Teacher “Education” (Part 1 of 2)

This article is the first of two parts in a critical examination on the education of prospective teachers in California.  This first part examines the difficult process by which a hopeful may actually be hired as a teacher.  Part 2 will examine the futility and wastefulness of the training that a newly-hired teacher must endure.

The Myth of Being “Highly Qualified”

The provisions of the NCLB act demand that teachers must be certified as “Highly Qualified” before they are allowed full autonomy in a classroom.  Exactly what it means to be “Highly Qualified” is not clearly defined by the act, as such requirements are left to the discretion of the state governments.  However, attention should be brought to two vital concerns in this quest for so-called “Highly Qualified” teachers.

First, NCLB does not demand that teachers who were tenured and/or in service before the passing of the act meet the same requirements for “High Qualification.”  In other words, the states do not have to retroactively train seasoned teachers to meet the same standards as those only recently entering the field.  Some districts will opt to provide certain, limited training opportunities, or they will require additional education, particularly on the topic of bilingual education, but these “continuing education” requirements, as such, are not nearly as comprehensive or demanding as those of a pre-service teacher in training.  Thus, until every last teacher who was in service before 2001 is phased out of the system, the likelihood remains (albeit on a declining scale) that students will still be taught by teachers who are not “Highly Qualified.”

Second, and more importantly, we must question whether the requirements imposed by the state governments are actually leading to “High Qualification,” or if they are, in fact, hurting the educational process more than helping it.  The rest of this article will focus on the weaknesses inherent in California’s program of teacher “education.”  This first part will examine the difficult process by which a hopeful may actually be hired as a teacher.  Part 2 will examine the futility and wastefulness of the training that a newly-hired teacher must endure.

So You Want to Become a High School Teacher

First, you need a bachelor’s degree.  In many regards, this is the easy part.  Since a student tends to get more out of the “college experience” than just the degree and job placement, working for the bachelor’s degree feels less like “jumping through hoops” than it will feel after graduation, when the real trial begins.  The bachelor’s degree does not have to be in any specific field, but it will usually be in the “liberal arts” or in a discipline that relates to the content area our subject wishes to teach.  To use myself as an example, my B.A. is in history, which lends itself to teaching the content area of social studies.

Next, you need to pass the California Basic Educational Skills Test (CBEST).  This is where it starts to get silly.  According to the state’s own web site, “the CBEST is designed to test basic reading, mathematics, and writing skills.”  It is curious to think that an aspiring teacher, having spent four years in college and graduating with an advanced baccalaureate degree, somehow did not acquire “basic reading, mathematic, and writing skills” in that time.  It should also be noted that the cost of the CBEST is $40.

Now you need a teaching credential.  If you were smart, you knew from day one of your freshman year at college that you were going to be the world’s greatest teacher, so you planned your schedule perfectly, executed it without error, and you earned your credential simultaneously with your bachelor’s degree.  However, if you were like most of us, you were “undeclared” for most of your freshman year, if not longer, and you spent too much of your lower division semesters in the student lounge playing beer pong. Things didn’t “tidy up” quite as nicely as you would have liked on grad night, so now you have to find a credentialing program.

Let it be stated at this point that anyone who is looking for a credentialing program at this time who does not strongly consider an on-line program such as National University is making a tremendous mistake. On-line programs are the only sensible way to pursue a teaching credential.  Without them, an aspiring teacher is condemned to take the traditional course of action, which includes one-and-a-half to two years of additional schooling on teacher education (the content of which will be deconstructed in Part 2).  Much of this program will require the student to commit to scores and scores of hours doing professional observation and attending classes – during normal daytime school hours.  This means that the typical pre-service teacher must continue to earn a menial living through part-time and night jobs while completing his credential, hardly a glamorous prospect after having already spent his entire college career in retail or food service.  This combined with the mandated CBEST, one wonders what the value of a bachelor’s degree really is, beyond a “pat on the back” for getting “past half way.”

It gets worse.  To teach a given subject, you must ensure that your undergraduate classes align perfectly with the prerequisites for being “Highly Qualified” in that content area.  (This would have been during the long-term scheduling phase of your freshman year, between beer pong tournaments).  If there is any discrepancy due to lack of foresight or anything else, you must also pass the California Subject Examination for Teachers (CSET) in the given content area.  This is easy to understand if our aspiring teacher wants to teach mathematics, but his bachelor’s degree is in an entirely different subject, say, English.  However, this requirement is more difficult to understand when, as in my own case, the aspiring teacher wants to teach social studies and his degree is in history.

Apparently, a bachelor’s degree in history with an emphasis on East Asia, graduation with honors and “distinction in general scholarship,” awarded by the University of California, Berkeley, does not certify that I possess expertise in the field of social studies or that I possess the “basic reading, mathematic, and writing skills” necessary to teach high school students.