Saturday, November 24, 2012

If We Want Them to Finish College, We Have to Make It Realistic To Do So

From the November 23rd, 2012 edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education:



This is from a study called "Completing College: A National View of Student Attainment Rates" by the National Student Clearinghouse, and the stats get to what I think are two absolute truths about teaching today:

1)  Raising tuitions might make budgetary sense, but it does absolutely nothing to further the goals we have around completion and workforce readiness.  The number speak for themselves, explicitly--if you want college students to graduate, which is the best proxy we have for success, then we need to give them the chance to be full time students.

2)  Making it harder to become a teacher is intended to create a stronger beginning teacher workforce, but I'd suggest that variables like the ProTeach Portfolio and WEST-E testing are doing more harm than good.  It's not bureaucratic mandates that are going to make the profession more attractive.


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