The Shortcomings of Teacher Training

Newspaper Article: Major Claims

An article in the New York Times by Tamar Lewin entitled “Training of Teachers Is Flawed, Study Says” pulls readers in with a compelling title which suggests that teachers are ill prepared to enter the classroom. The article alleges that the study “Student Teaching in the United States” says many of the student-teaching programs have weaknesses that can be critical. Lewin goes on to report that of the one hundred and thirty-four programs in the study three-fourths of them were not up to par with the standards, some of which that are believed to be abstract, of the researchers. Consequently, this can be a serious issue because this portion of training can weigh anywhere from one-fifth to one-third of a student’s grade. Moreover, Kate Walsh, one of the authors of the study, believes that the programs have not determined a set of standards and do not properly select the core teachers that will be working with the student teachers. With these conclusions it is not surprising that most of the programs examined in the study were considered to have ineffectual delineations while only seven percent had an ideal curriculum and seventeen percent were thought to have proficient models. All things considered, the study included twelve institutions that requested not to be included in the report and coupled them with an asterisk to show that some information was not included in their evaluations.

Scientific Article

Source

The study “Student Teaching in the United States” published by the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ). This group seeks to restructure many of the current policies and practices of the education system. They have a wide range of political diversity on their board that share the c...

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...h all the criteria used were arbitrary when, in fact, at least one of the five standards were indeed supported by previous research. Rather than accurately portraying the content of the report, the article mainly consists of a great deal of institutions complaining about the rating they received. The author did include other parts of the article. For instance, the article included the information about the twelve schools that asked to participate but, incidentally, did not tell why those schools were still included in the report. The study asserts that this is done to avoid bias in the study. According to the authors, schools that were eagerly willing to participate more than likely believe their school is up to par according to the standards used by the NCTQ. In essence, the article does a better job of slandering the article than reporting its actual findings.