Competency Based Teacher Education: Does It Have A Past Or A Future?

HAZEL WHITMAN HERTZBERG

Hazel Whitman Hertzberg is associate professor of history and education, Teachers College.
The endless process of reforming American public education usually takes one of two approaches.
Some reform movements are comprehensive in their analyses and in their proposals for change.
Others focus on a single aspect of educationthe curriculum, the organization of the school, the
composition or nature of the school populationas the key to change.
Competency Based Teacher Education (CBTE) is one of the latest of the reform movements.1 It
seeks to transform education by transforming one of its components the teacher. The CBTE
proponents believe that a radical change in teacher education and certification will radically change
the teacher, making him both more effective and more accountable.
Specific definitions of so general an idea are of course in controversy among both proponents and
opponents of CBTE. But out of the great variety of programs spawned by the movement some
common characteristics emerge. They revolve around the twin ideas of "accountability" and
"competencies." Teachers are the "products" of teacher-training institutions and these institutions
should be held accountable for their products, the argument runs. By the same token, experienced
teachers should be held accountable for their products (i.e., pupils).
Accountability is to be accomplished by breaking teaching into discrete, specific "competencies," or
teacher behaviors, which can be objectively observed or measured. Both competencies and the
ways they may be demonstrated should be public knowledge. The teacher candidate, by working at
his own pace through a series of predetermined modules involving corrective feedback, reaches a
prescribed level of mastery of the expected competencies. This process is known as mastery
learning. Traditional course structures are thought to be largely unsuitable for this kind of training.
They are to be replaced by competencies usually arrived at by a consensus of those most closely
involved: representatives of teacher training institutions, school administrators, teachers, sometimes
community representatives, student teachers, and pupils. The best place to acquire competencies,
it is asserted, is in the fieldusually a school. Lastly, because CBTE is believed to describe a
procedure (but not the goals to which the procedure is directed), it is alleged to be flexible and
adaptable to various educational purposes. That this is at least partially true is evident in the variety
of CBTE programs which assert or assume a variety of educational goalsoften including
conflicting ones.
The mechanism for getting these programs adopted is the revision of state certification
requirements to mandate or encourage CBTE, a practice which began in 1970. It was the linking of
CBTE with state certification for teaching in the public schools that elevated the movement from an
experiment to a position of considerable power in a number of states.
By early 1975, nineteen states seemed to have made some kind of commitment to CBTE. Twelve
states required it for teacher education programs, certification and recertification, though not all of
them had worked out programs that were actually in practice. The most comprehensive and
centralized compulsory systems were in Florida, Georgia, New York, Oregon, and Pennsylvania. In
other states, recertification was left largely to local districts that were required to meet state criteria
of CBTE. Three states which had previously mandated CBTENew Jersey, Michigan, and Texas
had withdrawn the mandate.2 It is interesting to note that the CBTE heartland is located in the
Sunbelt (an emerging power center in America) and the costal regions (the areas of greatest
student militancy in the sixties).

CBTE, which at first attracted little attention from most of the educational community, soon became
the object of a varied and vigorous criticism which has slowed its quick advance. The opposition
centers around three major and related points.
First, CBTE is attacked for its conception of teaching as a series of discrete and measurable acts.
Such a conception, it is asserted, ignores the extreme complexity of teaching and learning, tends to
focus on those teacher behaviors most easily measurable and therefore most trivial, defines
"competencies" in static and narrow terms, leaves the teacher unprepared for inevitable change,
and forecloses experimentation. A second criticism alleges that the available research base, with a
few minor exceptions, is too weak to support the identification and measurement of an appropriate
range of specific competencies. A third attack defines CBTE as an intrusion on academic freedom
in those states where it is mandated as the one route to initial teacher certification or is required for
recertification. In this view, CBTE opens the door to state flat which would impose the teaching of
specific interpretations or viewpoints and the use of a specific methodology. Opponents also fear
that it may be used to get rid of militant teachers.
Whatever the focus of the attack, critics tend to agree that concentrating on one component of
teaching and learning-the teacher-to the exclusion of others, and holding the teacher accountable
for conditions over which he has no control, is unrealistic, unjust, and counter-productive.
The attempts to resolve some of CBTE's problems are bringing consequences unforeseen by its
proponents. This has frequently been the case with educational reforms, especially those which
focus so strongly on a single element in education. This article will examine some of CBTE's basic
assumptions and their historical roots, trace its rise and the development of an opposition to it, and
venture a few predictions as to its future.

THE QUESTION OF COMPETENCIES

A central issue of CBTE is the source from which teacher competencies (usually defined as
"knowledge, skills, behaviors" and sometimes "attitudes") are to be derived. This is the rock-or
quicksand-upon which CBTE is based. CBTE proponents argue that specific teacher competencies
can and should result in specific pupil outcomes, both short and long-term. But they also admit
freely that the evidence to support this argument is weak and limited to a few teacher behaviors,
usually demonstrated under highly specialized conditions.
While CBTE advocates deplore the lack of this evidence, they often express the hope or conviction
that it will shortly be forthcoming or will be developed as CBTE programs are implemented.
Meantime, some basis other than pupil outcomes must be found for determining the competencies.
As one would expect, these efforts typically concentrate on the teacher: conceptualizations of the
professional role of the teacher; analyses of what teachers actually do or should do under
conditions of practice; desirable teacher traits, attitudes or characteristics; or a combination of all
three. However, with a few trivial exceptions, none of these can be shown to produce specific
changes in pupil learning.
CBTE thus suffers from a sort of intellectual schizophrenia, torn between a commitment to specify
and measure teacher competencies and a virtually nonexistent research base on what specific
teacher behaviors produce specific pupil outcomes. It is all too easy to slide from the assertion that
the goal of education is to affect pupil learningan assertion with which few would quarrel-to the
unsupported assumption that the competencies discovered or developed from various sources will
actually do the job. This confusion surrounding discussions of CBTE and the programs developed
under its rubric engulfs its proponents, sometimes bedevils its critics, and produces intense
frustration among those required to develop CBTE programs to meet state certification mandates. It
is noteworthy that a movement which so stresses accountability is not itself accountable to a body
of research which would firmly support its central premises.

HISTORICAL ROOTS OF CBTE

CBTE advocates, like crusaders for so many "new" educational ideas, sometimes give the
impression that American education has no history. But the search for teacher competencies and
ways to measure them is an old one. The most suggestive antecedents of the CBTE movement
may be found in the nineteen twenties. In that decade there arose a cluster of tendencies strikingly
similar to those now comprising CBTE. Probably the most basic was what has been called "the cult
of efficiency": the application of business management methods to education in general and
teaching in particular, and the attempt to put educational practice on a scientific basis. In pursuit of
these objectives, teacher activities and teacher character, personality, values, and morals were
described or analyzed; teachers were rated by observation using rating schedules; and the
formulation of specific objectives as a basis for the curriculum was essayed.
Some of these tendencies were signaled at the beginning of the twenties in a Carnegie study of
teacher preparation edited by W.S. Learned, W.C. Bagley, and others. It called for:
. . . an intelligent effort . . . to check the results of the teacher's work as measured by the growth of
pupils. It is in terms of such growth that the outcomes of teaching must ultimately be evaluated, and
the young teacher should be accustomed from the outset to think of his work as finally measured by
this standard. . . . Teaching cannot be tested or evaluated in terms of the pupil's growth unless the
direction and nature of the desired growth have been previously determined. There must be a
definite program of attainments, so to speak, which shall be both a guide to a teacher's efforts and a
standard against which to measure his achievements.3
TEACHER TRAITS, TRAIT ACTIONS, AND ACTIVITIES
The educational forces of the 20s which most closely resemble CBTE, however, focused on teacher
traits and teacher activities. They are best expressed in the influential and massive Commonwealth
Teaching Training Study (1929) financed by The Commonwealth Fund and directed by W.W.
Charters and Douglas Waples of the University of Chicago. The Commonwealth study was intended
to produce a scientific and systematic basis for the "radical reorganization" of existing teacher
training curricula which were scorned as being under "the powerful influence of common practice
and tradition," including the individual preferences of instructors with the consequent overlapping
and duplication of courses.4
Charters and Waples identified four stages in professional education: first, apprenticeship; second,
expansion of professional schools; third, standarization, or the attempt by educational organizations
and state regulating authorities "to elevate the standards of education and to enforce conformity to
these standards"a stage which the authors prophetically identified as not yet over and which
"promises to last for years to come;" and fourth, "the stage of critical analysis" which, the authors
believed, could give precise definitions of standards.5
Charters and Waples chose to develop such definitions through a "functional study" of teaching to
"determine what the professional practitioner does under modern conditions of practice."6 The
investigators took as their model similar studies of bricklayers, secretaries, and professionals. The
approach, known as "job analysis," was thus clearly linked to the development of business
efficiency and management systems.
The study first identified "traits" of character and personality of teachers deemed desirable by
"persons qualified to designate the significant traits of teachers," namely, "parents, teachers,
children, supervisors, superintendents, professors of education, and others having frequent contact
with teachers as such."7 Four decades later this combination of interests resurfaced in CBTE.
The interest in traits had been a long-term concern of Charters, who had published two books
dealing with early versions of what would be called today "values education," "moral education,"

"models of teaching," "role playing," and "developing a positive self-image." In any case, the
Commonwealth study argued that teacher traits, also referred to as "qualities," to a "very
pronounced and essential degree influence the performance of [the teacher's] instructional
activities."8 Therefore it urged that attention to the development of desirable teacher traits should
be included in any professional curriculum.
Among those who identified the Charters and Waples' traits, the most numerous (41) were
administrators, and the fewest (2) professors of education, who were "not included in the original
plans."9 Respondents were asked not only to name traits but also to give examples of behavior
illustrating them (i.e., "trait actions"). The traits and trait actions were then "telescoped" by
combining those most similar in meaning. The result was a list of 83 traits arranged alphabetically,
from "A" for accuracy to "W" for wittiness-a quality, it may be remarked, notably lacking in the
Charters and Waples study.
Each trait was accompanied by a list of trait actions which exemplified it. For example, among the
trait actions for progressiveness were: "Does research work," "Uses scientific research methods in
teaching," and "Modifies teaching in accordance with new ideas." Refinement included such trait
actions as "Shows refined social background" and "Does not sit on top of desk and swing feet."
Optimism was illustrated by "Does not regard his pupils as the poorest in the school" and, "Makes
the best of every situation. And interest in the community was exemplified by Stays in town over
the week-end and Studies and tries to understand the needs and conditions of the community10
Next the investigators turned their attention to collecting a list of activities actually performed by
teachers in the schools (what might today be called teacher behaviors.) An elaborate procedure for
doing so included questionnaires to state officers of public school systems, principals, heads of
departments of education in colleges and universities, presidents of teachers colleges, and
principals of normal schools, etc. Some of the activities described were those performed in teaching
specific school subjects.
The result was a bigger list: 1,001 teacher activities categorized under seven divisions, the first
being Teachers Activities Involved in Classroom Instruction and the last illustrations were
provided of actual teacher behavior exhibited in each activity. It was as complete as catalogue as
the authors could compile of the activities performed by teachers in all grades of the public schools.
A few examples illustrate the range of the activities. Using interesting methods of instruction was
illustrated by the following:
Avoiding mechanical repetition of questions; explaining need of voluntary attention, keeping pupils
interested and learning at the same time, knowing and using devices for arousing and holding
attention (by resourceful use of pupils remarks and performances), holding pupils interest through
skillful use of illustration; maintaining interest by methods of presentation, by motivating alphabet
drill by use of talking machine; overcoming group indifference by arousing curiosity in given subject
matter, interesting class in conduct of oral recitation, making work varied, using competition and
contests, varying games according to interests. Organizing each class as some governing body
(cabinet, council, senate) for laws, parliamentary drill, report of bills. 11
Securing cordial relations with superintendent outlines this activities:
Maintaining cordial relations with superintendent. This involves being loyal to and respecting the
superintendent. Becoming acquainted with superintendent and working in harmony with him.
Performing friendly acts for superintendent; remembering superintendent at Christmas; making
designs and drawings for superintendent; making lamp shades for superintendents wife. 12
The modern reader going over the 1,001 activities will experience a shock of recognition between
the Charters and Waples lists and many of those trotted out today as teacher competencies. This is
not surprising. Indeed, in the absence of hard research data similarities are virtually inevitable. If

competencies cannot be derived from the research, then it is quite natural for list-makers to fall back
on what teachers are already doing, or what they think ought to be done (which is exactly how the
Commonwealth study went about it).
Charters and Waples were aware of the distinction between what is and what ought to be, and were
sensitive to the attacks on their approach as an affirmation of the status quo. They recognized that
the activities described were not of equal value and that some might be valueless or even
pernicious. They therefore attempted to rate the activities. A varied group of educators was asked
to determine the relative value of the activities from the standpoint of their usefulness to various
types of teachers in service. Usefulness was defined by four criteria. frequency of performance
by teachers in service, difficulty of learning to perform the activity, importance of the activity, and
practicability of learning the activity in the training school rather than on the job.13 The results of
these ratings were set forth in an extensive series of summary tables.
It is in the evaluation section where one might expect an assessment of the impact of teacher
activities on pupil outcomes. But no such attempt was made. The report discusses in some detail
how its data might be applied to the revision of old courses and the construction of new ones. But
the relationship of teacher behaviors to pupil outcomes was a problem barely mentioned, much less
pursued or proposed as an important focus for future research.
Since the 20s, educational researches have continued to study teacher effectiveness, teacher traits,
and the problem of rating effective teaching. Studies of ratings of teachers by supervisors,
principals, and pupils have shown little agreement and are often contradictory. A recent survey of
the research concluded that an empirical basis for performance-based teacher education does not
exist.14 What seems to have emerged from the research is some cautious optimism that the tools
long needed for the analysis of the teacher-learning process are gradually being developed.15
THE SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES CONTROVERSY
Another major theme in the 20s was the demand for specific objectives. This was exemplified in
the work of F. Bobbitt, who advocated a curriculum built on them. Bobbitt summarized his viewpoint
as follows:
The central theory is simple. Human life, however varied, consists in the performance of specific
activities. Education that prepares for life is one that prepares definitely and adequately for these
specific activities. However numerous and diverse they may be for any social class, they can be
discovered. This requires only that one go out into the world of affairs and discover the particulars
of which these affairs consist. These will show the abilities, attitudes, habits, appreciations, and
forms of knowledge that men need. These will be the objectives of the curriculum. They will be
numerous, definite, and particularized. The curriculum will then be that set of experiences which
children and youth must have by way of obtaining those objectives.16
Boyd H. Bode, a leading Deweyan critic of "specific objectives" as advocated by Bobbitt, called this
method of formulating objectives curriculum making on the basis of "concensus of opinion."17 He
attacked both specific objectives and job analysis as static, with possible validity in a stratified
society of fixed classes, but having no place in a democracy. In his view, "the doctrine of specific
activities and specific objectives invite us to take over a set of ideals imposed from without, which
means that we are again on the way to formalism and routine."18
Fundamental to Bode's critique was his view that a democratic society needs a distinctively
democratic type of education. Methodologies, he believed, were no substitute. "Many of the
educational movements of the day are at bottom unfriendly to the ideas of democracy because they
center on the ideal of a static rather than a changing social order," he wrote. "We have not, so far,
managed to translate the idea of democracy into clear-cut educational theory and practice. There is
no more urgent problem on our educational horizon at the present time than the clarification of the
meaning and implications of democracy."19

This brief excursion into the twenties should serve to indicate that many elements of what is now
known as CBTE have long been a matter of serious debate among educators. Both wings of the
twenties debate, it should be noted, believed themselves to be working in the Deweyan tradition.
DEPRESSION AND WAR
A consequential difference between today and the twenties is that the earlier CBTE-type forces
were never transformed into requirements for the certification of teachers. The reasons are fairly
simple. Certification of teachers was then a responsibility divided among a number of state and
local agencies. Although the direction was toward centralized control at the state level,
requirements differed. A basic trend was toward more academic and professional education for
teachers, not toward a specific type of training enforced by regulating agencies. Both state control
and increased educational requirements for certification were given impetus by the Great
Depression, during which an oversupply of teachers developed and certification standards could be
raised and more firmly enforced. The impact of the twenties movements described above had only
an indirect effect on certification. Their influence was largely confined to teachers colleges and
normal schools.
While the historical roots of CBTE are much older, the antecedents of the movement are generally
traced to World War II when psychologists in the armed services developed performance based
programs and instructional materials designed to teach servicemen to perform tasks adequately. "If
the student fails to learn you have failed to teach it" summarizes this viewpoint. Thus we created a
technology for performance based training which could be transferred to education, as well as a
stance concerning teacher capacity and accountability. During the war, teachers were in short
supply and a number of emergency certificates were used. The United States emerged from the
war as a great power with global interests and commitments. It also found itself in the midst of a
baby boom.
FROM EXCELLENCE TO RELEVANCE
Following the war there ensued a debate over how American education could better prepare the
growing school population for the nation's new responsibilities. Critics attacked teachers, teacher
training institutions, and school curricula. Efforts were made to attract more highly qualified persons
to teaching. Educational organizations, reflecting a long-term interest in raising professional
standards, mounted a major effort to do so. Among the groups leading the professional standards
movement were the National Education Association's TEPS Commission, formed in 1946, AACTE
(American Association of College for Teacher Education), and NCATE (National Council for the
Accreditation of Teacher Education), which in 1945 assumed the responsibility of accrediting
teacher education institutions.
The Soviet launching of Sputnik in 1958 unleashed massive federal aid designed to improve
education. Much of it went to reform the curriculum-the new math, science, foreign languages,
social studies, etc. The new reformers were largely from the universities rather than the teacher
training institutions. To them curricular change was the key to educational change. They knew little
of the history of similar reform efforts and they had little or no previous contact with the schools.
They seemed to believe that neither was important.
The new reformers held definite conceptions of the pupil and the teacher. The pupils to whom the
new projects were addressed were the most able students, those who would presumably be the
country's future scientists and intellectual leaders. With some exceptions, the projects ignored the
variety of students in the public schools and the variety of schools and classrooms. Notably outside
their purview were students in the huge urban school systems, minorities, or pupils who had
difficulty learning.

To most of the new reformers, teachers were at best passive agents and at worst roadblocks.
Frequently the curriculum developed left little to the teacher's initiative or to the teacher's estimate
of what was needed in a particular classroom by particular pupils. The role of the teacher was to
learn to use the new materials properly. To this end, an elaborate series of workshops, institutes,
and inservice training courses was launched with federal funding. Some of the projects conceived
of their materials as "teacher-proof," a stance towards the influence of teachers which was wildly at
variance with the later CBTE conception of the teacher's competence as the central factor in
educational reform. Nor were the new reformers much interested in raising professional standards
through certification. Professional standards would be raised, they believed, by training teachers in
the new approaches and new curricula.
However, another wing of education represented by the NEA's TEPS continued to interest itself in
certification as a major way of raising professional standards. In 1960 TEPS issued a report entitled
New Horizons for the Teaching Profession.20 The basis for teacher certification, the report argued,
should be "demonstrated competence." The bases proposed for the issuance of a teacher's license
were:
1. Completion of an accredited college program of preparation.
2. Recommendation by the preparing institution on the basis of demonstrated competency as a
beginning teacher.
3. Recommendation in terms of teaching competence by the appropriate organization of
teachers.21
Thus TEPS asserted a major role in certifying teachers for both training institutions and the teaching
profession as represented by teacher organizations. In taking this position, TEPS was proposing to
raise professional standards by placing a large measure of control in the hands of the profession
itself. But how competence was to be objectively identified, demonstrated, and assessed remained
unclear.
A further development of the late 50s and 60s was a renewed interest in interning, given impetus by
the work of James Conant who advocated "clinical experiences" as a major part of preservice
education and as a basis for certification. The term is borrowed from medical education and refers
to a fairly broad range of activities, including working in the public schools with master teachers or
clinical professors. A number of teacher education programs which featured intern programs were
launched, thus shifting more of the responsibility for the education of teachers to the school.
Many of the intern and other field-oriented teacher training programs which developed in the 60s
made extensive use of a burgeoning technology and a systems approach: micro-teaching,
programmed learning, individualized instruction, computer-assisted instruction, models of teaching,
simulations, behavioral objectives, and the like. This sort of thing drew on the extensive body of
research and development growing out of World War II, and thereafter accelerated in business and
education as well as the military.
While varying widely in their emphases and sources, none of these reforms were in serious conflict
but rather seemed to complement each other. The new curricula used educational technology quite
extensively. The inquiry approach to subject matter which characterized the curricular reforms
seemed to fit reasonably comfortably into clinical and other field-oriented programs. Curricula,
clinical experience, technology all seemed to offer an opportunity for raising professional standards.
Many states responded to these trends by revising their certification requirements. At the same time
authority was increasingly centralized in state education departments which then often delegated
responsibility for setting standards to approved programs, advisory councils, and professional
practice laws. Approved programs were teacher education programs in colleges and universities. A
student completing such a program received state certification virtually automatically.

Towards the latter part of the 60s, the new curricula began to lose their appeal. They had been
directed largely to able students, to problems of interest to the academy, to "excellence" rather than
"relevance." But to a new generation of parents, teachers, and students, particularly minority groups
in tormented city schools, relevance became the order of the day. Whatever it meant, it was seen
as providing better education, new educational opportunities, and local control over the schools.
The new curricular movements tried to adjust, but without notable success. They could not develop
a new and unifying vision with the creative powers of the one they started with, nor could they
renovate their old one.
How much the new curricular movements actually affected the schools is difficult to say. Like many
movements in education, they were probably more talked about than practised. Nevertheless they
had the virtue of a firm grounding in the disciplines which helped to achieve a balance as well as a
tension between subject matter and methodology. When this balance tipped decisively toward
methodologies, when "how-to" overreached "what," there was unloosed a preoccupation with
procedure which helped increase curriculum fragmentation. In this atmosphere the interest in
accountability could flourish.

THE EMERGENCE OF CBTE

One version of accountability embraced by administrators and school boards emerged from
business and industry and the growth of management procedures based on cybernetic psychology
and a systems approach. School systems contracted with business organizations for the
performance of specialized administrative and educational services, often with a money-back
guarantee. This version of accountability tapped a long tradition of administrative concern with
business efficiency reaching back at least to the beginning of this century. The language of
business efficiency and systems analysis was quickly learned but its implications for education were
neither critically examined nor well understood. Many contracts provided for paraprofessionals and
learning center managers who required a minimum of specialized training. Though promise did not
always match performance, these business ventures did help to create a climate of expectation for
speedy and guaranteed results. They also helped introduce school administrators to a managerial,
product-oriented systems view of education, a view in which teachers could be held accountable for
their "product," namely student learning. This was readily translatable into CBTE.
A second version of accountability grew within education itself, sharing with business and
management systems a common origin, common theories, and a common history. In the 60s
educational research and development based on systems analysis became a major force. To this
was added other classroom-oriented research not directly rooted in systems analysis. The ensuing
body of research gave educators a more coherent analysis of teaching and learning than had
hitherto been available. This seemed to promise eventually, if not immediately, a basis for
specifying desired educational outcomes. Numerous applications of systems theory to teaching and
learning were developed: Some, such as micro-teaching, programmed learning et al., have been
mentioned above. Accountability was built into them, since the product was specified in advance,
and the method prescribed a sequence for attaining the anticipated result. Procedures included
testing, corrective feedback, and retesting until the desired level of mastery was reached. CBTE
reveals its parentage in systems analysis by its use of such terms as imputs, outputs, products,
feedback, modules and so on. To accountability as defined by business and industry was thus
added accountability as defined by educational researchers and developers.
A third version of accountability arose from the agony of the nation's cities and especially from
minority groups. Here the demands for accountability focused on teachers and big educational
bureaucracies. Teachers were attacked as unsympathetic or hostile to minority students and illequipped to teach them. Bureaucrats were charged with manipulating education in their own
interests and with failing to respond to community needs. A number of measures were advocated:
decentralizing the city school systemscommunity control; training and employing minority

teachers and administrators; using new assessment procedures, since standardized tests were
presumed to be biased against minority students; and, of course, making teachers accountable for
the learning of their students. Alternative ways of acquiring credentials for students, teachers, and
administrators were sought. These demands also affected CBTE programs, especially those that
stress changing student teacher attitudes towards minorities.
The romantic critics of education in the 60s furnished a fourth version of accountability. They
regarded the teacher as a very powerful figure who could influence dramatically what students
learned, could inspire them to learn, and could help them develop positive (or negative) "selfimages." Therefore the teachers could be held accountable for the use of this power.
In addition to these calls for accountability so defined, the romantics stressed an education based
on relevance. They advocated an alternative education more attuned to what students wanted, an
education less structured, more flexible, and more individualized. Moving education from the
academy to the field (field-centered); individualization and personalization; involvement of the
community and students in what and how they learned; hostility to formal course structures,
"traditional education" and traditional assessment procedures, including gradesall these were
ingredients of the romantic movement which were incorporated into CBTE.
THE ROLE OF THE USOE
Accountability as advocated by the USOE drew on all these somewhat conflicting versions. Since a
systems approach was widely used in government, it was to be expected that its educational wing
would be deeply affected. The USOE furnished massive grants to the research and development
efforts of the 60s designed to point the way to control and accountability in the process of education.
Among the most influential were the Teacher Corps, Triple T, and the Regional Laboratories. Many
colleges and universities with USOE funding created teacher education programs using or
developing these techniques, typically including interning or a field setting.
By the end of the 60s, there had thus developed a powerful group of forces in business, education,
the cities, and government which demanded accountability from education in general and from
teachers in particular. All of these forces were concerned with the control of education, and while
they differed about who was to do the controlling, they were quite clear about who was to be
controlled: the teacher, who was assumed to be wholly or significantly in control of what students
learned. If was further assumed that changing the teacher's behavior would virtually automatically
change education. The teacher was both the present villain and the future heroine of the piece. By
extension the institutions that trained teachers were similarly viewed.
THE TRANSITION TO CBTE
Yet CBTE as a solution to the demand for accountability had relatively narrow support within
education itself. Even today most teachers and many teacher educators have never heard of it, or
have only the vaguest notion of what it means. Teacher organizations took little interest in it until
recently. Teacher training institutions not involved in developing CBTE programs were indifferent to
it. Discussion of CBTE is still largely confined to a small though influential part of the educational
community: USOE and state education department officials; some educational psychologists; some
deans and faculty members of schools of education; some educators associated with the Regional
Laboratories; and such national bodies as AACTE, NCATE, and the Multi-States Consortium. CBTE
was simply one of many competing approaches to teacher education, before its incorporation into
state mandates. Not until then did serious critiques of it begin to appear.
Thus, while there was a demand for accountability the translation of this demand into Competency
Based Teacher Education under state mandate was certainly not the inevitable result of widespread
pressure from educators or the public. There were other reasons for its becoming a certification
requirement.

Historically, changes in certification arise from two basic factors: societal pressures and the supply
of teachers.
SOCIETAL PRESSURES
The years between 1965 and 1970 were characterized by an atmosphere at once deeply
pessimistic about American institutionsthe "system"and wildly optimistic about the possibility of
immediate and radical change. Fragmention marked many sectors of American life. Things seemed
to be breaking up. A broad and unifying vision of American society no longer seemed possible.
Specific groups had their own visions, but these were confined to their own futures.
In this atmosphere public education was also judged to have failed. Its validity, effectiveness, and
legitimacy were widely challenged by restive taxpayers, minority groups, and the romantic critics of
education. Youth movements on campus called for "student power" and for an "open" education
that would allow them more freedom in what, how, and where to study, and how to be evaluated.
These demands were soon felt in the high schools where the curriculum grew increasingly
diversified as mini-courses and electives blossomed. An outlet had to be found for the pressures
generated by this uneasy, varied, but heated mixturesome guarantee that a solution was
forthcoming quickly.
CBTE was sufficiently ill-defined to offer something for everybody. It advanced no holistic view
either of education or of society. It could be interpreted as meaning all things to all men, or specific
things to specific groups. It seemed to offer a solution which accepted fragmentation as a
necessary and desirable condition of educational reform.
CBTE had a comforting air of authority about it. It was presumed to have a solid scientific basis and
promised to provide a firm, surefire, systems-based approach which would yield predictable results.
It could deliver what was wanted, whatever that might be. In a time of uncertainty this was a
considerable asset.
Moreover, CBTE focused on the teacher as both the chief impediment and the key to educational
change, and on the institutions training teachers as the major producers of mindless, or soulless
practitioners. It could tap a deep historic current of resentment against teachers and the institutions
which educated them.
CBTE proponents could also ride another venerable current in American education: the tendency to
see in each new reform a panacea for education'ssometimes the country's-ills, especially when
the ills are intractable and the reforms simple. So recurrent and familiar is this tendency that many
professionals hardly notice it. They have simply learned to go about their business as educational
bandwagons trundle by trumpeting their wares.
And so beleagured administrators in the state houses and in Washington rushed to CBTE as
though it were an oasis in a desert. Accounts of some of the conferences they called at the
beginning of the 70s to promote the movement reveal an atmosphere of high hopes and revivalism
combined with rigidly specified procedures and engineered consent.
TEACHER SUPPLY AND DEMAND
In addition to societal pressures, the second major factor in changing certification requirements is
the law of supply and demand. Strict certification requirements are enforceable when candidates
are plentiful and openings are few, as was the case in the depression. In such circumstances the
best candidates may be selected (however "best" is defined). In the reverse situation, as during and
after World War II, both the standards and the power of certifying agencies are weakened.

By 1970, a period of "oversupply" of teachers had begun. At the time, there was surprisingly little
discussion of this important shift by CBTE advocates. Perhaps most were still living psychologically
in the expansive 60s, when jobs and funds were plentiful. But there can be little doubt that teacher
oversupply was a factor that made it easier to enforce certification change.
Initially, incorporation of CBTE into teacher certification requirements seemed to be relatively easy.
State education departments had already gathered certifying power unto themselves. It was quite
simple to begin the process of making CBTE-the sole or an alternative route to certification through
issuing regulations. As it turned out it was not so simple to carry the process through to a
conclusion. The initial steps were taken with almost no public debate. But as states attempted to
develop programs, difficulties arose.
THE ATTACK ON CBTE
In practice and even in theory there was little agreement on what constituted a CBTE program.
Differing state requirements made the collection of reliable data difficult and inhibited debate. The
absence of debate meant that many issues remained unclarified or unexamined. It also meant that
when controversies over CBTE erupted there was little previous systematic thought on which to
base positions.
The attack on CBTE as an intrusion on academic freedom began in Texas and was led by
academics, not by professional educators.
In 1972, the Texas State Board of Education mandated CBTE for the some sixty higher education
institutions in teacher preparation programs. Both academic and professional courses were
required to be competency-based. This action followed a large grant from the USOE two years
earlier to the Texas Education Agency to facilitate CBTE development. The agency, which operates
under the State Board of Education, is in charge of public schools, teacher certification, and teacher
education. With the USOE grant in hand, an elaborate series of centers and other devices to
develop and disseminate CBTE "models" was undertaken. A project to coordinate state and
national efforts was subcontracted to AACTE.
Texas' imposition of CBTE as the only route to certification was attacked by a number of national
learned societies, including the American Historical Association, the American Political Science
Association, and the American Association of University Professors. The AAUP resolution
expressed "its contempt of current efforts by various states to impose an exclusive, inflexible
approach to teacher education, such as the competency/performance based teacher education and
certification program." The result, the AAUP asserted, "constitutes a debasement of knowledge and
learning."22
The major charge against compulsory CBTE was that it was "inimical to the most rudimentary
freedom of individual professors, and destructive of the autonomy and integrity of colleges and
universities in curricular matters." It was further charged that, "If an agency of the government can
mandate C/PBTE today, it can mandate anything else it will tomorrowdialectical materialism,
Marxism, Burchism, Nazism, Castroism, or fascism." In Texas, CBTE was pictured as requiring a
choice between preserving the integrity of the universities and "pandering" to the "official party
line."23
The attacks soon moved beyond the serious charge of invasion of academic freedom to the
assumptions of the movement itself: its weak research base, its methodology, the extravagant
claims of its supporters, its model of teaching as a series of discrete competencies, and its
assertion of scientific validity. The upshot was a ruling by the state's attorney general that it was
illegal to mandate only one form of teacher education. In Texas CBTE is now an optional method of
certification. The national effect of this Texas-size storm seems to have been to slow CBTE's
advance.

About the time of the Texas imbroglio, a parallel struggle raged in the neighboring Sunbelt state of
Arizona. Here CBTE was attacked not simply as a negative influence on academic freedom, but
also as a smokescreen for political indoctrination by conservative groups. According to one of the
state's leading educators, a Basic Goals Commission set up by the state proposed teaching a
conservative interpretation of American history and of free-enterprise economics, and a science
curriculum whose objectives omitted any reference to the Darwinian theory of evolution. The muscle
for implementing these objectives was furnished by the competency requirements of the Arizona
State Board of Education which called for "a continuous uniform system of pupil achievement in
relation to measurable performance objectives in basic subjects." Opponents of CBTE resoundingly
defeated in the legislature a "Parents Bill of Rights" embodying what they regarded as the
conservative view. However it was promptly revived in a policy statement by the State Board of
Education. In a report on this situation in the Phi Delta Kappan in 1973 the author saw a national
trend to use performance-based certification for political indoctrination by dictating what and how
teachers teach. As evidence, the author cited California Governor Ronald Reagan's support for
Arizona's CBTE and the situation in Texas.24
In other states, teacher organizations took an increasingly hostile view of a movement which
proposed to recertify all teachers. They regarded CBTE as a growing threat to their freedom and
their organizations. In 1974 the CBTE mandate in New Jersey was withdrawn, due largely to the
opposition of the New Jersey Teachers Association. In New York plans to include the recertification
of experienced teachers were dropped, although the CBTE mandate for teacher education
programs remained.
While these battles against mandated CBTE were carried on in the states, the two major national
organizations of teachers came out strongly against compulsory CBTE. The NBA demanded that
"state education departments postpone the implementation of performance-based programs until
valid and reliable research indicates that such programs are an improvement over present
programs," and the American Federation of Teachers urged "insistence on serious research before
any state legislature mandates performance- or competency-based education.25
These defeats for mandated CBTE were administered largely by groups whose relationship to the
movement had been nonexistent or tangential. By 1973, however, disaffecton with mandating had
spread to AACTE, the national coordinating agency for CBTE programs and CBTE certification.
While continuing to support vigorously voluntary programs, AACTE came out strongly against
mandating.26 In this way it reflected the views of many CBTE proponents who had come to the
conclusion that the effect of mandating would be to cripple the movement. They believed that an
approach which could have great value if carefully tested and implemented with the voluntary
cooperation of teachers was instead being discredited through hasty implementation by
administrators under conditions which invited resentment and failure.

THE FUTURE OF CBTE

For teacher training institutions, CBTE creates problems which are exceedingly difficult to overcome.
The major concern is with the mandated CBTE programs. To participate voluntarily in an
experimental approach to which one has a commitment is quite different from being forced to carry
out a program about which one has serious doubts. This difference seems to have escaped some
state mandating agencies. Their message to teacher training institutions is clear: Comply or your
preservice programs will not be certified, and you will lose an important source of students and
income. Few educators believe this sort of approach produces valuable results.
The compulsory aspect of some CBTE programs is what makes the threat to academic freedom
real. Most teacher educators realize that, since public education is a public function, teacher
certification must be a state responsibility. But everything depends on how the responsibility is to be
exercised. Differences in professional judgment between state officials and teacher educators are

inevitable, indeed desirable, and such differences are not best handled by forcing teacher education
into a single mold which effectively precludes other approaches.
Imposition of CBTE also involves the diversion of scarce educational resources. An enormous
amount of time and energy must be spent on designing and implementing CBTE programs. This
focus precludes attention to many other problems and issues in teacher education or in skewing
such issues to fit, often uncomfortably, into CBTE requirements. The lack of clarity in many state
mandates compounds the problem. Implementation of CBTE remains a serious challenge whether
undertaken voluntarily or involuntarily.
Some of the fundamental problems in CBTE were discussed early in the debate in an influential
pamphlet by Harry S. Broudy, a philosopher of education.27 Broudy attacked CBTE as hostile to
educational theory, to the philosophy of education, to history, and to other than didactic education.
CBTE, Broudy argued, represented a false conception of teaching as a series of discrete acts, while
regressing to a form of pseudo-apprenticeship, or practice uninformed by generalization or theory.
Like Broudy, many educators do not agree with CBTE's conception of teaching as a series of
discrete acts. They see the process of education as far too complex to be dealt with on this basis.
Their experience warns them that differential teaching and learning are the rule not the exception,
that what induces learning in one person may not do so in another, that what works in one school or
classroom may not work in another. The closer they are to the classroom the more aware they are
likely to be of these problems. They believe that teachers must be prepared for complexity and
ambiguity. CBTE leaves little room for this view of education.
The source from which teacher competencies are to be derived is another problem. Teacher
educators are not comforted by the willingness of CBTE proponents to admit freelyeven
cavalierlythat evidence in terms of pupil outcomes is lacking. Lacking such evidence it is natural
to fall back on those old reliables: the traits of teachers, job analysis, teacher roles. But the
evidence here shows that specific teacher behaviors have only a tangential, if not nonexistent,
relationship to specific pupil outcomes. Thus an element of intellectual dishonesty or at best
muddleheadness is almost inherent in CBTE. To claim to be turning out teachers who have been
objectively verified as "effective" when specific ways of assessing effectiveness are so difficult to
create and test is a most serious matter. It cannot inspire respect among student teachers for their
teachers.
The behaviors easiest to identify and measure are the repetitive mechanical skills. There is little
question that these have a place in education. But building the entire program around them is
another matter. The most important behaviors in the view of many teacher educators are precisely
those most resistent to the kind of observation and specificity called for. There is serious danger,
therefore, that those easiest to observe and simplest to measure will win a central place in CBTE
programs. In this view, CBTE tends to steer teacher education to the trivial and direct it away from
more fundamental learning.
A further problem lies in the assessment procedures themselves. Teacher educators m many
subject areas use methods of assessment which are closely related to the subject they teach.
CBTE requires a major shift in the use of assessment procedures which may weaken or destroy this
relationship. It also requires teacher educators to learn a new field if they are to use the type of
assessment instruments called for with any degree of sophistication: The assessors must know
what they're doing. CBTE invites teacher educators to become test and measurement experts,
penalizes them if they do not do so, or rewards them if they can present a reasonable facsimile of
expertise
The question of field sites for teacher training is another difficulty. While the incentives for teacher
education institutions to cooperate with CBTE are clear (although negative), no such incentives
exist for schools or cooperating teachers. Getting cooperation from schools and teachers has
always been difficult. CBTE makes it harder Cooperating teachers must agree to allow student

teachers to practice the desired competencies in their classrooms and must use prescribed
assessment instruments to evaluate student teacher performance. This not only involves
specialized training for cooperating teachers but also a willingness to allow a type of
experimentation to which many able teachers are unsympathetic.
In a major effort to deal with CBTE's problems, a National Commission on Performance-Based
Education was set up in 1973 at the Educational Testing Service. Its charge is so ambitious that its
chairman remarked, "With a mild touch of megalomania we liken the effort to that generated by
NASA to solve the problems of getting man to the moon." A major series of R & D projects was
planned, including a five year program to identify and describe effective teaching performance
"defined as those performances which significantly affect student learning, broadly defined." The
study provided four "starting points" or "analytic strategies": different models of teaching different
conceptions of the role of the teacher, specific curricula and curricular materials, and the
measurement of specific student performance while identifying teachers "who are more effective in
producing these performances."28
The initiation of so ambitious a project speaks well for the seriousness with which the problems of
CBTE are taken by its supporters, although opponents might add that it would have been well to
wait for the commission's evidence before mandating CBTE.
Whatever the results of this commission's specific studies, the future of CBTE as of other reform
movements in education will be affected by varied forces in society as a whole.
One of these is the state of the economy. Imposing CBTE on education can be a costly business.
Teacher training institutions must redesign their programs, retrain their faculties, negotiate with
schools, produce and test new materials, assessment procedures, and measurement instruments.
School districts must come up with suitable competencies and ways to measure them. State
education departments must approve or disapprove these programs, and monitor them. These
costs, when the economy is sluggish, can be inhibiting.
State education departments considering CBTE are also sensitive to political pressures. The lesson
of what happened in Texas will not be the lost on them. The political power of teacher organizations
is growing and they are alerted to CBTE's potential as a weapon against them. A recent analysis
defines CBTE as essentially a labor-management issue in which CBTE "could become the spike in
the heart of the teacher militancy movement by providing a superior 'scientific' way to measure
teacher performance and call 'substandard' teachers from the payroll."29 Teacher organizations
can be expected to continue to oppose extension of CBTE to teachers already certified,
arrangements which exclude them, or requirements that threaten the terms of employment in
teacher contracts.
Another major factor in the future of CBTE is the general focus of American reform efforts. The
heated atmosphere in which CBTE mushroomed now seems remote. Some of the movements of
the late 60s and early 70s to which CBTE responded have disappeared, been incorporated into "the
system," or have altered their emphases and direction. We seem to be in a period of transition, of
reflection, and of searching for new ways to think about the problems of society and new ways to
solve them. If a more holistic view of society and of education's relationship to it should emerge
among American reformers, CBTE could appear as a relic of a bygone time, irrelevant if not inimical
to the concerns of the present.
Meantime the CBTE movement is so beset that it is unlikely to continue without substantial
modification. This could take the form of loosening state requirements, (which has already
happened in some instances), of shifting responsibility for certification to new agencies with a
strong representation of teachers, and of adjustments in the offerings of teacher education
institutions. A change of venue for certification could, among other things, get state education
departments off the hook. In Oregon a fourteen-member commission, including eight public school
teachers, is now in charge of program approval and certification and there are indications that

several other coastal states, notably Maine and New York, may follow suit. In New York a statewide
licensing examination is also under serious consideration.
One response of teacher training institutions to CBTE mandated programs may be to drop
preservice education. Preservice programs are expensive to administer in the best of circumstances
and are currently suffering from low enrollments. If preservice programs should be eliminated, the
loser will not be CBTE but education. It would remove from teacher education institutions an
essential link in the professional development of teachers and weaken their already attenuated
contacts with the schools.
Except in those instances where academic freedom has seemed in clear and present danger,
teaching training institutions have shown little disposition to fight CBTE. Many institutions have
been deeply involved in CBTE promotion and experimentation. Others have sought to modify state
CBTE requirements. Some have written CBTE programs with some resignation and in the belief
that once they have state approval they can go about their business more or less as usual, pursuing
educational problems which they believe have more significance.
Today CBTE's future is at best problematic. Its forward march to state mandating seems to have
halted and in many places is in retreat. Its early hopes of quick success have evaporated and the
forces opposing it are growing. While its incorporation into state mandates has given it a staying
power it might not otherwise possess, mandating may in the end prove to be its downfall. But
whether or not CBTE as such survives or declines, many of its components have deep historic roots
and will certainly continue to affect education.
CBTE raised significant questions for educators which go beyond the fortunes of the movement
itself.
1. Why is education so hospitable to panaceas, so ready to embrace with uncritical enthusiasm
supposedly simple, guaranteed solutions to complex problems?
2. Why do educators so often overlook the unwanted but likely consequences of the reforms which
are so urgently advocated?
If CBTE exhibits these characteristics typical of many educational reform movements, it is following
an historic pattern of meretricious claims, monistic solutions, and consequent disillusionment or
apathy. Undoubtedly, movements which will offer new or refurnished panaceas are even now
growing unnoticed. Can we not learn how to deal with them sympathetically but realistically?

1 Competency Based Teacher Education (CBTE) is also known as Performance Based Teacher
Education (PBTE). The terms are used interchangeably or combined, as in C/PBTE. Competency
Based Education (CBE) and Performance Based Education (PBE) may also refer to the education
of teachers.
2 John C. Pitman, "Actions Taken by State Departments of Education in Developing CBTE
Certification Systems," paper presented at the National Conference of the Association of Teacher
Education, New Orleans, Louisiana, February 1975, 32 pp.
3 W.S. Learned and W.C. Bagley. The Professional Preparation of Teachers for American Public
Schools. New York, N.Y.: Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1920, p. 219.
4 W.W. Charters and Douglas Waples. The Commonwealth Teacher Training Study. Chicago, Ill.:
University of Chicago Press, 1929, p. v.
5 Ibid., pp. xiii-xiv.
6 Ibid., p. xvi.
7 Ibid., p.52.
8 Ibid., p. 15.
9 Ibid., pp. 15, 54.

10 Ibid., pp. 240, 241, 238, 235.

11 Ibid., p. 313.
12 Ibid., p. 423.
13 Ibid., p 102. Italics in original.
14 Robert W. Health and Mark A. Nielson, The Research Basis for Performance-Based Teacher
Education, Review of Educational Research, Vol. 44, No. 4, 1974, p. 475. The authors also
observed that the effects of techniques of teaching on achievement (as these variables are defined
in the PBTE research are likely to be inherently trivial, p. 481.
15 Ned A. Flanders, Teacher Effectiveness, in Encyclopedia of Educational Research, 4th ed. New
York, N.Y.: Macmillan, 1969, p. 1423.
16 Quoted in Boyd H. Bode. Modern Instructional Theories. New York, N.Y.: Macmillan, 1927, p. 76.
17 Ibid., p. 13.
18 Ibid.,pp. 111-112.
19 Ibid., p. 20.
20 Margaret Lindsey, ed. New Horizons for the Teaching Profession. Washington, D.C.: National
Education Association, 1961.
21 Ibid., p. 144.
22 Quoted in Ellis Sandoz, "CBTE: The Nays of Texas," Phi Delta Kappan, Vol. 55, No. 5, January
1974, pp. 305-306.
23 Ibid., p. 306.
24 M.M. Gubser, "Accountability as a Smokescreen for Political Indoctrination in Arizona," Phi Delta
Kappan, Vol. 55, No. 1, September 1973.
25 Eugenia Kemble and Bernard H. McKenna. PBTE: Viewpoints of Two Teacher Organizations.
Washington, D.C.: AACTE, 1975, pp. 37, 26.
26 The AACTE position was as follows: "Because the present level of knowledge about PBTE is
limited, states are advised to avoid legislation which prescribes or proscribes PBTE. State
education agencies are encouraged to maintain a flexible and open position regarding
performance-based teacher education and performance-based teacher certification until sufficient
knowledge about PBTE has been generated through experience and research." Implementing
Performance-Based Teacher Education at the State Level (A Position Statement including
Recommendations by the Performance-Based Teacher Education Committee of the American
Association of Colleges for Teacher Education. This statement has the endorsement by the
Association's Board of Directors.) Washington, D.C.: AACTE, June 1973.
27 Harry S. Broudy. A Critique of Performance-Based Teacher Education. Washington, D.C.:
AACTE, 1972.
28 Frederick J. McDonald, "The National Commission on Performance-Based Education" PhiDelta
Kappan, Vol. 55, No. 5, January 1974, pp. 297-298.
29 John G. Menow, II. Politics of Competence: A Review of Competency-Based Teacher Education.
Washington, D.C.: National Institute of Education, 1975, pp. 33-34.