By Eugene W. Hickok
No single
element is more essential to students’ success than excellence in teaching. Fine
buildings, equipment, and textbooks are important, but it is the skill and dedication of
the teacher that creates a place of learning. So it is both distressing and heartening
that incompetence among the ranks of the nation’s teachers is finally entering the
spotlight. New York’s state education department recently discovered that hundreds of
its teachers, most of whom have master’s degrees, could not pass a standard test in
English, math, and reasoning skills. In response to a storm of public criticism, state
education officials in Massachusetts recently repealed their decision to lower the
qualifying score on a rather basic teacher-licensing exam after 59 percent of the
applicants flunked it.
Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge has decided to confront teacher incompetence with
a bold new program that focuses on clear, measurable, and rigorous standards for the men
and women preparing to be teachers. Indeed, as a result of the Teachers for the 21st
Century Initiative, we believe that Pennsylvania’s teachers will soon be the most
qualified in the nation.
Low Expectations
Before the state enacted these vital changes, it was astonishing how little was
expected of prospective teachers, many of whom received undergraduate or master’s
degrees from one of the state’s 91 education programs. When we examined our system of
teacher preparation and licensure in 1996, we found a system with limited assurances of
competence and quality. We identified six areas of urgent concern:
Few teacher-education programs had meaningful admission standards.
Most undergraduate programs, at best, required prospective majors to have a 2.5 grade
point average prior to majoring in education. In other words, the doors were open for
C-plus students (or worse) to become teachers. Moreover, that requirement could be
fulfilled with the easiest classes.
Grading standards in teacher-education programs were extremely low.
At one public university, 78 percent of students who took courses in "curriculum and
foundations" received A’s. But on that same campus, only 18 percent of the
grades earned in English or physics were A’s. A study of 14 state universities showed
that the average grade in an education course was a full letter-grade higher than the
average for a math course, and one-half grade higher than the average humanities grade.
A study by the National Center for Education Statistics confirmed that grade
inflation has been far more pronounced in the nation’s education departments than in
other fields. The average grade in an education course was 3.41, compared with 2.96 in
social sciences and 2.67 in science and engineering. We also found that many
teacher-preparation programs were increasing the departmental requirements for education
courses at the expense of strong preparation in academic subjects.
Students preparing to be high-school teachers were not required to
take the same courses as their peers who majored in academic subjects such as history or
science. Mathematics majors, for example, have to complete courses in differential
equations and advanced calculus, while education majors planning to teach high-school
mathematics—including advanced-placement classes—could substitute a course in
the history of mathematics for these rigorous courses. In Pennsylvania, we discovered that
some candidates certified in foreign languages were unable to engage in basic
conversations in the languages they were purportedly trained to teach.
Many teacher-preparation programs had no meaningful standards for
achievement in the academic content areas their candidates intended to teach.
Even in nonacademic coursework, such as classroom management and
professional skills, which these programs tend to emphasize, few departments had
sufficient benchmarks to assess the progress of aspiring teachers.
Passing scores on national standardized tests for teacher
certification (the National Teachers Exam or Praxis exam) were set absurdly low. Although
the questions are hardly difficult, Pennsylvania, like most other states, certified
teaching candidates who scored in the bottom 10 percent on some of these tests.
In short, our education colleges were enrolling students with grade point averages
of C-plus or lower, and the state was certifying teachers who earned the equivalent of an
F on their licensure exams. This must never happen again. Governor Ridge’s
initiative, which was approved by the Pennsylvania state board of education last March,
insists that teachers model academic accomplishment. Only a teacher who has achieved
excellence can drive students to excel.
A New Standard
In order to receive accreditation by the state, a college of education will have
to abide by the following standards:
Admissions. Pennsylvania will require that candidates for
teacher-training programs complete the equivalent of at least three full semesters of
college-level liberal arts courses with a B average before enrolling in a teacher-training
program. This requirement is based on college course work exclusive of education courses.
When we examined the problem of grade inflation, we determined that colleges and
universities would maintain rigorous standards for their education students as long as the
entrance requirements are grounded in the arts and sciences that are the core of all
further study.
Curricular requirements. Prospective high-school teachers must
fulfill the same course requirements as their classmates seeking a B.A. or B.S. in a
particular academic discipline. This requires would-be teachers to develop a serious
scholarly commitment to and expertise in the subjects they will teach. For example, a
science teacher who has personally conducted laboratory research and who has personally
pursued scientific inquiry is better equipped to guide students in creative and innovative
work in science and technology. No amount of training in teaching methodology can
substitute for real intellectual maturation in an academic area. Finally, the prospective
teacher must maintain at least a B average in the subject area he or she intends to teach.
The new standards also require education students to acquire classroom experience
at the very beginning of their training. We hope this will give them a sense of whether
they have the commitment and temperament for teaching, as well as an opportunity for
applying their academic training to the classrooms they will one day lead.
Finally, we have required colleges of education to ensure that education majors
can complete a teacher-preparation program as well as their requirements in an academic
subject in four years, like other baccalaureate students. Some education programs have
expanded to five years as their course requirements in methodology have proliferated. This
may be good for the job security of education professors, but it is an unethical misuse of
taxpayers’ funds and student tuition.
Qualifying test scores. We have begun to lift the minimum
qualifying scores on licensing exams gradually from the bottom quintile or decile of test
takers, depending on the subject area, to scores that approach the national average.
Before 1997, candidates could pass the Professional Knowledge Test with a score in the 5th
percentile of test takers; now the passing score represents the 28th percentile. We have
also raised the threshold for the mathematics exam from the 16th percentile to the 37th,
and from the 16th percentile to the 42nd in biology. No longer will the state certify
teachers who miss half or more of the questions.
Alternative certification. One size does not fit all in the
preparation of teachers. We are creating guidelines by which those who have completed
their undergraduate or graduate education with distinction and have passed the appropriate
licensing exams will be permitted to enter teaching-apprenticeship programs at eligible
public schools. Other states have already found that this type of program bolsters their
teaching force by allowing uniquely qualified individuals to contribute to their public
schools. In fact, some studies even show that teachers who gained alternative
certification were more skilled than their traditionally licensed counterparts. Detractors
claim that these programs allow unqualified persons to enter the profession, but research
shows that they actually are windows of opportunity for those with special expertise and a
commitment to improve schools.
The Money Trap
The National Education Association has declared its objective to make licensure
"a process controlled by the profession." It is clear to us that the profession
has been doing little to ensure that new teachers have the knowledge base they need and
much to ensure that colleges of education could expand their control of the preparation of
public-school teachers. Although per-pupil expenditures in the United States are among the
highest in the world, most reform efforts still assume that only more money will help our
children. National and international studies, however, show that our high expenditures and
intense focus on educational theory have not served us well where it matters: the academic
performance of our schoolchildren.
President Clinton’s answer to our classroom woes is another high-cost,
low-yield fix: funding 100,000 new teachers in order to lower classroom size. This is
misguided for two reasons. First, the teaching force will not be invigorated by the
infusion of yet more teachers held to the same mediocre standards in subject knowledge.
Second, there is no evidence that smaller classes by themselves have more than a marginal
effect on student performance. A growing body of research, on the other hand, validates
what common sense tells us: Teachers with better academic preparation and skills are more
effective, and their pupils perform better. A 1991 Texas study by Ronald Ferguson showed
that student achievement had a positive correlation to the performance of teachers on a
statewide standardized test, and a recent study by Daniel Goldhaber and Dominic Brewer of
high-school math teachers, published last summer in the Journal of Human Resources,
demonstrated a strong connection between the teachers’ preparation in their subject
area and their students’ achievement test scores. Says Eric Hanushek, an economist
and education expert at the University of Rochester, "The only reasonably consistent
finding seems to be that smarter teachers do better in terms of student achievement."
The Cost of Quality
Some skeptics may object that states already facing teacher shortages
(Pennsylvania is not among them) cannot afford to raise the qualifying standards for the
profession. But we will never be able to place a qualified teacher in every classroom by
pretending that quality does not matter. Rather than recruiting the mediocre by lowering
standards, states need to make teaching in the public schools a prestigious career open to
only the best qualified. Moreover, public schools can use alternative certification to
draw upon a large group of eager professionals—many with advanced degrees—who
wish to serve in public education. Experience shows that this talent pool includes highly
skilled post-doctoral students, scientists, and adjunct college faculty keen to share
their expertise.
Under the leadership of Governor Ridge, Pennsylvania’s new standards require
objective criteria for admission, curriculum, and academic achievement in teacher
preparation. We are firmly convinced that the dynamic new teachers who will emerge from
these stronger schools of education, augmented by a carefully designed
alternative-certification program, will justify this effort. We owe our children and our
nation no less.
