See also, "Comparing Teaching to Other Occupations"

When there was a surplus of teachers, politicians ignored the opportunity to toughen teacher preparation. To the contrary, they sat idly by while colleges pushed through thousands of half-trained, half-committed, half-witted candidates in order to cash their parent's tuition checks.

Now that there is a growing scarcity of teachers, however, state officials race to weaken already wimpy state standards. Pennsylvania provides a particularly egregious example. In recent years keystone state officials repeatedly reduced the budget of the agency charged with overseeing teacher preparation. The gutted remains can't possibly enforce real rigor in teacher education. Which is precisely what they should be doing, because for years many Pennsylvania colleges have been shamelessly exploiting teacher preparation as a source of ready cash. Usually only a fraction of the tuition derived from these heavily enrolled programs is reinvested in their improvement. The rest is siphoned into things that really matter to college officials? varsity athletics or remodeling the President's residence come to mind.

Instead of remedying this situation, Governor Tom Ridge, (a Republican vice-presidential hopeful, by the way) recently made it much worse. In an announcement characterized by double-speak, he decreed a new, and preposterously easy, way into teaching. Ridge declared that those who think they might like to teach need only take a ten day summer seminar to qualify for their very own classroom. After no more than six credits of additional instruction in pedagogy they can be certified for life. How's that for standards?

Ridge says he wants to "...help local education agencies fill critical vacant positions in secondary or K-12 content areas with 'outstanding' candidates for eventual level I certification." Actually, he wants to fill teaching vacancies in the state's educational wastelands with whatever warm bodies can be found. He also wants to weaken the state's teachers unions, both of whom were smart enough to oppose his election.

Right-wingers, like Chester Finn, argue that many thousands would jump right into teaching if they didn't have to expend any effort to learn something about it. Besides, Finn asserts, kids taught by certified teachers don't do any better on achievement tests than those taught by scrubs. Here's what's wrong with this argument:

• So-called "achievement" tests are only one measure of a teacher's success ? and a weak one at that. We need only consider what they don't measure to appreciate their limitations.
  
  
• Just because a teacher is certified doesn't mean they have been adequately prepared. Certification means little so long as state officials fail to enforce tough program approval standards and close down low quality cash cow programs that are used to generate tuition.
  
  
• You don't get elite troops without tough training and you don't get top-flight teachers with blue light special certification either. Requiring a candidate to prove their commitment and capabilities by surviving a tough training process is vitally important.
  
  
• Filling schools with marginally committed, virtually untrained warm bodies destroys whatever hope teaching has of becoming a full-fledged profession. Such disempowerment fits the political agenda of "conservative" politicians, but it undermines efforts to make schools better.
  
  
• However weak, most certification programs sort out at least some of the candidates who are lazy, uncaring, mentally unstable and so forth. God knows what kind of people will sneak through alternative certification processes like Ridge has instituted.
  
  
• Subject matter knowledge is necessary for teaching competence; but it is not sufficient. To be competent a teacher must also command a body of professional knowledge.
  
  
• Certification was introduced largely because teaching was bedeviled by patronage. Hiring was based on everything but professional competence. Without tough certification standards that's where we'll end up again. Political affiliation, religious preference or who your brother-in-law is will be what gets you a teaching job.
  
  
• Alternative certification and cash cow traditional programs demoralize caring teacher educators. It's tough to continue to insist on quality when the governor himself doesn't give a damn about it. In fact, alternative certification and cash-cow programs threaten to drive demanding programs out of existence. Why spend a lot of time and effort qualifying for certification when there are far easier ways?