There are several new books out on teacher education. They all deal with the question of how should education schools be training America’s future teachers.

After watching my kids’ teachers, working along fellow professors, and teaching myself, I have a few thoughts. 1) Educations schools could be doing a better job. 2) Some people are born teachers. Some people can be trained to be good teachers. Some people cannot be trained to be good teachers, no matter how good their training. 3) A good school is a combination of three closed intertwined variables — parental involvement, community wealth, and good teachers.

That said, there is another issue. We can use scientific studies and money to create the best teachers in the world, but the biggest problem will still lie  on the table. How do we get the good teachers to where they are needed most?

Last year, Ian was in a special classroom in our public school for kids with high functioning autism. In that classroom, there was one regular teacher and four teaching aides. Teaching aides are typically local moms, who want to pick up some extra money while their kids are in school. They usually have a BA, but they don’t need to have any background in education. They are simply there to help out the kids who can’t focus on their work either because they have attentional issues or behavior problems. It’s a part time job with no benefits and low pay. They make about $14,000 per year.

Ian’s teaching aides last year were different from the typical aides. They all had BAs or MAs in education and were extremely young. When I came to school to volunteer for pizza day or special events, we would talk about jobs. The education schools have overproduced teachers in the past five to seven years. There are three times the number of teachers out there for the number of job openings. His aides were kids who didn’t have the connections to get jobs in fancy school districts. They took these low paying jobs, while living at home with their parents, in the hopes that they could make connections to teach at our school district.

There are jobs in Newark, I told them. Why don’t you teach there for a couple of years where you can gain experience and make a decent salary? Newark is about 30 minutes from here. They said no way. They were afraid of crime. Many of these young teachers came from middle class towns and heard stories about rapes and murders in Newark. When they went into teaching, they envisioned teaching smart, prepared kids, like themselves. They weren’t prepared and weren’t interested in dealing with the bigger social problems that arise in those city schools. They also were afraid of the major classroom management issues that they would face in Newark.

So, there are plenty of good teachers. The challenge is getting them from this school district, which has enough capital to get kids to college even with bad teachers, to places where they have very little social capital and really could use smart, dedicated, talented teachers. Higher salaries for teachers isn’t enough of a draw. Ian’s aides accepted slave wages in our good school district, rather than take a short drive down the highway to Newark.

In Education Week, Walt Gardner makes a similar point:

Teaching in these schools is extraordinarily hard.  That’s why “combat pay” has not solved the problem – and never will. Even the most idealistic and dedicated teachers have limits to what they can endure on a daily basis.

Teach for America has tried to deal with this problem by infusing missionary mentality into their education program. But the program has mixed results. Teachers treat the program like the Peace Corps and do it for two years before moving on. And teachers don’t receive enough training.

Perhaps education schools should tackle this issue head on. Prepare future teachers for social work in addition to pedagogy. Urban school districts could bring in suburban unemployed teachers on charter buses. The school districts could employ behavior specialists to assist the teachers, so they can focus on education.