Who's Teaching Your Children?: Why the Teacher Crisis Is Worse Than You Think and What Can Be Done about It

Troen and Boles give a grim outlook for the state of public education in the United States, but they offer hope and some real solutions for improving education. They believe strongly in professionalizing teachers and they should be listened to. I highly recommend this book!

The malaise of education seems pretty obvious to many people and the first half of their short book provides a summary of that common harangue in clear, solid, soundbite-proof language. The authors identify what they call a Trilemma Dysfuntion in schools that has a crippling effect on reform strategies. First, since there are "not enough academically academically able students...being drawn to teaching," the pool of talent and ambition has diminished. Second, "teacher preparation programs need substantial improvement," since their certification and renewal procedures have historically been much less than rigorous. Third, "the professional life of teachers is on the whole unacceptable," that is, professional development and growth opportunities remain stagnant. These three dysfunctions feed into and maintain a malformed culture in schools. What is worse, teachers have operated for so long under this cultural dysfuntion that they regulate themselves with their own myopic, bureaucratic chains (cf. Foucault's Panopticon). What really made this book a wonderful reading and learning experience for me, though, remains in their providing hope, that is, a plan. Since teacher improvement lies at the heart of any educational reform strategy, the authors declare that empowering teachers to do their job well must be the premise and promise of the profession. Their blueprint for school reform contains the Millennium School, an attempt to revive the profession of teaching, re-organize the roles of educational personnel, and improve educational leadership. The bedrock principles that comprise the Millennium School consist of four tenets: first, "multi-tiered career paths for teachers," next, "teaching in teams instead of in isolation," then, "performance-based accountability," and finally, "ongoing professional development for all teachers and principals" (p. 185). I suppose that I am a little jealous of the authors. They have written the book that I have always wanted to write. This is my way of giving it very high praise because it resonated with me in a profound manner. If I were to criticize it, it would be that for all its fine writing, eloquent arguments, and scholarly support, the authors do not provide a Millennium School model at the High School level (my arena), only at the Elementary School level. (Wait. Maybe there is still time to consider writing that book after all. Better go now--)

Everyone's talking about the need for great teachers in every classroom. Almost nobody is encouraging their own smart, well-educated, creative son or daughter to consider teaching as a CAREER. This book explains the disconnect and what we need to do about it. How to make teaching an attractive career for well-educated young people who can write, who enjoy mathematics, who like being with children -- that is the key issue that no one else is talking about. This book gets real. - a former classroom teacher

With all the talk about "Leaving No Child Behind," it's refreshing to read a book that explains clearly and credibly how the entire teaching profession has been left behind. While the state of teaching in the United States is truly disheartening, Ms. Troen and Ms. Boles give us hope that it can, in fact, be resurrected. One can only hope that enough people heed their sage advice.

Do you have children in school? For anyone interested in education - whether they're a parent, teacher, policymaker, legislator - this book explains why education reforms fail. It's an inside look into the classroom, the culture of teaching, the reasons why teachers are so poorly prepared for the realities of classroom life, about the culture of schools, and mainly why there's a critical shortage of over 2 million teachers. Do you believe that classroom instruction is getting worse? Do you think that teachers of today are less capable than the teachers of 20 years aago? Do you think your children are getting teachers who are not as smart as the teachers you had when you were in school? Well, you're right, and this book tells you why. It's the truth, and yet it's so well written, it reads like fiction. The authors reveal the history behind how classroom teaching got to be the way it is, and then they tell you how it could all be better. How teaching could be a respected profession, like medicine or law, and what it would take. They describe the "perfect" school, and how to construct it. We spend, as a society, billions of dollars on schools and terribly much of it is wasted. This book tells us how we could make our money better spent, and how we could get the teachers our children deserve.