Who's Teaching Your Children?: Why the Teacher Crisis Is Worse Than You Think and What Can Be Done About It

241 Pages·2003·0.9 MB·English

by  Vivian Troen

Who’s Teaching Your Children?

vivian troen & katherine c. boles
Who’s Teaching
Your Children?
Why the Teacher Crisis Is Worse Than You
Think and What Can Be Done About It
yale university press / new haven & london
Copyright ∫ 2003 by Vivian Troen and Katherine C. Boles. All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in
any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S.
Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written
permission from the publishers.
Printed in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Troen, Vivian, 1940–
Who’s teaching your children? : why the teacher crisis is worse than you think and
what can be done about it / Vivian Troen and Katherine C. Boles.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-300-09741-7 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Elementary school teachers—United States—Social conditions. 2. Elementary
school teachers—Training of—United States. 3. Educational change—United
States. I. Boles, Katherine. II. Title.
LB1776.2 .T76 2002
372.11%00973—dc21 2002012966
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the
Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on
Library Resources.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To the hardest working, least appreciated, most undervalued worker in
our society; linchpin of democracy and conveyor of American values and
culture; conservator of our most valuable national asset; indispensable
determiner of our future—the classroom teacher.

Contents
Foreword by Seymour B. Sarason xi
Acknowledgments xv
Prologue 1
Introduction 5
1 Your Children Aren’t Getting the Teachers They Deserve 13
The Big Questions, 14 The Big Picture, 16
2 How Teaching Got to Be This Way 25
The American Teacher, 25 Who Chooses to Become a
Teacher? 32
3 Teacher Training: How Bad Is It? 37
Into the Leaky Pipeline, 37 Teachers Receive Poor Prepara-
tion, 38 Certification Requirements Are Nearly Irrelevant, 46
Most ‘‘Professional Development’’ Is Weak and Ine√ective, 52
viii ∞ contents
4 Mammas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be
Teachers 59
Take This Job, 60 Teaching Is an Isolated, Dead End Job with
No Career Path, 67 Teachers Are Kept at the Bottom of the
Power Structure, 77 Ine√ective Leadership Compounds Poor
Performance, 81
5 Band-Aids and Boondoggles: The Myths and Realities of
‘‘Educational Reform’’ 89
More Testing, 92 Smaller Classes, 99 School Vouchers, 103
Charter Schools, 107 Schools for Profit, 113 Incentives for
Teacher Recruitment and Retention, 115 Paying Teachers for
Student Performance, 119 Teacher-Proof Curriculum, 121
More Homework, 124 Homeschooling, 129 Blaming the
Unions, 131
6 The Millennium School: A Total Approach to Solving the
Fundamental Problems of Elementary School Education 141
A New Model for a New Era, 141 In a Nutshell, 142 First,
Give Teachers a Real Career, 143 Second, Make Teaching a
Real Profession, 147 Third, Improve Educational Leadership
and School Management, 155 A Day in the Life of a Typical
Millennium School, 162 How Much Will It Cost? 174 What
Can We Do Now? 183
contents ∞ ix
Epilogue: E Pluribus Unum 187
Notes 189
Bibliography 205
Index 211