Pennsylvania’s education chief vows to restore luster to his state’s teacher-prep programs
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 In response to a storm of public criticism, state education officials in Massachusetts recently repealed their decision to lower the qualifying score on a rather basic teacher-licensing exam after 59 percent of the applicants flunked it.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.
