Spending time studying how to teach and how children learn has been replaced with fast-track programs that breed future workers. These people know little about children, but they follow the script. They will keep children focused on their computer lessons, and collect data on their progress.
It’s like getting on a plane and learning the pilot had only five weeks of training. The real pilot has been removed or quit because they required an adequate salary.
Here’s a list of just a few of the states that have easy requirements to the classroom.
- In Georgia and Idaho, hiring can take place while you’re earning a degree.
- In Kentucky, like many other states, you can have a degree in anything and easily get certified to teach.
- In Louisiana, with a little training, you can teach with only a high school diploma.
- In Mississippi, if you can find a teaching job first, you can get into the alternative teaching program to learn how to teach.
- Missouri likes the American Board for Certification of Teaching Excellence (ABCTE) if you can afford to buy online credentials.
- There’s more.
Have a nice flight!
Recently, T.M. Landry College Prep, a private school in Louisiana duped parents and the community into believing the school did a great job despite hiring teachers with no credentials. The school had few resources. Students gathered in a warehouse. They appeared to be doing so well, Ivy League schools admitted them to their schools with glowing recommendations.
Prominent people hailed the school as a success. It turned out to be a lie. Here is the complete report “Louisiana School Made Headlines for Sending Black Kids to Elite Colleges. Here’s the Reality.” by Erica L. Green and Katie Benner.
The school focused on making a profit. They made teaching look simple like anyone can do it. The trouble is this is false. Qualifications matter!
What were the credentials of those who ran the school? Michael Landry is a teacher and former salesman. His wife is a nurse. It’s unclear where they received their education.
T.M. Landry didn’t take public funds. It was a private school with a tuition fee of $725 a year.
What did Louisiana School Superintendent and Teach for America’s John White say about the T.M. Landry Prep School revelations? White and his supporters love private schools. Here are headlines where he says “It’s What Matters for the Kids.” Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is in the video in the same article with President Trump praising choice schools while demeaning “failed public schools.” They will not talk about the failure of choice and charters.
What about the politicians and journalists who praised the miraculous success of the school? How did they fail to do their homework? How many other “miraculous” private schools and charters run by individuals with no credentials have been highlighted in the news, but are honestly failing behind the scenes?
If it is a simple miracle it most likely is a lie.
This message that it isn’t necessary to learn to teach children, or study education, has been used so successful, that America now runs the risk of losing its teaching profession. Phi Delta Kappan recently reported that for the first time in sixty years parents respect teachers, but they don’t want their children to enter teaching as a career. Parents don’t want their grown children treated so shabbily.
Meanwhile, those who have no background in education like Teach for America wind up in positions of great authority overseeing public schools or running their own schools.
This lack of respect for a true teaching profession which has been promoted in the media and by politicians, has seriously hurt the future of public education, for students and America.
The idea that we will get to our destination on a plane with an unqualified pilot is a lie. We finally saw it firsthand with T.M. Landry. The plane crashed!
Qualifications matter. Credentials are a moral imperative.
I have to say, Nancy, I couldn’t believe what I was reading. The fact that this can happen in 21st Century America is truly shocking. I’m afraid that this is where we too may be headed in the UK. Already, the lies and deceptions are slowly coming to light. A favourite here seems to be re-branding to hide what should be shouted from the roof-tops.
The media have a duty to expose what is happening but it requires journalists and their editors to tell it as it is, not as they have been led to believe it is. It’s as if we are sleep walking into a future that is set to strip us of our humanity. When we fail our children so fundamentally, we are true failures. You have to keep these stories coming.
Thanks, John. They are rebranding here too. Diane Ravitch wrote today about The City Fund. It’s a sad new public school takeover attempt.
https://dianeravitch.net/2018/12/10/beware-privatization-vandals-target-7-cities-for-destruction-and-takeover/
Unqualified people teaching crappy (Common Core) standards and focusing on companion tests written to produce hyper-failure rates, while narrowing the curricula and constraining pedagogy. Talk about a dystopian educational system courtesy of an amateur shit-show.. Don’t dare blame the professional educators who have been fighting against the 21st century reform movement.
Agreed!
I do blame the majority of the teachers and adminimals for implementing atrocious malpractices that harm so many students. Perhaps if the teachers had stood up and said “No, we’re not implementing the malpractices that we know are useless, waste resources and will cause irreparable damage to the students” more people would respect the “profession.”
Goodness. You seem a bit harsh. “Atrocious malpractices” what do you mean?
Look at all the teachers who marched last spring on behalf their students!
Testing? Well, in Seattle the Garfield High School teachers boycotted the tests. But they also had parents watching their backs.
Most teachers try their best to overcome bad policy made by their school boards. They walk a difficult balance trying to do their jobs well and help students. Many also need employment and want to practice what they learned.
Give them a break.
I would like to speak up for high school teachers who come to the classroom without credentials. Often the credentials are education classes instead of content classes. Thus we have credentialed teachers with no content experience. This can be toxic, especially if the education person is imbued with the notion that they can wrap their minds around a lesson even if they do not understand where it is going. This is especially problematic in math.
I speak from some experience. I began teaching during the shortage of math teachers that struck during the 1980s. I ended up teaching math on the basis of my having had calculus in high school. I knew then it was insufficient. I also knew then that I was as good as it got, so I went back to school to obtain math certification. Eventually, it was the math certification that landed me my present job. I taught math, mainly geometry for the next 29 years. It was only then that I was asked to teach world history, probably because they thought I remembered most of it.
I was very qualified to teach history, holding an MA with a thesis. I was marginally qualified to teach math, which kept me in the math department until just recently, despite the fact that there were credentialed teachers teaching history in my stead most of those years.
Oddly enough, I did some of my best teaching when I was learning myself what I should be teaching. Whether I did or did not have certification, I was able to help out several kids who went on to become successful math people in college, engineers, and even some local contractors who could read a standard ruler.
There are a thousand reasons why someone makes a good teacher. Being certified is sometimes beside the point. I do not condone using this reality to staff schools with people who are trying out the profession for a year or two. These folks should be doing something else that helps them learn how to teach. Still, some of us have traveled different roads and arrived at the same destination, and our road less traveled by has made a positive difference.
Roy, I usually agree with you, but honestly, high school teachers need BOTH content instruction and education coursework. This is an old argument and it feeds into the Teach for America business that anyone with a degree can teach.
It is especially important for high school teachers to take good education preparatory classes to understand the kind of student traits and development in which they’re dealing. Middle school students, for example, act much differently than high school students and teaching approaches at that level are also specific. Just because some teachers come from an alternative route to teach and have a knack for it, doesn’t mean they always do well like you.
When I was student teaching I recognized one of my students had impetigo which is contagious. I was quite proud of myself, but I didn’t take over the nurse’s job. That’s when they had school nurses I might add.
Thanks, Nancy. I cannot imagine a person more pleasant with whom to disagree. Please do not assume that I accept the private school modus venvendi. They hire multitudes of young people out of four year colleges to augment the old standards they have on their faculty to deal with the best students. I think that is why TFA turned out the way it did; it was already a practice in traditional private education.
Despite all my education classes, and I had many in two different states, nothing prepared me for the onslaught of real teaching. When I started, I had five preps and helped with a team. I had one kid that eventually earned a MBA from Harvard in the same class with a kid who never learned to read. Nothing prepared me for any of that, but I had good, supportive people to work with.
I guess my thinking above was inspired by a wonderful lady who works in our school as an aide. She never went to college, but she raised two kids who needed some special help. She knocks it out of the park every day. Last year I had some kids who had a lot of problems. She was the best.
Your argument appears to be that anyone who is good with kids can be a teacher. In some ways you contradict yourself. The aide might be great interacting with children, but does she have content knowledge?
TFA should be aides.
I still disagree with you. I’m sorry if you look down on your ed. courses, but we still need professionals with education degrees who understand students and how they learn.
Finland is making some changes that are worrisome, but they have always been known for their professional teachers.
“Students gathered in a warehouse.”
I’m sorry, I know I’m blaming the victim, but really? What kind of parent puts their kid in school in a warehouse? Have you ever been in one? They’re huge metal buildings with no windows. With the exception of a small front office area, they’re designed specifically to hold stuff, not people. They’re not designed with things like climate or comfort in mind. They don’t come with playgrounds or even adequate plumbing. I wouldn’t care if the graduates went on to become U.S. presidents, I still wouldn’t want my kid going to school in a warehouse.
There’s an argument there. I agree. I don’t like the warehouse idea either. Great point!
I suppose if a student’s public school was rundown and had large class sizes due to a lack of funding, and the media promoted the private or charter school, a parent could be duped.
I think that’s a huge problem with choice. It is easy to buy into the message without knowing the facts. Most parents struggle with jobs etc.
Also, many of these schools are so new that there’s really no way to do research on them. When you start hearing of Ivy acceptances it sounds good.