The New York City Department of Education intends to ask the state Board of Regents to allow it to grant certification, bypassing the higher education route.
The Regents have already given permission to TFA and to the charter training program Relay to award certification. The Museum of Natural History also has that authority.
Soon there will be Mom-and-Pop certification programs, or maybe online programs, or gosh darn it, just put your money on the barrel, Sonny, and presto! You are a certified teacher.
Two thoughts:
1. We are not trying to elevate the profession.
2. Bye-bye Ed schools.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
We need quality teachers to provide a quality education for the future of our youths and country!!
I could see this coming. I have a masters + 60 and seldom taught at a level higher than 6th grade in Secondary Education.
However, the years it took me to get there gave me the level of maturity to deal with the low level classes I was assigned. I took the low level classes to avoid all the fights with teachers that would argue for better classes based on seniority etc.
Lowering the standards for teachers will help meet the coming teacher shortage they created by increasing class size, longer day, longer year, cutting pensions, charter schools, etc.
Very few will choose teaching as a career. It will just be a job.
Hence forth, 1968-2007 will be known as the Golden Years of teaching not to be repeated.
Medicine is going that route as well. Walgreens now provides some low level health care and the practical nurse will write some scripts as well.
The pay has to be lowered to meet the lower income levels created by the Great Recession.
Inch by inch, we are lowering standards.
Which in turn lowers living standards even more. Meanwhile, the cost of everything continues to rise. It’s totally out of whack.
I agree.
This is the only way we may compete in the new global economy. Our government refuses to protect our way of life.
Apparently, there is a MD shortage looming on the horizon. Here’s a business idea that should make millions. Set up storefront MD certification centers in the most needy areas. Almost everybody has been to an MD for one reason or another, and who hasn’t played MD when they were a child. Also, who among us has not watched a MD show on television. So, why not make the pathway to the MD a bit easier. The Doctor is ready to see you, are you ready?
You don’t need to give them any ideas —
I’m sure that’s already in the works.
Welcome to Indiana! If you have a degree in anything and can pass a content area exam, you can be a teacher. Teachers used to get a bump in pay for competing a masters degree, but that is now a thing of the past. The reason given? Teachers with masters degrees don’t have higher test scores. Diane is correct– so long SOEs.
I’m sorry to see this. I agree with Jim, we are seeing the stepping away from trained professionals in other sectors. I’m a dental hygienist (and exasperated parent advocate). I trained very seriously in that profession. I had to pass national and regional board exams. I am required to attain at least 20 continuing ed credits every two years. The state of Alabama allows a “hygienist” to be trained by a dentist, in his/her office. No professional board exams, no formal training, no CE. Some medical schools are now training their students in “emergency dentistry” (read: the doc in the ER now knows how to pull a tooth) and in Alaska, where access to care is abysmal, the state is using RN’s to do basic dentistry (fillings, pulling teeth), but does not allow an RDH to perform that basic care. How does that make any sense???
Just as I want my medical professionals to be trained well and to be practicing what they are trained in, I want that in teachers too! I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but being named “teacher” just because more are needed quickly, hurts all of our kids and completely plays into the ridiculous notion that anyone can teach.
They had to let emergency medical personnel perform emergency dental work since they cut adult dental out of Medicaid. Now people are showing up in emergency rooms with severe dental problems that could have been treated easily in a dentist’s office weeks or months ago, but they couldn’t afford to go to the dentist. Another one of those losing the forest for the trees things that seems so common that someone paranoid (like me) might think it’s intentional.
Who needs training when anyone can teach! Perhaps those in charge might want to teach for a few weeks, just to see if their assumptions are true.
In the meantime, I might open up my own certification factory/school down in the Sportsman’s Paradise of good ole Louisiana. I use as part of my pitch, their other slogan: Come as you are. Leave Different.
Wisconsin just instituted something similar recently, where the state Department of Public Instruction can grant licensure based on “prior experience” and passing the Praxis II. The teacher ed colleges are pressuring the DPI to require these alternative licensure folks to have to abide by the edTPA requirement, but so far, no word on what they’ve decided. If the DPI says alternative license scabs don’t need to pass the TPA, then the rest of us are screwed.
Much of the damage has already been done, though. In the past, my secondary methods course had between 10-20 students. I have 3 next spring. The word is out to bright young people that teachers are not valued, and they’re voting with their feet.
If the Waldorf or Montessori or Reggio Emilia schools petitioned the state for the right to certify teachers, would you be against it? If the Big Picture or New Tech Network schools petitioned the state for the right to certify teachers, would you be against it? High Tech High already has permission to credential teachers: http://gse.hightechhigh.org. Are you against that?
Do you think that institutions of higher education (IHEs) are the only ones that can adequately and credibly credential educators?
For teacher certification purposes, what do you see as the difference between a private college or university accredited by the state and a private charter school network accredited by the state?
For teacher certification purposes, what do you see as the difference between a public college or university accredited by the state and a public school system accredited by the state?
Yes, I would oppose turning certification over to providers and school systems. It would lose all meaning. It would be handed out to anyone who wanted it.
Like many states, mine has had to deal with a shortage of STEM teachers by allowing students to teach if they majored in, say, mathamatics in college and take a 13 credit hours from the education school. Do you think this adequate?
NO! But, they will work cheap. What is a STEM teacher?
Science, Technology, Engenering, and Math. It is not a matter of working cheap, the problem is that schools don’t pay enough to interest students with these skills to specialize in education by getting an education degree.
Do you think it’s adequate to deal with shortages of gasoline by adding water to the mix?
It’s more like ethanol where private profiteers get public money for manufacturing something nobody wants, product quality declines, and consumers suffer.
Sooo scary. Here we go, Baressi. She’ll love this!
Sent from my iPhone
I apologize for my email in response to this. It was supposed to have been a forward, not a reply.
This is frightening as can be, however, so I’m sharing it w numerous colleagues.
Thanks so much for your vigilance, Diane! You are a hero to public ed (and to me!).
Lisa
Sent from my iPhone
I think this post is confusingly titled. It does not seem that anyone is arguing that teachers need not have degrees, just that they need not be degrees granted by schools of education.
Death by creeping normalcy. There is and has been a slow but steady march toward privatization and the delegitimization of the teaching profession. Remember that ALEC was formed in the 1975. Privatizers will continue to fight for the public education dollar. Every new charter is one step toward their goal. Unless parents and students fight back, they won’t even know it has happened. The change will be to slow for the public to notice. That is why what Diane Ravitch does is so important. My blog on creeping normalcy. http://qmsteched.edublogs.org/2012/01/14/creeping-normalcy/
It is no secret that Romney has supported ending degree programs in education and ending career teachers as a profession.He is the Reformer’s candidate. Teachers will be called “learning facilitators” and be trained by their individual corporate charter employers. Their employment in a a classroom will be limited to 3 years (since that is when teachers are most productive according to ‘think tank’ studies…((cough)) and then these ‘facilitators’ will be free to move on to other interests after their 3 years (such as child rearing perhaps or family building)…The great reformer ‘vision’ is an end to education as a profession, an end to highly educated teachers and ending Education departments at universities and colleges.. With the election drawing near, the implementation of this radical change is being accelerated by ALEC and the Reformers with an intensity that is frightening. Corporate America is very hungry for their profits of their new market.
This horrific vision of education is why I became an Independent and am no longer a Republican, I refuse to accept this vision…It is why I am voting for Obama. He at least still supports teacher education and degree programs…and recognizes our value to the future of America. If Romney wins this election, the end for us will come swiftly. The stakes have NEVER been higher for educators, students and public education.
If the Waldorf, Montessori, or Reggio Emilia schools asked for permission from the state to prepare and credential teachers, would you be against it? If the Big Picture or New Tech Network schools asked for permission from the state to prepare and credential teachers, would you be against it? High Tech High already has permission to prepare and credential teachers: http://gse.hightechhigh.org. Are you against that?
Do you think institutions of higher education are the only entities that can ever prepare and credential teachers?
What do you see as the difference between a private college or university preparing/credentialing teachers and a private charter school chain preparing/credentialing teachers?
What do you see as the difference between a public college or university preparing/credentialing teachers and a public school system preparing/credentialing teachers?
The end goal is to end teaching as a profession. That way you don’t have to offer expensive benefits like health care insurance or pension plans.It’s all about the money and control over who profits. It won’t be the students that benefit.They will pay the price unless they can afford an expensive private education at an elite school.