The Rise of Private Teacher Training

Issue Brief

Executive Summary

A shortage of teachers and the growing demand of parents for choices in their children’s education are combining to spur the entry of the private sector into teacher training, which has largely been left to a state monopoly. Both for-profit and nonprofit organizations are putting resources into teacher preparation.

The nonprofit Core Knowledge Foundation is developing grade-by-grade syllabi to guide its teachers in important subject matter to teach at each grade. Edison Schools, Inc., the largest for-profit manager of public schools, is opening its own teachers’ colleges and expects to have campuses in 20 different cities within seven years. Sylvan Learning Systems, which made its reputation in tutorial services for lagging K-12 students, has recently acquired a 41 percent interest in Walden University, a pioneer in online education, and will use the accredited institution as a base for expanding its teacher-training services. The University of Phoenix also is a large online player in teacher training and recently was admitted to the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education.

The explosion of private programs will likely have a profound impact on teacher training over time. As Dr. Allen Glenn, Dean Emeritus of the University of Washington’s College of Education, says, “When people have choices, competition and service become instrumental. Colleges of education are now just one choice among many for educators. Competition will only escalate.”

——————————————————————————–

Introduction

For the past 100 years, the training and certification of the nation’s schoolteachers has been largely in the hands of a like-thinking, powerful monolith centered in the professional schools of education and government education bureaucracies. Clinging to the romantic tenets of child-centered, “progressive” education, this near-monopoly has turned out a teaching force that exhibits on the whole a low degree of intellectual diversity and a high degree of susceptibility to recycled fads.

Soon the rise of a competitive education industry could change that picture significantly. Two forces converging to challenge the status quo in teacher preparation and entry to the classroom are: (1) the drive to reform American K-12 education, which places a premium on attracting and retaining the most knowledgeable teachers possible, and (2) an increasingly acute teacher shortage, projected at 2.2 million over the coming decade. The immediate need to fill teaching jobs for a looming school year has caused many school systems to waive the usual state certification requirements in favor of hiring liberal arts graduates or people from the working world who have a demonstrated grasp of subjects like mathematics or language.

Typically, “fast track” or alternative certification entails hiring college graduates and giving them a crash course over the summer in classroom mechanics to which education schools devote years. Georgia’s new “Business to Teaching” program, for instance, has the new recruits start teaching right away while completing their education coursework one night a week and in the summer.1 New York City’s year-old Teacher Opportunity Program lays out a seven-week course in the nitty-gritty of classroom management for math and science specialists willing to teach in the Big Apple’s schools.2

Those elements of the education establishment with a vested interest in preserving the current monopoly of labor in education (including the teacher unions) grouse that alternative certification amounts to lowering standards. “Whenever we have a large teacher shortage as we do right now,” declared Kathleen Lyons of the National Education Association, “you will see that licensing and credentials are thrown out the window and warm bodies are simply placed in classrooms.”3 However, studies such as one conducted by Dominic Brewer of RAND Corporation and Dan Goldhaber of the Urban Institute have established that students taught with alternatively certified teachers perform every bit as well as students taught with fully certified teachers.4

Alternative certification is being pursued largely through publicly funded programs but by paving unconventional paths to teaching careers, it opens the door for greater privatization. Ultimately, the spread of school choice may be what spurs the entry of private enterprise into the closed world of teacher preparation. In response to parental demand for varied choices in educational styles, private educational companies – some nonprofit, some for-profit – are establishing beachheads in communities around the country. The idea of a competitive education enterprise has received a boost the past decade from charter schools, which are publicly funded schools whose organizers receive exemption from many bureaucratic rules in exchange for their promise to deliver academic results. Currently, more than 2,100 charter schools are operating in three dozen states and the District of Columbia. These schools of choice find it desirable to select (often from alternative paths) and train their own teachers who can implement the schools’ distinctive styles of education.

Among the non-profits, the Core Knowledge Foundation, which was founded by cultural literacy advocate E.D. Hirsch, Jr., has begun developing grade-by grade handbooks for its teachers, along the lines of “What the Fifth Grade Teacher Needs to Know.” 5 CK also has subject-matter syllabi that it uses in pre-service and in-service courses for its teachers. Hirsch is a critic of the dominant view in ed-school circles that teachers should be mere facilitators of student-directed learning rather than transmitters of knowledge. Hence, Core Knowledge finds itself increasingly in the business of preparing teachers and principals.

Edison Schools
Edison Schools, Inc., the largest for-profit manager of public schools, has embarked on an even more ambitious venture in private teacher training, one that could make it “the nation’s largest operator of teachers’ colleges.” 6 An operator of 139 schools enrolling 75,000 students, the company has opened an entire division — Edison Teachers

Colleges — and put in charge of it former Detroit school superintendent Deborah McGriff, who led Edison’s charter-school development. “We’re responding to our {school district and charter school} partners who say there is much to be gained in terms of improving the quality of teachers,” said Ms. McGriff on the occasion of Edison’s May of 2000 announcement that it would be researching the best way to launch its own teacher colleges.7

If Edison succeeds in its overall plan to become a major player in public education, with 1 million or more pupils by the end of this decade, the concept of private teacher training will receive a big boost. Edison plans to guarantee all its successful trainees teaching jobs, although they will be free to teach elsewhere.

Within seven years, Edison expects to be training would-be teachers on campuses in 20 cities. These will be communities that have clusters of Edison Schools offering K-12 education.

Asked by Lexington Institute scholars why Edison is embarking on such an ambitious plan, Dr. McGriff replied, “To ensure that we have the quantity of teachers and administrators needed…