Caylan Ford: Universities have a monopoly on teacher training. They don’t deserve to keep it

For two full days this school year, teachers with the Alberta Classical Academy charter schools attended an intensive professional development session on early literacy, with a concentration on phonics instruction. The sessions were led by a Harvard-trained cognitive scientist and doctoral candidate whose research focuses on the science of reading.

The charter school board (which, in full disclosure, I founded and previously chaired) offered the same training last year as we prepared to open our first elementary school. And for the second year in a row, the reviews from new faculty were glowing—and alarming.

No fewer than five different teachers reported, in nearly identical terms, that they learned more in those two days than they did in their entire education degree. Others expressed something between baffled incredulity and outrage that their bachelor of education programs had left them so unprepared to teach children how to read.

The gravity of the problem is hard to overstate: a troubling number of Canadian school children cannot read at grade level. Without serious and immediate interventions, most of those children will face a lifetime of struggle with basic life skills. Their career and social prospects will be severely constrained, as will their ability to participate in the enjoyment of high culture, literature, and philosophy.

How can we account for the failure of so many university faculties of education to teach these essential skills? Part of the answer is that these programs hold a near-monopoly on teacher training and certification, but little direct connection to classroom instruction, and no accountability for the results they produce.

This needs to change.