Mike Petrilli's recent editorial, Tough choices on teacher quality, spawned lots of letters. Here are a few.
From Dave Taggart, U.S. Army, Retired, Calhoun, G.A.
Michael Petrilli makes accurate and appropriate comments, but avoids a main issue: many principals wouldn't recognize an effective teacher if they saw one, and many more do all they can to discourage effectiveness, or to drive the effective teachers out of their schools.
The whole "qualifications" issue is absurd. I found that out right from the beginning. When I retired from the Army, I went back to college for teacher certification. Since I had a BA and an MS, and had worked nearly five years in curriculum development at the Infantry School, I figured I could skip quite a few courses. Turned out that I didn't have to take PE. Seven full-time quarters later, I was certified to teach elementary school. And it was only after being evaluated on a multiple choice test, two seven-day summer courses, and transcripts of three classes (that I took back when Ford was in the White House), that I became a fully qualified middle school science teacher.
Now - with a BA in history and an MS in political science, degrees from the Army and Air Forces Command and Staff colleges, and eleven years experience teaching social studies in first through 8th grades - I am officially unqualified to teach 9th grade social studies.
From Patrick Groff, Professor of Education Emeritus, San Diego State University
As a longtime teacher and teacher educator, I sense that making decisions as to (a) which teachers should be hired, and (b) which ones turn out to be competent, is not as big a "mess" as Michael Petrilli portrays in his latest editorial.
Since a high percentage of beginning teachers who meet university and state departments of education requirements are able to find a school district that will accept their services, item (a) isn't a critical problem.
As for item (b), the test for a competent teacher should be that his/her students achieve more academically while under his/her guidance than they did while under the direction of most of their other teachers. The validity of this "value added" test increases, of course, the older that students become.
There also are reliable and valid tests of how much academic achievement students make during a school year. School districts could be urged to identify those assessments or make known the need for them.
From Eric Premack, Charter Schools Development Center
Michael Petrilli writes: "And yet, the case for academic rigor is also strong." But a glimpse at the research actually shows that the case for academic rigor is rather weak. There's little, if any, credible studies indicating that credentialing is important and only scant evidence (almost all in math) determines subject-matter expertise to be such.
The case for flexibility may be a lot stronger than meets the eye.
From David A DeSchryver, The Doyle Report
Michael Petrilli asks readers to choose between allowing individual principals to make all hiring decisions for their schools (without any oversight) and mandating that new teachers demonstrate subject knowledge through testing. "It's simply not possible to have it both ways," he writes. "Trust principals, or don't. On which side of that divide are you?"
The trouble is that Petrilli lays out a false dichotomy. Freedom and accountability are only at odds when idle policy overrides creative change. Petrilli cites the trouble D.C. is having with the Praxis exam because the exam is not available on the timeframe required by NCLB. But testing and scoring can be computer or Internet based. There just needs to be a will to do it. The GRE is offered more times a year than I can count. If they can swing a high frequency of examination, why can't the Praxis? Managed differently, it can and it should. It is what Peter Drucker (rest in peace) called creative destruction (or change).
With such creative change, the Praxis and dated D.C. requirements can improve so that we can have it both ways: Principals should, of course, be able to hire the best candidates and, if hired, the new teachers should also be able to take an online/computer based competency examination to demonstrate their basic knowledge.
You see, freedom and accountability can love each other like turkey and gravy.