The No Child Left Behind Act, signed into law by President Bush January 8, 2002 includes as one of its measures the standard to staff our public schools with “highly qualified teachers” by June 2007. The main difficulty with this is that school districts are suffering chronic teacher shortages across the nation.
According to the Title I Director’s Conference (February 2003), “highly qualified” means that all teachers must have full State certification or have passed teacher licensing exam, and hold a license to teach, and that certification or licensure requirements have not been waived on an emergency, temporary, or provisional basis.
Approximately 20% of math and science positions are currently filled by uncertified teachers. In urban areas, uncertified or emergency-certified teachers have long filled staffing gaps in order to provide students with instruction. The problem is not that schools do not wish to hire certified teachers but that a suitable pool of certified teachers qualified to teach in these fields and willing to work in these districts does not exist. In addition to staffing shortages, these districts will face even larger budget shortages if they do not find means to comply by next June.
Washington, D.C., has chosen to implement the law one year early. According to the Washington Post, 370 teachers will be terminated Friday because they have failed to gain certification. An additional 450 teachers who are close to achieving certification will be given until September, or risk losing their job if a certified teacher is found to replace them. An additional 300 teachers are expected to retire before the start of next school year. In an already difficult labor market, where are the replacements going to come from?
Another question no one seems to be asking is whether certification even equates with quality. Certification, in most states, is achieved by completing a related degree at a state accredited university and passing a standardized test. It has nothing to do with job performance. In 1983, only three states required prospective teachers to take a general knowledge skills test. By 2002, after passage of NCLB, 48 states required prospective teachers to pass these tests. Research, however, does not show a relationship between test scores and teacher effectiveness.
In one [research study], Marc Claude-Charles Colitti of Michigan State University examined data going back to 1960 and found teachers’ scores had almost no correlation to principals’ evaluations of their classroom performance.
“How smart a teacher is doesn’t necessarily tell us that they’re a good teacher,” he says. Teachers’ SAT or ACT college entrance exam scores, or even their own scores on fifth-grade skills tests when they were children, would be as accurate at telling whether they’ll be good teachers, he says. — USA TODAY
Despite the lack of evidence, we continue to spend between $50 million and $100 million annually on these exams which may actually turn away qualified teachers. Classroom performance does not factor into the decision anywhere, even in the cases of the thousands of uncertified teachers currently teaching to help fill shortages.
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Karl Marx would love the popular moves among politicians in various state governments and the federal government to ban so-called "junk" food in schools, and to "put healthy food in" convenience stores and on the tables of those they define as poor. It's a very elitist and arrogant mindset that promotes this ideology, and it needs to be addressed.
Ultimately, the war supporters in Congress prevailed in the vote on the resolution. Still, the vote was significant because it places every member of Congress on the record as supporting or not supporting the unconstitutional, costly, violent occupation of a country that never attacked us. This vote should serve as an important reminder to the American people of where their representatives really stand when it comes to policing the world, empire building, and war.
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Nigel Watt
Jun 28, 2006
There actually is a group called “No Teacher Left Behind”, but I can’t seem to quickly find it on Google.
Dana
Jun 28, 2006
Actually, there is a grantee titled, “No Teacher Left Behind” that seeks to help districts hire and keep “highly qualified” teachers.
http://www.ed.gov/programs/transitionteach/2004abstracts/fl.html
ex-sub
Mar 23, 2007
One of the major problems is that the school systems are already broken. In reality, they are borderline on a state of collapse. Classes are too large, there is no discipline, you will get no support or direction from the overpaid administration (especially if you are a substitute teacher; subs are also *very* poorly paid), students have no respect for teachers and simply don’t care. You can’t teach because 1/3 of the students are always talking in class or otherwise causing problems. They won’t stop or shut up no matter what you say or do, they may threaten you, they will certainly be insulting and talk back to you. That 1/3 should be kicked out. The problem is not only with the parents of the kids, but the school districts themselves for not enforcing even a pretense of real discipline.
A major problem is this “no child left behind” nonsense. It makes nice political rhetoric for TV sound bites, but it belies reality. Some students will get left behind if we are to have a reasonably well educated majority. That’s too bad, but it’s also the reality. Throwing gobs of money at the problem will not make the problem go away.
To anyone who disagrees with me, I encourage you to become a substitute teacher and see just how bad things are for yourself. In California, it doesn’t take much — get a bachelor’s degree (in anything from anywhere), take the CBEST test (which ought to be the high school exit exam), get fingerprinted to insure you’re not a pervert, pee in a bottle to make sure you are not a dope fiend. That’s it. Good luck. I lasted 2 weeks. At least I made back enough money to pay for the costs of the tests/fingerprinting, which you (the sub) have to pay for. I’d have to say being a teacher in California is the *worst* job I ever had. No wonder the average life span of a regular teacher as a teacher is now just 5 years.
To parents, I say grades K-6 are probably OK in California public schools, but if you can afford it, put your 7-12th grader in a private school that enforces discipline and won’t tolerate crap from students. If your child gets kicked out of private school, recognize that it is probably your child that is at fault, and your child is part of the 1/3 of students in public schools that are destroying the educational system in this country. Deal with it.
Carl Slaughter
Nov 22, 2007
If America really has a teacher shortage, why is certification such a nightmare.
Going back to college for a teaching certificate takes nearly 2 years and college tuition has skyrocketed. Alternative certification programs require a certain grade point average no matter how long ago you graduated from college. Transferable skills are considered irrelevant because you can teach only the subject of your major. Even teaching experience outside the public school system means nothing.
Alternative certification requirements are confusing, websites are not user friendly, information about certification was written by bureaucrats instead of recruiters, and alternative certification programs that are billed as personalized and fast track are neither.
Meanwhile, certification tests are very difficult to pass and are no reflection of skill, aptitude, or attitude.
But organizations like Recruiting New Teachers and Teach for America keep cranking out those slick TV ads and slick brochures invoking noble ideas through catchy slogans. Many nights, you can hardly get through an hour of TV on any major network without seeing one of the those ads. Those ads and those brochures don’t mention the dirty little secrets of the teacher recruitment movement.
Those who make it through the gauntlet of certification face low pay, inordinate regulation, excessive paperwork, dubious evaluation procedures, and accountability for situations beyond their control.
They also have to make everybody happy. Executive, legislative, and judicial branches of federal, state, and local governments. Unions. Parents. They have to answer to consultants, researchers, activists, journalists. Beginning in the 90’s, they started tailoring to CEOs.
Because of similar nonsense, I couldn’t break into the teaching profession as a tutor, substitute teacher, teaching assistant, or even curriculum developer.
How others deal with all this, I don’t know. I finally fled overseas, where my college degree was enough to get me into the classroom.