Now there is a scarcity of teachers. And how are state officials facing this challenge? They are dealing with the problem by further weakening already wimpy teacher certification standards. Pennsylvania provides one worrisome example. Decades ago when teachers were becoming scarcer Pennsylvania's Governor Tom Ridge declared that those who have a hankering to teach need only take a ten day summer seminar to qualify for a classroom of their very own. Then, after no more than six credits of additional instruction in pedagogy, they could be certified for life. How’s that for standards? Of course many other states have done and are doing the equivalent.
Ridge claimed he wanted to “…help local education agencies fill critical vacant positions in secondary or K-12 content areas with ‘outstanding’ candidates for eventual level I certification.” He actually wanted to fill teaching vacancies in the state’s educational wastelands with whatever warm bodied cannon fodder could be found.
He also wanted to weaken the state’s teachers unions, both of whom had been smart enough to oppose his election. (By the way, Ridge is the fellow who subsequently became U. S. Secretary of Homeland Security and advised us to buy duct tape and plastic sheeting to ward off possible chemical, biological or radiological attacks.)
Politicians typically assert that thousands will jump right into teaching if they just don’t first have to expend effort to learn something about doing it. Besides, they argue, kids taught by certified teachers don’t do any better on achievement tests than those taught by scrubs. Here’s what’s wrong with this argument:
• Research actually shows kids do better when taught by certified teachers.
• Just because a teacher is certified doesn’t mean they have had adequate preparation. Certification means little so long as state officials fail to require tough program approval standards ,then close down low quality cash cow programs that exist to generate tuition dollars.
• So-called “achievement” tests are only one measure of a teacher’s success — and a weak one at that. We need only consider what they don’t measure to appreciate their limitations.
• You don’t get elite troops without tough training and you don’t get top-flight teachers with easy training either. Requiring a candidate to prove their commitment and capabilities by surviving a tough training process is vitally important.
• Filling public schools with marginally committed, virtually untrained warm bodies destroys whatever hope teaching has of becoming a full-fledged profession. This fits the political agenda of “conservative” politicians who want to further weaken the profession for selfish reasons.
• However weak they presently are, most certification programs do sort out at least some of the candidates who are lazy, uncaring, mentally unstable, potential child molestors, and so forth. God knows what kind of people will sneak in with some crazy, just pee a hole in snow, alternative certification process.
• Subject matter knowledge is necessary for teaching competence; but it is not sufficient. To be competent a teacher must also command a body of professional knowledge.
• Certification was introduced largely because teaching was bedeviled by patronage. Hiring was based on anything and everything but professional competence. Without tough certification standards that’s where we're heading again. Political affiliation, religious preference or who your brother-in-law is will be what gets you a teaching job.
• Alternative certification and weak-in-the-knees programs undermine those teacher educators who still demand respectable standards.
It’s very difficult to continue to insist on quality teacher preparation when government officials don't give a damn about it.
Instead, alternative certification and existing cash-cow programs drive demanding programs out of existence. Why spend a lot of time and effort to become a teacher when there are far, far easier ways?
Will turning out truly qualified teachers actually improve our schools? Look to Finland. Troubled by low achievement, Finland dramatically upped teacher preparation standards as well as the pay and professional autonomy of their teachers. The result was a dramatic improvement in Finland's academic achievement that finds them, year after year, at or near the very top.
It's palpably obvious that you won't improve an organization by enforcing laughable entry standards. Consider the Navy SEALS. Seventy five per-cent of their candidates fail to meet the mark. But the twenty five percent can certainly get the job done. Or here's a very different sort of example. The requirements to participate in building those great European cathedrals that still astound us more than a thousand years after their creation. To qualify to participate in their creation took years of demanding effort. First as an apprentice. Then a journeyman. And finally, after proving your skill by creating a masterpiece, as a master craftsman. Only then were you fully qualified to help create these awe-inspiring wonders.
The craftsmen who built these marvels didn't just grab any shlep wandering by, shove a chisel into his hand and say, "Hey buddy, how'd ya like to take a crack at carving that stone into a gargoyle." But that, in essence, is what we are doing to prepare the people who help us shape the lives of our children! Shame on us! It's way past time to match the standards of entry into teaching to the importance of the job!
