Rob123,

If you think someone "can be taught to be a better teacher in just a few weeks" , you clearly have no idea of what it takes to be a teacher.

Is Arne Duncan seriously suggesting that we follow Louisiana's lead in terms of education? He has to be kidding! This state is totally impoverished and is at the bottom in terms of all human development categories. I doubt they have actually had an education revolution. What they do have is more red tape.

And of course, good results are not being seen in many of Louisiana's schools. Why? Good teacher training cannot neutralize the effects of poverty, physical/psychological abuse, poor nutrituion, bad parenting, poor health care, and so on. Is there any evidence that it ever could? Not a scratch.

Linking student testing to teacher evaluation is not the answer, at lest not exclusively. It only makes sense if you assume a fair and unbiased system, which doesn't exist. Instead of improving education, it more often leads to gaming the system, finding ways to juke the stats without addressing the problems.

I agree though that there is a problem with modern schools of education. Namely, as Duncan implies, they spend too much time on educational theory and no where near enough time (or quality) on content. You can be the best teacher in the world as far as method, but if you don't have a deep and fundamental understanding of the subject you teach, you can't be effective at teaching it. This is even more true at elementary levels, not less. At higher levels you are dealing with students who already have their own understanding of core conceptual models in the field. But at the elementary levels you have the burden of translating these complex core concepts to students to whom they are entirely foreign, and who may share very little if any common conceptual landmarks from which to build. That requires that you yourself are not still blundering around in the dark without a very clear understanding of where you re in relation to your subject.

As a professor in the natural sciences, at a university that also has a nationally recognized college of eduction, I've seen the problem first-hand. Students in the Elementary Education program are only required to take one course in science (the state minimum). They are free to choose any such course, not one designed to address their particular needs, and so often end up in a course that is far too narrow in focus, and they also often perform at the bottom of the class. Somehow this is believed by the college and the education system to qualify them to step into a classroom as a teacher, when, as a well-respected teacher in the subject myself, I believe that they're still barely qualified to sit in as a student.

I'm not saying that teaching methodology is not important. At the university level, most professors never take even one class in how to teach as opposed to what to teach. And this leads to a very hit-and-miss distribution of good and bad teaching. My university has put a great deal of focus on improving teaching in its own faculty, and I think that more should as well.

And yet American universities overall are still highly respected and top-rated, though the vast majority of their teachers have no formal training at all in teaching methodology, but great depth in area-specific knowledge. This is in opposition to US primary and secondary education, where the trend has been an ever-increasing focus on methodology and a decreasing focus on content-specific training.

I believe both are important. But from what I've seen, content has been pushed far too far down the list of priorities, and methodology has been elevated way too far up it. A good scientist (or English professor, or mathematician, etc.) can be taught to be a better teacher in just a few weeks. But a good teacher will still require years of training to become a good scientist, mathematician, historian, etc. No one should ever be allowed in front of a class, at any level, unless they have the equivalent of a Bachelor's degree in the subject they're expected to teach.