Can you spell “cash cow”? U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan can. In a hard-hitting talk at Teachers College, Columbia University last week, Duncan said that most teacher education is lousy (my word, not his).

You may be surprised to know that I agree with many of the observations Secretary Duncan offered, but I believe that what he said doesn’t make much sense without a whole lot of context. It is what he didn’t say that points the way to effective teacher preparation.

This is the topic of another column. For now, let me say just this:
1) Only a nitwit would think that a 22-year-old teacher could be fully formed after a four-year college degree — no matter how good the program. No industry holds new employees to this standard.
2) The quality of a teacher’s preparation is dependent on all faculty at the university as well as on the academic culture of the local schools, the politics of teachers unions, the prejudices of university administrators, and the funding of education at all levels. So anybody who characterizes teacher education as lousy is offering a broad indictment indeed.

But back to the cash-producing cow. Duncan had this to say, “For decades, schools of education have been renowned for being cash cows for universities. The large enrollment in education schools and their relatively low overhead have made them profit-centers. Many universities have diverted those profits to more prestigious but under-enrolled graduate departments like physics – while doing little to invest in rigorous educational research and well-run clinical training. This robbing Peter to pay Paul is shortsighted. If teaching is – and should be—one of our most revered professions, teacher preparation programs should be among a university’s most important responsibilities.”

This is precisely the situation at Millersville, a university with normal school roots that is running as fast as it can away from its strength in teacher education in order to position itself as a STEM-rich institution. STEM refers to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, and the university has, for the past20-plus years systematically invested its faith and future in the quality of these programs. This seems like a good move in many ways.

As Secretary Duncan points out, and as has been true for decades, we are not only investing faith and future. We are also investing the cash generated by the faculty in the School of Education. It’s going to get worse.

Enrollment caps for graduate courses are going to 30. And it is only in the School of Education (including the Psychology Department) where graduate courses will attract that level of enrollment. The fruits of faculty labor will not go to reduce class sizes for their own graduate seminars or upper level methods course. Instead, it will subsidize other administrative and academic priorities.

Methods courses in special education, elementary, and early childhood education, and in social studies (what should be the “studio courses” where students can practice their craft under the watchful eye and reflective prodding of pedagogical mentors) have more than 35 students enrolled and no amount of reasoning, cajoling or begging will prompt the powers that be to open an additional section to make defensible pedagogy possible. Caps are only going up while faculty energy and morale are stretched thinner and thinner.

I don’t mind sharing the wealth – nor the burden of budget cuts.

As I watch my colleagues in the School of Education struggle valiantly to provide the mentoring and personal support that students need, while maintaining links to public schools, traveling to supervise field experiences, responding slavishly to PDE’s every whim and modeling the kind of instruction that recognizes the diversity of students in the classroom, I just keep thinking “it ain’t fair.”

I should note that we milk the cash cow of more than money. We admit far too many ELED “wannabes” when we need to round out a first year class with SATs high enough to keep our ratings up (and then, of course, we use this to justify large methods course sections later, saying that we have to do it “for the good of the students”). We brag about BSE graduates achievements when it suits our limited purposes. (See the Middle States Report, Chapter 11, for example) When push comes to shove, we send their money – with love — to the School of Science and Math.

I think what bothers me most is that good people doing good work (not lousy, Secretary Duncan, not by a long stretch) are being ground down in order to generate funding for smaller classes and pedagogical support for other good people who are praised as somehow “better,” as contributing more richly to the good of the institution. This is utter nonsense whatever the decision about the niche the institution is to occupy.

Run from Millersville’s tradition of exemplary teacher education if you must. Position the university as a place where outstanding scientists and mathematicians are nurtured; I’m right there with you. Let’s stop milking the cash cow. Let’s stop skimming the best from the faculty in the School of Education so that we’ll be justified in dismissing and discounting them. It isn’t fair, it breaks faith and it jeopardizes our shared future.