A recent AP-AOL Learning Services poll looked at how parents and teachers view the education system. It found that less than half of parents say student discipline is a serious concern at school, but two in three teachers call children’s misbehavior a major problem. There are a lot of misperceptions about teaching, and outsiders may not realize how much more is involved in teaching than simply relaying information. That should be taken into consideration as Kansas Education Commissioner Bob Corkins’ plan to change the license requirements for teachers is considered. It would allow for more teachers who haven’t completed a teacher education program.
Posted by Melissa Cooley
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30 Comments
How do we increase performance standards in schools by hiring less qualified teachers? It seems to me that raising teacher’s salaries would make the profession more inviting for those who are highly educated and that might help ease the shortage of teachers.As far as discipline, schools need to hold parents more accountable when their little darlings act out at school. Offering parenting classes at the school would be benefical, make it madatory for parent’s whose kids misbehave or else the kid gets suspended. There are all sorts of ways to address the discipline problems.
Lateral entry or second career teachers can be very good teachers; however, it does seem reasonable to demand that they be working towards certification during their first two years teaching. Other states have programs where teachers teach and take the ed classes. Of course, I think there is a lot of improvement to be made to the teacher’s education system. Many of us, even if we were considering teaching in college, didn’t take the ed. classes because they were not relevant. I walked into a hs classroom with 2 weeks of training, and I would not do it again. There is a lot more to teaching than knowing your subject matter. I walked out of the classroom not because of the money, but eventually that would have mattered, too.Re: Discipline – I think many teachers want more discipline. It is often the administration that seems to have trouble implementing it. A teacher friend in NY takes the attitude, we work it out in our classroom because the admin. isn’t going to do it. Sending kids to the principal doesn’t work. Parents seem to only want discipline for other people’s children. Punishing their kids inconveniences them. But, Damoon, how do you hold the parents responsible?I also think we have to get away from social promotion. Yes, kids that fail or are held back are more likely to drop out. But, what we teach them is what you learn doesn’t really matter and we won’t hold you accountable for it anyway. So, why are they going to try to learn the next year?
When teachers spend most of their time babysitting bad students, then teaching education becomes affected for those students who are there to learn.
Teachers shouldn’t be babysitters. We just have a lot of bad parents who don’t teach their children disipline and respect.
Some school districts have any resulted to paying kids with cash, Ipods, and even cars (with taxpayers money) to intice kids to come to school and get good grades.
I think that is sending a very bad message. Sure! We like to reward kids for doing good, but isn’t getting an education the greatest award? I mean! Getting good grades should be standard, not something for kids to achieve so they can get an ipod.
Corkins plan to let in more teachers without certification is a great idea.
It’s such a great idea, we should do it for dentists. Why should you have to have a DDS degree and pass state boards just to pull teeth?
Think of how much cheaper denistry would be if your barber could do it.
And heart surgery . . . who needs TRAINING for that. You can carve a turkey, you can do by-pass. It’s all in that conservative CAN-DO spirit.
Financial planning. Get government out of it. Let old folks invest in Indonesian junk bond derivatives. It’s THEIR MONEY!
End Driver’s Ed. Think of how much time our teens would save, time they could be working for less than minimum wage at Wal-Mart, if we didn’t have them in those time-wasting Driver’s Ed classes.
Sure, there MIGHT be a few more accidents in which you or your loved ones DIE, but that’s the price you pay to live in a free society.
Allie said,”Lateral entry or second career teachers can be very good teachers; however, it does seem reasonable to demand that they be working towards certification during their first two years teaching. Other states have programs where teachers teach and take the ed classes.”
I think you have a very good grasp of the education system. I agree with what you said in the quote above. I know of some people who are involved in long-term sub jobs who would be very good full-time teachers. If they could teach and work on their ed classes toward certification, it would help them and it would continue to help the kids whom they teach.
NoJo–do you volunteer your kids to be the guinea pigs for these un-certified teachers?
Because I don’t. My kids went through the honors classes, the IB classes etc.
I’m no more interested in entrusting my kids’ education to an un-certified teacher as in taking them to un-certified doctor for medical check-ups.
And you must look “cool” even in war. Note the “shades” { sunglasses }. Is that “cool” or what?
{ Forgot the link }
http://www.arabworldnews.com/p/69/ac68024a25c0bf.html?id=WNAT85e66907d4c82fa10ae96a1c7cc88bad
ProudLib-I think we are all interesting in students having the best teachers possible. However, often lateral entry teachers come with a wealth of “real world” experience and enthusiasm. I would agree with you more, if I thought more highly of most teacher ed. classes for certification. Very few schools would put a novice teacher in their honors and AP classes. I think IB has its own certification program. Remember, these people do have BA/BS’s. They are not totally off the street. Additionally, you have probably seen an “uncertified” doctor; they are called residents and medical students. Just like every doctor has a first patient and a first time doing a sugery, every teacher has a first class. The beauty of your first class is you get to learn so much together.
One state, California, has what is called an emergency credential. Due to a shortage of teachers, they accept college graduates as teachers, but they have a time limit (2 years, I think, but not sure of that) to get their teaching credential.
Makes more sense than the “throw open the doors” approach of mister “not-qualified-but-in-charge” corkins.
Maybe this is his way of downgrading public education enough so that even vouchers sound good???
I know North Carolina has a similar system where you have 2 years to take classes as you teach. Few have the resources to go to school fulltime before starting a new job (esp. teaching, you aren’t going to reap a profit on the investment). Teachers also have those summers that I miss so much to take the classes.
“Very few schools would put a novice teacher in their honors and AP classes.”
Right, that’s what I’m saying.
Why can’t all the students get the “good” teachers?
PL
How are teachers supposed to become good without being a novice. I agree with most of your points but they have to start somewhere. We have a math teacher shortage. surely there are soem people who could teach math well but aren’t certified.
Scott,Of course there are people who could teach math well, but they are making four or five times as much working for indutry. Same goes for other areas of expertise. If we want the best as teachers, we have to quit paying the worst salaries.
If there’s a shortage of math teachers because high salaries in industry lure them away from teaching, would a possible remedy be to pay math teachers more than other teachers?
PL- Why can’t all the patients get the good doctors? The answer isn’t to stop training doctors on the job (where most real learning happens in any field). There is no way out of the novice problem in any field. Somebody’s kid is going to get a novice teacher. I don’t think my students suffered forever for my various ineptitudes my first year. As a student, it worked pretty well as an encouragement for me – I wanted the best teachers so I took the harder classes.
When my boy was in Goddard, HS I was apalled at the parent apathy. On the days that were set aside for us to go and conference with his teachers sometimes we were the only parents that came in for that respective class.
My boy graduated on the honor roll and I think it was a large part due to our expectations of him. I have a new respect for the problems facing teachers today.
I think there needs to be some program to ensure parental envolvement.
As far as getting teachers without ‘certificates’, there is some great talent out there that could contribute to the cause. If…. the system wasn’t ran by the NEA!
Hank
A lot of excellent teachers are leaving education because they are burning out on paperwork and documentation requirements. Not only does so much documentation take time away from classroom preparation and teaching time, but it takes away the joy of teaching. Add to that, children who never stop talking, parents who blame everything on everyone else, and LOW PAY — and you can understand why fewer and fewer people want to be educators.
Home school your kids if you can. It’ll be better for both the parent and the child.
CX,Do your own surgeries if you can. It is cheeper and you will learn alot. Teachers are professionals. I have known homeschooling parents without high school educations, and they should homeschool kids in high school because teachers are underqualified?
I love seeing the homeschoolers in the grocery store, plain women with their brood gathered round–
“This is a carrot. Carrots grow in THE GROUND. This is lettuce. It grows ON TOP of the ground.”
I wonder if they’re teaching biology or English-as-a-Second-Language.
Scott and Allie ask, novices have to start somewhere, don’t they?
Correct, of course. But they can be trained first, trained by professionals with experience. Then they can be mentored in the classroom–not the “sink-or-swim” student teaching system we have now.
Unfortunately, I DO know of kids who got “left behind” by student-teachers who were muddling through. Teacher training should not be at the expense of students learning.
It too often IS at students’ expense now because of cost worries. Two teachers are “inefficient.”
But that’s what beginning teachers need and what students deserve.
We should all listen to the all wise ProudLib on education. After all he is a failed government school teacher.
If those who can’t teach, what do those who can’t teach do?
Answer: Politics
Allie,What do you know about my preceding comment? Did I say that people should homeschool their kids because I believed that teachers were unprofessional? No, I didn’t so please stop putting words in my mouth!
Oh dear Crusader,Stop pretending like I am trying to insult you personally at every turn. You said that people should home school and this is a debate about teacher qualifications. In less your “if you can” means “if you have teaching experience or at least higher education in the fields you are trying to teach,” I think you implied that anyone can do what teachers do. I think just like one wouldn’t assume they can do surgery, they shouldn’t assume that they can teach their child geometry. It is somewhat demeaning to professional teachers to say well anybody can do it. Nobody has a bachelor’s degree in all of the basic academic classes.
PL- Many schools do have mentoring programs with experienced teachers. The quality of these programs varies. Finally, I really do think there is nothing that makes up for being in the classroom on your own. However, my guess is that lateral entry teachers, with prior experience in working world and being older, have better success “swimming” than a 21 yr. old college senior, even if he/she has completed a teacher certification program. And, there is some responsibility of students to learn the material, not just teachers to cram it into their unwilling little skulls, so, I can’t totally blame the teacher if the child gets left behind.
Allie,NO! the “if you can” part of my statement was directed at the parents stating that they should homeschool their kids if they could. i.e. if it were possible for them to do homeschooling while at the same time having a job to support their kids. “If you can” meaning that if parents had the time available to them, they should opt to teach their own kids, because it allows parents to spend more time with their kids and not be subject to peer-pressure and vices that kids would encounter on typical elementary / high school settings. You read too much into a single statement! No wonder we’re at loggerheads most of the time. I don’t think you were insulting me, I just accused you of “putting words in my mouth” or saying that I said things that I never said (on this post at least).
CX-I am exploring the implications of your argument. It isn’t putting words in your mouth if it is based upon the logical conclusions of what you are saying. It isn’t my fault if you don’t like the implications of what you are saying.So, you are saying that parents (whom you will have to agree may have absolutely no teaching credentials and education in the fields they will be teaching) should teach their kids that information. Just because you think there are benefits (less peer pressure and time with kids) doesn’t mean you aren’t also saying anyone can do what teachers do as well as they do it.
Correspondents courses work just fine. Statistics show that home-schooled kids have the some of the highest test scores in the country. It looks to me that it’s working just fine. I’m not trying to put teachers out of a job, there are many qualified and well-intentioned educators out there. However, is public schooling better than homeschooling? Why then are inner-city schools still using out-dated textbooks in their curriculum? Why do inner-city schools have to wait months if not years for old computers? This is going on in major metropolitan centers! Even New York City isn’t immune to this. New York City! The largest, most populous, richest city in the modern world, and the public schools and their curriculum is in disarray. Now, can you really say that homeschooling is worse than public schooling?
CX-I am having trouble finding unbiased information on home schooling. You wanna back up “statistics show that home-schooled kids have the some of the highest test scores in the country” with some unbiased work? Anyway, I had some of the highest test scores in the country, too. Any large enough population will have some of the highest test scores in the nation. Some of the brightest kids I know went to some of the worst schools I’ve seen. I bet the kids with really top scores would have had high test scores no matter where they went. The great and terrible thing about public schools is they have to teach everybody, no matter what. Inner city schools probably have a greater number of high test scores (so many more students and many special programs in those schools). I think East High has the best academic program in Wichita, public or private (no, I didn’t go there and not just IB). Now, do home schoolers have higher scores than those same students would have at public school? That would be interesting, but we probably need more than testimonials (I took my kid out, and he is doing great with me). Problems arise when you compare homes schooled students (overwhelmingly white and middle class, I assume) against national or state averages. Would a peer matched group (the best way to do this kind of research) show home schooling to be better? Are parents really home schooling their kids because they would otherwise have to go to a truly inner city school? I don’t know, but I do have my doubts. I agree that we need to improve our public schools. I am not sure having parents “teach” their kids by using a correspondence course is really the best answer. I don’t disagree with you that parents use other reasons for wanting their kids out of public school (some good some bad), but I am not convinced that academics or better teaching should really be among them.
Given the state of adult literacy as revealed in some recent articles, I think the schools should first worry about relaying at least a little information.