I don’t know about lawyers, but I imagine doctors do encounter this situation occasionally. Say, during a catastrophic natural disaster, or on the battlefield. In which cases a very large percentage of their patients die – yet they typically remain “in business” afterwards because everyone understands that such a workload is simply unsupportable. Lawyers, of course, just remain generally unpopular because they have rigged the entire legal structure of society on their behalf to provide them with permanent low-intensity, high-remuneration employment.

I’m sure most teachers would love to have the equivalent of an attorney’s or a doctor’s practice, where students would come into an office, one by one, receive instruction for an hour, and then go away for a year or so. I bet each student would receive an education entirely geared to their own strengths, weaknesses, and readiness, just as Mr. Hoss expects they should.

Clearly, education is not a profession like the others cited in this article, either in terms of practitioner-client relations, or in terms of fees earned. Why not start by admitting that, before comparing the universities’ education programs to law schools or criticizing the quality of training or recruitment that takes place in the so-called profession of education?

For some reason society chooses not to hire teachers at the same ratio to clients (students) that other professionals take for granted: about 1:1 per hour or even less. If society did so, and if they paid the teachers at the same rates as these other practitioners charge, the ed schools would probably develop wonderful pedagogies and research-based solutions for every type of student’s education. On the other hand, I doubt the national population can provide a recruitment base for that many very highly qualified and highly educated teachers.

Not that Ed Schools are so wonderful – I agree that they are terribly weak academically, compared to other graduate schools. But is that the fault of the schools somehow, so that the “online” replacements are going to be so much more wonderful? (As you say, no one has even begun to show that online training is superior, as education, to in-class training. All anyone knows and likes is that it’s much cheaper, because the teachers don’t have to meet or get to know their students at all – a feature that Mr. Hoss seems to think makes for a rather poor education.) Or is the problem that we as a society have always wanted our public education to be cheap, fast, and excellent? I, and anyone who has ever worked for a living, knows that you can’t have all three of those at once.

Many twenty first century educators employ the same strategies used by their predecessors from decades past. The teacher standing in front of the class giving the same lesson to everyone suggests that all students have the same strengths and weaknesses as well as the same levels of readiness as every other student in the class. They don’t.

If medical doctors or attorneys attempted to operate in this manner they’d be out of business by the end of the week.

Low SAT scores among those who assert they are going into education are different from SAT scores of those actually enroll in ed schools. Aspirant scores are lower than actual enrollees, but not a whole lot lower. More importantly, however, the low scores of ed school or teacher training aspirants evidence the low regard in which ed schools are held. If top tier SAT scorers wanted to enter conventional teacher training, would we not have a different view of ed schools? We certainly would.

Now, as to why no one clamors for alternative routes for instructing and certifying nurses, engineers, lawyers, physicians, and business leaders. Sherman is right here. There are few such calls. There is a good reason why. These other professions operate from a solid base in scientific principle or, in the case of law, long standing craft knowledge. Ed Schools can make no such claim. This is precisely why they cannot legitimately proclaim hegemony over the preparation of teachers. They have no scientific base upon which to operate and no legitimacy as a consequence, Alternative routes to being a teacher hold equal legitimacy, are attracting more and more able individuals, and offer a less expensive path to teaching. Ed schools are suffering as a result.

Jim Guthrie

Yes, teacher education programs need a better foundation in research. I am not convinced that the elimination of those programs from higher education would move things in the right direction.