Quality Assurance: What Must Be Done to Strengthen the Teaching Profession

Phi Delta Kappan

Volumn 77, Issue NOV, 1996, Pages 220-224

  Shanker, Albert ^a  

^a American Federation of Teachers   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 1942489694     PISSN: 00317217     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (8)

1. See, for example, Organization of the French Educational System Leading to the French Baccalauréat (Washington, D.C.: Embassy of France, 1991); and Paul Gagnon, French Secondary Education (New York: College Entrance Examination Board, November 1981). The baccalauréat tests are both written and oral. Written exams can last up to four days.
2. See, for example, Organization of the French Educational System Leading to the French Baccalauréat (Washington, D.C.: Embassy of France, 1991); and Paul Gagnon, French Secondary Education (New York: College Entrance Examination Board, November 1981). The baccalauréat tests are both written and oral. Written exams can last up to four days.
3. The AFT report Making Standards Count (1996) indicates that only 17 states require that students take exit exams to graduate from high school. Virtually all of those exams are tests of basic literacy.
4. For example, Praxis 2 is a set of widely used content examinations published by the Educational Testing Service. The brochure for the Multiple Subjects Assessment for Teachers: Content Knowledge indicates that the test is a two-hour examination that includes 120 multiple-choice questions. Fifty-six percent of the questions cover knowledge of the core disciplines. The remaining questions assess knowledge of the visual and performing arts, physical education, and human development. Examination of the sample questions in the brochure for this assessment reveals it to be much less rigorous in content than the French baccalauréat required of French students who wish to graduate from high school and enroll in a university. What is more, the performance level on such tests required for licensure is too often set unconscionably low.
5. See, for example, What Matters Most: Teaching and America's Future (New York: National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, 1996); and Schools and Staffing Survey - Teacher Supply, Teacher Qualifications, and Teacher Turnover: 1990-1991 (Washington, D.C.: National Center for Education Statistics, 1995).
6. See, for example, What Matters Most: Teaching and America's Future (New York: National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, 1996); and Schools and Staffing Survey - Teacher Supply, Teacher Qualifications, and Teacher Turnover: 1990-1991 (Washington, D.C.: National Center for Education Statistics, 1995).
7. See, for example, Judith Warren Little, "Teachers' Professional Development in a Climate of Educational Reform," Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Summer 1993, pp. 129-51.
8. Harold Stevenson and James Stigler, Why Our Students Are Failing and What We Can Learn from Japanese and Chinese Education (New York: Summit Books, 1992).