School of education


In the United States and Canada, a school of education is a division within a university that is devoted to scholarship in the field of education, which is an interdisciplinary branch of the social sciences encompassing sociology, psychology, linguistics, economics, political science, public policy, history, and others, all applied to the topic of elementary, secondary, and post-secondary education. The U.S. has 1,206 schools, colleges
and departments of education and they exist in 78% of all universities and colleges. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 176,572 individuals were conferred master's degrees in education by degree-granting institutions in the United States in 2006–2007. The number of master's degrees conferred has grown immensely since the 1990s and accounts for one of the discipline areas that awards the highest number of master's degrees in the United States.

History and areas of interest

Schools of education are historically rooted in the 19th century normal schools. After the Civil War, universities began to include instruction in pedagogy, competing with normal schools in the preparation of teachers. Pedagogy and psychology, which previously were considered to be subsets of philosophy, gained status of legitimate collegiate academic disciplines thanks to William James and John Dewey. By 1900, most universities had some formal instruction in pedagogy. For a long time teacher education, curriculum, and instruction remained the core offering of schools of education.
By the 1930s, schools of education started training educational administrators such as principals and superintendents, and specialists such as guidance counselors for elementary and secondary schools.
Many graduates of schools of education become involved in education policy. As such, issues such as equity, teacher quality, and education assessment have become focuses of many schools of education. The issue of equitable access to education, specifically focusing on low-income, minority, and immigrant communities, is central to many areas of research within the education field.

Types of programs

Typically, a school of education offers research-based programs leading to Master of Arts, Master of Education, Doctor of Philosophy, Doctor of Education or Educational Specialist degrees, as well as professional teacher-education programs leading to Master of Arts, Master of Education, or Master of Arts in Teaching degrees. Schools of education also offer teacher certification or licensure programs to undergraduate students. Generally schools of education have graduate programs related to teacher preparation, curriculum and instruction, public policy and education, and educational administration. In addition, some schools of education offer programs in school counseling and counseling psychology.

Criticism

Low academic standards

Schools of education have been blamed for low academic standards and "Mickey Mouse" courses, suggesting that earning an advanced degree in education, specifically a master level degree, doesn't seem to actually make someone a better teacher. George Pólya quoted a typical pre-service secondary school mathematics teacher, "The mathematics department offers us tough steak which we cannot chew and the school of education vapid soup with no meat in it". Polya suggested that a college instructor who offered a methods course to mathematics teachers knew mathematics at least on the level of a master's degree and had some experience of mathematical research.
In her book The schools we deserve, Diane Ravitch suggested that "it would be preferable if there were no education majors at the undergraduate level, if every would be teacher majored in some subject or combination of subjects". She claimed that more than one third of bachelor's degrees in education were awarded to future elementary teachers, followed by physical education teachers, special education teachers, and teachers "of such specialized areas as home economics, vocational education, prekindergarten instruction, and health education." She pointed out that "less than three percent of the education degrees went to secondary teachers, which suggests that those who want to teach in high school take their baccalaureate degree in the subjects they want to teach and get their education credits on the side or in graduate school".
Former president of Teachers College, Arthur Levine, found in his 2006 report that "taken as a whole the nation’s teacher education programs
would have to be described as inadequate", while former U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said that "by almost any standard, many if not most of the nation's 1,450 schools, colleges and departments of education are doing a mediocre job of preparing teachers for the realities of the 21st-century classroom".

Progressivism and reading instruction

Throughout the 20th century American schools of education promoted progressive ideas in education, including hands-on projects, group work, development of social skills, and de-emphasis of textbooks. One of the aspects of progressive education is reading instruction based on recognizing an entire word or phrase as a picture, known as "whole word" or "look-say" method, instead of decoding words by recognizing individual letters. Since 1920s, progressive educators warned against "too early attention to alphabet, phonics, or any other kind of analysis of words". To ensure children can memorize all the words in a story, the "look-say" readers like Dick and Jane got rid of traditional stories and fairy tales, and instead introduced simple and repetitive texts that consisted of "controlled vocabulary".
The stance of schools of education in regards to teaching of reading changed little in 21st century. A 2018 APM report revealed that "ill-informed, ineffective reading instruction is the norm", and many schools of education still promote "whole word" method under the guise of "balanced literacy" despite that it has been discredited long ago. The report quotes a 2016 research that claims, "faculty have ignored the scientific knowledge that informs reading acquisition. As a result, the pre-service teachers who are being educated at these institutions fail to receive the necessary training". According to 2016 report of the National Council on Teacher Quality, only 39 percent of teacher preparation programs appeared to be teaching the components of effective reading instruction.

Prominence of ideology

Some people, including E.D. Hirsch, Jr., Diane Ravitch, Chester Finn, and Lynne Cheney criticized schools of education for left-wing political bias, for favoring socialist philosophies such as Paulo Freire's critical pedagogy and the "Teaching for Social Justice" movement, for creating academically, professionally, and socially inhospitable environment toward students whose political views do not conform to the left-leaning ideology.
Other critics like Lyell Asher argued that Paulo Freire may be more revered than read, for ed schools pushing "an already left-leaning academy far in the direction of ideological fundamentalism". Their interest in educational equity sometimes crosses over the line between academic research and political activism, intimidating even the social strata meant to be protected by the ed schools' ideology, so that "small differences of opinion are seized on and characterized as moral and intellectual failures, unacceptable thought crimes".

Emphasis on administration

called courses like "the supervision of the teaching staff", "duties of school officers", "awareness of situations and planning of behavior", "reflective thought as a basis for teaching method" to be "absurdities and trivialities". He admonished the attention "devoted to tests, measurements, organization, administration—including administration of the teaching staff and how to organize for planning the curriculum".
Lyell Asher blames the surge of residential life "curricula" on the selfish motives of the ed schools' administrators to present themselves not as resident advisers but as residence-hall "educators". According to him, campus administrators "talk not just about social justice 'training' but also about social justice 'literacy'", which must be learned "beyond the classroom". Mr. Asher says that there might be "nothing wrong with training students in equity and social justice were it not for the inconvenient fact that a college campus is where these ideals and others like them are to be rigorously examined rather than piously assumed".
He supports the argument of E. D. Hirsch that professors of education, "surrounded in the universities by prestigious colleagues whose strong suit is thought to be knowledge, have translated resentment against this elite cadre into resentment against the knowledge from which it draws its prestige". Mr. Hirsch warns that it is "never a healthy circumstance when people who are held in low esteem exercise dominant influence in an important sphere. The conjunction of power with resentment is deadly".

Notable schools of education in the U.S.

The annual rankings of U.S. News & World Report placed the following schools of education in the top 20 of all graduate education institutions in the United States for 2018. They follow here, with identical numbers indicating ties:
  1. University of California—Los Angeles
  2. Harvard University
  4. University of Wisconsin—Madison
  7. Stanford University
  10. University of Pennsylvania
  13. New York University
  15. Teachers College, Columbia University
  16. Vanderbilt University
  17. University of Washington
  19. Northwestern University School of Education and Social Policy
  22. University of Southern California
  25. University of Texas—Austin
  28. University of Oregon College of Education
  30. University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
  31. Arizona State University
  32. University of Virginia
  34. Johns Hopkins University
  37. University of Kansas
  40. University of California—Berkeley
  43. University of Minnesota—Twin Cities

  44. Notable scholars within schools of education