Mercedes Schneider writes about Arizona’s new law, which seeks to fill its teacher shortage by eliminating almost all professional standards for teachers.
She writes:
In an effort to address teacher shortages in Arizona classrooms, the Arizona legislature passed a revised version of AZ SB 1159, which Arizona governor, Doug Ducey, signed into law on July 05, 2022.
This revision allows for Arizona school districts and charter schools to apply to the state to operate classroom-based, teacher-prep programs in which participants need only pass a background check and be enrolled in an accredited bachelors degree program before being allowed into the classroom– supervised, sort of maybe.
Just enrolled– meaning not even a single credit hour yet earned is acceptable, and in no particular field. Furthermore, the bill language is loose regarding who could be actually instructing the class, since the bill states that participants do not “regularly” instruct class unless a “full-time teacher, certificated teacher, instructional coach, or instructional mentor” is present.
What qualifies as “regularly”? Who knows? Is “regularly” different days of the week? Is “regularly” every day, with some mentor figure poking a head in the door on occasion to token-supervise, thereby CYA, so to speak, on countering “regularly” with a superificial, other-presence of sorts?
Those who teach with emergency certificates need only a high school diploma.
The best way to increase the supply of teachers is to raise salaries and reduce class sizes.
But doing the right thing costs money, and Arizona prefers to funnel money to charter operators and vouchers.
Arizona is doing its best to destroy public education while enriching charter entrepreneurs and the voucher industry.
The state is placing its bet on the assumption that anyone can teach.
Why don’t they try that for doctors? Drop the requirement of medical school and allow anyone to cut and sew. That would kill people. As for the future of their children? Doug Ducey and the legislature don’t care.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Clearly any incompetent fool can be a politician –Republican or Democrat (Sinema) — in Arizona.
Just what the country needs teachers with the mental capabilities of politicians. Makes sense, all the better to implement more educational malpractices.
Good morning Diane and everyone,
It’s going to take a lot more than raising salaries and reducing class size to make teaching an attractive profession to young people.
Professional autonomy, for example
I am convinced, for those who consider teaching more than a job, that this is the most important measure of satisfaction. And next on the list is small class sizes.
Arizona is a petri dish for the Koch-ALEC, Walmart Walton brand of theo-libertarian kleptocratic fascism. Improving public education is on their hit list along with labor unions, minimum wage, Social Security, Medicare, the US Constitution, et al.
The only goal of this group has is to increase their power and wealth. The hell with everyone else that isn’t a member of their 0.1% club. We are nothing but peons to them, numbers without names.
The Grand Canyon State in more ways than one.
I don’t see the problem — there’s hardly anyone under the age of 65 living in Arizona … at least there won’t be for long …
Wow. Race to the bottom indeed. And I thought Utah was bad…
This reminds me of Teach for America, where a few weeks of summer school equals a credential. It reminds me of online credit recovery classes, were a few minutes of googling test answers equals a diploma. This reminds me of the Bridge program, where American billionaires like Gates bribed public officials in other countries (African, of course, just to make sure we’re being the ugliest Americans possible) to privatize education with for-profit schools, using untrained, uneducated techs to read scripts off of tablets instead of teachers.
It also reminds me of the countless times stooges tried to convince me to stop teaching and instead “flip” of “blend” my classes into having students “learn” on laptops at home and just take tests in the classroom. It reminds me of all the hype when schools shut down at the beginning of the pandemic and classes went online, and the mainstream media repeatedly suggested it was “the new normal”.
Does anyone really think AZ SB 1159 is a reaction to the teacher shortage? Turning teaching into a cheap temp gig using scripted programs is the big plan. It has been for a long time. Smells like ALEC legislation. And by the way, speaking of temp gigs and tech companies buying legislation, have you been reading the leaked Uber documents? Outrageous. Can’t wait to read some leaked Pearson emails.
Uber teachers Uber called!
Uber alles!
Spell “correct” is very annoying.
The programner who wrote it should be drawn and quartered.
Prgrammer!
Programner is not even a word, but spell correct thinks it is!
LeftCoast: Many, many years ago, I read a speech by Bill Gates in which he said that there were two big expenses in education: facilities and teachers’ salaries, and both could be almost completely eliminated by computerizing instruction. So, this has been the big plan for a long time, but it’s been Gates’s plan. That’s why he paid for the Common (sic) Core (sic). He wanted a single national bullet list to key depersonalized education software to. And that’s why he created InBloom–so that there would be a single national gradebook controlled by him and anyone who wanted to create educational software would have to partner with. He would be the monopolist at the center, in control of the entire industry of training the children of the Proles.
He’s not the first, however. Way back in the 1950s and early 1960s, the federal government got the idea that enormous amounts of money could be saved in education and the best teachers put in front of all students nationwide by leveraging the new medium of television. The feds held meetings in which they invited prominent scientists from around the country to come discuss this concept.
It never went anywhere for the same reasons that Gates’s plan hasn’t. Education works because of RELATIONSHIPS between teachers and students. These are key. People like Gates who are not interested in what other folks think and say can’t grok this, can’t understand why the BIG PLAN–one ring to rule them all–is a crok.
Gates should have been discounted long ago, but after his meetings with Epstein, he should have been shunned.
What kind of person would still take Gates seriously?
Gates talks a language that people understand: $$$$$$. Just as MIT and Harvard were fine with looking away in order to get Epstein’s money, so thousands of astroturf groups today continue to suckle at the Gates Foundation.
One would think that associating with a convicted pedophile would be off limits for anyone doing anything related to schools and children.
But then again, if one thought that one would be wrong.
MIT and Harvard are run by sick people.
They should have had ALL their federal funding yanked.
B.F. Skinner and the teaching machine.
Thanks for sharing your history with similar failed experiments.
In April, NEA shared this USED announcement in support of debt-free avenues into the teaching profession:
Please join our upcoming webinar (TBD May 11th or 12th at 3:00pm ET) U.S. Department of Labor webinar on establishing teaching as an apprenticeship. During this webinar DOL will do a deep dive on the process of establishing an apprenticeship program for K-12 teachers, the benefits of apprenticeships in scaling career pathways equitably, and the role that the federal Office of Apprenticeship can play to support education partners.