Education School Ghetto

The serious scholars whom you can still find on college campuses have long regarded education schools as the slums of academia but now the denizens of those projects are even admitting to the dilapidated condition of their discipline.

“The findings of this report were very disappointing,” Arthur Levine [pictured] of Columbia University writes in a new study. “Collectively, educational administration programs are the weakest of all programs at education schools.”

Levine is the head of the Teacher’s College at Columbia University. More graduates receive doctorates in education than in any other major of concentration, Levine reports, although he unearthed information indicating that even education majors and Ph.D. candidates don’t take the fruits of their field of study seriously.

In his survey of 28 education schools and departments, Levine heard similar complaints:

• Education administration scholarship is atheoretical and immature;
• It neglects to ask important questions;
   It is overwhelmingly engaged in nonempirical research; and

• It is disconnected from practice.

Levine interviewed scores of administrators and teachers.

“In a recent study on the research on administrator preparation, Murphy and Vriesenga found that more than 2,000 articles had been published in the leading school leadership journals from 1975 to 2002,” Levine reports. “But less than 3 percent were empirical studies.”

Eighteen years ago, a national commission on which then-Governor Bill Clinton sat found that education schools nationwide were doing such an inferior job that the panel recommended closing more than half of them. Yet two decades later these schools proliferate.

“While some programs are non-degree granting, the combined total of degree and non-degree programs is more than 600,” Levine writes. “This is considerably larger than anticipated and previously reported in the literature.”

“This means that since 1987, when the National Commission on Excellence in Educational Administration recommended closing three-fifths of the nation’s graduate programs in school leadership, the number of programs appears to have actually increased.”

Then why are they flourishing? As they used to say during the Watergate years, follow the money, specifically the funds that states spend on college students majoring in education.

“We get $4,300 per undergraduate from the state and tuition is close to $4,000,” one university official told Levine and his team of researchers. “So we have around $8,000 to work with and our programs cost a little under $6,000.”

“You can admit a lot of education majors and make money,” the official explained. “Nursing students cost $12,000 per student.”

“So you have to admit a lot of education majors to have some money left over so you can admit a few nursing students.” The education department at that school, Levine informs us, transfers more than $2 million a year to the university.

To update an old cliché: If those who can’t do, teach, then those who can’t teach, administer, and those who can’t administer, teach administration.