Wanna teach? Ed Schools Emptying Out
Enrollment in teacher-preparation programs has dropped by more than one-third in the past eight years.
The report comes from an education think-tank, the Center for American Progress, which analyzed federal data to learn that nearly every state in the nation has experienced enrollment declines…some states more than fifty percent.
Significantly the enrollment of black and Hispanic students in Education schools dropped more than 25%.
A national poll conducted earlier this year found that 55% of teachers didn’t want their children to enter the field and more than half of those teaching are thinking of walking away from the profession. This number correlates perfectly to the reality that more than 50% of teachers have been quitting before the end of five years of teaching for years!
And this number: 28% of those in Education schools are leaving them before completion of their programs…all in the past eight years.
Only five states saw an increase in enrollment: Utah, Arizona, Washington State, Texas and Nevada.
Nine states saw a decline of more than 50% with Oklahoma seeing a decline of 80%. Oklahoma is so desperate for teachers that they hired 2,000 college graduates with absolutely no background in education.
The most significant figure of failure is this: Education schools prepare the largest number of teachers. The decline in attendance at these was 43%…
A STARTLING SUCCESS
In the midst of this indication that teaching has no longer become a growing profession comes startling news: schools in Mississippi, which has been the worst school system in the nation for years, did amazingly well on the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests we reported on in Part One. In fact they rivaled the top schools in the nation in reading in the Fourth Grade…making more progress in the past two years than any other school system in the nation.
A miracle? Well maybe…it depends upon your understanding of why students in America score so poorly on reading (and math) tests in the fourth and eighth grades.
It has been our contention that American teachers have not been properly trained to teach these subjects..especially reading. It is understood that children learn to read best when taught how to put the letters together to form a word and then learn the meaning of the word.
Teaching the meaning of words before teaching children how to form words which began back in the 1970’s, has led to failure. Dropping phonics from teaching strategies has caused the failures we now see especially among students who come to reading for the first time in school and not at home.
As we have previously discussed the idea of ‘learning the whole word’ instead of teaching the “boring, repetitive phonics approach” came from California professionals who saw business opportunities in this new approach…new books, new classroom aides etc. all of which meant more money. The concept of phonics – that we first learn what the letters mean and then how letters form words and then what words mean – seemed to have had its day. California has never regained its educational supremacy…and doesn’t have it now.
New math also came from California. Same idea…a new approach meant new money..and that became the goal.
And what we now know is that faced with only knowing how to teach students the meaning of words and not the formation of words has been a national disaster. But a decade ago that changed in Mississippi as teachers were taught “scientifically” first word formation (phonics) and then the meaning of words.
And finally evidence that Mississippi’s approach has worked and worked wonderfully well given the most recent results.
Research reveals that approximately 40% of children will learn to read no matter what. But what of the 60% who need skilled instruction which has been missing from schools for two generations? Unless they receive the kind of instruction that Mississippi children did, they will continue to fail. Because no matter what “experts” say about how poor children are always going to be at a disadvantage, it is obvious now that the poorest state in the nation, Mississippi, can successfully teach poor children to read if they teach their teachers how to do it right.
Unless that begins to happen across the nation soon, the poor results we see will simply get worse and the America some of us remember – smart and resourceful – will continue to fade from the scene…yet another example of history at work.
The great powers throughout the history of time lost their supremacy when they failed to teach their children. All of them. Each and every one of them. Are we living in one now?