(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)
The chief education advisors for the McCain and Obama campaigns debate next week online. Check it out.
Jay P. Greene's Blog
With Help From Some Friends
(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)
The chief education advisors for the McCain and Obama campaigns debate next week online. Check it out.
Jay P. Greene's Blog 
Professor Darling-Hammond spoke at the University, on the topic of teacher training. I asked if anyone had compared the standardized test performance of students of teachers with College of Education degrees to the standardized test performance of students of teachers with degrees in the subject and on-the-job training. She knew of no such study.
When I went through Ed school, professors routinely compared classroom book and lecture instruction to “authentic” real-world learning, to the detriment of book and lecture instruction. It seems to me that this argument undermines the case foro school, and especially undermines the case for Ed school. I would like to see a comparison of methods of teacher training which compares Ed school graduates to graduates of regular academic programs who have been trained on the job, with salaried positions as teachers’ aides, department gofers, and in-house substitutes. I expect that the second group would outperform the first group. Such a policy would reduce costs to taxpayers (save on Ed faculty saary) and reduce costs to student teachers (save on Ed school tuition and the opportunity cost of their time in school).