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Columnist way off on teacher-quality reform

As a proud retired public school teacher, I was quite disturbed by Walter Williams' recent opinion column about teacher-quality reform. After citing only a few examples of negatives, he labels most U.S. colleges of education as the "academic slums of colleges." Did he quote from extensive research on the hundreds of education colleges and the hundreds of thousands of teachers for this slamming accusation? No. He just attacked the colleges and their students.

Then, Mr. Williams' suggestion for reform was to abolish such schools of education. What a leap. His second idea was to require teachers to have a degree in the field they wish to teach (pertaining to middle or high school teachers?). That requirement already occurs in Illinois. He then suggests that merely having a few training sessions in teaching techniques is adequate. I would certainly pity the poor academic (and their students) who knows their field well but has no clue how to teach and to deal with students.

Over my career, I've worked with excellent teachers. They have been intelligent, well-educated, prepared, and dedicated. If there truly is a problem somewhere with the abilities of teachers, let's investigate and fix the problem. However, I would warn against using Walter Williams as an expert. He gives broad generalizations with little proof and offers very little in improvement ideas.

Cathy McQuillan

Arlington Heights

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