9/1/2000

What Makes a Teacher 'Qualified'?

Q: What does the word "qualified" mean when it refers to a teacher? Is it enough to have taken the necessary courses?

A: I received the following letter from a reader who raises many important questions about the effectiveness of teacher training.

"I, like many parents and others exposed to the public school system, believe that many of the certified teachers should not be permitted to "teach." While in graduate school, I worked as a teacher's aide. It was obvious to me that the teacher was not even familiar with standard English on a fifth grade level. There was no evidence that she had ever encountered Wariners, MLA, the University of Chicago Press Manual of Style or any other style manual.

"I had to correct her answers before grading the students' papers in order not to mark correct answers wrong. I was told not to worry whether students did their homework or learned, and that I did not understand the circumstances poor children had to face in housing projects.

"Unfortunately, I had grown up in orphanages (euphemistically called "children's homes") and in a low income housing project. Fortunately, I had good teachers who understood that poor children need and deserve a decent education no less than affluent ones do.

"The poor students' greatest disability was in having an unqualified -- although certified -- teacher who expected and gave little to her students, who met the low expectations of the teacher. The "teacher," after being shown the authorities in support of the standard punctuation and grammar, simply asked, "Wasn't that tedious?" After having to do that three times, I simply resigned.

"As a parent, I have been exposed to other examples of "educator" incompetence. One example was when my child's spelling of attract (spelled as you see it here) was three times marked as being incorrect, and the spelling "attracked" substituted!

"My daughter was told by a high school chemistry teacher, who required students to purchase a calculator for use in his class, that she could not use a scientific calculator, because it would not add, subtract, multiply or divide (it does those operations and many others.) I wondered exactly what sort of education he had received. I expected no less incompetence with the slide rule. Examples abound.

"Being knowledgeable and competent in the discipline being taught should be the criteria, whether the evaluation is of prospective, regular or substitute teachers. Moreover, the teachers should be required to take continuing education courses so as to stay current, not unlike what is required in many other professions. Teaching methodology courses should not be paramount.

"Indeed, active recruitment of professionals in other fields should be pursued as teachers. I am sure that there are many people who were not education majors who would like to teach. To attract them to teaching, we must pay competitive salaries, reward excellence, reduce class size, remove disruptive students from the classroom, and foster school environments free of violence and other impediments to learning.

"On the other hand, we need to hold teachers -- no less than students -- accountable for mastery of the material being taught. They should be required to demonstrate at least a satisfactory knowledge of the subject they teach. They should be required to take tests to demonstrate that competence. Indeed, this should be part of the pedagogical training they receive. Feedback is necessary and proficiency should be rewarded. Do educators seeking advanced degrees feel insulted when asked by their professors to demonstrate proficiency? "Teachers, whether certified or not, should not be permitted to subvert the public interest in an educated citizenry, especially in a democratic and highly technical society. The remedy is to remove incompetent professionals regardless of whether they practice medicine or law or whether they teach our children. The notion that only affluent children should be educated well is not only undemocratic but also stupid. In this competitive, global economy, we cannot afford to have our children getting a second-rate education.

"Teacher unions serve a legitimate function in collective bargaining for decent pay, working conditions, smaller class size, and protections against arbitrary and capricious actions by supervisors and administrators. In the long run, neither teachers nor the public are served well by attempts to exclude competent people from teaching or to protect from exclusion those union members who are not competent to teach."

Readers, what do you think about the issue of teacher competence? Is this a problem in the schools your children attend?

Please send questions or comments to bbruno@snet.net.