Letters: Teacher training that works
Re “Report criticizes teaching schools,” June 18
The main thrust of teacher training programs should be how to teach. To do so, schools of education — including those at UCLA and Loyola Marymount University, identified by a report as having among the least effective schools of education — need to stop relying on trendy but unscientific “theories” of learning and instead focus on those based on good science, such as behavior analysis.
The most effective strategies for producing competent students who actually master the material being taught are derived from a science of behavior. And guess what? When teachers actually teach, as measured by daily student performance, behavior problems in the classroom decline. Behavior management — which the report by the National Council on Teacher Quality indicated was missing from California teacher training programs — will take care of itself when students are active and interactive learners.
It’s not rocket science, but judged on the basis of how rarely it occurs, one would think it is.
Henry D. Schlinger Jr.
Los Angeles
The writer directs the Graduate Applied Behavior Analysis Program at Cal State Los Angeles.
As a former classroom teacher currently employed as a university student teacher fieldwork supervisor, I offer a simple solution for improving training.
School of education students should have to complete a six-month, fully paid classroom internship. This internship would give future teachers a great amount of practical classroom experiences. Students would observe and help teachers. And since so many billionaires are interested in education reform, I am quite sure they would open their wallets to help fund these internships.
Leslie N. Herschler
Garden Grove
Most of our schools, and not just in California, ceased to be educational institutions and became focused on social engineering in the 1960s.
If California’s teaching schools do indeed focus heavily on “addressing racist attitudes, gender bias and classism,” then our schools remain social engineering institutions, with a real education being only a faint possibility.
Yet the people who run these schools of education also bemoan the low international academic rating of American students and schools and demand more money for math, science and literacy.
Do they really have such a talent for irony, or are they simply duplicitous?
Tom Rath
Pasadena
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