Audit Culture: Snuffing the Life out of Teacher Education

In this week's program Education Radio looks at how audit culture is being used to undermine and privatize teacher education, decoupling it from higher education and turning teacher development into technical training.

Speaking first with Christine Sleeter, Professor Emerita, California State University, we look at how the assault on teacher education connects to the larger neo-liberal effort to privatize public spaces. We then examine the specific measures being used to devalue, de-humanize and undo the democratic the work of teaching and teaching teachers.

Ann Berlak, of the California State system, helps us understand the technical rationality behind the current push for a national teacher performance assessment. Celia Oyler, Associate Professor of Education at Teachers College Columbia University, brings us into the absurdities of the National Council on Teacher Quality's grading' of school of education, and the dangers of privatization found in the new Relay Graduate School of Education, founded by educational management companies Achievement First, Uncommon Schools and KIPP. Finally, we speak with Julie Gorlewski, from State University of New York New Paltz, as we examine how teacher educators can respond to this assault by naming it for what it is and making spaces to fight back and claim the liberatory potential of our work.

You can download mp3's of this program here:
Program 19: Pacifica Audioport (podcast)
Program 19: Internet Archive