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Adequacies and Inadequacies of Current Strategies to Recruit Teachers

Ken Zeichner

March 2005

Is the U.S. producing enough teachers as a nation to fill all of the openings? Yes and no. The number of new teachers is sufficient to meet demand, but the graduates are not necessarily in the subject areas where they are needed, and many do not want to go to the schools where they are most needed. The effects of the shortages of fully qualified teachers are disproportionately borne by students in low-achieving schools, schools with high numbers of students of color, and schools with high numbers of students who qualify for free and reduced-price lunch. In addition, students who attend high-poverty schools, low-performing schools, or schools with high concentrations of African American or Latino students have less-qualified teachers than students who do not attend these attend other schools.

Three approaches to school reform—the professionalization agenda, the deregulation agenda, and the social justice agenda—offer very different visions of how to remedy current inequality and injustice in public education. In a recent article* UW-Madison education professor Ken Zeichner examined each of these approaches and identified their strengths and weaknesses. He also went beyond these three approaches to raise additional issues that he believes must be addressed if we are to see things change for the better.

Those supporting the professionalization agenda argue that the inequities and injustices that exist in public education can be remedied by raising standards for teaching and teacher education and making a greater investment in teaching and public schooling. The main assertions of this agenda have been translated into policy mandates that have been incorporated in the program approval or accreditation process in most states.

Positive results have occurred from the implementation of pieces of this agenda in recent years. For example, advocates of this position give center stage to problems of inequality and injustice in public education and the relative lack of appreciation for teacher education in higher education. But despite many positive contributions, a number of problems plague the implementation of this agenda and threaten to undermine the goal of equalizing educational outcomes —for example:

1. The teaching standards that have come to be commonly used as the basis for performance assessment in teacher education programs, such as the INTASC (Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium) standards, do not adequately incorporate what we know about culturally responsive teaching.
2. Given the uneven playing field of public education, raising standards has reduced the diversity of the pool of teacher education students. Admissions criteria that emphasize academic performance to the exclusion of other attributes and skills keep some promising prospective teachers out of teacher education programs.

Advocates of the deregulation agenda seek to break what they see as the monopoly of colleges and universities on teacher education programs. This agenda stresses establishing alternative certification programs and dismantling state teacher certification. Advocates argue that:

1. Teachers’ subject matter knowledge and verbal ability are the main determinants of teaching success.
2. Much of what is offered in professional education methods and foundations courses can be learned on the job through an apprenticeship.

While it’s fair to draw attention to the problems with the quality of teacher education and to the possibilities offered by alternative routes to certification, some points in deregulation advocates’ arguments conflict with their expressed concern for academic standards. Simply majoring in a subject or passing a subject matter test is no guarantee that teachers understand the central concepts in their disciplines and have the pedagogical content knowledge needed to transform content to promote understanding by diverse learners. Also, this agenda uncritically advocates alternative routes to certification without attention to the conditions needed in these alternative programs for their educative potential to be realized.

According to Zeichner, it would be more useful to focus on gaining a better understanding of the components of good teacher education, regardless of the structural model for the program. In his view, educators need to continue developing multiple pathways into teaching and focus on making sure that the components of high-quality teacher education are present in all of these various structural models.

Advocates of the social justice agenda see schooling and teacher education as crucial elements in the making of a more just society. Educators do know a great deal about the teacher attributes and instructional strategies associated with successful teaching in culturally and linguistically diverse schools, and about teacher education strategies that effectively prepare teachers to become culturally responsive teachers. For example, factors effective in developing greater intercultural sensitivity and competence in prospective teachers include such things as:

1. Admission criteria that screen applicants on the basis of their commitment to teach all students.
2. Carefully monitored and analyzed field experiences in culturally diverse schools and communities, including cultural immersion experiences.
3. Use of uncertified adults in communities as teacher educators teaching prospective teachers cultural and linguistic knowledge.

But several problems with this reform agenda have weakened its impact. First, much of what has been done by advocates of the social justice agenda has occurred at the level of the teacher education classroom. However, any solution to the problems of inequality and injustice in public education will need to address the larger contexts in which teaching and teacher education exist. The focus must consider program approval and accreditation, requirements for initial licensure, the induction of new teachers, and the structure of teaching careers.

A second limitation of the social justice agenda is the lack of an ethnically diverse group of teacher educators. Currently, faculty of color constitute only about 14% of the faculty in higher education generally, and about 15% of the faculty in education units, are of color. Zeichner maintains that a diverse learning community in teacher education programs is critical to our ability to prepare teachers for diverse schools.

The discourse on teacher education is largely silent about the need to aggressively advocate for the societal conditions needed to achieve equality in the educational arena. Such conditions include access to quality food, housing, affordable health care, and a job that pays a living wage. In the U.S., 11.5 million children under age 18 currently live in poverty , and almost 11 million children under age 19 lack health insurance. Unless we address these broader social conditions that affect students in our public school classrooms and their families, Zeichner says, the slogan now attached to our new education act, No Child Left Behind, will be empty and meaningless and will not help us move toward a world where what we all want for our own children and grandchildren is also available to everyone’s children.

Zeichner’s recent research has been funded by the U.S. Office of Educational Research and Improvement, the National Science Foundation, and the Spencer Foundation.

* Some of this material originally appeared in different form in Teachers College Record Vol. 105, No. 3, April 2003, pp. 490–519.