Which Way to Millinocket?

Abstract

As the classic comedy album Bert and I says in the punch line to the tale from which the title of this response was drawn, Come to think of it, you cahn't git they-ah from hee-ah! Indeed, you can't! Willis Hawley generally can be counted on to craft useful, analytically sound, and provocative expositions of policy issues confronting educators. The High Costs and Doubtful Efficacy of Extended TeacherPreparation Programs: An Invitation to More Basic Reforms does not measure up to the standard we have come to expect of him. Hawley asks the reader to think with him about the risks and inadequacies of teacher-preparation programs. Early on, he acknowledges the many different shapes and sizes of programs, but he then defines them as any strategy that requires students to take a minimum of five years of college-based course work before being allowed to teach at full salary. During the course of the paper, Hawley references programs more than 50 times, five-year programs more than 20 times, and fifth-year and postbaccalaureate teacherpreparation programs also more than 20 times. Anyone familiar with the discussions in teacher education about requisites to program improvement would quickly recognize the nonusefulness of a definition that blurs the crucial distinctions between, for example, a five-year program of teacher preparation (one that integrates teacher education and teacher preparation in a carefully sequenced and well-integrated program of five full years of study) and a fifth-year program (like the one that California has maintained with the dubious results that Hawley references). And, in truth, even Hawley admits as much by his throwaway admission that extended programs that require undergraduate education courses could provide teachers with more pedagogical knowledge than do four-year programs that insist on a strong liberal arts curriculum and intensive study of the subjects or subject that the student will