To Build a Better Teacher: The Emergence of a Competitive Education Industry

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Holland proposes breaking up the teacher-preparation monopoly and replacing it with a market-based approach that would allow school principals to hire knowledgeable candidates who have not necessarily been through the education-school mill. Mentoring and value-added assessment would ensure children benefit from the highest quality teaching. Throughout the 20th century, grade-school teachers were trained in schools of education where progressive theories largely held sway and were licensed by state bureaucracies philosophically compatible with the education schools. Vested education interests now seek to make the monopoly even more controlling by requiring that all teachers be products of education schools accredited by a single national agency dedicated to progressive ideals. Holland proposes an alternative vision compatible with the emerging 21st-century paradigm of a competitive education industry: Lower unnecessary barriers to teaching so that bright persons of diverse background and disposition can become teachers. Set up an alternative trackas in New Jerseyso that bright liberal arts graduates or persons with valuable real-world experience can be hired as teachers and put under the supervision of experienced mentors. Apply value-added assessmentas in Tennesseeto these new teachers, and to veteran teachers as well, so that principals can see how much each teacher has helped each child progress academicallyor notfrom school year to school year. Holland's plan to break up the teacher-prep monopoly is bound to be controversal, and, as such, should be of great interest to allfrom parents and administrators to teachers and policy makersconcerned with improving the state of American education.

Reviews

"In any survey conducted by policy analysts of those interested in the issues that are on the minds of the public, education is at the top of the list. . . . Bob Holland's approach to solving some of the problems addresses the issues associated with those who teach our teachers what and how to teach. He makes the case, that in the absence of proof to the contrary, change has to occur if we want improvement in the product, the product being those children who have been entrusted to our care, instruction, and nurturing."-The Honorable L. Douglas Wilder Distinguished Professor, Virginia Commonwealth University Former Governor of Virginia
"This superbly written book exhibits a humane tone that is very welcome amid the uncharitable shrillness of education debates. . . . This book is concrete, readable, accurate, up-to-date, and authoritative. If you want to know what is going on in the all-important teacher-education debates, what is being proposed, and what needs to be done, this is the book to turn to."-E. D. Hirsch Jr. Professor Emeritus of Education and Humanities, University of Virginia

Author Bio

ROBERT GRAY HOLLAND is a Senior Fellow with the Lexington Institute in the Washington, D.C., area. As a newspaper columnist and editor, Holland won the H. L. Mencken Award for his incisive writing on education. He is prominent among school reformers seeking the nationwide spread of greater choice in education. His articles have appeared in such journals as Policy Review, the Howard University Law Journal, and USA Today, as well as in major newspapers. His 1995 book, Not With My Child, You Don't, told the story of parental opposition to mandatory school restructuring.