To Borrow a Liberal Cliche, "It's For the Children!"

By George Leef

*  *  *

New York recently administered a test to 11,371 people who want to become public school teachers, a new requirement mandated by the State Board of Regents.

(Keep in mind that these are college graduates who have been through "education schools.")

Surely they all possess enough knowledge of English to pass the basic Academic Literacy Skills test – right?

(*SNORT*)

Not even close.

(*SNICKER*)

Only 68% achieved the passing score of 520 points out of 600.

(*SIGH*)

Graduates of colleges in New York City did even worse. At many schools, the pass rate was under 50%... and at one, not a single student managed to pass.

(*PURSED LIPS*)

People familiar with education schools are not at all surprised because they’re noted for admitting some of the academically weakest undergraduates, then immersing them in “progressive” theories such as "good teaching is mainly about encouraging students to feel good about themselves."
Thus we get the blind leading the blind.

(*NOD*)

In his sharp and iconoclastic 1993 book "Inside American Education," Thomas Sowell wrote of education schools: “In short, some of the least qualified students, taught by the least qualified professors in the lowest quality courses supply most American public school teachers.”

His indictment was aimed at ed schools nationally.

* YEP. (IT'S BEEN DOCUMENTED AD NAUSEAM, FOLKS.)

The dismal results of the New York testing shows that things have not improved over the last two decades. That’s just what you’d expect in a system where there is no penalty for turning out a poor product.

Mastery of any true field of knowledge is seldom required in ed schools, but as this test reveals, the graduates are generally weak even in the fundamentals of reading and writing.

(Long ago, most education schools were captured by progressives who adhere to what Heather Mac Donald calls the “anything but knowledge” theory of schooling in her classic article “Why Johnny’s Teacher Can’t Teach.”)

* BUT BACK TO 2015...

But for the happenstance of the new literacy test, no one would know how weak many ed school graduates are in their use of English.

(*SIGH*)

With a few exceptions, such as the teacher preparation program at Hillsdale College (which aims at training teachers for the private school market, where decision-makers don’t have to hire graduates of government-accredited programs), most education schools operate with what Professor Sandra Stotsky calls "An Empty Curriculum" (that’s the title of her forthcoming book). It’s predictable that many graduates of those programs are of marginal literacy because a good command of English is neither necessary to get into - or - get through them.

Education schools attract weak students who know they can coast through without much if any hard work.

Overwhelmingly, as the National Council on Teacher Quality reports, they earn high grades in their education courses, off-setting low grades in any serious courses they might have to take to fulfill degree requirements.

After graduating, those young people become licensed to teach by passing a state certification test. (Those tests are easy and rarely include anything remotely challenging like the New York literacy test.) With a few exceptions, state laws prevent public school principals from considering anyone who isn’t licensed. Thus, our regulations guarantee that classes will be taught mostly by teachers who themselves have weak academic abilities.

(It’s no wonder that American literacy is in a downward spiral.)

What to do?

Lately, the Obama Education Department has been making noise about new regulations that will supposedly improve the effectiveness of teacher training programs. Education Secretary Arne Duncan wants the federal government to devise a rating system for education schools.

(*ROLLING MY EYES*)

Nothing the federal government can do, however, will change the underlying problem, which is that education schools have a captive market. If you want to teach in public schools, you must be licensed, but you can’t get that license without graduating from an approved education school. As long as public school officials are required to hire only prospective teachers who have gone through the education school mill the hapless children who desperately need academically-minded teachers will continue to suffer from classroom mediocrities.

* WHILE ALL THE WHILE BILLIONS UPON BILLIONS UPON BILLIONS OF DOLLARS WILL CONTINUE TO BE WASTED BECAUSE FAILING TEACHERS EQUAL FAILING SCHOOLS!

Contrast that straightjacket with the situation facing principals in private schools. They can hire individuals who have deep subject matter knowledge (which usually goes hand-in-hand with a high level of literacy) and a strong desire to teach. Equally important, they can easily terminate a teacher who turns out not to be good.

That isn’t just true in the U.S., but around the world.

In Great Britain, for example, independent schools (i.e., not run by the government) hire many teachers who lack “qualification” to teach.

As we read in a Telegraph piece “What Really Makes a Good Teacher,” by Barnaby Lenon, “Schools are happy to appoint an excellent graduate in a subject like physics even if they don’t have a teaching qualification. They are classified as ‘unqualified’ even though they possess the most important quality of all. Good subject knowledge matters not only because at the top of the ability range you need to be able to stretch pupils but also because teachers with good knowledge tend to make lessons for younger children more interesting.”

* MAKES PERFECT SENSE!

Conclusion: Someone can become a superb teacher without having gone through a long program of formal pedagogical coursework and conversely, going through such a program is no assurance of teaching competence.

State legislators who want to see better teachers in public school classes need to open this field up to competition. Allow principals to hire the individual they think is best qualified and motivated, no matter what his or her educational credentials might be. Let competition and the market’s discovery process determine the best way or ways of preparing teachers, rather than continuing to rely on governmental mandates.

* HEAR! HEAR!

Believing that more regulations from Washington will fix what’s wrong with teacher training is like believing that more diktats from Moscow would have made collective farming in the Soviet Union efficient.

Let’s not wait for futile federal tinkering that might deal meekly with the symptoms of the education school disease; let’s cure it with deregulation.