http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/opinion/jack-kelly/ed-schools-vs-education-648613/
This article makes me mean. It's upsetting that the writer makes such broad generalizations on such little evidence. Not all education degrees are created equal and I've never seen any studies that show having an education degree makes you an inferior teacher. At CU-Boulder, you can't major in education. This writer would say that's a good thing, but what ends up happening is that most of our elementary education candidates major in something like psychology and leave college with probably one math course and one math methods course. As a math educator, I wish they had more. At the University of Northern Iowa (my alma mater), however, you can major in elementary education. That degree program requires three math and math methods courses along with a minor in a subject area, one of which is mathematics. As a math educator, I have no reason to think UNI elementary teachers are less prepared to teach math than CU-Boulder elementary teachers. In fact, they should be more prepared, but that's what I'd expect from a school whose legacy is a teacher's college.
This article makes me mean. It's upsetting that the writer makes such broad generalizations on such little evidence. Not all education degrees are created equal and I've never seen any studies that show having an education degree makes you an inferior teacher. At CU-Boulder, you can't major in education. This writer would say that's a good thing, but what ends up happening is that most of our elementary education candidates major in something like psychology and leave college with probably one math course and one math methods course. As a math educator, I wish they had more. At the University of Northern Iowa (my alma mater), however, you can major in elementary education. That degree program requires three math and math methods courses along with a minor in a subject area, one of which is mathematics. As a math educator, I have no reason to think UNI elementary teachers are less prepared to teach math than CU-Boulder elementary teachers. In fact, they should be more prepared, but that's what I'd expect from a school whose legacy is a teacher's college.