Teacher Education Enhances Disjuncture Between K-12 and Postsecondary Education

A constant theme of this blog has been the disjuncture between levels of education that causes secondary students to experience different academic standards  and expectations when they reach  broad access colleges. Students enter colleges not knowing about placement exams or what they need to do to be successful. For more on this theme see the Stanford Bridge project at http://bridgeproject.stanford.edu

The disjunture beteen education levels has deep historical roots. One root is teacher preparation for K-12 where the linkage of teacher education programs and the K-12 sector has weakened over time. Elementary teachers were originally prepared in two-year postsecondary normal schools – normal meaning according to rule, model, or pattern. In 1910, there were 264 normal schools enrolling 132,000 students (Dunham, 1969). The next development was from a normal school for elementary teachers to a teachers college to prepare secondary teachers as well. These institutions were linked to K-12 schools, and interactions across K-16 levels were frequent.

But as demands for increasing higher education grew, teachers’ colleges expanded functions and enrollment become multipurpose state colleges, often governed like normal schools by K-12 state boards of education. This growth caused recruitment of arts and sciences professors who sought higher academic prestige. Education schools or departments were typically viewed by the colleges more diverse faculties as having low prestige. The final step was for the former normal college to become a university lacking close contact with K-12 teachers and students except those enrolled in the education school. As institutions of higher education – including teacher education programs themselves – detached from K-12, secondary school students increasingly failed to receive clear signals about college placement exams and about what first-year university students need to know in order to be prepared. Western Michigan University is an example of this institutional evolution. Founded in 1903 as a normal school, it became Western State Teachers College in 1927, Western Michigan College of Education in 1941, and then Western Michigan University in 1957 with 18,500 students in 1969 served by 900 faculty members. The first doctoral degrees were conferred in 1968.

Thus, many former normal schools have become broad-access institutions that typically admit all qualified applicants, but use placement tests for first year students to preserve standards. Secondary school students know that it is easy to get in, but know little about placement tests and curricular demand. An historical irony of this evolution is that postsecondary institutions established to prepare teachers to follow  k12 standards no longer communicate these k12 standards to teachers in enough depth..