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If colleges want to reverse the failing number of teachers of color, create more than Stalk teachers, and calibrate instructor supply with district demand, then teacher preparation programs need to become less dependent on individuals' tuition.

The current tuition-driven system is incentivizing teacher preparation programs to prioritize quantity over districts' needs.

The land needs more than effective Stalk (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) teachers likewise as teachers of color. President Obama endorsed the President's Council of Advisors on Scientific discipline and Technology's 2010 report that called for the recruitment and development of 100,000 new STEM teachers over the side by side decade. Despite beingness over half of all public school students, people of colour only represent 15 percent of teachers (projected five percent by 2020). Since collegiate instructor prep programs brainwash 90 percent of all teachers, universities must lead the charge in cultivating these areas of need.

Related: How college ed programs try, fail to recruit teachers of color

Selection has to be tempered with need. I've stated numerous times that multifariousness has to be included in our standards of quality. Currently, individuals who hold tuition dollars are driving colleges of education's output. Instructor colleges are producing too many simple school teachers because individuals' tuition money is the tail wagging the canis familiaris.

"Tuition is higher educational activity'due south favorite cocktail. If a land reduces the amount allocated higher teaching, colleges enhance tuition."

Tuition and becloud higher education accuse to address social demand. Higher educational activity'south dependency on individual'due south tuition is a barrier for allowing supply to fit demand.

On the subject of alcohol dependency, Charles Bukowski in one case said, "That's the problem with drinking… I f something bad happens y'all drink in an endeavour to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen."

Related: Will weak teacher training ruin the Common Core?

Tuition is higher pedagogy's favorite cocktail. If a state reduces the amount allocated to higher education, colleges heighten tuition. If enrollment numbers aren't met, we solve it with a tuition spike. Higher teaching volition as well celebrate success with a hike. Increased demand for specific academic programs spurs tuition increases. The reaction to stagnation is the aforementioned. Nosotros cure fiscal inertia with new dormitories and bookish buildings, which are kickoff with multi-year tuition hikes.

Ever-increasing tuition rates discourage cash-strapped talent from pursuing educational activity careers. Extortionate tuition prices are making majors like pedagogy at high-priced colleges into bad economic decisions. Not everyone can beget to be a preschool instructor. Also, instruction degrees rank as some of the everyman paid majors. Higher shouldn't help make smart people worse off. College education has a responsibleness to maximize the wealth of our most of import professionals – teachers.

In that location has to exist another way for colleges to generate the acquirement needed to do the piece of work as well as the incentive to accost needs.

Related: The real cost of college? It'south probably even college than you lot think

What if states and districts paid the tuition of aspiring teachers? What if teacher preparation programs were financed based on the commitment of outcomes rather than tuition? Tuition is the life-blood of mail-secondary institutions, simply information technology shouldn't corrupt higher didactics's charge to accost workforce demands and societal needs.

As a higher administrator I know as well well, what gets paid for gets washed. States can provide districts and schools with funding to pay eligible instructor preparation programs based on whether or non they've met districts' needs. If teacher prep programs were paid based on math teacher product, yous'll see an immediate reaction.

I'll digress. I've always believed that teacher prep faculty should hold joint appointments with districts and universities. College faculty can help train aspiring also equally current teachers in the natural setting. In add-on to educational activity candidates, embedded kinesthesia can provide continuing instruction credits (aka professional person development) for the unabridged school. In-school faculty tin can reduce our current emphasis on pumping out new teachers and put a renewed focus on developing currently employed teachers. This conceptualization fits well with a pay for outcome model.

I've never been confronting using standards to encourage performance. However, our metrics never seem to directly favor those whom reforms are supposed to do good. Let'southward incentivize colleges to reduce tuition and brainwash students.

Some postsecondary institutions are creating revenue streams based on outcomes. The Texas Legislature voted to create a revenue model that will pay institutions in the Texas State Technical College System based on how much alumni wages are above minimum wage. Real to life outcomes are driving the system. My own institution, Davenport University, will provide three semesters of complimentary classes and career guidance for accounting students who neglect to country a task six months later graduation. Teacher prep programs need a revenue construction that facilitates the training of the teachers that schools actually need.

District needs should include factors such every bit subject, grade level, diverseness, effectiveness and longevity. A percentage of the tuition can exist paid on each factor.

Related: What police force schools tin teach colleges about lowering tuition

The tradeoff of such a system is that it would require more adjunct kinesthesia. Or, full-time faculty would have to be generalists. Faculty would have to be able to teach a wider multifariousness of courses that could suit to the trends of the district. Also, states and districts would have to redirect professional development and scholarship dollars from individuals to colleges. An aside – I agree with the remarks Education Secretary Arne Duncan gave to the National Education Association. Duncan said, "school systems pay teachers billions of dollars more each twelvemonth for earning PD (professional development) credentials that do very little to improve the quality of teaching."

If college teaching continues to drink from the same troth, nosotros'll be too unresponsive to local and national needs. Colleges haven't shown they tin can command their appetite for tuition. Maybe the funding should come from somewhere else. The land can't afford a tuition-driven system to be a bulwark to reaching her teaching needs.

Andre Perry, founding dean of urban education at Davenport University in Grand Rapids, Mich., is the author of The Garden Path: The Miseducation of a City (2011).

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Dr. Andre Perry, a contributing writer, is a David Thousand. Rubenstein Fellow at The Brookings Institution. Perry was the founding dean of urban education at Davenport Academy in Grand Rapids, Mich. Previously,...