My general opinion of ED degrees is low. (I've looked at several dissertations from the "Doctors" running the district over the last few years and they are total jokes. The 'data' they collect is usually from a focus group or interviews consisting of a dozen people or so. They sound more like shooting the $hit sessions in the teachers lo…
My general opinion of ED degrees is low. (I've looked at several dissertations from the "Doctors" running the district over the last few years and they are total jokes. The 'data' they collect is usually from a focus group or interviews consisting of a dozen people or so. They sound more like shooting the $hit sessions in the teachers lounge. Current superintendent "Dr." Turner didn't even have to write a dissertation!)
Leaving the BS nature of Ed degrees aside, how was this program any different than a normal MEd? The district already has a tuition reimbursement for teachers. Why not expand that as a recruiting tool?
It is obvious from the emails from NLU that the District was having trouble finding recruits which means the program wasn't very attractive.
The program is actually pretty different from standard masters degrees. Those are usually one year courses, then you do a semester of student teaching, and you aren't earning a salary for any of this time. From teachers I've talked to who went this path, the expectation is you just take out large student loans to live on while student teaching, even if you did the masters in the evening while working 9-5.
Due to that, there were over a hundred applicants for each Cohort that went through a multi stage interview process to be accepted into the program - the 30-40k salary wasn't much but it was still better than $0.
I don't believe the issue was in finding recruits, it was in helping them through administrative barriers/hurdles which were constantly being created.
To your point, Dr. Horton's dissertation was basically him talking to his friends about being principals in turnaround schools. I wouldn't say it was super rigorous and contains some elements that are borderline plagiarism, but I've definitely seen worse.
Someone needs to write a book about the Education-Credentialing complex. Interview subjects help their aspiring Doctors put together thin gruel dissertations. They get the Doc degree and payback their friends with consultancy contracts, etc…
To be fair to education folks, you should see the business PhDs that get awarded these days. Bigger problem than just EdD - general weakening of rigor and inflation of grades
Interesting...How would one go about finding these dissertations? I would be curious to see what type of research they did and their data collection methods.
My general opinion of ED degrees is low. (I've looked at several dissertations from the "Doctors" running the district over the last few years and they are total jokes. The 'data' they collect is usually from a focus group or interviews consisting of a dozen people or so. They sound more like shooting the $hit sessions in the teachers lounge. Current superintendent "Dr." Turner didn't even have to write a dissertation!)
Leaving the BS nature of Ed degrees aside, how was this program any different than a normal MEd? The district already has a tuition reimbursement for teachers. Why not expand that as a recruiting tool?
It is obvious from the emails from NLU that the District was having trouble finding recruits which means the program wasn't very attractive.
The program is actually pretty different from standard masters degrees. Those are usually one year courses, then you do a semester of student teaching, and you aren't earning a salary for any of this time. From teachers I've talked to who went this path, the expectation is you just take out large student loans to live on while student teaching, even if you did the masters in the evening while working 9-5.
Due to that, there were over a hundred applicants for each Cohort that went through a multi stage interview process to be accepted into the program - the 30-40k salary wasn't much but it was still better than $0.
I don't believe the issue was in finding recruits, it was in helping them through administrative barriers/hurdles which were constantly being created.
To your point, Dr. Horton's dissertation was basically him talking to his friends about being principals in turnaround schools. I wouldn't say it was super rigorous and contains some elements that are borderline plagiarism, but I've definitely seen worse.
Someone needs to write a book about the Education-Credentialing complex. Interview subjects help their aspiring Doctors put together thin gruel dissertations. They get the Doc degree and payback their friends with consultancy contracts, etc…
To be fair to education folks, you should see the business PhDs that get awarded these days. Bigger problem than just EdD - general weakening of rigor and inflation of grades
Interesting...How would one go about finding these dissertations? I would be curious to see what type of research they did and their data collection methods.
You can email me: tom@foiagras.com - they’re copyrighted so I can’t publish
Okay, thanks!