Teacher Education Policy in the United States: Issues and Tensions in an Era of Evolving Expectation

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Certainly these have been the foremost issues on the reform agenda. However, there were other concerns. The theme of equality of opportunity represents the attempts of the reformers of the populist era to address education provision in relation to the issues of race, color, class, gender, region, and disability. The policies were never part of a coherent whole, set out in a single document.

Rather, they emerged as an expansion of access to education, was contemplated and implemented. Accordingly, it is not possible to report all the equity reforms in a coherent and sequential manner. Special education was pioneered by private initiative, like most other elements of Jamaican education. Churches and associations of concerned individuals were the main providers.

The private provision, however, was much less than was needed. In addressing the theme of equality of opportunity, advocates for the disabled argued strongly for the inclusion of special education in the public provision. The first concession to this advocacy was government subsidy to some schools through the payment of the salaries of their teachers. Continued advocacy brought about full integration in the public provision in , that is, toward the end of the populist era. At that time government undertook the following reforms: Some persons, especially within the government bureaucracy, argued that the returns on investing in children with disabilities would be so modest as not to justify it in comparison to other pressing needs within the education system.

Chapter 2. A Brief History of Supervision and Evaluation

Apart from the humanitarian considerations, this argument was countered by the number of parents who were sending their children abroad for such education for which the country had to find much needed foreign exchange. This would be saved if more adequate provisions were made locally. An unexpected source of resistance came from primary school parents who did not want children with disabilities educated along their children for fear that the standard of education would be lowered. Such concerns had to be addressed by a careful program of public education directed at the particular areas in which special education units were going to be placed in primary schools.

Parent resistance was considerably lowered by this strategy. Kingston and the Rest of Jamaica. At the end of the colonial period, while primary education was spread across the country, secondary and tertiary provision was highly skewed in favor of the Kingston Metropolitan area.

Moreover, because many of the schools in the rest of the country were boarding institutions, residents of the city of Kingston also had access to institutions in the rural areas. Providing access to rural residents became an important focus of education reform in the populist era. Reform focused on two approaches. The first was to build more schools outside of the Kingston Metropolitan area. The second was the modification of the selection process so that students in a particular parish had access to the secondary provision in that parish.

Accordingly, most of the secondary schools, teachers colleges and community colleges built in the populist period were sited outside of the Kingston Metropolitan area resulting in much greater access of rural residents to secondary and tertiary education. In addition, boarding was retained particularly at the tertiary level, as a means of ensuring access to this level of education by rural residents. Notwithstanding these reforms, the bias in favor of the Kingston Metropolitan area has not been completely reversed. The location in Kingston of the University of the West Indies, the CAST, the Cultural Training Center, the Maritime Institute, and other institutions that are the only ones of their kind, still gives the impression that in order to advance in education, Kingston is the place to be.

The emergence of Montego Bay as the second city of the nation has not brought with it the educational institutions that can rival those located in Kingston. The region, therefore, continues to be an axis of inequality in education despite reforms to promote equality of opportunity in this dimension.

During the colonial period, many schools were single-sex institutions, especially at the secondary and tertiary levels. A major reform was the system-wide adoption of coeducation.

All new schools built from government resources were to be coeducational institutions. In addition, several of the existing single-sex institutions willingly adopted the coeducation policy. The interesting aspect of this was that while many boys schools became coeducational, very few girls schools converted to coeducation. Accordingly, the institutional provision among traditional high schools became biased in favor of girls. By the end of the populist era, of the 46 traditional high schools there were 7 boys schools, 15 girls schools and 24 co-educational schools. Jamaica is among the few countries in the world in which inequality in educational provisions in favor of boys has been almost completely reversed at all levels of the education system.

While the seeds of this transformation were planted in the colonial period, they came to full fruition in independence. Universal primary education brought about gender equality at the primary level. At the secondary and tertiary levels gender bias in favor of boys has been reversed and are now decidedly in favor of girls.

Girls now start school earlier, attend more regularly, drop out less, complete the schooling cycles in greater numbers, and perform better than boys at all levels of the education system and in all subjects except physics and mathematics. Selection for Some Types of Secondary Education. The major focus of reforms addressing the theme of equality of opportunity was on selection to some types of secondary and financial provision for secondary and tertiary education. In the colonial period, schools selected their students and the fees charged constituted a significant portion of their revenue.

Notwithstanding these fees, public subsidy through government subvention, was the major plank of their financial sustenance. As such, public provision for high school education offered a substantial subsidy to many who could afford to pay for such education. Both the argument and the fact was that the twin instruments of individual school admission policies and student fees worked to the disadvantage of the marginal black majority and to the advantage of the dominant light-skinned minority groups in the society.

Since these were the main axes of inequality in the Jamaican society, structured on the basis of color and class, it is not surprising that the major effort on securing equality of opportunity was made in this area. Measures to ensure equality of opportunity to high school education among the different groups in the color and class system, therefore, targeted the selection to high school and the financial provision for secondary and tertiary education as their major foci of intervention. A set of reforms evolved in the populist era that are best discussed in the chronological order in which they were implemented.

The fundamental break with the past was that entry to traditional high schools would be based on academic merit and not on parents ability to pay. Schools would not select their own students but would admit students selected through the CEE, that would be the means of assessing academic merit. Students from public primary and private preparatory schools would take the CEE somewhere between the ages of 10 and 12 years.

To make provision for the fact that because of a selection process based on merit there would be students from homes that would be unable to pay for their education, the reform introduced 2, free positions for which government would pay the full tuition cost. These positions would be awarded to the top 2, students based on their performance in the CEE. In other words, top performing students in the CEE would receive free tuition in high school.

The reform also created a second category, the grant place students. These students would be those whose performance in the CEE would be below those receiving tuition, but certainly of the level that merits a place in high school. The policy was to award 2, grant places each year. Government would pay half the tuition fees charged by the school while the parents of grant position students would pay the other half. The grant awards would be to particular high schools as a general award. Parents would need to shop around high schools to gain acceptance for their children at particular schools.

The reform allowed for a third category of students, full fee-paying students. These would be students who did not merit a place through the CEE but whom the school would admit because of other considerations. In a real sense this contradicted the principle of merit, on which the reform was founded, but it was a concession to church and trust schools who wished to admit some students based on their affiliation or the connections of their families to those schools.

The rider was that there would be no state subsidy for such students as there had been in the past. They would have to pay the full tuition cost. No cap was put on the proportion of such students that a school could admit. It should be noted, however, that the annual admission of 4, students, through free and grant places, was close to the intake capacity of the schools at the inception of the reforms. Selection on merit through a common entrance examination was also imposed for admission to technical high school.

It was offered to children who were one year older than the age limit for the CEE. In the case of the technical high schools, there were only free positions, hence, all students were assigned to particular schools and received free tuition. Grant position and full fee-paying students were not allowed. Two factors accounted for this. First, the technical high schools were created by the same reforms that established the new selection policy. In a new situation the reforms would be implemented without compromise. Second, there were only a few technical high schools, hence they did not attract the same attention as the more numerous and prestigious traditional high schools.

Later when comprehensive high schools were added to secondary provision they were partially integrated into the selection process established for traditional high schools. While some of their students were selected through the CEE, the majority came through free flow from designated primary feeder schools in their neighborhood. After the first five years of the implementation of the reform, it was found that the majority of the students obtaining the 2, free places awarded annually were students from preparatory schools.

Strong arguments were mounted that this defeated the spirit of the reform because, in effect, it continued to subsidize students who could afford to pay for their education. This argument has to be understood because of the fact that many students gaining grant positions were unable to accept them because their parents could not afford to pay the half cost for tuition plus the expenses related to books, uniform, lunch, and transportation. Following a change of the government that instituted the reforms, the new government introduced what became known as the Basically this reform imposed quotas for primary and preparatory students in the award of free positions and shifted the balance that had existed to that point.

This meant that some preparatory students, who previously would have gained free tuition, would obtain grant positions, while some primary school students, who previously would have obtain grant positions, would receive free tuition. The question around which the criticism centered was, if selection to high school should be based on merit, why should those meriting free places not receive them?

This question highlights a major deficiency of the reforms that confounded the principle of merit as the basis of high school selection with financial assistance to children of merit who could not afford to pay for their education. If 4, students were to be selected annually to high schools on the basis of merit, why should free tuition be granted to the first 2, if the intention is to ensure that poor students selected on merit are able to benefit from the education for which they are selected? Instead of addressing the fundamental weakness of the reform, the Not surprisingly the The general public believed that the The middle and upper classes criticized the policy and used it as justification for gerrymandering the selection process through abuse of the full fee-paying loophole.

Principals of secondary schools, in sympathy with parents of children from preparatory schools, were willing accomplices in the gerrymandering process. In the government abolished fees and introduced the free education policy. This reform had five important elements: The free education reform was based on the idea that it ensured equality of opportunity for all students whereas selection to high schooling was based solely on merit.

The reform provided financial assistance for students from homes that could not meet all the ancillary costs involved. While the preparatory school students still obtained a higher proportion of positions than the numbers warranted, the gap between them and primary school students had narrowed considerably. Indeed, had the As would be expected in any country, just prior to and immediately after political independence, nationalism and regionalism became important themes in reforming the education system that had been fashioned in colonial times. This theme of the Jamaicanizing and Caribbeanizing of education centered around areas of university education, teachers, the curriculum, and external examinations.

Each of these will be discussed in turn. As soon as it became evident that political independence would be part of the political future of the Caribbean, university education was conceded as a necessary means of producing the future leaders of the countries and the region. While there was advocacy for a university in the Caribbean from as early as the s, the British administrators only made feeble attempts to address this need.

Interestingly, it was the Anglican clergy, through arrangements with Durham University, that had sustained some form of university education through Cordrington College in Barbados. By , however, the British had conceded the need and made the University College of the West Indies a parting gift to the region. The assumption was that some form of federation would emerge as the vehicle of the Caribbean state. However, even if this were not the case, university education within the region would have to be the subject of regional cooperation and not the national efforts of individual states. This emerged as a joint agreement and commitment by the British and the Caribbean governments.

The intention here is not to attempt to discuss the history of the development of the University of the West Indies, but rather to make the point that the citing of the original campus of the UWI at Mona, Jamaica had far-reaching consequences for Jamaican education with respect to the themes of nationalism and regionalism. The UWI itself became the most powerful Caribbean symbol and presence in Jamaica, and early interventions in outreach activities added substantial support to Jamaican nationalistic efforts.

Indeed, the implementation of the reforms to produce Jamaican teachers, nationalize and regionalize the curriculum, and the external examinations, all drew heavily on support from and the resources of the UWI. This connection will be more clearly demonstrated as each of the other areas are discussed. Producing Teachers and Principals Locally. Teachers for primary schools were being trained through local teachers colleges from as early as the s. Whether the teachers were trained or untrained, primary schools had been staffed and administered by Jamaicans for more than one hundred years.

The thrust of the reform efforts for the training of primary school teachers was to upgrade their quality and ensure that the entire teaching force was trained. Teachers and principals for secondary schools were a different story. Prior to the establishment of UWI there was no Jamaican or regional capacity to train secondary school teachers. The pattern that emerged was that the vast majority of the trained graduate teachers and principals in secondary schools were expatriates, mainly from Britain, while the vast majority of the untrained undergraduate teachers were Jamaicans.

Senior students often became junior mistresses and masters in the secondary schools until they moved on to some other jobs. The reforms to expand secondary education in further aggravated the teacher supply for the high schools. Accordingly, expatriate teachers were actively recruited through annual missions to Britain undertaken by personnel of the Ministry of Education. Such measures necessitated reforms to replace expatriate teachers by establishing a local capacity to produce and recruit secondary school teachers.

The elements of the reforms that emerged to address these issues can be summarized briefly as follows: As a result of these measures, Jamaica could abandon its recruitment of expatriate teachers despite the massive increase in primary and secondary enrollments and the consequential increase in the teacher supply needs. By the end of the populist period the teaching force at the secondary level had been Jamaicanized and Caribbeanized.

The dependence on Britain to supply trained secondary school teachers had been broken by the establishment of local teacher education capacity. The establishment of local capacity to produce secondary school teachers and the recruitment of such teachers for post in the school system led, in time, to the replacement of expatriate principals by Jamaican and Caribbean nationals.

By the end of the populist period, the vast majority of secondary school principals were Jamaican nationals with a minority of nationals from other Caribbean countries. As with teachers, Jamaican and Caribbean nationals had replaced expatriates from Britain as the principals of the secondary schools.

As long as Jamaica recruited teachers from Britain to staff its schools, the salaries had to be internationally competitive. In large measure, therefore, teachers salaries in Jamaica were comparative with similar salaries in Britain. This decline took place in two stages. First, in the latter stages of the overseas recruitment the expatriate teachers were paid higher salaries than those recruited locally. As would be expected, this met with strong objections from local teachers and their associations representing them.

Second, the higher salaries disappeared with the cessation of the overseas recruitment. This set the stage for bitter salary disputes at a later date. The criticism that surrounded the curricula that had developed during colonial times centered around three issues: Nationalizing and regionalizing the curricula at all levels of the education system became a major focus of reform in the post-independent period.

Curriculum reform became an important item on the education agenda. National curriculum committees were established, with broad based representation from numerous stakeholders, and mandated to reform the curricula to reflect Jamaican and Caribbean conditions, culture and citizenship requirements. In addition, nationals were encouraged to write textbooks in support of the new curricula that would emerge. Interestingly, this supported the move, on the part of some interests within the society, to establish local publishing houses.

It also prompted international publishers to establish national and regional subsidiaries to gain market shares with respect to the new materials and books that were being created in relation to the new curricula emerging from the reform process. Again it is important to note the contribution of the University to the curriculum reform process. In most instances UWI personnel were invited to chair the national curriculum committees as well as the subject sub-committees that were established. Further, UWI personnel were often engaged as consultants in several curriculum reform projects.

Also, both local and international publishing houses recruited UWI staff to write several of the textbooks that were put on the market to support the new curricula. In a nutshell, the location of the UWI at Mona facilitated and supported the reform of the school curricula to reflect nationalist and regional themes relating to content, culture, and citizenship. By the end of the populist era substantial progress had been made in reforming curricula at all levels of the education system.

However, as King and Morrisey observed, not all the old content, images, and biases had been eliminated. While the nationalists and regionalists could feel some satisfaction with respect to the accomplishments, there is no sense in which they could declare the mission accomplished. The former was set locally and was taken by senior pupils of the elementary schools, while the latter was set in England and sat by students of the high school. The reform of the curricula to reflect national and regional content, culture, and civics raised the question of the appropriateness of the Cambridge Examinations as the major means of assessing the performance of secondary school students.

Two schools of thought emerged, one favored national assessment and the other favored regional assessment. Local discussion of these issues occurred at the same time that similar concerns were being expressed in the rest of the region. The school of thought favoring regional assessment, therefore, had support from similarly minded persons throughout the Commonwealth Caribbean.

This lobby was sufficiently strong to persuade these Ministers of Education to take action. After five years of planning and preparation, CXC examinations were administered for the first time in The nationalist position on examination did not go without some concessions to its position.

In converting junior secondary schools from three-year to five-year institutions, the question arose with respect to the assessment of the performance of these students at the end of five years of schooling. This question arose in the early s before CXC was established. The options were to integrate them with the Cambridge examinations until the regional examinations were in place, or create a unique national examination for students of this type of school. First, the GCE or later the CXC examinations would be above the level of achievement of the vast majority of the students in this type of secondary institution, hence sitting such examinations would encourage new secondary schools to concentrate on a few students to the exclusion of the many.

Second, Jamaica should develop its own examinations to meet the specific curricula approved for the particular type of secondary school that may not coincide with the policies of other countries. Third, a national examination could be mounted at lower cost than a regional examination. This last argument was crucial given the socioeconomic background of the majority of new secondary school students.

The arguments in favor of the Cambridge and regional examinations were predicated on three premises. First, a national examination designed specifically for the type of secondary education least demanded by the public was unlikely to be highly valued by students, parents, or employers.

However, the integration into the mainstream examinations would eventually build prestige for new secondary schools. Second, Jamaica by itself could not afford to establish and operate the machinery that would be needed to mount a high quality examination. While regional examinations may appear more costly they would be more cost effective. Third, while initially only a few new secondary school students would reach the standard, when both students and teachers had mastered these standards a much larger number of students would be involved.

The nationalist won the day and the Secondary School Certificate SSC , was created to assess student performance in new secondary schools. In retrospect there were valid arguments on both sides. On one hand, the SSC, after 20 years of operation, has not gained the wide acceptance among parents, students, employers, or tertiary education institutions.

Jamaica by itself has not been able to put the machinery in place to operate the SSC as a high quality examination. On numerous occasions the examinations have been nearly one year late in publishing results. On the other hand, CXC fees are often outside the reach of poor candidates and have resulted in their taking fewer subjects than they are intellectually able to take in any single examination.

Also the high standard of the CXC has left an uncomfortable number of candidates unable to pass at the General Proficiency level. Several educators have therefore called on CXC to establish another level of performance that is approximately one year below the level of the General Proficiency. In other words, while the regional position appears more sustainable, there are still some critical issues, identified from the inception, that still need to be addressed.

This theme in education reform in the populist era arose from three considerations. First, the level of education required of citizens of an independent and democratic society was far greater than that required in an undemocratic colonial society. Second, the colonial provision in education was deficient even with respect to its own limited needs.

Third, provision of education opportunities for children of school age could not compensate for the many adults who had missed basic schooling in the colonial period. These three considerations lead to the provision of reclamation education for adults. The focus of reclamation education in the populist era was functional literacy among adults. A literacy survey found that Most efforts were mounted by professionals in the field, whose primary contribution was that of developing the local materials and testing methods that were effective in the Jamaican setting.

These paved the way for a national mobilization to address adult illiteracy in the s through the creation of the JAMAL Foundation, in , with its mandate to eliminate adult illiteracy in the shortest possible time. Indeed, it represented national mobilization around a common cause by enabling persons who had not learned basic functional skills to acquire them in order to enhance their lives. The program involved mass mobilization and by had been instrumental in making about , adults functionally literate.

A literacy survey done in showed that functional illiteracy had been reduced to Interestingly, JAMAL found that only one in three of its recruits were absolutely illiterate, not having ever been literate. Two out of three recruits were lapsed literates who had acquired the skills but not the habit and had deteriorated for lack of application of the skill. The important point to note about this reform is that it created a national organization and infrastructure for adult education that had not previously existed.

The Period of Scientific Management

While its mission of eliminating illiteracy was not achieved in the populist period, like in other areas substantial progress had been made towards its objective. Moreover, materials, methods, and manpower had been effectively mobilized on a national basis Miller Observations on Education Reforms in the Populist Period. When the education reforms in the populist era are examined in their totality, several observations appear warranted.

These can be enumerated briefly as follows: The structural adjustment era dates from to the present. The government has announced that the agreement with the International Monetary Fund IMF , which ended in , will be its last. The government has claimed that the adjustments have been made and the economy is on target to enable it to terminate the special agreements with the IMF.

These agreements were reached in the context of IMF conditions requiring that the Jamaican Government adopt policy measures designed to adjust the Jamaican economy. Bullock pointed out that IMF adjustment policies have had two main strands: Both Davies and Bullock, in reviewing the impact of these policy measures on the Jamaican economy, have identified adverse effects on education and other social services. To date, only Miller has attempted to analyze in detail the impact of structural adjustment policies on any specific aspect of the education system.

The attempt here is not to assess the impact of structural adjustment on the education sector per se, but rather to outline the educational policies and reforms that have been spawned during this period. Adams highlights the fact that the decline in public expenditure that has marked the period of structural adjustment has resulted in major reductions of education expenditure in the school system. Several of the reforms spawned in this period attempted to take account of this fact. Reduction in education expenditure has formed an important context for education policy making over the last seventeen years.

Several cost cutting measures that started as short term responses have become long term strategies by default. Reforms in the structural adjustment period have encompassed many different themes. Each of these themes will be discussed in turn. Reforms to Increase Efficiency. School attendance, understood as a broad indicator of the opportunity to learn, offers itself as a key lever by which learning efficiency can be improved at a low cost.

The most recent policy measure to improve attendance was enacted in when the Government decided to make primary school attendance compulsory through the passage of appropriate legislation. The implementation would begin in two parishes, St. Thomas and Trelawny, and then extended to the rest of the island on a phased basis. Welfare measures would be associated with the enforcement of the legislation through the supply of uniforms and school feeding, directed at children from low socioeconomic backgrounds.

It is important to note that Jamaica has achieved universal enrollment of the primary school population on the basis of voluntary participation. The introduction of compulsory legislation was, therefore, not to mandate enrollment but to compel the attendance of those who had voluntarily enrolled in school.

Coomarsingh , Jones , and Blair investigated the impact of the implementation of the policy in some of the target areas. From the three studies it was apparent that, apart from an initial response in St. Thomas, the compulsory policy has had no significant impact on improving attendance in the parishes studied. By itself legislation does not appear to be effective in inducing parents to send their children to school regularly. The major difficulty appears to be the enforcement of the law with the consequential punishment of the parents who are mostly poor. The three researchers suggested that the desired results would have been achieved had the promised welfare support been forthcoming.

Further, they implied that it was the absence of the materialization of the promised welfare support that undermined the successful implementation of the policy. The assertion here is that poverty alleviation is a critical element in addressing the problem of poor attendance. However, it is still to be established that welfare support is not only a necessary but also a sufficient condition in improving attendance. While the conclusion of these three studies seem to support the work of Clarke that says that attendance appears to be an outcome of underlying social factors related to the socioeconomic status of the parents and communities, the issue still remains as to whether these underlying social factors can be appropriately addressed by welfare measures alone.

It would appear that a critical issue is the cost of schooling to poor families who believe that education will make no difference to the lives of their children. If this is indeed the case, then poverty alleviation measures would need to be associated with strategies to improve the quality of the schools concerned while linking the improved schooling with access to educational opportunity that would change the life chances of the children. New policy measures to address poor attendance would need to address the issues of opportunity cost, quality of schooling and access to educational opportunity that increases the life chances of children from poor socioeconomic backgrounds.

The experience of the compulsory and welfare support policy would seem to suggest that legislation by itself, and possibly even if bolstered by welfare assistance, may not be sufficient. Reforms to Improve and Maintain Quality. Both the Government and Donor Agencies have been cognizant of the fact that the present structural adjustment policies, with their high social costs particularly for low income families, can be expected to have adverse short-term and long-term educational consequences.

Reforms have been introduced in the education system to avert some of these adverse effects by addressing critical input related to educational quality. The Provision of Textbooks. The lack of textbooks was identified as a major setback to students in Primary and Secondary Schools, mitigating against regular attendance, notable achievements and the development of positive attitudes to school and learning. Through the Primary Textbook Project, textbooks have been delivered, free of cost, to all children in primary and all-age schools in Jamaica.

The capital provision for acquisition of the books has come from assistance from the British Development Division, Caribbean of the Overseas Development Agency. Through this plan, textbooks, at low rental, have been provided for all secondary school students. Some of the lessons learned so far can be listed as follows: Policies Related to Nutrition.

Nutrition has been another aspect on which both Government and Donor Agencies have concentrated assistance, based on the assumption that some of the negative effects of structural adjustment could be mitigated. The School Feeding Program was established in the early s to provide school lunches consisting of buns and milk fortified by nutritional supplements. Researchers at the Tropical Metabolism Research Unit of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of the West Indies have carried out studies on the nutritional status of school children.

Simeon raised the question as to whether school feeding programs focused on providing lunch are as effective as programs that use breakfast as the locus of intervention. The study also provided evidence that suggests that attendance and achievement are two correlated outcomes of the same underlying set of nutritional, health, and socioeconomic factors. In other words, well-designed and well-executed nutritional, health, or welfare interventions are likely to improve both attendance and achievement. It also calls into question the adequacy of the existing policies and provisions through the School Feeding Program.

Nutri-buns and fortified milk at lunch time appears to be inadequate compared to the needs of these students. Despite the present School Feeding Program, children from depressed urban communities are experiencing significant educational deficits that can be traced directly to their nutritional and health status. Teacher training in Jamaica has operated virtually unchanged for over one hundred years. In the s the reform focused on expanding teacher supply while maintaining the basic structures and relationships that had traditionally defined the sector. The reforms of the s focused on qualitative change.

The reforms sought to redefine teacher education in the education system and to improve the quality of the teachers. The rationale was that improving teacher quality was the key to improving the general quality of schooling. The elements of the new policies are set out below. The programs to prepare teachers would be three years intramural in all colleges involved in teacher education.

The qualification award would be a Diploma in Teaching. Teacher education would overlap with university education, and not with secondary education as was previously the case. This would be accomplished by: By linking admission to teacher education programs to successful completion of secondary schooling, the new policy was making a significant break with the past.

This admission policy had the potential to exclude a significant number of students who did not come from a high school background. A bridge was necessary between the old admission standard of five passes in the JSC and the new standard of four passes in CXC. The Preliminary Year would be that bridge. The new policy sought to re-conceptualize and re-define the types of teachers to be prepared for the school system.

Four levels of the school system were recognized: The new policy mandated that from the outset of their training, students had to choose the level of the education system for which they would be educated and trained to teach. Further, it asserted that there was a fundamental difference between early childhood, special education, and primary teachers on the one hand and the secondary teacher on the other hand.

The former teachers had to possess a general intelligence that allowed them to learn and master a wide variety of subject matters and skills. The secondary teacher, on the other hand, must be a specialist in one or two subjects and as such must have special abilities in those areas and the capacity to pursue those areas to great depth.

A secondary school teacher could, therefore, have great weaknesses in some subject areas, but this need not affect their competence provided these weaknesses were not within their particular area of specialization. This was not the case with primary school teachers who had to be generally good in all the subjects of the primary curriculum, even if none are pursued at great depth.

Although each type of teacher must be trained in relation to their specialization, all teachers of each level share a common core of knowledge and experience as teachers. The common areas were personal competence in language and communication, professional knowledge in education foundation, competence in practical teaching, capacity to execute action research, and continuing personal development. Both the common core of shared knowledge and experiences and the fundamental differences between the types of teachers, had to be reflected in admission requirements, curriculum provisions, and evaluation criteria.

The assumption was that the key to improving the quality of teachers was improving their academic preparation. This would be accomplished by the following: The general rationale for this approach was that while greater concentration on academics would result in some loss of pedagogic competence, over time and with experience, the young teacher would gain the desired pedagogic competence. On the other hand, if academic weaknesses were allowed to go unremedied, teachers are unlikely to rectify them on their own, regardless of the amount of experience gained in the classroom.

Accordingly, the balance in the teacher preparation programs should be struck in favor of academic and technical competence. Traditionally, the stated ideal had been to staff secondary schools with university graduates. While a few high schools had come close to this ideal, none have actually achieved it. Neither were there good prospects for achieving this ideal in the foreseeable future. Several factors accounted for this. First, UWI does not produce graduates in the full range of subjects taught at the secondary level. Second, even in those subject areas in which it does produce graduates, the flow of graduates into the school system has been modest.

Third, with the increasing cost of university education to foreign students in the United States, Canada, and Britain and the continued devaluation of the Jamaican dollar it is unlikely that graduates trained abroad would make up for either the limitations or the shortfalls of the local training capacity.

Cognizance was taken of the fact that some research on teacher effectiveness has shown that above a certain threshold of knowledge of subject matter, additional increments seem to add little to teacher effectiveness. While no research has so far isolated and identified the threshold, this finding is significant from a policy perspective.

The assumption made here is if secondary school teachers are to teach up to the CXC General Proficiency standard, then if student trainees, who have themselves obtained this standard in the subjects they are being prepared to teach, are given an additional three years of content in those subject areas, they should cross the threshold required to be effective secondary school teachers in Jamaica.

The need to adjust the supply of teachers was manifested by several developments: The situation described above required that the number of primary school teachers being produced annually should be reduced while the number of secondary school teachers should be increased. The irreversible trend in the world is for increased technology and technological applications. If the Jamaican society is to make technological advances, then teachers must play a significant role. The use of technology by teachers in the schools is likely to be facilitated if their own learning in college is assisted by the use of various educational technologies.

Accordingly, teacher education institutions should be equipped with a wide variety of audio-visual equipment and materials and also with computers and other digital machines with memories. These should be integrated into the instruction of all teacher trainees. From the mid s and into the s the Ministry of Education has sponsored the redesigning and installation of curricula at the primary level.

In the s the Caribbean Examination Council was established and had produced new curricula for secondary schools.

It was therefore decided that the new curricula developed for the new Diploma program should prepare teachers to teach these new curricula in the primary and secondary schools, by incorporating their major objectives and methodologies in the pedagogic courses. Teachers produced through these programs should have mastered the content and methodologies required to teach the curricula currently in place in the primary and secondary school systems.

Teachers should also be au-fait with the principles, philosophies, attitudes, processes skills, and achievement outcomes prescribed by these curricula. In the s, following the New Horizons Conference in , several colleges embarked on pilot projects testing various innovations.

The decision was therefore taken that all successful innovations that were relevant and meaningful to the new program would be incorporated. In other words, these innovations would be upgraded from pilot status to system-wide implementation. Some of the innovations that were incorporated were: While there has been some articulation between teacher education and the University, this has never been as close or smooth as that between the University and Sixth Forms. The new policy sought to address the two issues. In designing the new Diploma, the level of attainment was set so that the level of attainment at the end of the second year would be roughly equivalent to that of the old Certificate program.

Teachers who had graduated with the Certificate would require an additional year of full-time instruction in order to reach the Diploma standard. The basic rationale for the provision to upgrade the teachers in the field was as follows: Several different strategies and modalities would need to be employed if all the Certificate teachers in the school system were to be upgraded to the new Diploma. The strategies would include full time, part-time, vacation and distance teaching packages.

Teachers graduating with the Diploma in Teaching would be paid substantially more than teachers holding Certificates, and at the same rates as Specialist I and untrained Graduates. The rationale for these salary relationships were as follows: It was decided that the new policies, and specifically the new Diploma, would be implemented over a three-year period, starting in September , just as the old Certificate program was being phased out. By June therefore, the old Certificate program was entirely phased out and the new Diploma entirely phased in.

One of the ironies, of the structural adjustment period, has been the degree to which reforms designed to address unsavory aspects of the adjustment process have been undermined or retarded by the adjustment process itself. Nowhere is this better illustrated than with respect to the reforms in teacher education. No sooner had the reforms been phased into the system in , than the restructured system was disrupted by further demands of the adjustment process.

The list of further adjustments to teacher education after could be listed as follows: Interestingly, the reforms survived the disruptions of the mids. The Preliminary Year was reinstated, student entry was returned to the previous levels and the Moneague College was reopened in However, by the country experienced a shortage of trained teachers that has, subsequently, led to increased numbers of unqualified teachers employed in the schools.

Re-engineering Instruction in Schools. Knowledge at the current time is that the wealth of the world is no longer based on natural resources, a surfeit of cheap labor, excessive amount of capital, or the ability to manipulate monetary instruments such as money supply, exchange rates, interest rates, and tariff regimes within national borders.

Rather, wealth and prosperity reside in the ability to compete in the global market place, especially in the markets of industrialized countries. This shift demands new and dynamic relationships between business and national management and profound changes in market systems since competitive advantage will not flow from labor or capital but rather from science, technology, and human resources.

Sections of the Jamaican private sector that hold to this view, the Business Partners, have joined with the Ministry of Education and the Computer Society Foundation to re-engineer instruction in primary and secondary schools through the application of information technology to address the learning needs of students. Through this partnership, computer labs are being placed in primary and secondary schools.

This program, operative since , seeks to place computer labs in all secondary schools and subsequently in all primary schools. The labs are being placed in schools for the purpose of computer-assisted and computer-based instruction. Teachers are being trained, however, to use computers to teach their subject of specialization. The initial results of this innovation has been quite impressive. Mobile labs will be employed in urban centers and fixed labs in remote rural primary schools. Included in the experiment is the use of CAI in the communities in which the schools are located to address the learning needs of adults, especially with respect to the economic activities in which they are engaged.

Apart from the innovation, with respect to the use of information technology to address the learning needs of children and adults, this program represents new directions with regard to the partnership between the State, the private sector, and the international donor community. While the partnership is still in its embryonic stage, it signals fundamental reform of the relationships in the provision of education. Neither the Government nor the donor community projected the inclusion of computer-assisted or computer-based instruction in schools.

The official policy is that the use of information technology, while desirable, is outside the reach of developing countries such as Jamaica. The Business Partners have taken the opposite view and provided the leadership in formulating and implementing this reform. The extent to which this reform succeeds is still to be determined. The important point to note is the change in leadership during the reform process.

The private sector has literally dragged the Government and the donor community into this reform. Restructuring the Education System. The period of structural adjustment has not been without attempts to fundamentally alter the structure of the education system. Reforms under this heading relate to rationalizing secondary education, changing the alignment of technical and vocational education within the education system, and restructuring tertiary education.

In the Five-Year Development Plan , priority is given to the improvement of secondary education by streamlining the structure and providing common curriculum for grades A major aspect of this development is the strengthening of the all-age and new secondary schools to deliver this common program. The Reform of Secondary Education Project ROSE was designed to rationalize the system of secondary education and to further reduce the remaining inequalities by ensuring that all children are provided with equal opportunities to complete nine years of basic education.

ROSE particularly targets the all-age schools that lag far behind the secondary schools in qualitative terms. The Ministry of Education and Culture proposes to implement the following reforms with respect to all-age Schools: The essence of the reform is the development of a common curriculum for all types of secondary schools.

The reform is therefore being driven by the revision of curriculum upon which the teacher training, textbook provision, examinations and evaluation, the provision of teaching materials, and equipment are all being predicated. The reforms are being introduced on a phased basis and are expected to have been introduced into approximately of the eligible schools by It is also expected that the reforms begun at the Grades 7 to 9 level will be extended to encompass Grades 10 and A seeming contradiction is that at the same time that the Ministry is proceeding with the reforms under ROSE, it is converting new secondary schools into technical, comprehensive and traditional high schools.

It is also creating junior high schools. During this phase, the supervisor observed the teacher using the framework articulated in Phase 1. Data from the observation was organized by the supervisor with the intent of helping teachers participate "in developing evaluations of their own teaching" p. Phase 4—A Supervision Conference: The teacher and supervisor engaged in a dialogue about the data. The teacher was asked to reflect upon and explain his or her professional practice.

This stage also could include providing "didactic assistance" p. Phase 5—Analysis of the Analysis: The supervisor's "practice was examined with all of the rigor and for basically the same purposes that Teacher's professional behavior was analyzed theretofore" p. In , Morris Cogan wrote the book Clinical Supervision.

As mentioned previously, Cogan was one of Goldhammer's professors at Harvard. His focus was on specific classroom behaviors. He noted that supervisors should be looking for "critical incidents" that "impede desired learnings in striking fashion" p. He also emphasized the fact that the supervisory process should be viewed as a vital aspect of the process of continual improvement in teaching:. A cornerstone of the supervisor's work with the teacher is the assumption that clinical supervision constitutes a continuation of the teacher's professional education. This does not mean that the teacher is "in training," as is sometimes said of preservice programs.

It means that he is continuously engaged in improving his practice, as is required of all professionals. In this sense, the teacher involved in clinical supervision must be perceived as a practitioner fulfilling one of the first requirements of a professional—maintaining and developing his competence. He must not be treated as a person being rescued from ineptitude, saved from incompetence, or supported in his stumblings. He must perceive himself to be engaged in the supervisory processes as a professional who continues his education and enlarges his competences.

One of the more interesting aspects of Cogan's perspective was his caution that a supervisor's personal model of teaching might impede his or her ability to provide effective feedback to teachers. Most teachers have consciously and unconsciously constructed a personal model of the good teacher. Such conceptions generally grow by accretion rather than by critical examination and careful testing.

The result is that too often the operating model of the teacher-turned-supervisor is pretty much what he himself does well. When teachers become supervisors, these personal preferences generally operate in full vigor, furnishing many of the criteria for viewing the teaching of others. It is instructive to contrast the original view of clinical supervision with that into which it evolved.

Goldhammer was clear that what is to be observed is the holistic practice of teaching: The five phases of the clinical supervision process were intended to be the vehicle to disclose effective instructional practices. However, over time, the five phases became an end in themselves. In some cases, the rich, trusting dialogue envisioned by Goldhammer was reduced to a ritualistic set of steps to be followed.

Perhaps contributing to this problem was Goldhammer's resistance to defining any characteristics of effective instruction. In Goldhammer's view, the supervisor should have few if any preconceived notions of what constitutes effective teaching:. Since I have deliberately not structured my observations in advance so that, for example, I should only record data in certain predetermined categories, and since I have collected as many data as possible in order to alleviate unconscious selectivity, I must now, ex post facto, invent categories of some kind.

I must organize the data into classes of one sort or another in order to talk about them. Regardless of the reasons for its demise, Goldhammer's vision of supervision as a collegial, inquiry-driven quest for more effective instructional practices quickly disappeared. The five phases of the clinical model, absent the rich dialogue proposed by Goldhammer, became the de facto structure for the evaluation of teachers—clearly a purpose for which it was not intended.

The next major influence on supervision was the work of Madeline Hunter , The centerpiece of her work was the seven-step model of a lesson depicted in Figure 2. A mental set that causes students to focus on what will be learned. It may also give practice in helping students achieve the learning and yield diagnostic data for the teacher. What do you think might be the most important part to remember?

Not only do students learn more effectively when they know what they're supposed to be learning and why that learning is important to them, but teachers teach more effectively when they have that same information. Sometimes you feel you have studied hard and yet don't remember some of the important parts. Today, we're going to learn ways to identify what's important, and then we'll practice ways we can use to remember important things. Students must acquire new information about the knowledge, process, or skill they are to achieve. To design the input phase of the lesson so that a successful outcome becomes predictable, the teacher must have analyzed the final objective to identify knowledge and skills that need to be acquired.

To avoid stifling creativity, showing several examples of the process or products that students are expected to acquire or produce is helpful.

Before students are expected to do something, the teacher should determine that they understand what they are supposed to do and that they have the minimum skills required. Students practice their new knowledge or skill under direct teacher supervision. New learning is like wet cement; it is easily damaged.

An error at the beginning of learning can easily "set" so that correcting it later is harder than correcting it immediately. Independent practice is assigned only after the teacher is reasonably sure that students will not make serious errors. After an initial lesson, students are frequently not ready to practice independently, and the teacher has committed a pedagogical error if unsupervised practice is expected. Hunter , "Knowing, Teaching, and Supervising. Although the seven-step framework for a lesson is the most well-known aspect of Hunter's work, she contributed many other ideas to the process of supervision.

For example, she championed the idea of using professional development to articulate a common language of instruction. She also identified a variety of purposes for supervisory conferences that included the following: To identify, label, and explain instructional behaviors as related to research; To encourage teachers to consider alternative approaches that are aligned to their style of teaching; To help teachers identify components of lessons that were not as effective as they had hoped; To identify and describe "less effective aspects of teaching that were not evident to the teacher" , p.

Observation and script taping were critical components of Hunter's process of supervision. During script taping, a supervisor recorded teaching behaviors and then later categorized them into those that "promoted learning; those that used precious time and energy, yet contributed nothing to learning; and those that, unintentionally, actually interfered with learning" Hunter, , p. After script taping, supervisors conferred with teachers. During this postconference, the supervisor and teacher discussed the data from the script taping in depth.

In short order, Hunter's seven elements of an effective lesson became the prescription for teacher evaluation in many states Fehr, , p. If clinical supervision was the prescribed structure of supervision, Hunter's seven-step model, referred to as mastery teaching , became the content of the preconference, observation, and postconference. Teachers described their lessons in terms of Hunter's model, and supervisors determined the effectiveness of observed lessons in terms of alignment to the model. By the mids, researchers and theorists in supervision began to articulate alternative perspectives, primarily in reaction to the prescription applications of clinical supervision and mastery teaching.

William Glatthorn promoted supervisory models that considered a teacher's career goals. In Differentiated Supervision , Glatthorn explained that as professionals, teachers should have input and some sense of control over their development. Through differentiation, supervisors were expected to focus clinical supervisory practices on staff members who would derive the greatest benefit from a clinical approach.

Additionally, different opportunities and venues for professional growth were to be provided for teachers based on their individual needs. In a similar vein, Thomas McGreal delineated a range of supervisory options based on teacher experience. These options ranged from intensive developmental supervision for nontenured teachers and teachers with significant instructional deficiencies to more self-directed professional development for experienced staff.

For evaluation purposes, McGreal recommended that teachers be placed either in an intensive evaluation program designed to make high-stakes decisions related to continued employment or granting of tenure, or in a standard evaluation program designed for quality assurance. Another proponent of the differentiated approach to supervision during this era was Carl Glickman.

In the first edition of his book Supervision of Instruction: A Developmental Approach , Glickman affirmed that the most important goal of supervision was to improve instruction. In the fouth edition of his book , he described a number of related actions that constitute a robust approach to supervision. They included " 1 direct assistance to teachers, 2 group development, 3 professional development, 4 curriculum development, and 5 action research" p. Glickman noted that to implement a robust model of supervision, educators must take a systemic approach to the supervisory process: Clearly this era saw substantive arguments against the rigid applications of clinical supervision and mastery teaching.

This era also set the stage for an emphasis on teacher evaluation. Amid the debates about the proper approach to supervision in the s, the RAND group engaged in a study to determine what types of supervisory and evaluation practices were actually occurring in school districts across the United States. Its report, titled Teacher Evaluation: One general finding from the study was that the supervisory and evaluative approaches that were more developmental and reflective were sometimes viewed as not specific enough to enhance pedagogical development. Indeed, the report stated that teachers were the strongest advocates for more standardized processes.

The models in place in most of the 32 districts they studied were adopted or developed through committees of teachers, administrators, union representatives, and principals. Four consistent problems with supervision and evaluation were also identified in the study. Nearly all respondents felt that principals "lacked sufficient resolve and competence to evaluate accurately" Wise et al.

Teacher resistance to feedback was the second most identified problem. A key source of this resistance was related to the third most identified problem: The hypothesized reason for this concern was the fact that of the 32 districts in the study, only one district had a system built on a set of established teacher competencies. The fourth problem was a lack of training for evaluators. The study authors summarized their findings in four conclusions and 12 recommendations. These are reported in Figure 2. Examine goals and purpose of educational system and align system to those ends.

States should not adopt highly prescriptive systems Wise et al. Provide administrators with adequate time for evaluations. The quality of evaluation and ability of evaluators should be monitored. Training for evaluators is important, particularly with new systems Wise et al. Examine current systems to determine and align with primary purpose. Consider adopting multiple systems if there are different purposes Wise et al. Utility depends on the efficient use of resources to achieve reliability, validity, and cost effectiveness" Wise et al.

Allocate resources as aligned to importance of purpose. Target resources to achieve maximum results Wise et al. Involve expert teachers in the supervision and assistance of peers. Involve teacher organizations in the development of processes and ongoing monitoring.

The Early Days of Supervision and Evaluation

Hold teachers accountable for instructional decisions Wise et al. In , a seminal work on supervision and evaluation was published by Charlotte Danielson. A Framework for Teaching , which was updated in , was based on her work with the Educational Testing Service that focused on measuring the competence of preservice teachers. Given its past and current popularity, the Danielson model must be the reference point for any new proposals regarding supervision and evaluation. Whereas Hunter had described steps in the teaching process and Goldhammer and Cogan had done the same for the supervisory process, Danielson sought to capture—in its full complexity—the dynamic process of classroom teaching.

As we briefly described in Chapter 1, Danielson's model included four domains: Within each of these domains, she described a series of components that further articulate the knowledge, skills, and dispositions required to demonstrate competence in the classroom. According to Danielson , the intent of the framework was to accomplish three things. First, it sought to honor the complexity of teaching.

Second, it constituted a language for professional conversation. Third, it provided a structure for self-assessment and reflection on professional practice. The framework was considered comprehensive by Danielson in that it included all phases of teaching—from planning to reporting achievement. Additionally, Danielson noted that the model was grounded in research and that it is generic or flexible enough to be used across levels and disciplines.

One of the more powerful aspects of the Danielson framework was that each of the 76 elements of quality teaching was broken into four levels of performance unsatisfactory, basic, proficient, and distinguished. An example of one of these elements and the corresponding levels of performance is reported in Figure 2. Establishing a Culture for Learning. Instructional outcomes, activities and assignments, and classroom interactions convey low expectations for at least some students.

Instructional outcomes, activities and assignments, and classroom interactions convey only modest expectations for student learning and achievement. Instructional outcomes, activities and assignments, and classroom interactions convey high expectations for most students.

Instructional outcomes, activities and assignments, and classroom interactions convey high expectations for all students. Students appear to have internalized these expectations. From Enhancing Professional Practice: A Framework for Teaching p. Danielson, , Alexandria, VA: Copyright by ASCD. The level of specificity supplied in the Danielson model provided the foundation for the most detailed and comprehensive approach to evaluation to that time.

Since the turn of the 21st century, emphasis has shifted from supervision to evaluation, as well as from teacher behavior to student achievement. In their book Linking Teacher Evaluation and Student Learning , Tucker and Stronge championed the importance of student achievement as a criterion in the evaluation process. Specifically, they argued for evaluation systems that determine teacher effectiveness using evidence from student gains in learning as well as observations of classroom instruction. To study how both of these components can be valued concurrently, they examined the supervisory systems in four different school districts that used data on instructional practices and learning gains.

They drew a series of recommendations supporting the use of both types of data. However, their recommendations regarding the use of student achievement data were the most forcefully stated: Student achievement can, and indeed should be, an important source of feedback on the effectiveness of schools, administrators, and teachers" p.

In , Toch and Rothman's report Rush to Judgment provided a provocative perspective on teacher evaluation. They critiqued current supervisory and evaluative practices, saying they are "superficial, capricious, and often don't even directly address the quality of instruction, much less measure students' learning" p. Specifically, they described teaching as a profession that focuses on formal credentials rather than on instructional effectiveness and student achievement. Furthermore, despite No Child Left Behind requirements around teacher quality, they found only 14 states that required school systems to do annual evaluations of teachers.

They noted that some evaluation systems may not even reflect teacher effectiveness in the classroom. Michigan State professor Mary Kennedy is quoted as saying, "in most instances, it's nothing more than marking satisfactory or unsatisfactory" p. The report authors explained its unusual name in the following way:. The failure of evaluation systems to provide accurate and credible information about individual teachers' instructional performance sustains and reinforces a phenomenon that we have come to call the Widget Effect.

The Widget Effect describes the tendency of school districts to assume classroom effectiveness is the same from teacher to teacher. This decades-old fallacy fosters an environment in which teachers cease to be understood as individual professionals, but rather as interchangeable parts. In its denial of individual strengths and weaknesses, it is deeply disrespectful to teachers; in its indifference to instructional effectiveness, it gambles with the lives of students.

The Widget Effect was the product of research into the evaluation practices in 12 districts across four states including approximately 15, teachers, 1, administrators, and more than 80 local and state education officials. Specific findings indicated major flaws in the teacher evaluation process:. The failure to assess variations in instructional effectiveness also precludes districts from identifying specific development needs in their teachers. In fact, 73 percent of teachers surveyed said their most recent evaluation did not identify any development areas, and only 45 percent of teachers who did have development areas identified said they received useful support to improve.

Final conclusions from the report suggested a complete overhaul of the teacher evaluation process:. Evaluations are short and infrequent most are based on two or fewer classroom observations totaling 60 minutes or less , conducted by untrained administrators, and influenced by powerful cultural forces—in particular, an expectation among teachers that they will be among the vast majority rated as top performers. While it is impossible to know whether the system drives the culture or the culture the system, the result is clear—evaluation systems fail to differentiate performance among teachers.

As a result, teacher effectiveness is largely ignored. Excellent teachers cannot be recognized or rewarded, chronically low-performing teachers languish, and the wide majority of teachers performing at moderate levels do not get the differentiated support and development they need to improve as professionals.

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