Uncertified Teachers Performing Well

[darski]

I still believe we had better teachers who had two years at "Normal school" than we have with 4 years at U and a degree in education.

If you can't learn most jobs in two years there is something wrong with the training or with you. (OK brain surgeons can have 3 years )

[other one]

I always wondered if state "teacher certification" was a beurocratic dream that didn't produce better teachers; turns out it doesn't! From the NY Sun, here are some excerpts.

Uncertified Teachers Performing Well, Study Says

Uncertified teachers end up performing just as well in the classroom as certified teachers and alternatively trained teachers like Teaching Fellows, a study to be released today says.

The study's results appear to challenge requirements under the federal No Child Left Behind Act that every classroom have a "highly qualified" teacher, instead suggesting that schools should put more emphasis on weeding out bad apples after the teachers have been hired.

"These are people who have no prior experience in teaching and they go into the lowest performing schools, and they do just as well," a Columbia University Business School professor, Jonah Rockoff, who co-authored the study, said. "Where you went to college and what your GPA was doesn't seem to tell you how good you're going to be in the classroom."

In the study, researchers at the Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank affiliated with Stanford University, used standardized test scores to measure the performance of New York City students taught by traditionally certified teachers, uncertified teachers, and teachers who enter the profession through alternative programs such as Teach for America and Teaching Fellows. They found that while alternatively certified and uncertified teachers do worse at first, they appear to improve at faster rates than traditionally certified teachers in their first years on the job. By the teachers' third year on the job, students of alternatively certified and uncertified teachers are performing just as well as those of traditionally certified teachers.

You are not really showing that untrained teachers are as good as teachers that have been taught teaching skills, what you are seeing is that teachers are not the problem in our lowest performing schools........ it's the parents and the students. Teachers can't make students learn when they don't think education is important just like you can't make a horse drink when you take him/her to water....... if they are not thursty for water or education nothing will happen..... good teacfher..... bad teacher... or novice. Nothing will change.

You want to help the schols that are preforming badly,.... find a way to make students hunger for knowledge, and teachers simply can not do that if partents have not instilled it into them before or as they start schools.

Sam

[darski]

Here's a thought.... why not just get people to teach kids to read.

You would be amazed at what happens to kids who learn to read.

But all the money is made in remedial readers..

[Akabu]

The study's results appear to challenge requirements under the federal No Child Left Behind Act that every classroom have a "highly qualified" teacher, instead suggesting that schools should put more emphasis on weeding out bad apples after the teachers have been hired.

Unfortunately, due to the regulations that have been forced through every public school system in the USA by the teachers union it is almost impossible to fire a non performing teacher. If a teacher stays out of controversy the chances of getting the teacher fired is less than the chance of a camel going through the eye of a needle.

This is the reason my sister no longer teaches, but homeschools. She left teaching because the most incompetant teachers are promoted to positions to make more stupid regulations that allow failing teachers to stay.

[other one]

The study's results appear to challenge requirements under the federal No Child Left Behind Act that every classroom have a "highly qualified" teacher, instead suggesting that schools should put more emphasis on weeding out bad apples after the teachers have been hired.

Unfortunately, due to the regulations that have been forced through every public school system in the USA by the teachers union it is almost impossible to fire a non performing teacher. If a teacher stays out of controversy the chances of getting the teacher fired is less than the chance of a camel going through the eye of a needle.

This is the reason my sister no longer teaches, but homeschools. She left teaching because the most incompetant teachers are promoted to positions to make more stupid regulations that allow failing teachers to stay.

That is not the case in all places. I have seen it happen in schools in Oklahoma. One just has to build a case to prove a teacher is incompetant and very fiew administrators are willing to go to the trouble to do so....... the alternative would be to have the administrators just descide who they wanted to keep and let go and that is not a good thing to have. Teaching is not an easy profession, nor is it financially a great way to get rich. Most teachers I know (and that is a lot) don't like the NEA nor what it stands for and don't go along with what they preach.... jus depends on where you are.

Btw, my wife is a kindergarten teacher and each year 90 percent or more of her kids can read at the first to third grade level when they leave her class. The kids also have prayer sessions that just spring up on their own, that in the state of Oklahoma she can not stop (even if she wanted to).

So when you give a general thumbs down to public education, please keep in mind that not all places are that way and by far overall teachers do not fit the bill of the stories that circulate on theinternet.

[mikado5001]

I for one learned better from a few of the non-certified teachers I have had. That is those who were starting out and not yet certified. Why? I do not know. But perhaps the certification process somehow educates away some natural teaching gifts.