his latest column for the Chronicle (emphasis mine), Arum and Roksa

found significant differences [in learning] by field of study. Students majoring in the humanities, social sciences, hard sciences, and math—again, controlling for their background—did relatively well. Students majoring in business, education, and social work did not. Our future teachers aren't learning much in college, apparently, which goes a long way toward explaining why students arrive in college unprepared in the first place.

This observation, of course, makes perfect sense. If we dumb down college curricula (particularly for future educators), we shouldn't be surprised to see students at elementary and secondary schools exhibit lower levels of academic achievement than should be expected of them.

Should We Abolish Colleges of Education?

By Richard Vedder

I believe the following stylized facts are roughly correct.

1. American K-12 students perform in a mediocre fashion on international standardized tests, and other data likewise suggest that the academic performance of American students is disappointingly modest.

2. Following from the first point, poor K-12 academic preparation is a significant reason why colleges need remedial education programs, and why they have high drop-out rates.

3. Great teaching leads to better results than mediocre teaching.

4. Most K-12 teachers have studied extensively in colleges of education.

5. Teachers who do not come from a college of education background do as least as well, and often better, than those with certification gained by taking education college courses. Programs relying on non-education-college-trained personnel like Teach for America are highly successful.

6. Standards in American colleges of education are appallingly low, and a sort of anti-knowledge, anti-intellectualism is often apparent. Typically, education students have below-average indicators of college performance (e.g., relatively low high school grades and test scores), yet tend to receive extremely high grades in their education courses. averaging A- or even higher. Research done at the center I direct (the Center for College Affordability & Productivity), took a sample of 174 public institutions with education schools and obtained grade data from campusbuddy.com. Looking at over 1.3 million grades, we found that the average GPA in education classes was 3.65, and 76 percent of students received an A- or better. Contrast that to university-wide GPAs that averaged 2.99, with 41 percent receiving A grades. (I have talked about the wider problem of university-wide grade inflation here and here).

7. The colleges of education have often fought genuine education reform that rewards teachers on the basis of student learning. They have fought to keep certification rules requiring students to take many education courses. Too often, they seem to believe that the maximization of student self-esteem is more important than the acquisition of knowledge.

To be sure, not all colleges of education fit this model, and there are some effective education professors teaching at some schools. By and large, however, colleges of education are considered vast wastelands of mediocrity at most comprehensive universities. And it certainly seems that most of the good research on learning, educational costs, etc., is being done outside education schools by psychologists, political scientists and economists.

Thus it seems to me it is a dubious proposition that undergraduate colleges of education make any sense at all. I am not, of course, suggesting that it is not worthwhile studying the process of learning, and trying to improve it. To the contrary, we do too little, not too much, research into what works in terms of improving student educational outcomes. But future teachers are better served by getting good grounding in academic subject matter, augmented by some practice in teaching under the guidance of an experienced mentor. Courses in the history of education, for example, are less useful to the future math teacher at the intermediate or secondary level than a course in advanced calculus.

State governments should consider defunding students in colleges of education, requiring future teachers to major in an academic subject, etc. There should be upper limits on the amount of work in pedagogy allowed in a bachelor's program, and requiring teachers to get a master's degree in education (a way educrats might use to preserve the education schools) likely should also be prohibited. Most top-flight schools already do not have undergraduate education schools, but this blight on true "higher education" should be discouraged at all institutions depending on taxpayer funds.

Abolish Colleges of Education

By Richard Vedder

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, new "normal schools" were created --colleges to train teachers. Established universities also added schools or colleges of education. There is mounting evidence that this was a mistake. It is time that public policy turn to doing something about it.

My wonderful CCAP Whiz Kids have written blogs exposing one huge scandal --that grades in virtually all schools of education are uniformly high. The best and brightest are treated the same, roughly, as those of mediocre intellectual or interpersonal qualities. Looking at a sample of literally scores of institutions, the Whiz Kids found that the typical student earned a grade of A or A- in education courses, while the median grade in, say, economics courses was a B-. Yet I would bet $1,000 against $1 that on average the intellectual rigor in the economics classes was far higher than in the education ones. We offer Feel Good instruction emphasizing raising self esteem in education schools, crowding students out of legitimate courses in subject matter.

To be sure, there has been a realization of this problem for decades, and in some cases some things have been done about it. The proportion of college students majoring in education has undergone a deserved decline. But most teachers in K-12 settings today were either majors in education or took lots of education courses. And to what result? The overall student performance levels in the U.S. K-12 schools are embarrassingly low, although that reflects a lot of other factors beside so-so teaching.

Teachers in the Teach for America program do a great job by all accounts, and few of them have had the mindless education courses that most states require. Teachers getting licensed via alternative certification options in states like New Jersey have performed as well or better in the classroom as those with more formal education training. College professors teaching 18 and 19 year old kids are winning teaching awards (I would immodestly include myself) never having a class in how to teach. Yet they are forbidden to teach 17 year old students in high school because they lack these vacuous courses. My own son was a Teacher of the Year nominee in his first year of middle school teaching --before he had taken any education courses. The examples abound.

Mediocre standards --or no standards--in education schools have returned to bite the colleges. We turn out teachers with mediocre basic knowledge skills but firm indoctrination in promoting student self esteem. A decade later, the products of these teachers return to study at the university --and often they are pretty mediocre, since the teachers have not challenged them to learn basic facts and principles on which our world depends.

The solution: after a certain date in the not-to-distant future, remove all federal subsidies for institutions with colleges or schools of education. Remove subsidies to state governments requiring teachers to take more than a small number of education type courses. Ultimately make it a felony for any school superintendent to knowingly hire a graduate of a college of education (allowing a grandfather clause to exempt teachers educated in the past). Put these schools out of business.

That is not to say, however, that teachers should have no training specific to the instructional mission they carry out. I think it is reasonable to require an elementary teacher to take up to five three-credit hour semester hours dealing with pedagogy, and up to one semester of time in student teaching, working with an experienced teacher. But I think it should be required that teachers mostly study in academic areas where they are teaching --French teachers should study French, for example.

Educating Brilliance?

by Matthew Denhart and Christopher Matgouranis

Today’s “everyone is a winner” culture has spilled over into higher education. Over the last several decades, there has been consistent grade inflation in American universities. CCAP has addressed this in past posts. It has been estimated that there has been at least a 0.1 percent increase in average student GPA in every decade since the 1950s. In 1991, for example, the average GPA according to gradeinflation.com was 2.93, but had risen to 3.11 by 2006.

So who cares? At first glance this seems like a minor problem considering all the issues facing higher education. Grade inflation might seem like a good deal for students, but actually they are the ones who suffer the most. Grades serve two purposes. The first purpose is to measure competence in a class or subject area and the second is to distinguish oneself from peers. Students and potential employers are given an unrealistic idea of their gained knowledge. Also, when good students attempt to get jobs or continue on to graduate school, they have more trouble distinguishing themselves from their average peers.

While grade inflation is present throughout universities, colleges of education are the most egregious offenders. Using official university grade records, campusbuddy.com has created a comprehensive database of grade distributions for entire universities and individual departments within schools. We found this data for the top 20 CCAP/Forbes 2009 Public Research Universities that have the requisite information for education departments. The chart below shows the average GPAs for all university classes juxtaposed with the GPAs from education classes. Additionally, for all university classes, 43 percent of the grades were an “A” while 80 percent of education grades were an “A.”

Here is a sample chart of education department grade distribution for the University of Washington. This chart gets the point across, but sadly charts for many other leading public schools are just as bad.

University of Washington, Education Department

Often problems in higher education are blamed on a poor K-12 system. However, in a Catch-22 scenario, it may be that the colleges of education are harming the K-12 system by providing poorly trained teachers who then educate the next generation of mediocre college students. In this way, grade inflation hampers the entire education system.

It could be that students taking these courses are far more brilliant than average university students. The problem with this argument is that, at least at our university, data show that entering education majors by all measures (ACT, SAT, high school GPA and class rank) are below the entering class average. Most shocking, the average high school GPA for education majors was 3.35 while their college GPA in education courses was a 3.77. Universities are supposed to be more rigorous, but this data suggests that standards are lower in college, especially in colleges of education.

All of those shocking statistics are just an initial analysis. CCAP thinks that this is a topic that warrants a much deeper investigation. Stay tuned.