Highly Qualified Teachers Need Not Apply -- Bush is trying to weaken teacher credentialing

The New Jersey Teachers Union ^ | President of the NJ Teachers Union

[summer]

February 22, 2004

Highly Qualified teachers need not apply --The Bush Administration is trying to weaken teacher credentialing.

Anyone familiar with Three-Card Monte knows it’s a game you can’t win. Keeping your eye on the money card is impossible, making the game a perfect street-corner hustle.

It’s also a perfect analogy for the Bush administration’s policy on teacher quality.

In a classic case of “watch what we say, not what we do,” the administration is setting high standards for public school teachers. Then, while our attention is diverted, it is covertly working to weaken the “alternate route” entry path for teachers, in order to soften the landscape for vouchers.

Under the administration’s so-called “No Child Left Behind” act, all public school teachers of core academic subjects (English, math, science, foreign languages, history, geography, civics and government, economics, and arts) must be “highly qualified” by September 2005.

“Highly qualified” means holding at least a bachelor’s degree, and obtaining full state certification or passing a state teacher licensing exam. The bar is unusually high for beginning special education teachers and middle school/high school teachers who teach multiple subjects. They must either pass a rigorous state test in each subject they teach or successfully complete coursework or credentialing in each subject area. Veterans must either do the same or demonstrate their competence in all subjects they teach in a state evaluation.

Ironically, under the newly enacted District of Columbia voucher law – a major priority of the Bush administration and its allies in Congress – teachers in private and religious schools receiving taxpayer-funded vouchers don’t even need to possess a college degree.

Whatever happened to “highly qualified” teachers?

This is a common theme with “No Child Left Behind.” The rhetoric sounds great, but there’s a rather profound lack of sincerity behind it. (There’s also a rather profound lack of funding to implement the law – $9 billion less than authorized this year alone. Small wonder more and more state legislatures are telling the administration to keep its inadequate money, rather than try to comply using already-strapped state revenues.)

But why the double standard on teacher quality? It’s really obvious, once you connect the dots. The Bush administration openly supports vouchers. It tried to get enabling language for a national voucher program into “No Child Left Behind,” but it was deleted in committee.

Undeterred, the administration is doing everything possible to pave the way for an eventual national voucher program. While demanding that public school teachers exhibit the highest quality credentials, it has now pumped $42 million into the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence, one of several pro-voucher organizations receiving millions of our tax dollars to further the Bush agenda for privatizing public education.

ABCTE is developing a fast-tracked route for alternative teacher certification (no “highly qualified” caveats here), consisting of – you guessed it – a standardized test. Those lower qualifications will cost a lot less – meaning more profits for private voucher schools.

Last week, U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige lashed out at critics of the administration’s education agenda, saying they had “a different ideology.”

We certainly do. Giving students vouchers to attend private schools – where the qualifications for teachers will apparently be little more than their ability to fog up a mirror – is about as far away from the promise of a “highly qualified” teaching profession as you can get.

Keep your eye on the money card, if you can.

[Old Student]

It was my pleasure, and thank you for your support of our troops, as represented, in this case, by my humble self. I expect something like a 20-year working life as a teacher, and I believe I can have just as much impact on American lives as I did in assisting in the killing of perhaps as many as .5 million Iraqi soldiers during the first Gulf War. Hopefully, this will be a more positive impact, and I will need just as much help with it as I got back then.

[summer]

I believe I can have just as much impact on American lives as I did in assisting ....

I would say you also assisted in liberating millions of Iraqi citizens, and brought new hope to women and children. Stabilizing that region certainly will have a positive impact on the world, including America.

[Old Student]

No, that was left for my cousins and some of my young friends, the new crop of Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines, to take care of. We were required to leave the mess for later back in '91. We killed a bunch of people who, mostly, had no choice but to be under arms, and many of them did not have ammunition for their weapons. Not all of them, certainly, but enough. Because of the political decision not to pursue Saddam, at the time, their deaths were pointless.

And now, I have to listen to people slam the current president for being too aggressive in this matter, so I have to try to educate them, too. Mostly at my college, but often here on FR, too. As far as I'm concerned, the mural on wall in the Iraqi command post that had Iraqi airliners crashing into the World Trade Center proves that G.W. was right, and we had to do what we've done. We have to finish the job, and get Iraq prepared to begin to govern itself democratically. They're going to need a lot of practice, and they're going to make a lot of mistakes, but that is how they will improve the situation. Not to mention that a democratic and free Iraq IS a dagger pointed at the hearts of all the dictators in the region.

{/lecture...

Sorry, the soapbox just appeared under my feet!