One of the easiest things I've EVER done was get a Master's of Education degree at Virginia State University, America's first black college [1892]. One of my professor's actually had us read aloud from the text in class, which at first seemed demeaning. Then I realized that several of the graduate students had difficulty with this task. Typically these were the kids that came straight out of the undergraduate Education coursework -- not the teachers who'd been teaching for several years and wanted to better their profession. Tom Sowell is correct -- there shouldn't be such a thing as an "Education" degree. Teachers must come from other [actual] disciplines and get a Master's degree in Education to modify skills for the classroom.
Nearly two years ago, U.S. News & World Report came out with a story titled "Educators Implicated in Atlanta Cheating Scandal." It reported that "for 10 years, hundreds of Atlanta public school teachers and principals changed answers on state tests in one of the largest cheating scandals in U.S. history." More than three-quarters of the 56 Atlanta schools investigated had cheated on the National Assessment of Educational Progress test, sometimes called the national report card. Cheating orders came from school administrators and included brazen acts such as teachers reading answers aloud during the test and erasing incorrect answers. One teacher told...
In my libertarian view, the entire government-run school system should be shut down and replaced with something called "freedom."
Short of that, however, the Ed schools should be shut down. Anyone with a bachelor's degree (with a suitably high GPA) should be allowed to teach, after a brief (perhaps six weeks) apprenticeship under an established teacher, with a small stipend.