Rocco Basile

Link: http://www.roccobasile.net

One person with a mission is hoping to train schoolteachers in a manner that “explodes the traditional, course-based paradigm that has been adopted by traditional schools of education over the past century.” Norman Atkins is the founder of a network of charter schools. His organization is called Relay. This method is intended to ensure a future of instructional methods teachers use that are known to work, so they will be held accountable for each student's performance.

Public education is thought to be failing millions of children in the United States, to the point where they won't have the skills needed  survival or success in the 21st century. Relay's intent is to vastly improve the education of our teachers. Concerns that most teachers are unprepared yet many have more credentials than ever before including Master’s degrees, a requirement for permanent certification in only a few states, including New York and Kentucky.

The National Center for Education Statistics has data indicating that 52 percent of kindergarten through eighth-grade teachers have a master’s degree or higher — which often qualifies them for better pay, yet there is little evidence that getting a Masters degree provides better student achievement. There were 178,564 master’s degrees in education awarded in 2008-2009  accounted for 27 percent of all the master’s degrees distributed in the U.S.

Current trends in some states are planning reform, everything from raising the standards at traditional schools to charter schools to the online network apporoach in order to further prepare teachers.

New York state even invited nonacademic institutions to apply to receive $12.5 million in grants for the purpose of developing and then  offering master’s degree programs in teacher preparation that are more "clinical."  Yet many of today's teachers bypass traditional education degrees, and simply go to work in schools with temporary licenses, and some of them have had  just a few weeks or months of training.  Around 500,000 of tour country's 3.6 million teachers have entered the field this way. One culpret is via Teach for America, where teachers work within high-poverty areas through public education systems.

The good news is that there are a number of states stating thatthey are going to create alternate routes for becoming a teacher, witho increased standards.

--Rocco Basile