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One requirement of the No Child Left Behind Act is that all teachers be "highly qualified."  The law specifies that each teacher have a bachelor's degree, state certification and a "demonstrated knowledge" in the core subject they teach.  This requirement was to be met within four years.

In the enthusiasm over passage of the Act by Congress in December of 2001 and its signing into law by President George W. Bush in January 2002, there seemed to be little recognition that this wouldn't happen.

And it hasn't.  As of June 30, 2006, beyond the four year deadline, not one state met that requirement.

The requirement for each teacher to have a bachelor's degree could be satisfied by having a B.S. in Education (now, now, B.S. means Bachelor of Science, not what you think).  A great many of the nation's 3,000,000 teachers, having majored in education, have such a degree.  Since it can be obtained without a strong academic major or minor it doesn't result in‘highly qualified" teachers.  The late Al Shanker, longtime president of the American Federation of Teachers was cited as saying a quarter of all classroom teachers were not competent to teach. That's 750,000 teachers!

Next is the issue of certification.  Again, according to Shanker, education students had SAT scores 40 points below the national average of all college students.  They would be even further below the scores of students in other professional majors.  Shanker added that the lower ability of education majors is further complicated as superintendents were inclined to hire the worst of newly graduated teachers because the brighter ones were more likely to cause trouble. Brighter ones, as some studies have indicated, are also more likely to leave the classroom after only a few years.  They have both a lower toleration for the classroom environment coupled and more opportunities to move elsewhere.

Even for better student teachers, countless studies for decades have concluded that the teacher certification process is essentially useless.  A few years ago Eric Hanushek, then of the University of Rochester, analyzed 113 studies on student performance and found no relationship between a teacher's educational background and the achievement of the teacher's students.  Sam Peavey, professor emeritus of the School of Education at the University of Illinois has said 50 years of research finds "no significant correlation between the requirements for teacher certification and the quality of student achievement."

These results are not just theoretical. A 2005 report said 68% of eighth graders are taught math by teachers with no degree or certificate in the field.  Thirty-three percent of grades 5-9 students are taught physical science by teachers with no relevant qualifications.

If the aim is to have "highly qualified" classroom teachers, requiring teacher certification won't do it.  Further,  if certification is a valid requirement then the education professors who prepare student teachers to obtain certification are themselves not qualified because they are not required to be certified.  Also, very few homeschool teachers are certified, yet their students tend to rank in the 85th percentile in achievement.

University of Missouri's Michael Podgursky notes that Missouri issues one license to practice medicine, law, dentistry, accounting, nursing and veterinary medicine but has 781 valid education certification codes.  That's ridiculous.  Podgursky adds that Missouri is not unique.  In Kentucky, the pass rate on a verbal ability test teachers is the 20th percentile.  Yet verbal ability is one teacher attribute known to make a difference.

As for "demonstrated knowledge," President Bill Clinton's Secretary of Education, Richard Riley, said there are too few "talented, dedicated" teachers.  Current president George W. Bush's administration has issued a study saying many of the best candidates don't enter teaching because of the "useless education courses" they would have to take, the same courses the NCLB Act accepts for certification.

Finally, many of today's 3,000,000 classroom teachers will still be there when NCLB expires.  Given tenure laws, union contracts, and prohibitions against ex post facto or retroactive laws, updating the current teaching staff is virtually impossible.  Given the inadequacy of teacher preparation programs, and the resistance of the establishment to any meaningful change improving the future quality of teachers may be equally unlikely.

In brief, what's supposed to happen, won't.

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It has been estimated that 250,000 teachers are working without proper preparation in course content or without any kind of training in how two teach...only 36 percent of teachers...felt they were ‘very well prepared' to meet the current increased standards in grammar and high schools." "Officials give poor marks to teachers," p. A1, The Patriot-News, Harrisburg, PA, January 10, 2000

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Copyright 2006 David W. Kirkpatrick
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Douglassville, Pennsylvania 19518-9240
Phone: (610) 689-0633