A Compelling Case for Deregulating Teacher Preparation

You're a senior business executive.  You want to hire a junior business executive.  Do you have to hire someone out of business school?  No.  Do you have to hire someone who interned in a similar business?  No.  Will these qualifications give the candidates a leg up?  Quite possibly.

You're an editor at a magazine.  You need to hire a staff writer.  Do you have to hire someone out of journalism school?  No.  Do you have to hire someone who interned with a similar magazine?  No.  Will these things give them an edge?  Sure.

Now you're a high school principal.   Do you have to hire someone who has gone through an accredited teacher preparation program?  Yes.  Along with the required student teaching?  Yes.  Are you always impressed with these people?  No.  Where else can you turn?  Virtually nowhere.

Over the past couple of weeks, I've started to make the case that our pool of teachers could be substantially better.  Am I teacher bashing?  I hope not.  I certainly don't think our teachers are incompetent.  Most are competent.  A few are brilliant.  A tiny number are inspiring.  I just think we're suffering from pervasive mediocrity, and it's the system that pretty much guarantees that mediocrity.

Consider deregulating teacher preparation.  Of course, we'd still require a bachelor's degree.  Also, it's a good idea to have them pass the Praxis II or something similar.  (Does it guarantee good teaching? No, but it's only $80 to take, and it indicates content knowledge.) And I'd want rigorous background checks.  (Currently, school officials do what the law requires.  Fingerprinting and so forth.  Mostly they rely on the State's licensing people to guarantee that a licensed individual is not an ax murderer.)

Several advantages would occur from this deregulation. 

1) More and better candidates would appear.  Right now the opportunity cost is too high to become a teacher unless you decide to do that by age 20.

2) No more ideological gate keeping.  People with diverse backgrounds and philosophies would bring competitiveness within each school, instead of everyone "sharing a vision."  Because the "vision" coming out of teacher preparation programs is weak.

3) The teacher preparation programs would get better.  They'd have to become more relevant, because they'd be competing against the much easier option of not going through a teacher preparation program at all.  They'd have to become more practically useful in order for them to give candidates the "leg up" I talked about earlier.

4) Better content preparation.  Imagine if principals could hire elementary school teachers who actually had taken college math courses.  Wouldn't that be cool?

Deregulation can be adopted as a whole or in part.  In a more competitive school system, it could easily be adopted in exactly the way I've just described.  Frederick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute has proposed something very similar and made a number of the points I have.

In the current model that we have, we can take some simple steps to deregulate a bit.  For instance, we can make our peer review process easier for the non-traditional teacher candidates.   In the last few years we've made it more difficult for them.

Take your pick.   Whole or part. But if we do nothing, we will continue to guarantee mediocrity.

Comments

[KCook]

The majority of teachers are young people coming straight out of school with very little, if any, experience in the buisiness world or in life in general outside of the school environment. Yet we expect them to be able to prepare our next generation to be internationally competetive and have a world view that reaches beyond the classroom, their neighborhood, our country. Wouldn't students be better off being taught by people who have experienced more? Who have owned a buisiness, worked in the corporate world, or learned a trade? I am not saying that there should be no young teachers; often they are called to the profession and are very good at educating (in exactly the same they were educated, because obviously that style worked well for them). Teaching should be a more valued profession. It is one of the only professions that the employers have so little say in who they can and cannot hire, as this post points out, and also where the employee has so little say in what is the best way to do their job. If we made it easier, more economically viable, and more empowering for experienced people to become teachers, then maybe we would discover there are more ways, better ways, than just the traditional idea of schooling to teach people. This would create a much stronger educational system that could better prepare students to become what ever they are called to become.

[G. Cross]

Hopefully, Curt, your M.Ed comprehensive exam will not test your research skills, or even your willingness to collect data before writing opinion pieces. Your postings appear to be something other than well informed. To learn a bit more about what is currently going on teacher education I suggest the following two websites to you:
www.castleton.edu/Education/index.htm
www.mcla.edu/Academics/Majors_ Departments/Education/opportunites.php

You will find that both Castleton and Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts (North Adams State College) and most other colleges require elementary education majors to complete a double major these days. You will find other information that might be helpful to understanding the improvements that have been put into place over the last 10 -20 years. I sense your opinions have been formed on data that is old and less than complete.

[Ethan]

Mr. Cross,

I'm curious where the requirement for “researching” an opinion piece is to be found? Is it part of the current improvements in “education” education you note? And since we're on that point, the improvements put in place in the past 10-20 years have been so effective the United States is consistently way down the ranking for student proficiency in math and science (as compared to other countries) – but that no doubt is because we're so focused on the process of education – rather than the education itself. Just a hunch (no research).

[SPS]

An interesting notion. We are also short good engineers, should we drop the requirement to have an engineering degree and PE certification in order to be an engineer? What about dentists? Deregulation to the rescue!? Perhaps not.

Point being there are some pretty sensible reasons for ensuring teachers have some exposure to pedagogy before getting in the classroom.

[Curtis Hier]

"Point being there are some pretty sensible reasons for ensuring teachers have some exposure to pedagogy before getting in the classroom."

No, see the difference is that there are no canons in teaching the way there are in engineering. Build the bridge right or we get to observe it falling down. Education outcomes aren't like that. Teaching is more of an art. Would we require some genius artist go to art school? Teaching has not gotten better since Socrates's time, and he didn't go through teacher preparation. Engineering, however, has had important developments since Socrates's time.

[Curtis Hier]

Now, George:

Given that you are a leader in the education community, your perspective is appreciated. But it seems you're really not responding to what I actually posted.

Here's an example: “and most other colleges require elementary education majors to complete a double major these days”

Require require require. You really don’t get it, do you, George? We have to get out of the "require" box.

And I really wasn’t talking about education majors. If double majors still make sense after deregulation, fine. If not, fine. Your new information is, frankly, not relevant to this post.

[Greg Decker]

"The justification offered is always the same: to protect the consumer. However, the reason is demonstrated by observing who lobbies at the state legislature for the imposition or strengthening of licensure. The lobbyists are invariably representatives of the occupation in question rather than of the customers. True enough, plumbers presumably know better than anyone else what their customers need to be protected against. However, it is hard to regard altruistic concern for their customers as the primary motive behind their determined efforts to get legal power to decide who may be a plumber."

- Milton Friedman

[Tim Diette]

We can keep in mind that "deregulation" would still involve training. I would imagine training such as what Teacher For America does over the summer between college graduation and the fall would be useful. I agree that teaching is an art, but based on numerous general surveys and the students that I have volunteer in classrooms there are some basic organization and management skills that are useful (I teach an economics of education course at a liberal arts school and this is a service-learning component of the class). The gentlemen that were assisting in middle school had difficulty teaching the 7th graders math. They knew what they were doing (having over 1400 on the SATs), but communicating it to a middle school kid is a whole new ballgame. All that said, deregulation makes sense on many fronts, but in addition to a bachelors, PRAXIS, a summer crash course on teaching would be useful.

Most of the prior posts seem to more directly apply to jumping in and teaching high school classes, which as a college professor I would view as doable. I would have no idea if I jumped into a 4th grade classroom what sort of material the students might be able to manage.

My apologies for the lack of organization, my brain is melting down from reading final exams.

[anonymous]

Most professions that require a license in Vermont, (pharmacy, accounting, veterinary - see www.vtprofessionals.org for a list) have public members on their boards as well as members of the profession. I'm not actually sure whether the plumbers board has a public member though. The charge of each state board is regulation of the practicing professionals within the state for the protection of the public. The wishes of the board particularly the public board members carry great sway with the legislature. Mr. Friedman must never have served on a state board. I'm not sure about public representation on the state board of education but I believe Gov. Douglas appointed someone to represent the home schoolers. Obviously she's not a pawn of the NEA. You know if any of you out there want to be on a Governor appointed board just let Gov. Douglas's office know. They are always looking for knowledgeable members of the public to serve.

[Nate Freeman]

Can an investment company put a broker out on the street without passing the Series 7? No. (And don't try to pass off a broker as a "technical expert." They're nothing more than glorified sales reps.)

Can a firefighter fight fires without being certified? No.

Can a doctor, lawyer, accountant, or so many other professionals provide services without licensing, accreditation, etc., etc.? No, no, and again no.

Your assertion that teaching is an "art" describes only half of what they do. The social sciences required as part of the academic rigor in preparation for the teaching profession qualifies educators in concrete ways that non-regulated teachers are not. Comparatively, would you want psychologists to be deregulated because their work is an "art"? Imagine this was the case, and parents sent their suicidal teens to unregulated "dream therapists" or feel-good inspirational speakers? Heck, even priests and ministers aren't professionally qualified to provide the kind of counseling and referrals that will help a teenager overcome clinical depression.

Curt, your analogies and comparisons just don't line up. And furthermore, your reference to Socrates in your response to SPS is laughable. What in the world does Socrates have to do with public education? It's not like ancient Greece -- or even Socrates' own vision of democracy -- required education for every child above the age of five. Imagine Socrates in a room of 8th graders.

...On second thought, given the man-boy relationships of ancient Greece, maybe we better not go there after all.

Your opinion is your own, and I'll even give you slack for not providing any references whatsoever. But your wide ranging comparisons don't compute, and therefore your argument is really, really weak.

Professional regulation protects the recipients of services. Frankly, it is far more important to have a teacher who has the appropriate academic background than an "expert". And besides that, schools are not required to hire teachers fresh out of college. Lots of experienced teachers and administrators are hired from other schools and other districts based on the model of competitive hiring practices.

You're an editor of a magazine and you need a staff writer? Well, if your magazine is of any repute whatsoever, you hire someone with solid writing experience. And the most likely candidate may not have attended "journalism school" but is most likely an English major or liberal arts student who started out with the college paper, alumni magazine, or another periodical of similar scale. Do you hire that person fresh out of college for your own prestigious magazine? No. You find another likely liberal arts major with 2 to 10 years experience, depending on what you're looking for.

There's no regulation around "staff writers" because, of course, we have the 1st Amendment. And let's hope that remains an unregulated Amendment.

Nate Freeman

[Greg Decker]

Anon, I'm supposed to believe Vermont's free of the pressures of special interest groups because of a few randomly selected public service board members? LOL!

The point of the Friedman quote is that even though regulating the 'standards' of plumbing (or any other profession) might be in the public interest regulating 'who' can be a plumber rarely is.

[Curtis Hier]

So, Nate, you actually believe that Socrates wouldn't have figured out how to teach eighth graders without Castleton State College training him how to do it?

So my analogies are laughable? Well, I'm not laughing at yours. But every one of your analogies, even the "art" of psychology, has canons. Teaching has no such canon. Mostly what we get from training is someone's goofy theory. Just imagine if they gave firefighters the same kinds of goofy theories at the Fire Academy in Pittsford.

[GreggB]

Whatever we do, we must not deregulate teaching. It would be horrible if we did, then the private schools would have to compete with public schools for all those wonderful well educated teachers who don't have a M. ed. I would like to see teaching as something done either by young people for a few years or older folks with a grasp of reality(As KC suggested) and avoid the teaching drones that use the same lesson plans for 30 years. Not having 40 year career teachers would save taxpayers tremendous amounts of money. Although without long term public employment where would we put our educated ambition less minions. Maybe we should start a petition to amend the US constitution and get rid of the right to a public education...

[SPS]

Re: Socrates
If all teachers were like Socrates, sure there would be no need for certification, but how many teachers are that good? My public school experience and that of my kids' suggests that number is very low.

There are lots of problems in teaching and in education, but I don't think this is a particularly significant one.

[Anonymous]

Greg, all the State Board meetings are public and the schedules posted. Go to a few and ask the members what their job is. Then follow the process of one of the Boards as they periodically update the laws and rules including testimony before various legislative committees. You might be pleasantly surprised.

[Nate Freeman]

Curt,

Ok, I'll tone down the "laughable" comments. But give me something to work with in terms of setting your analogies on firm footing, please. I'll agree with you that many educational theories have been implemented over the last 3 or 4 decades, but are they any more "goofy" than the sweeping generalizations you are making?

For any parent who desires to have their child to be taught by a self-described Socrates or an ordinary "unregulated" teacher, existing private schools are an option. If you don't like the private schools already available, then it's not to hard to start one up. You don't have to be certified to teach in a Waldorf school.

But if you are suggesting that public funds should be provided to support privatization, then I'll have to say that, in my opinion, such money funneling out of the public sector is not appropriate.

But here is a place I can go with you in terms of getting more value for dollar: year-round education. Taking the summer off is simply a derivative of the old farm days. And something that should be an attractor to any profession is the amount of time the professional gets to vacation.

For educators out there, I know most of you are involved in professional development and other activities, but I still think students and education will benefit by having more weeks in school.

[Curtis Hier]

"My public school experience and that of my kids' suggests that number is very low."

You're making my case.

And we're probably not going to get reincarnations of Socrates, but how about a few teachers out of Amherst, Williams, Dartmouth, and maybe some more from Middlebury?

[Curtis Hier]

“For any parent who desires to have their child to be taught by a self-described Socrates..."

Who has described him/herself as a Socrates?

“If you don't like the private schools already available, then it's not too hard to start one up.”

That’s what parents should do just to get a decent education for their children? Start their own school?

“funneling out of the public sector is not appropriate”

It’s good that you’re willing to look at some new ideas. It’s too bad you’re still stuck in the box represented by the above words. What is so special about our monopolistic education system and traditional way of funding it that is so sacred? Is it because public education is so important? Because a lot of important things are left largely to market forces. And, really, who said anything about privatization anyway? Deregulation does not have to mean privatization.

[Anonymous]

Actually Nate there is Waldorf Certification and pedagogy is very important in a Waldorf school because you are following the 100 year old ideas of Rudolph Steiner. No new fangled ideas in a Waldorf school.