Great Moments in the Teacher Quality Debate--Updated!

While it’s often hard to peg down just what exactly promoting “teacher quality” means, an interchange that brought it into focus for me occurred yesterday between Dan Brown, a blogger for the Huffington Post, and Amy Wilkins from Ed Trust.

The HP blogger was speaking about his time as a first-year teacher in a poor, high minority school in the Bronx and fact that he had written a book about the experience (presumably equal parts negative and idealistic), when Amy cut him short…

“What were you doing in that school?” she asked.

The blogger began to respond, but was cut short by Amy, again.

“You had no business being there. It’s not that I doubt your abilities, but as a young, first-year teacher you had no right being in one of the poorest, most challenging, schools in the nation. The teacher prep system failed you, just like it’s failing your students when we continue to deny poor students the opportunity to be taught by experienced teachers.”

I looked around the room and waited to hear a pin to drop. Pardon the Tyra reference, but those Ed Trust ladies are fierce.

UPDATE--Trolling around YouTube I found a video of the interchange! Okay, it looks like it I paraphrased her quote in my notes significantly, but you get the picture.