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. 

---

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.

[Reily]

From my experience and from talking to friends & relatives who went into K12 education. In WV the teacher’s union and the “educrat” establishment including colleges of education work hand-in-glove. Why wouldn’t they it’s made up of essentially the same people! They are almost all share the same education experience - ED degrees. Many are ex-teachers in the county and state education bureaucracy. Often, they capture the school boards by running sympathetic candidates- often ex-teachers.

It’s all very Marxian in a way. The education colleges are the ideological fountains that produce the weird teaching ideas and the leaders of the education proletariat. The teachers are the “education proletariat”. The unions and students at the education colleges are the “shock troops” who can be called out to support a strike or strike the right ‘Sympathetic pose” with the media to gain sympathy. In WV I’ve seen them go and bring out other unions!

[arthurus]

Wife taught for 35 years.

[trfree98]

My father had a different goal. He was an EE that spent his first half of his career in the ‘50’s-’60’space race. The second half doing what he really wanted to do advanced engine engineering...

He just wanted to be a teacher’s aid/assistant in math and science. Since he wasn’t going back to school as a retiree for Ed.School, he was a no go in helping kids learn.

[arthurus]

Unions in many states control the hiring-firing process and it becomes near impossible to get rid of a bad teacher. They also push the propaganda indoctrination process while chipping away at teaching actual literacy, math and history. We, like a disproportionately large number of teachers’ families, did not subject our 4 children to the Public schools once wife saw what the progression is.

[GingisK]

You are a wise couple. Too bad it is so difficult to found schools outside of the government stink. I know there are a lot of great teachers who would knuckle down to teach. I taught only three years on a provisional certificate. My students were great, I loved teaching my subject; but, the writing on the walls was clear. Those places are merely diploma factories now, no education required.

[Mr.Unique]

I was a high school teacher for decades.

Not much of a revelation after your first comment.

[GingisK]

Perhaps you could explain your comment.

[Leaning Right]

If you have a counter-argument to make, I’d love to hear it. I might learn something.
But snide and snarky comments do no one any good. So please don’t bother me with them.

[AnAmericanMother]

One is born knowing how to motivate. Learning the "how" is a substitute for a real drive to teach.

I have numerous teaching certifications -- WSI, BSA and Red Cross Lifeguard, Theatre and Dance (from my college), Scottish Country Dance, and Equitation (Hunter-Jumper). I can persuade a jury when there are hundreds of thousands of dollars on the line. My mother was a dance teacher and my father was a trial lawyer - both were singers and actors in their spare time. It's in my DNA.

The real kicker about law firms being private is that they have to do their job, or die. If somebody's a bad lawyer, the word gets around without delay.

I think the answer on teachers is to have a review board to which a teacher can appeal an unjust dismissal - staff it with a good cross section of parents, teachers, school board members, and a few lawyers just to see fair play. Tenure -- like unions -- has outlived its usefulness.

[GingisK]

Cut salaries so that only real teachers will be educating the children.

That is a good way to attract the best engineers as well. I can see a new submarine manufacturer in your future.

[GingisK]

You should read the posts in this thread. The problems in schools do not rest solely with teachers.

In Georgia, the Principle of a school can revoke any teacher's certificate. So, when a teacher doesn't go along with the pronoun thing, out the door he goes, state wide.

Yeah, your understanding of this mess is so clear. < /sarcasm>

[GingisK]

...snide and snarky comments do no one any good...

Aside from that he will threaten you.

[HIDEK6]

Similarly, I’ve been studying music on my own for 70 years. Recently, I dared to teach a church congregation how to diagram a song (read music.)

The Educrats at the local government indoctrination camp gasped and shuddered.

I told them their approach has led to people bragging and being proud that they couldn’t read music.

[NorthMountain]

There’s a huge difference between an engineering/science/math degree and an engineering/science/math education degree.

[Leaning Right]

> One is born knowing how to motivate. Learning the “how” is a substitute for a real drive to teach. <

Some truth there. Perhaps I didn’t choose my words carefully enough last time. The “how” I mentioned referred to specific teaching techniques.

Here’s an example. I was in my fourth year of teaching high school science when an older teacher gave me a tip. Kids start to get restless half-way through a lesson, he said.
So when you’re half-way through a lesson, change things up a bit. Do a quick demo. Hold up some relevant item. Even just moving to another side of the room helps!

I never thought of doing that. But the older teacher was right! His advice made me a better teacher.

> I think the answer on teachers is to have a review board to which a teacher can appeal an unjust dismissal - staff it with a good cross section of parents, teachers, school board members, and a few lawyers just to see fair play. <

That is a great idea.

[Mr.Unique]

In Georgia, the Principle of a school can revoke any teacher's certificate.

*Principal

Yeah, your understanding of this mess is so clear. </sarcasm>

[NorthMountain]

get classroom discipline under control.

That starts with removing from the classroom those individuals (they are NOT students) who are only there to disrupt.

[AnAmericanMother]

I have no formal music degree (and there are gaps in my education which I'm doing my best to remedy) but both my parents were choir singers and I have sung in auditioned choirs since the age of 6 (Episcopal choir school. They may not have any theology to speak of, but their music is top notch.) I also took piano from the age of 7 or so.

It boggles my mind how people can sing in a choir for 20 plus years and never learn to read music! It is such a tremendous help when you can just read it right out of the book.

[AnAmericanMother]

My dad used to say, "If I were king, things would be really different around here!"

[Leaning Right]

Public education is in steep, and perhaps irreversible, decline. So I will not object to anyone criticizing the field. Heck, I might even agree with some of those criticisms.

But I do object to personal criticisms of me, when there is no argument to back it up. Without any specifics, I learn nothing. It’s just a form of name-calling.

In a way, it’s like the country’s current police situation. On other threads I have made numerous criticisms of out-of-control cops. But I would never personally criticize any police officer on this forum. I don’t know that specific person. I do not know his history. So it would be quite unfair to criticize him.