The Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, collects test results from 65 countries for its rankings, which are released every three years.
The latest results, from 2012, show that U.S. students ranked below average in math among the world's most-developed countries. They were close to average in science and reading. "In mathematics, 29 nations and other jurisdictions outperformed the United States by a statistically significant margin, up from 23 three years ago," reports Education Week. "In science, 22 education systems scored above the U.S. average, up from 18 in 2009." In reading, 19 other locales scored higher than U.S. students — a jump from nine in 2009, when the last assessment was performed. The top overall scores came from Shanghai, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Macao and Japan, followed by Lichtenstein, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Estonia (B. Chappell, 2013). It is time for US education to change—for the better. We can blame that the US has lost her way, prioritizing other matters because of the incredible sea of issues in our world today. We have war; we have poverty; we have violence; we have oppression. We must combat these problems, and we cannot deny that they exist. However, what is truly at the center, the root cause, of these issues? Could it be that education is inequitable; therefore, we have these problems? Or because of these issues, we put our educational system last on our list of priorities; therefore, creating a viscous cycle? Regardless, wouldn’t our world be better when thoughtful decisions are made, when people understand others’ perspectives, and when creativity leads us to significant progress? Education is at the heart of resolving many conflicts that we must combat today. How can we ensure that education is a priority and that our future will be more secure? One way is to prioritize our teacher training programs to produce educators who will inspire their students. Teachers, today, need to be skillful, innovative and passionate about teaching our future leaders, innovators, inventors, great contributors and teachers in our society. It is time for a significant change in the way we train our teachers to educate our youth. The higher ranked countries greatly regard the teaching profession. Teachers in those countries are honored, lauded, and esteemed by the public. The other way we can prioritize is through our marketing of the profession. In the US, we need to re-brand the profession of teaching. This can be done. There has been an extensive stress on marketing STEM fields as highly respected professions. Likewise, there’s a significant push to influence young girls into engineering careers. These marketing efforts restructure our public’s view on STEM fields and women entering into these fields. They provide a pathway that what was once overlooked--but now is a possibility. We can do the same in changing perspectives about the field of teaching. With creative marketing, we must attract others into the teaching profession. There is an enormously growing need for teachers across our state and nation. All educator preparation programs (EPPs) are called upon to increase the teacher pipeline. More importantly, we must not neglect the value of producing highly qualified teachers. Community college teacher preparation programs can provide significant learning experiences for pre-service teachers. We produce a significant number of diverse teachers, provide a pipeline of “grow your own” teachers in many districts, and offer a financially viable avenue for those who cannot start at four-year institutions. It is a travesty today if a teacher leaves her college or university with a mountain of debt. All teachers should be given the privilege of graduating debt free. In fact, a report from Recruiting New Teachers "Tapping Potential: Community College Students and America's Teacher Recruitment Challenge” (2002), a nonprofit organization whose primary goal is to meet teacher shortages states: "Community college students represent an important, yet still largely untapped, pool of prospective teachers," according to the report, "Despite evidence of their promise, the role of community colleges in helping to solve the nation's teacher shortage crisis remains relatively unexplored." Additionally, from Community College Week, the executive director of National Association for Community College Teacher Education Programs (NACCTEP), Kimberly Tobey, mentions that “[i]n 2013, the American Association of Community Colleges reported that approximately 7.4 million students attended community college for credit. According to this enrollment data, Hispanics, Blacks, American Indian and students with more than one ethnicity were more likely to enroll in community college as first-time students than white students.” Therefore, we can increase the number of diverse teacher candidates who will enroll in Educator Preparation Programs. To this end, it is imperative that community colleges firmly establish a solid ground for our future teachers so that they will find job satisfaction and, in turn, have a long-lasting career in the field. Community college teacher preparation programs can achieve this by providing early clinical experiences that will deeply root our students’ knowledge and skills. With this foundation, Lone Star College-CyFair Associate of Arts in Teaching program has created a vision and mission that encompass the aforementioned core values about teacher preparation at the community college level. Vision Lone Star College-CyFair Associate of Arts in Teaching Department fully dedicated to meeting teacher shortages. Our program will not only focus on increasing enrollment, but helping our pre-service educators develop a passion for students, for teaching and for service. We believe that the teaching profession is a worthy occupation that will make a significant difference in children’s lives. Through incorporating project-based and service learning, students will make a firm decision to join the teaching profession. Mission Statement LSC-CF AAT program’s mission is to provide a solid foundation of essential concepts in education, to develop servant leadership, and to nurture a passion for student success. Upon acquiring these skills, students can seamlessly transition to an Educator Preparation Program (a 4-year university) to obtain a Texas Educator Certificate.
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AuthorProfessor of Education at Lone Star College-CyFair Archives
April 2017
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