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Reid Lyon is no longer the Branch Chief at NIH/NICHD/CDB. His new vision: American College of Education, a for-profit teacher training program. The name "American College of Education" has less than 200 Google Hits (Ghit) today, some of which are irrelevant. Expect it to increase by 1,000 fold in a year.

Inside Higher Ed (June 14): Challenge to Teacher Ed

“In my experience, the majority of education courses are not rigorous whatsoever. They typically are based on philosophical ideas and ideology, not the research we have on how children learn,” said G. Reid Lyon, chief of the Child Development and Behavior Branch at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Lyon is leaving that position at the National Institutes of Health to develop the new teacher education programs, the first of which will debut in the fall.

“Teachers tell you now that everything they need to know, they learn on the job,” Lyon said.

This paragraph suggests that he did some undercover work before swinging into action:

Lyon’s criticisms of teacher education come from personal experience. He took courses at the University of New Mexico and elsewhere so he could be certified as a teacher and see how education ideas are applied in classrooms. That experience led him to want to avoid the idea of having students serve as ’student teachers” during some portion of their training. Rather, he wants them to “apply ideas immediately.”

 The first campus is to be open this Fall:

The first programs offered by the American College of Education will be in suburban Chicago, and the college is currently seeking a campus and hiring faculty members. Lyon said that discussions are under way with several school districts about providing the first cohorts of students.

The college recently purchased the educational programs (but not the campus) of Barat College, which was once a small private college, was then merged into DePaul University, and which DePaul is shutting down this month. The American College is in the process of shifting accreditation and licensure from Barat’s education programs to its own, and will start this fall with two master’s degrees: one in curriculum and instruction and one in education leadership.

 Sponsors of the new ACE:

The new university is being created by Best Associates, a Dallas-based merchant bank led by Randy Best, who was also a founder of Voyager Expanded Learning, which sells literacy instruction programs to school districts around the country. Voyager was sold to another company this year for $360 million.

What the traditional folks say:

Sharon P. Robinson, president of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, said she thought it was “affirming” that so many businesses saw teacher education as “worthy of the investment.”

“We’ll see if they are any good,” she said.

As to the criticisms made of traditional programs, Robinson said of the American College of Education comments: “They offer a rather breath-taking, broad brush indictment that is certainly unexpected and unfortunate. I certainly will be watching their venture with great interest. If they feel they have a better product, go prove it, just like the rest of us are attempting to do.”

If the underlying economy of being a teacher does not change, why would someone want to go through the ACE?

This entry was posted on Friday, June 17th, 2005 at 11:49 am and is filed under Odds'n'Ends, Education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Edit this entry.