State licensing requirements for teachers in public schools mandate a certificate from an approved school of education — that is, a teacher training program at a college or university. The problem is that these programs attract some of the weakest students and do little or nothing to improve their academic capabilities. New York state recently administered a basic literacy test to prospective teachers and found that a high percentage of them couldn’t pass.
We have known about this problem for a long time, but it continues because there is no penalty for graduating people who aren’t very sharp academically. No ed school goes broke because many of its grads are not good at basic English.
My latest Forbes piece is about this problem. The federal Department of Education has proposed new regulations, but I say the only solution is to allow competition to flourish by allowing school officials to hire (and fire) on the basis of teacher competence, not mere paper credentials.
