_Shut Up and Let the Lady Teach_ by Emily Sachar

[archerships]

Comments by Jim Glass on a post to Arnold Kling's blog regarding the economics of teacher pay.

http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/000074.html

"The private schools maintain parity or better in quality because..."

4. They don't impose Byzantine Ed School certification requirements to limit the market of available teachers (and thus drive up salaries).

Anyone can teach in a private school if the those running the school deem them qualified to teach. Not so in the major unionized urban school systems. In fact, a "reverse filter" applies, since an Ed School degree is generally required for certification, and Ed School students as a group have the lower average academic qualifications (SAT scores etc.) than people in other University departments. So not only are great numbers of graduates in other fields steered away from teaching but those steered away have better average qualifications in terms of academic achievement.

Larger pool of better qualified job applicants = better employees at lower cost.

When PBS was running those "all big expert" roundables a few years back they did one on public education and an Econ nobelist, Becker IIRC, observed, "I can teach econ at any university and I can teach it a private high school yet I am deemed unqualified to teach econ at a public high school." To which the Education Commissioner of my home state, NY, replied in words that as a proud taxpayer of NY I shall always remember: "Nobody ever taught you how to conduct a birthday party in class".

There's a great book that reveals more about how the urban school systems actually work than you'll get from reading a hundred academic studies: _Shut Up and Let the Lady Teach_ by Emily Sachar, a former NYC public school teacher. It recounts her personal experiences.

She was a Stamford graduate in economics who had spent 10 years as a prize-winning journalist for Newsday, who decided altruistically to give it up for teaching -- *exactly* the sort of qualified achiever the public schools claim to want.

Her experience in getting hired was that she expected she would naturally teach English or Math, due to her work experience and education. But she was deemed unqualified to teach English because she hadn't studied English in college. (Her book on all this was nominated for a Pulitzer). And she was deemed unqualified to teach Math because she had no algebra courses on her college transcript, only calculus courses -- she'd finished studying algebra in high school, and that didn't count. So they assigned her to teach Social Studies, about which she knew nothing. She lasted one year -- the altruism beaten out of her.

It's really a very fine and disturbing book. A few years old and out of print, but well worth looking up in the library. (As I said, nominated for a Pulitzer.)

Comments

[ex-petra476.livejournal.com]

My father always thought it was funny that he, a doctor with an undergraduate degree in microbiology isn't allowed to teach a course in science in a public high school -- but a gym teacher is.

I don't have much faith in most public schools anymore, I used to subsitute teach mathematics -- I had 17 year olds that didn't know how to add.

[rillifane.livejournal.com]

The number one thing that could be done for public education in the USA is to dynamite every department of education at every university in the country.

[stealthcomic.livejournal.com]

I couldn't help respond to this post, crasch.

I'm a career switcher who is in the process of applying to a masters program in education. Why? Well, not only because I want to teach in the public school system, but because I want to learn more about education as a field. I don't want to walk into a classroom with the assumption that because I'm a good editor I have any idea how to break my skills down in such a way as to be understandable to students half my age. I haven't been in high school in long enough that I've forgotten what it's like to BE a high schooler.

Now, I have to agree that the coursework prerequisites are goofy sometimes. I was able to demonstrate via transcripts that I have all the required major courses, but the truth is I haven't studied any of that literature in at least 6 years.

Am I qualified to teach it according to the state? Yep. Am I ready to teach it by my own standards? Nope. I studied these texts at a college level. I'm not likely to get high school kids to engage with the text as if they were older than they are, so I have to figure out what will work. That's part of the reason that I'm taking these Ed courses--so I can figure out how to teach writing and literature to students of a certain age.

I think I'm going to get a lot out of examining my own learning styles and developing age-appropriate teaching methods in an environment where I am encouraged to reflect on them and determine their effectiveness. I also know that being in an environment with many other prospective teachers, most of whom are my age or older, will give me a different perspective on the whole teaching issue than if I were an undergraduate student.

So, I think that Ed schools have a real role in helping those with the desire to teach become better, more reflective and self-critical teachers--and that's what we want from our teachers, isn't it?

[crasch.livejournal.com]

I have no objection to education programs per se. However, I disagree with the notion that a Stanford economics grad or a Nobel prize winner couldn't adequately teach high school students without such ed school training. And I strongly disapprove of the fact that teachers have successfully passed laws to bar individuals without ed school degrees from teaching in tax-supported schools.

Let's suppose that you took a randomly selected bunch of college-educated physics majors (with no ed. school training) and made them high school physics teachers for a year. And let's suppose you took an identical number of ed school graduates, and put them in charge of teaching high school physics classes. At the end of the year, which group of high school students would you bet had a better understanding of physics?

[stealthcomic.livejournal.com]

I don't necessarily buy that argument. I actually work with a large number of scientists and I'd say 3 out of 4 of them couldn't explain physics to a high school student. They've forgotten what it is like NOT to know the basics, so you get a lot of "wait a minute, before I get into that, you need to know..." I'm not saying that the Nobel Prize winner couldn't teach. I am saying that most career scientists tend to be come so specialized that they don't even think of the core level concepts on a conscious level and it takes them a while to organize those thoughts to even be able to attempt to explain it to a science-challenged 31 year old.

I would also argue that the teachers unions, while significant lobbying forces, don't always influence educational policy all that much. Lots of groups have played the standards game over time and I suspect that the ed class requirements were more likely the product of those than anything else. I'd have to do more research to support that, but the classes do sound more like a reform attempt based on ever-present, and sometimes accurate, theory that teachers are not adequately trained than on any teacher-derived job security lobby.

For example, in VA, I have to have 4 core courses to be fully licensed--1 foundations class, 1 methods class, 1 learning theory class, and 1 literacy class. Now, I can get provisional licensure tomorrow based on the fact that I have all the required subject matter (endorsement area) courses, most of which I took at the undergrad level. However, in the next 3 years, I would have to take those 4 classes at an a state-accredited education school.

So what would I be letting myself in for if I did that? With grading, meetings, planning, teaching, and misc. paperwork, I'd be doing a 60 hour a week job, taking a 33% pay cut (only because I'm in a well-paid area and I already have a masters degree), and trying to squeeze in graduate-level courses that I'd likely be paying for with my own nickel. So even though it means that I won't be able to teach for another 2 years or so, I'm taking the classes while I'm still reasonably well-paid and can afford to take classes that I think will be valuable to me personally.

Re:

[crasch.livejournal.com]

Although I'll grant you that some physics majors couldn't teach their way out a of a paper bag, I note that you didn't say how you would bet. How would you bet in the scenario I outlined?

In any case, to my mind, even if physics majors taught less well than ed school majors, shouldn't the decision regarding whether or not to hire them be left up to the schools, not legislatures? After all, as a teacher, you would be on the hiring committee, and work with these people--wouldn't you want to be able to hire whomever you thought best, regardless of their formal qualifications?

Who were the primary drivers behind licensure? Parents of students who would theoretically be harmed unqualified teachers? Or teachers who wanted to eliminate competition, in order raise/maintain teacher salaries?

Ask yourself: if there were a referendum to eliminate teacher licensure, where would most of the money for the opposition campaign come from? From the parents of students who would theoretically be harmed unqualified teachers? Or by the teachers unions?