Who's Teaching Your Children?: Why the Teacher Crisis Is Worse Than You Think and What Can Be Done About It [Hardcover]

Professor Vivian Troen (Author), Professor Katherine C. Boles (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0300097417 | ISBN-13: 978-0300097412 | Publication Date: February 8, 2003

Many of the problems afflicting American education are the result of a critical shortage of qualified teachers in the classrooms. The teacher crisis is surprisingly resistant to reforms and is getting worse. This analysis of the causes underlying the crisis seeks to offer concrete, affordable proposals for effective reform. Vivian Troen and Katherine Boles, two experienced classroom teachers and education consultants, argue that because teachers are recruited from a pool of underqualified candidates, given inadequate preparation, and dropped into a culture of isolation without mentoring, support, or incentives for excellence, they are programmed to fail. Half quit within their first five years. Troen and Boles offer an alternative, a model of reform they call the Millennium School, which changes the way teachers work and improves the quality of their teaching. When teaching becomes a real profession, they contend, more academically able people will be drawn into it, colleges will be forced to improve the quality of their education, and better-prepared teachers will enter the classroom and improve the profession.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Many school reform efforts are merely Band-Aids that do more harm than good and don't solve the problems they are intended to correct. According to veteran teachers Troen and Boles, "Public education has become a closed-loop system of dysfunction." The public has been inundated with critiques of education and proposals for fixing schools: conduct more testing, ax the unions, stop social promotion, raise standards, etc. However, efforts to address these problems are likely doomed to failure, say the authors, because they seldom consider the most important variable: teacher quality. This well-researched, thoughtful proposal for an overhaul of America's public education system identifies three major problems with the teaching profession: not enough academically able students are being drawn to teaching; teacher preparation programs are inadequate; and teachers' professional lives are unacceptable, "isolating" and "unsupportive." Rather than suggest radical new ideas, Troen and Boles offer a model of reform they call the "Millennium School," which gathers the best of what is known about how to transform the teaching profession and wraps it up neatly in a commonsense package. This reasoned response to the teacher crisis does not offer a quick or painless fix. It will take time, money and hard work to straighten things out. But if parents and teachers want "no child left behind," as the president proposes, Troen and Boles insist we must remedy the deep, systemic problems in the teaching profession now, before all the good teachers leave the schools.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

An educational manifesto, diagnosis, and prescription written by two experienced teachers. -- Steven L. Turner, American School Board Journal

Troen and Boles. . . . deserve credit for making the[ir] research [so] accessible to a broad swath of public. -- Karin Chenoweth, Washington Post

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (February 8, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300097417
• ISBN-13: 978-0300097412
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,855,045 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Harangue and the Hope, August 18, 2003

By 

Mark Valentine (Port Angeles, WA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Who's Teaching Your Children?: Why the Teacher Crisis Is Worse Than You Think and What Can Be Done About It (Hardcover)

The malaise of education seems pretty obvious to many people and the first half of their short book provides a summary of that common harangue in clear, solid, soundbite-proof language. The authors identify what they call a Trilemma Dysfuntion in schools that has a crippling effect on reform strategies. First, since there are "not enough academically academically able students...being drawn to teaching," the pool of talent and ambition has diminished. Second, "teacher preparation programs need substantial improvement," since their certification and renewal procedures have historically been much less than rigorous. Third, "the professional life of teachers is on the whole unacceptable," that is, professional development and growth opportunities remain stagnant. These three dysfunctions feed into and maintain a malformed culture in schools. What is worse, teachers have operated for so long under this cultural dysfuntion that they regulate themselves with their own myopic, bureaucratic chains (cf. Foucault's Panopticon).

What really made this book a wonderful reading and learning experience for me, though, remains in their providing hope, that is, a plan. Since teacher improvement lies at the heart of any educational reform strategy, the authors declare that empowering teachers to do their job well must be the premise and promise of the profession. Their blueprint for school reform contains the Millennium School, an attempt to revive the profession of teaching, re-organize the roles of educational personnel, and improve educational leadership. The bedrock principles that comprise the Millennium School consist of four tenets: first, "multi-tiered career paths for teachers," next, "teaching in teams instead of in isolation," then, "performance-based accountability," and finally, "ongoing professional development for all teachers and principals" (p. 185).

I suppose that I am a little jealous of the authors. They have written the book that I have always wanted to write. This is my way of giving it very high praise because it resonated with me in a profound manner. If I were to criticize it, it would be that for all its fine writing, eloquent arguments, and scholarly support, the authors do not provide a Millennium School model at the High School level (my arena), only at the Elementary School level. (Wait. Maybe there is still time to consider writing that book after all. Better go now--)

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The missing ingredient, March 3, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Who's Teaching Your Children?: Why the Teacher Crisis Is Worse Than You Think and What Can Be Done About It (Hardcover)

Everyone's talking about the need for great teachers in every classroom. Almost nobody is encouraging their own smart, well-educated, creative son or daughter to consider teaching as a CAREER. This book explains the disconnect and what we need to do about it. How to make teaching an attractive career for well-educated young people who can write, who enjoy mathematics, who like being with children -- that is the key issue that no one else is talking about. This book gets real. - a former classroom teacher

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is quality - everyone who believes in education should read this!, January 3, 2007

By 

R. Roberson (Arlington, MA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Who's Teaching Your Children?: Why the Teacher Crisis Is Worse Than You Think and What Can Be Done About It (Paperback)

Troen and Boles give a grim outlook for the state of public education in the United States, but they offer hope and some real solutions for improving education. They believe strongly in professionalizing teachers and they should be listened to. I highly recommend this book!