Yes, we are losing the “magic” in today’s classrooms.

Yes, we are losing the “magic” in today’s classrooms, as pointed out by Chuck Brickman in his Teachers.Net article Are We Losing the Magic in Today’s Classrooms? “The magic in the classroom wasn’t the curriculum, or the manipulatives, or the computer and slide shows, it was the teacher and how that teacher made what we were learning come to life, to mean something to us, to connect with us….Yet due to the No Child Left Behind Act [now: Race to the Top] focusing on reading and math, mandated testing and accountability factors have led to narrowing of the curriculum…take[s] the human factor out of instructional development and teaching.”

Standardized tests are not a valid measure of a good education. Instead, they usually just predict future school success, which is a tautological begging of the question about “a good education”. And besides: standardized testing has many “side effects” harmful to our children, teachers, administrators, schools, and our whole society. Let me explain.

A 2006 report by former Columbia Teachers College President Arthur Levine says 61 percent of educators believe they were inadequately prepared for the classroom...that most of the nation's 1,450 teachers colleges are doing a mediocre job, at best, of preparing future teachers. But, specifically, what is wrong with teacher education in the United States?