Sane Schools Pillar III

III. Mastery, Not Certification

Maryland’s requirement that individuals must complete a prescribed body of coursework before teaching in public school is misguided. This process, known as teacher certification, is neither an efficient nor an effective means by which to ensure a competent teaching force. Worse, it is often counterproductive.

--Executive Summary, Reconsidering Teacher Certification

The Abell Foundation (2001)

In May of 2006, a Latin teacher at Pacific Collegiate, a successful charter school in Santa Cruz, California, made the decision to leave his job and teach at a private school on the other side of town, and not because it was his first choice to do so. Although sixteen of Jefferds Huyck’s students had achieved honors on a national Latin exam that same year, the California state Commission on Teacher Credentialing had determined that Huyck and nearly a dozen other teachers at Pacific Collegiate were not “highly qualified” under their interpretation of the federal No Child Left Behind law (NCLB). Incidentally, Huyck held a PhD in classics from Harvard and had twenty-two years of teaching experience at both the high-school and college levels[1].

Such is the absurdity wrought by the teacher-credentialing industry in the United States—an industry run and perpetuated by educrats. Critics of NCLB, a poorly conceived federal band-aid which we will not defend here, will no-doubt seize on this example as evidence of the law’s failure. But it was the blind interpretation of the law by state officials that led to Huyck’s decision. The “highly qualified” provision of NCLB doesn’t say anything about requiring prospective teachers to complete lengthy and expensive programs in pedagogy; it merely requires teachers to demonstrate mastery of their own subject matter. It’s up to the states to determine how that will be accomplished. In Huyck’s case, the path to certification under California mandate would’ve cost him two years and $15,000, to say nothing of his dignity. (Huyck’s wife, who also held a doctorate, had already submitted to the laborious certification requirements and found them “infantilizing” and “an embarrassment.”)

Because Progressive dogma holds that how we teach is more important than what we teach, the educrat class maintains a ruthless monopoly on teacher licensure, holding the entry keys to the profession itself like fairytale trolls. Nobody, no matter how expert they are in their respective academic disciplines, gets through the tarnished gates unless they submit to the silly catechism of political correctness, cultural awareness, and pop psychology that normally constitutes today’s teacher ed programs. Not to imply that ideology is the only reason for this—judging from the cost in California alone, greed is clearly a factor.

It’s time to abolish certification as we know it for all schoolteachers. The only requirements for obtaining a teaching license ought to be a bachelor’s degree or higher, a passing score on a subject-matter competency test, and the completion of a thorough criminal-background check. Perhaps a one-day class on federal education law dealing with IDEA and Section 504. But that’s all. No more elaborate, insulting obstacle courses; no more extortion of time and money from new teachers who deserve a better, more respectful welcome from the profession they’ve chosen to enter. The challenges a beginning teacher faces are enough in themselves, and most of them can only be overcome through on-the-job experience and mentoring by Master Teachers, not through theory and indoctrination. (By Master Teachers, we mean teachers with both experience and a graduate degree, preferably in an academic discipline. This is the kind of mastery for which new teachers should be encouraged to strive, not the false imprimatur granted by a mere license.)

Preposterous! Outrageous! howl the educrats. New teachers need training in methodology, classroom management, dealing with limited-English-speakers, special education, writing lesson plans, and advanced macramé. None of these areas, except maybe macramé, is as complex as educrats would have us believe: any educated adult can read and follow a typical Individual Education Plan (IEP), and if a special-education student needs anything more than a little extra time and tutoring, then he or she belongs with a learning-disabilities specialist, i.e. someone who already majored in Special Education in college. When limited-English speakers are so limited they can’t cope with what’s being said in the mainstream classroom, then they don’t belong there, unless the school is using an immersion policy, in which case the idea of special training for regular-education teachers is still moot. All of these issues can be dealt with on the job, or through district-provided training, and that’s the way it should be, since individual campuses and districts often handle them differently. And even if we granted the educrats’ argument that elaborate certification programs are necessary, numerous studies have shown these programs—as run by educrats—to be wasteful and ineffective[2].

In higher education, professors and instructors are not required to have a teaching license—their degrees, which represent their intellectual accomplishments, are their license. That’s how it should be for schoolteachers, allowing for the safeguards that should be in place for anyone dealing with young children. And even so, if the object of certification is to protect children from harmful adults, then the system is still a disastrous failure. A practitioner’s license is no more a guarantee of quality (or ethics) than a driver’s license, a truth revealed all too often by the daily news headlines.

The real reason educrats oppose the removal of teacher certification requirements is that it poses a direct, and potentially fatal, threat to their franchise. Most graduate schools of education wouldn’t exist if state certification mandates didn’t make the high-priced nonsense they peddle compulsory for new teachers. What would happen if those mandates were removed, and the study of pedagogy became optional? Could schools of education survive in a market environment? If the educrats are right, new and veteran teachers will come to them for additional training as a matter of professional necessity, not compulsory regulation.

But there’s only one way to find out for certain.

Go to Pillar IV School Sanity Home

[1] Freedman, Samuel G. “Despite a Doctorate and Top Students, Unqualified to Teach.” The New York Times. 11 Oct 2006.

[2] Three studies of particular interest:

w The Abell Foundation report quoted at the top of this page, which found that verbal ability, not pedagogical training, was the decisive factor in teacher effectiveness

w Educating School Teachers, the report authored by Arthur Levine and sponsored by the Education Schools Project, released September 2006

w Kane, Tomas J., Jonah E. Rockoff, and Douglas O. Steiger. “Photo Finish: Certification Doesn’t Guarantee a Winner.” Education Next. Winter 2007. Vol. 7, No. 1.