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.

[Clara Lou]

if they didn't have to go back to college and get an ed degree,

From the article: “Highly qualified” means holding at least a bachelor’s degree, and obtaining full state certification or passing a state teacher licensing exam.
To my knowledge, people don't get "ed degrees" anymore-- not at the bachelor-level. A person majors in a particular area and the education courses are on the side. That's how I did it. That's how it is in Texas.

[summer]

Seems to me quite reasonable to require these teachers to meet the same minimal competency standard if they're getting my tax dollars.

Yes and no is my response to what you said here.

Yes, I think what you said makes sense on the surface; but, no -- because having taught students in a failing school, and being aware of the lack of teachers for those kids, I actually find myself agreeing with any policy that increases the teacher applicant pool for those students.

[sirchtruth]

The ed bureaucracy keeps a lot of good people out of teaching, and then burns them out if they somehow manage to get in.

So what's you're saying is there should be NO standard to become a teacher and anybody off the street should be able to do it? Afterall, there's plenty Good People.

Has anybody ever heard of Standards?

[Zeppo]

What I'm getting at is the absurdity of public school teacher unions pushing for high standards for private school teachers, when they have fought tooth and nail against such standards for public school teachers for so many years.

[mathluv]

thought you might be interested in this.

[summer]

Re your post #44 - Remember though, this new law concerns private schools accepting voucher (taxpayer) money. Not all private schools want those students. Therefore, their teachers would not be subjected to this new law. In FL, private schools can hire whoever they want to teach, college degree or not, if they are not taking the voucher money.

[Swing_Thought]

union blather

Yes it is.

The problem with the union head's perspective is that she doesn't like the highly qualified standard for public schools either.

Her focus should be on why so many of her colleagues are not highly qualified!

In the innner city public school system that I work for, more than 25% of the teaching staff does not meet the highly qualified standard.

Does anybody need any more explanation as to why public schools fail?

[BoozeHag]

I'm wondering why the potential teachers making a clamor to teach in public schools (but don't want to go the ED School route) aren't making a clamor to teach in private schools? Could it be the money? There are several wonderful private schools in our area. People always ask why I don't teach private rather than public. I'll put up with the public school BS any day to make a decent wage. Isn't that the American way?

[summer]

What will be interesting in how the private school associations will respond to this law, because as I understand it, there are private school associations that set up standards in order for the private school to claim membership in that association of private schools.

[summer]

What may be interesting to watch is how the private school associations will respond to this law, because as I understand it, there are private school associations that set up standards -- in order for a private school to claim membership in that association of private schools.

[Swing_Thought]

Yea, I agree wholeheartedly with that sentiment!

[summer]

RE your post #43 - see my post #50.

[skip2myloo]

Because they wouldn't be PRIVATE schools anymore.

Smoking is a bad decision, but adults ought to be free to make that decision.

FREEDOM means accepting Voltaire's position I may not agree with what you say, but I'll defend to my death your right to say it."

Not just in its obvious context of freedom of speech, but in the broader concept that a FREE people should have the right to make decisions affecting their lives.

The government takes money out of the pockets of the people for education, the people ought to have some voice in how that money is spent.

The current voucher system proposal, returns only a very small percentage to the individual of the total school tax dollar collected from the people.

My kids go to private school (without vouchers). I just moved one of them (in the middle of the school year) to another school, because she was not getting a quality math education.

We the people have some sense, we SHOULD know what kind of education our children are receiving and respond accordingly.

I don't need no steenkin' government bureaucracy telling me whether my kids' private school math teacher is qualified -- I can, I should and I want the freedom to act accordingly.

The government is doing a lousy job in the public schools, they need to clean up that act before they start intruding inside the doors of private schoolhouses.

Besides, in the aggregate, statistically, from test scores and other psychometric data, it appears the kids in private schools are getting better overall educations than kids in public schools.

No need to worry, at least not in the macro view.

[the invisib1e hand]

Her focus should be on why so many of her colleagues are not highly qualified!

her focus should be on living on the income of a housecleaner, which she might be better suited to do.

[DonQ]

It's true that teachers' groups are (generally) not asking the best teachers to go to the worst schools. .... And a major reason is the Bush "No Child Left Behind" scheme. One of the major elements of the Bush scheme is that money will be taken away from schools with low-scoring students and diverted to schools whose students already test well. It's a device that seems to defy logic, and it definitely discourages teachers and administrators from sticking with a school that presents a "challenge".

Teachers who hope for promotions and pay increases will shy away from schools with poor track records, schools in poverty pockets, and the like. Because going where the need is greatest could kill their careers.

Even now we've seen the side effects of the Bush plan. School administrators are so eager that their schools should test well that they've scuttled courses that wouldn't show up on the test - mostly art, vocational prep, some foreign languages and sports, some of the tougher science and math courses, etc. - and dumped the teachers for those courses - and turned the whole school into a giant cram course for the Bush tests (several commercial contract tutoring groups have sprung up to take the schools' money in order to direct these cram course programs). The damage done by this scheme will last for decades.

[Triple Word Score]

The college of education is an expensive, worthless gauntlet they want any prospective teacher to have to run. They might as well literally make them run between lines of educators armed with switches. It would be just as meaningful to the ends of education.

My husband taught 18 and 19 year olds how to run sophisticated satellite communications equipment; he had to teach them math, reading, writing, and technical skills specific to that equipment and to their careers in the military in general. He dealt with immaturity and discipline problems. For 24 years he served his country and took college classes when he could.

He wants to teach high school. There is a shortage of competent teachers who can keep control of a classroom. Yet a simple B.A. or B.S. degree in the subject he'll be teaching isn't enough. He's got over 200 hours of college credit and he's still a year and about a dozen liberal education courses away from the classroom. It's an infuriating waste of his precious time.

A talented TEACHER can teach a difficult subject effectively even if he or she is only learning the material a chapter ahead of his or her students. I know--I've seen it done. The ability to teach has nothing to do with a piece of paper, no matter how expensive that piece of paper may be.

What part of vouchers being for a CHOICE do these people not understand? If they want every private school to be a simple echo of the failed public school system, with the same failed standards and methods, what choice really exists?

[summer]

There are several wonderful private schools in our area. People always ask why I don't teach private rather than public. I'll put up with the public school BS any day to make a decent wage. Isn't that the American way?

I taught in a highly regard public school in FL. The salary was horrible. I think I could have earned more working in a 7-11. That is why I do think it important to have an organization looking out for teachers - if schools were left to their own devices in terms of salary, I think they would pay teachers $0. In fact, in FL, because I earned more than $1 from this private school, everything they did was legal in terms of my wages. I won't go into how they screwed me out of a portion of the meager salary I was earning. That is why I will not teach in a private school again - they are business people, out for a buck. And, they're take yours.

[Swing_Thought]

I don't need no steenkin' government bureaucracy telling me whether my kids' private school math teacher is qualified -- I can, I should and I want the freedom to act accordingly.

I've got no trouble with that, so long as you're not taking tax dollars.

[summer]

There are several wonderful private schools in our area. People always ask why I don't teach private rather than public. I'll put up with the public school BS any day to make a decent wage. Isn't that the American way?

I taught in a highly regard public school in FL. The salary was horrible. I think I could have earned more working in a 7-11. That is why I do think it important to have an organization looking out for teachers - if schools were left to their own devices in terms of salary, I think they would pay teachers $0. In fact, in FL, because I earned more than $1 from this private school, everything they did was legal in terms of my wages. I won't go into how they screwed me out of a portion of the meager salary I was earning. That is why I will not teach in a private school again - they are business people, out for a buck. And, they'll take yours.

[skip2myloo]

If the union representing public school teachers would get their acts together, demand only the highest standards for their teacher-members, assure quality education in the schools, they wouldn't have to worry about competition from private schools or what goes on inside of them.

We would return to the idea that kids go there for parochial reasons, and not just to get a basic education as is now the case.