Want To Improve Public School Outcomes? End Teacher Licensing

The Federalist ^ | 07/06/2023 | Shannon Whitworth

[SeekAndFind]

To teach full time in a Wisconsin public school, one must jump through time-consuming, resource-draining hoops to obtain an occupational license. 

Our public schools are failing children by requiring strict, impractical licensing requirements and excluding highly qualified, would-be instructors from entering the teaching profession. We must create flexibility in licensing requirements to allow more experienced people to expand young minds. The kids will see the inherent value in this approach and respond.  

Our children are starving for people who can provide them with practical skills that will allow them to build a life for themselves.  There are many adults who have those skills and would love the opportunity to prepare kids for a jobs-based economy, if only they were allowed.  There are welders, machinists, lawyers, artists, graphic designers, writers, accountants and more out there, all with skills our children need. 

This is even more reasonable when you consider the shortage of teachers affecting schools around the nation. A 2022 national survey of schools found that nearly half reported having at least one vacancy. It is foolish, at best, to require that people in the middle or at the tail end of their career spend a year or more to get a license, especially considering the stark number of unfilled positions.  

I am an attorney by trade.  I have a degree in law, yet I am precluded from teaching about the Constitution in Milwaukee Public Schools.  I also spent 12 years as a business litigator, but I would not be allowed to teach basic supply and demand.  In 22 years as a practicing attorney, I communicated in court with countless lawyers, judges, and juries, yet I cannot teach public speaking in our public schools.  At Milwaukee Lutheran, however, where I am the director of the Free Enterprise Academy, I can teach all these subjects.

Why shouldn’t any principal at a public school have the option to hire someone like me with significant real-world experience? To teach in a Wisconsin charter school, a candidate only needs a bachelor’s degree with demonstrated competency in the subject area — having majored or minored in the subject or passing a content test or assessment. To teach full-time in a Wisconsin public school, one must jump through time-consuming, resource-draining hoops to obtain an occupational license.  

This past semester at Milwaukee Lutheran, a fellow teacher paid me the highest compliment.  He told me he was having a discussion in his class about courses the high school offered students. Several students said the things we teach in our Free Enterprise Academy were “what we really need to know.”  

Like most other teenagers, they do not appreciate reading Shakespeare or knowing algebra as much as they will later in life. But they did appreciate the practical life skills that I and others are able to provide by sharing our decades of experience. Where would these students be if the powers that be had prevented me from teaching them? 

Whenever I write a column on education reform, I invariably get a message from some education “expert” who pontificates that strict and cumbersome licensing requirements exist to ensure that only the highest quality instructors can teach students. The expert assures me that these requirements will translate into higher-performing students and schools.  My response is that this concept has not worked out in practice.  

With our public schools’ failings now fully exposed, we see that in most states and school systems, proficiency rates are in free fall. Now more than ever, our kids are less educated, less skilled, and less prepared to meet the challenges of adult life.  The situation couldn’t get any worse by trying a model different than the one that has been failing students for decades.   

These exclusionary licensing requirements benefit no one except unionized teachers. Licenses shield them from the accountability that a free market demands by keeping qualified people out of their schools. 

If we are truly going to reform education in this country, then we need to shed the old model that does not serve students’ needs. 

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Shannon Whitworth is a Bradley Freedom Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty and directs the Free Enterprise Institute at Milwaukee Lutheran High School.

[Sacajaweau]

need parental review of cirriculumn

[Reily]

I too oppose ‘education degrees ‘. I think it unlikely you can get “teaching skills “ in any practical form from a community College class. Better to teach k12 as an “apprentice teacher” for a year or two to pick up those skills.

[clashfan]

Education majors typically have the lowest SAT scores and secondary school GPAs going into higher education as well as the highest overall GPAs upon graduating. Think about it.

[Leaning Right]

> I didn’t oppose the certification, but I do oppose the ‘Education’ degrees. My recommendation is to require a REAL 4-year degree… <

Bingo. It would be great if all university schools of education were abolished. They add nothing to the field (see my post #16).

However, the key reform would be to get classroom discipline under control. When I first started teaching (in an urban school district) we had administrators who at least tried to keep order.

Those days are gone. Most administrators now are wokesters from those university schools of education. They are completely student-centered. Orderly classrooms are very low on their priority list.

“Mr. Teacher, you say that James was on his cell phone for the entire class. That’s obviously your fault. You are not meeting his needs.”

Sigh. Hand me those retirement papers.

[AnAmericanMother]

The only thing the teacher needs to know is the subject taught. "Education" degrees are a total waste of time.

I have an honors degree in History from an Ivy (back when they actually were good) and a law degree from a good regional private law school. I also have a strong background in Classics (Latin and Greek) and I know American and English lit. inside out.

When the law firm I worked for imploded, I tried to get a teaching job while looking for a new position. The City of Atlanta public schools would not hire me, even as a substitute, because I had no "edumacation" degree. But my kids' private school was *happy* to have me teach the unit on Ancient Greece. We had an absolute blast (and the kids could recite the first seven lines of the Iliad in Greek). If ONE kid decided to try Classics, my work was done!

P.S. - not that long ago, you didn't even need to go to law school to practice law. There was (still is in a few states) an apprenticeship program. You work for a practicing attorney, when he thinks you're ready you go before the local county judge, he asks you some questions, and you get your law license.

But the major difference is that the bar is policed by its own members, the bar association, and the supreme court of the state. Bad actors are ditched pretty quickly. Not so in the public schools . . . .

[GingisK]

I'm not sure of the other subjects; but, teachers in technical subjects must have at least a BS in their subject. The teaching certificate is an "add on".

I do know, on the other hand, that certification in a subject in an "area" qualifies a teacher for other subjects. For example, a Culinary Arts teacher is considered qualified to teach Computer Science because both fall within the "Career, Technical, and Engineering" department (Georgia). Now, that is just plain wrong.

I observed that people with a doctorate in education assume they can teach anything, and that expertise in a subject is secondary to their magnificence.

Assuming that "Education Degrees" is the primary source of trouble is actually a great place to start an overhaul. State level employees and the county level employees have no respect for subject matter. They view pedagogy as the Holy Grail.

[AnAmericanMother]

And the discipline issue is a serious problem. One bad apple can spoil it for everyone by stopping learning in its tracks.

If we can get the tax dollars to follow the student, the only ones left in the old public schools will be the kids nobody wants. It will, in effect, be the "reform school" that the oh-so-enlightened phased out two generations ago.

[oldtech]

Teacher’s unions might declare a foul on that one.

[GingisK]

Administrators did indeed ruin it, didn’t they? I observed that a lot of poor policy changes came about because of parental pressure. It seems being able to pass a test was too much to expect from their children.

[bigbob]

I remember a program that was designed to teach the teaching skills to professionals who wanted to become teachers. The guy I knew that did it was a software engineer at Motorola but got burned out on the corporate BS and also wanted to change his work-life balance, so part of his plan after getting the teacher certificate was to relocate to a small city and teach math. Mostly advanced classes so he probably got more motivated and well-behaved students. He would agree with you.

[BenLurkin]

Just close them.

The time has come for seperation of school and state.

[T-Bird45]

“I was taught by the WWII generation until about 1965.”

My education began in a half-day kindergarten in 1960 in a small town in KS. Several of my elementary teachers started their careers in 1-room rural schools teaching grades 1-8. I think I greatly benefited from that experience. By coincidence, my 4th grade teacher had also been my godfather’s rural school teacher many years earlier. Her methods were old school with spelling bees & students doing math problems on the chalkboard - she’d be run out of the classroom today.

[Leaning Right]

> The only thing the teacher needs to know is the subject taught. <

For a college professor, yes. But public school teachers need to know more. They need to know how to motivate students, students who might not want to be there. It really is an art.

> “Education” degrees are a total waste of time. <

I totally, 100% agree. The best way to learn the “art of teaching” is to intern for a semester with a master teacher. You’d learn more practical stuff there in a day than in a year at a university school of education.

> But the major difference is that the bar is policed by its own members… <

Another difference is that law firms are private. They can be as unfair as they want with their employees. But public schools use taxpayer dollars. So safeguards were put in place to keep things fair (tenure, ie due process).

Tenure stopped dishonorable principals from firing a veteran teacher, just to make room for a relative. But no doubt tenure is now being abused. It’s too difficult to fire a bad teacher. This obviously needs to be fixed.

[SuperLuminal]

"Want To Improve Public School Outcomes?"

Simple! Only one solution with any possible chance of working...

1. Shut down every so-called school and the government agencies controlling them...
2. Burn all "regional" indoctrination asylums to the ground...
3. Reconstruct the original public education system and "neighborhood" schools...
4. Begin each school day with the Pledge of Allegiance...
5. Reintroduce reading, writing, & arithmetic...
6. Cut salaries so that only real teachers will be educating the children...
7. Hire ONLY teachers who, demonstrably, love this country, its Constitution, its history, and understand that they are employed by the children's parents...

[Reily]

Agree!

[T.B. Yoits]

The license is for the administration and the state to hold something over the head of the teachers in order to keep them in line.

[T.B. Yoits]

Remove compulsory education and the schools will be great again.

It's damning to look at what students learned a century ago versus what passes for education now.

[Macoozie]

Most crapola taught in schools can be learned over the internet.
Reeedin-Writein-Rithmetik

Basic Civics and hands on skills in Camp settings.
Basic home econ and household finance in community settings.
Animals and farming, machinery and structures, manufacturing and logistics, etc . . . all in hands on settings from folks in the field.

Not in a silly classroom, with an over-credentialed stooge leading the group.

really is time to change things in a very big way-

[Leaning Right]

> Administrators did indeed ruin it, didn’t they? <

Yes, indeed. Many administrators at the start of my career were military veterans. And they all had years of classroom experience. I could really count on those guys for help when I needed it.

At the end of my career, they were mostly young wokesters with next to zero classroom experience. I was grateful when a boss was just incompetent.

Unfortunately, most of them were both incompetent and vindictive.
That did a lot to convince me to take an early retirement. No regrets there.

[FLT-bird]

I have a much better idea. Implement a voucher system so parents can opt out of sending their kids to dysfunctional public schools with their marxist teacher’s union.