Debating NCLB

There is a really good article in the NY Times about NCLB and teacher certification. It shows a significant flaw in the NCLB legislation that requires all public school teachers to be certified as "highly qualified" through education classes and training. While I don't disagree with the push to require teachers, especially new teachers, to get training and certification, the way it is being implemented is a mistake.

One of the biggest problems facing public school systems in a lack of flexibility and ability to change. This restriction on teachers only adds to a lack of flexibility. We should be doing all that we can to encourage the best teachers to work in public schools. We also have to realize that sometimes, the best teachers are people with PhD's or real world experience who late in life want to go into education. I saw this first-hand in Montgomery County, Maryland where the schools had trouble finding "highly qualified" teachers for such focused classes like nursing, engineering, and business. They had no problem though finding professionals that didn't have the certification but wanted to teach. Requiring them to go through a long certification process, that can also be a humbling (or even humiliating) process will only discourage these teachers.

This doesn't mean that I am opposed to all training requirements. One of the people interviewed for the article said that she thinks it is important that all teachers know how to work with students whose primary language is not English, or students who are being mainstreamed from special ed classes. I agree with that. But maybe there can be exceptions granted to teachers who have a background in instruction (college or private school) to skip the very basic classes on teaching that are a part of this long certification process. Someone who has taught in college might not know everything necessary to teach in high school, but they certainly have enough experience that they don't need instruction in classroom management or drawing up a lesson plan.

Conservatives are often trying to replicate the private sector in public institutions. While I certainly support that goal, I often think what we choose to replicate is not what makes the private sector strong. Private schools work so well because they have good teachers. But they have good teachers not because they have a cumbersome certification process; it is because they are flexible. That is what we need to replicate in our public schools.