[JohnnyB]

Schools of education have a very important social role to play in developing individual teachers and in shaping the professional teaching work force. They are not simply training people to fill technical or knowledge-based roles. A teacher's role is necessarily related to factors that go beyond knowledge or technical abilities. If a school of education has grounds for believing that they can do a better job of preparing individual teachers and shaping the work force by shifting more emphasis towards teacher diversity, they should do so.

Frankly, I think a teacher education program which requires teachers in training to learn from and with a broad diversity of peers and requires their close interaction with people from the many different backgrounds they will need to work with in future should produce educators better prepared to contribute to the community than would a program which lacks diversity but has students with a slightly higher average gpa.