"HIGHLY QUALIFIED TEACHERS?" nah, ya get what ya pay for

 

If you enjoy dark humor you might get a laugh out of this. A few years ago schools in a number of states began importing teachers from the Philippines! Yep, staffing our public schools with folks who aren't Americans! 

Why is this even remotely acceptable? Because the politicos in those states, not to mention the voters who elected them, apparently didn't care what happens to other people's children. And because these non-American teachers largely end up trying to teach in schools serving in the pedagogical equivalent of the Russian front.

Do these Filipino teachers speak intelligible American English? Maybe not. That requirement could be too stringent, given the urgent need for cannon fodder. Perhaps their teaching resembles the "assistance" one gets from 'help' desks that corporations have moved overseas.

Given the conditions these imported teachers face, this is pure exploitation. But exploiting the people who teach America's children dates way back. For years and years we relied on a steady supply of bright, hard-working women because they had few other opportunities outside the home. Secretary, nurse, teacher, that was it. For many years this worked reasonably well. Acceptable and docile service at minimal cost. But when America's females gained other opportunities and a mature of pride, the teacher pool shrank dramatically. A shortage ensued that has never really been remedied. So, since women's liberation, we've been scraping the bottom of the collegiate barrel. 

There has been a cyclone of hot air directed at this teacher quality problem. Some of it of Marx Brothers quality. Remember when former President Obama's Secretary of Education and basketball buddy (a totally unqualified guy named Arne Duncan) toured the country wringing his hands about the urgent need to improve teacher preparation? Yet he lacked even rudimentary training, much less experience in education. Maybe he was distressed to find that teacher aspirants were almost as poorly selected and anemically prepared for their job as he was for his.

Predictably, Duncan didn't complain when Obama classified thousands upon thousands of wanna-be teachers who were still in training as "highly qualified?" Why did he do that? Because "highly qualified" teachers were required by the federal No Child Left Behind law. 

Arne expressed zero concern about this palpapoly ridiculous move. His Education Department simply went along this ridiculously weak standard. When a federal judge finally ruled that Obama's presidential ruling clearly violated the No Child Left Behind Act, congress quickly passed a bill lowering that NCLB standard to the equivalent of breathing. 

Did "highly qualified"  mean anything before Obama castrated it? Well it didnt looked so at first glance. The law clearly stipulated that if you wanted to teach math, science, social studies, the arts, reading and languages you must have obtained a long-term teaching certificate, and demonstrated subject matter knowledge by either obtaining a college major in the subject, by passing a test in the subject taught, OR (and here's the where the politicians proved their slipperiness) "by some other means established by the state." Oh!

That's right, every state was provided with an escape clause. Never mind all the seeming hard-nosed requirements. In the end each state could decide what "highly qualified" meant for them. This shielded every state where teaching had so long been underpaid, under-respected and under-appreciated that the only qualification they could realistically impose was the ability to pee a hole in snow. 

This "by some other means" wording rendered all the preceding requirements meaningless. Only in the lala-land of public school policy could such a feeble requirement be taken as too tough. Later, though, both the George W. Bush and Obama administrations further weakened this already castrated law.

No Child Left Behind is far less influential these days. But the weak-kneed teacher selection standards just described remain very much extant. Worse still, public school teaching has gotten even less desirable because the right is systematically undermining public education, while the left struggles to impose' "woke" indoctrination of its' new religion. 

Teachers are caught in the middle. That's a major reason why the best and brightest, plus a whole lot of others, want no part of teaching. So abandon hope if you favor the tough, high quality teacher preparation standards our children deserve. That ideal has metamorphosed into hiring foreigners to teach America's children on the cheap. 

Those who are very well off and politically influential, need not care about any of this. They are very unlikely to have kids, or grandkids, in public schools. That's one reason why public schools and their teachers have become America's foster children. Those with decisive influence don't have to depend on them to educate their own. If they did, it wouldn't be in the state it's in.

For additional considerations please see: Highly Qualified Teachers: misgivings

-- GKC