[Mb-civic] Opening Classroom DoorsBy NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

[Michael Butler]

The New York Times
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April 30, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
Opening Classroom Doors
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Suppose Colin Powell tires of giving $100,000-a-pop speeches and wants to
teach high school social studies. Suppose Meryl Streep has a hankering to
teach drama.

Alas, they would be "unqualified" for a public school. Elite private schools
would snap them up, of course, but public schools that are begging for
teachers would have to turn them away because they don't have teacher
certification.

That's an absurd snarl in our education bureaucracy. Let's relax the
barriers so people can enter teaching more easily, either right out of
college or later as a midcareer switch.

Sure, there are lots of other problems in the U.S. education system. But
this is one of the easiest to solve.

One reason to act is that the U.S. faces a growing shortage of teachers.
Just to keep student-teacher ratios where they are now, we need a 35 percent
increase in the number of people entering teaching.

The other problem is that the quality of teachers is deteriorating, mostly
because ‹ fortunately! ‹ women have more career options. A smart and
ambitious woman graduating from college in 1970 often ended up as a
third-grade teacher; today, she ends up as a surgeon or senator.

The upshot is that between 1971 and 1974, 24 percent of teachers had scored
in the top 10 percent on their high school achievement tests. Now only 11
percent have done so.

So one study after another has concluded that it is time to relax teacher
certification requirements.

"Barriers to entry are too high," declared last month's final report of the
Teaching Commission, a private blue-ribbon panel led by Louis Gerstner, the
former I.B.M. chief. "Confusing and cumbersome procedures discourage many
talented would-be teachers from entering the classroom."

A white paper from the Hamilton Project of the Brookings Institution urged,
"Rather than dig further down in the pool of those willing to consider
teacher certification programs or raise class sizes, we need to expand the
pool of those eligible to teach."

In a new book called "Tough Love for Schools," Frederick Hess argues that
applicants should be eligible for teaching jobs if they have graduated from
a recognized college, have passed a competency test in their field and have
passed a rigorous background check. Principals may prefer to hire graduates
of teaching colleges, he writes, but they should have the option to hire
other outstanding applicants as well.

That's the situation in some of America's most elite private high schools.
Phillips Exeter Academy, for example, says that 85 percent of its faculty
have advanced degrees but probably only a handful are certified. (Since it
is private, it doesn't worry about certification or even keep track of which
teachers are certified.)

At Exeter, for example, biology is taught by a former doctor. Japanese is
taught by a former businessman who worked in Japan. And a history teacher
arrived with no teaching experience but has published five books.

The idea behind teacher certification is that there are special skills that
are picked up in teacher training courses ‹ secret snake-charming skills to
keep the little vipers calm. But there's no evidence this is so. On the
contrary, several new programs have brought outstanding young people into
teaching without putting them through conventional training programs, and
those teachers have been widely hailed as first-rate.

One superb initiative for young college graduates is Teach for America,
which last year had 17,000 applicants for 2,000 spots teaching in low-income
schools. Among those who applied were 12 percent of Yale's senior class and
8 percent of Harvard's and Princeton's.

Teach for America participants get only an intensive six-week training
session, yet they excel in the classroom. One study found that classes with
a Teach for America participant learn an extra month of math over the school
year, compared with classes with a traditional teacher.

Likewise, Troops to Teachers helps retiring military personnel become
teachers in public schools. And I.B.M. has started a program to help
executives with math or science backgrounds switch to teaching.

Granted, intellectual brilliance alone does not make a great teacher. When I
think of my best teachers, like Juanita Trantina in the fifth grade, they
didn't just teach us but also inspired us, humored us, tamed us and
enchanted us. Maybe it helps to be brilliant and to have studied teaching,
but mostly it is personality. Colin Powell, Meryl Streep and many anonymous
others would dazzle the surliest student, so why continue to bar them at the
schoolhouse door?

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