Grand Canyon U rejected for student teaching agreement

Estep: 'We are dealing with what could be a dubious institution here,' School officials toss out agreement with online school - The Exponent Telegram : News



“We are dealing with what could be a dubious institution here,” Estep said. “That causes me concern.”

Estep said the online institutions have a high fail rate for entrance exams to post-graduate schools such as law schools, and no one ever gets turned down.

“What these groups do is find a school that has been recently accredited, but failing financially,” Estep said. “They purchase the school, shut down the bricks and mortar part of the school and add it their online accreditation. In other words, they bought an accreditation.”

 

I sure hope the school board gets to work on ferreting out all those monsters teaching in and administrating their schools with graduate education degrees earned online from WVU and Marshall.

 

Having grown up in a Virginia County bordering West Virginia I sooooooo want to say something.. But, I won't. Must.Not.Go.There. #GiveMeStrength. Steve opened up a hole big enough to drive a Mack Truck through.

 

LOL exactly.

I looked it up, Grand Canyon University has held regional accreditation since 1968. http://www.gcu.edu/Academics/Accreditation.php

 

I'm pretty sure that the board caught the headline about Corinthian Colleges and merged it together with Ashford University and created their own reality...but anyway...

It reminds me of 2007 when my husband and I were upgrading to a bigger home. We secured our mortgage and showed up at closing. The seller's attorney (bless his heart) advised his clients to "walk away" because we used "that internet" for banking and "that's nothing but a big racket." I'm sure he's passed on now, he was quite elderly at the time, but it's just a normal evolution of culture. The old timers on this board will be replaced by a new board and all will be well in the world.

 

I wonder if lobbying was done, so that teachers could attend in state universities and colleges. I know that here in NC, there is pushback for the state to allow WGU to become an official training partner for teachers. The state and non state supported universities and colleges are quite upset and have started a campaign that states that online education is not of quality and that the teachers from these type of institutions should have to undergo further training to become a teacher.

 

What can so often happen on these things is one blusterer who's gray and paunchy and ignorant gets some idea in his or her head or some axe they want to grind and sets out to push it through. They're willing to go nuclear if others disagree. Often, people on a board or committee who aren't really passionate one way or the other can get swayed by the least competent but most vocal member--Groupthink. Or, even if they know just how ill prepared and ignorant the loudmouth is, they want to go home sometime before midnight or they're hungry and just frankly want to get out of there, so they go along for the ride and vote with the majority and internally roll their eyes--Pragmatism.

I dare say there appear to be multiple candidates for gray, paunchy, incompetent, ignorant loudmouth in that picture.

I've seen it happen before.

 

I think they have 3 strikes against them:

1. They are private
2. They are Christian
3. They are mainly distance learning

You have to remember, public schools won't even let you do your student teaching at a private k-12 for licensure, and they certainly won't let you do it at a religious school. I'm sure DL is just icing on the cake.

 

As a former public school teacher, I beg to differ. You can become a public school teacher, after doing student teaching at a religious school and in some cases you do not even have to do student teacher, at least in the state of NC. The argument in NC is that they will take students away from the state supported traditional campuses, all which also offer online routes to licensure.

 

Texas (Texas Education Agency (TEA) /State Board of Educator Certification (SBEC)) rules recognize student teaching via both K-12 public or private schools as well in meeting the teaching practicum requirement toward initial teacher certification /licensure requirements …

 

I think the fact that GCU is a for-profit school is probably a bigger strike 2 than being a Christian institution.

 

I wouldn't bet money on that.

Someone profits from every successful school, the ones who state that they're for-profit are just honest enough to admit it.

 

finally, the voice of reason

 

Not exactly true. Of course, it depends on the state, because each state sets its own requirements for student teaching. I teach the EDU 200 course at my community college, which does NOT involve student teaching, but it does involve a field placement. As far as the state goes, they just require that the schools in which we place students are accredited. It doesn't matter if it's public or private, and generally we want the cooperating teacher to be a licensed individual.

-Matt

 

With all the other online schools that offer teaching training they have one strike.

1. They are Christian.

 

To become a teacher, Florida has eliminated the requirement for an in-resident RA bachelors degree. A DEAC degree is sufficient for pursuing certification as a teacher.

 

So, I've noticed a phenomenon that is particular prevalent on this forum. I refer to it as an "accreditation fetish."

I've seen some of the most intense language discussing accreditation at times. I think my favorite, to date, is by Johann who has referred to a school as having "bulletproof accreditation." I both understand what is meant by that sort of phrase and appreciate its meaning.

It's true, no one can argue against the fact that an RA accredited institution is, indeed, accredited. It is, generally speaking, the most utilitarian level of accreditation.

And for a lot of people, that's just enough. All a school needs, for them, is RA. If you don't like their RA school then, well, screw you.

The rest of the world has a vague sense of what it means for something to be "accredited." I have colleagues who cannot understand that ITT Tech is accredited and that LBU is not. It simply causes a short in their brains.

Accreditation, as every diploma mill notes, is a voluntary process. I can start a school in a variety of states and live forever as an unaccredited institution operating under either state approval or a religious exemption of that approval. And it gives us a reasonable degree of confidence that a school is not a complete scam. But accreditation, arguably, doesn't tell us that a school is "good" just that it isn't "that bad." It's a bit like how an FDA approved drug might still kill you but it has been tested and shown that it likely doesn't kill you (or at least, as many people) as badly as some of the garbage that was out there before FDA approval was a thing to do. And yes, I say "doesn't kill you as badly" in jest. So, an accredited school isn't necessarily "good." But, if it's accredited, we can at least comfortably call it a "school" rather than a post office box that awards diplomas in exchange for cash.

Accreditation has been picked up by licensing bodies as well. Got an MSW? Well, no license for you unless it has the proper programmatic accreditation. Chiropractic school? You can be RA all you want. But without programmatic accreditation, your D.C. is even more useless than a regular one. The same is true for degrees in Law, Engineering, Education, Library Science and a variety of other disciplines.

Except that what I just said isn't necessarily true. Programmatic accreditation is needed except when it isn't. New York allows a program to be considered "licensure qualifying" even if it lacks the programmatic accreditation otherwise required. This is the case for psychology, mental health counseling, accounting and just a bunch of other disciplines. New York even two separate education requirements; one for a person who graduated from an accredited chiropractic school and another for people who graduated from an unaccredited chiropractic school. New York has similar rules for graduates of non-ABA law schools. And the NYS Civil Service, which proudly states that you need an RA degree for state employment, gives itself the out by opening up those jobs to holders of degrees from "institutions approved by the NYS Board of Regents" which, by default, includes EVERY NA school physically domiciled in the state of New York.

As noted in another thread, two states license practitioners of naprapathy (IL and NM). There are two schools that train these folks and neither are accredited by any USDOE recognized institutional accreditor (the one in NM claims it is in the final stages of accreditation through a national accreditor which it does not specifically mention). There is no "accredited option." If you want to become a Doctor of Naprapathy, you need to attend an unaccredited school and receive an unaccredited degree. That's the only path toward licensure available to people who want to keep their education within the U.S. Your Masters from the American College of Health Sciences (DEAC), Bastyr University (RA) or New York College of Chiropractic (RA, ACAOM, CCE) will do you no good if this is your career choice (honestly, though, why would it be?). You have no alternative by to go to one of two unaccredited but licensure qualifying schools.

Diploma mills are a blight. But I think that in our pursuit to draw a line in the sand to prevent them from blighting us further some people just embraced accreditation gave it much more credit than it was due in many circles. Perhaps worse, they wrote off entire institutions for refusing to play that game even though they make it very clear to anyone who cares to look that they are legitimate institutions of higher learning (I'm looking at your, WISR).

Accreditation is a good thing. But accreditation is not the only thing. And the accreditation fetish that some people has made it difficult to decide how we will dispose of schools like Grand Canyon. How can we hate it? It's accredited by the same body that accredits schools we do like.

I don't know what the answer or alternative is. I have no idea how we can reconcile the conflicting system we presently have where two schools, accredited by the same body, are thought of so drastically different because of now arbitrary lines in the sand (for-profit versus not-for-profit, public versus private, christian versus secular etc). And maybe we need to rethink the whole thing. I think that this incident is political. And I think it is a knee-jerk reaction to something that the participants don't fully understand. I also think that we are experiencing some long overdue fallout from some cranky old men saying "Hey! Waitaminute! We don't want none of them there interwebs degrees!"

But I think we need to start imagining a world where accreditation is no longer seen as the gold standard. And maybe the lines will get blurry without that system. Or maybe they won't. Maybe a state approved school in Virginia shouldn't be immediately written off as a diploma mill. And maybe we need to look at articulation agreements with other schools to better understand academic quality. Maybe we just need to do more research before we enroll in a school and that stamp of accreditation just won't be as important as we once felt it was. I don't know, I'm just thinking out loud (or, in writing, as it were).