Secondly, if the bar was to be instituted at a state level—as legal bars are—what difference would it be from the certification system already in place? Well, most likely it would be the certification system in place with the added benefit of an unnecessarily stressful and expensive bar exam. Take New York State for example. In order to become a Childhood (Elementary) Teacher serving grades 1-6 a teacher must complete an accredited masters program (within 5 years of initial certification), pass the Liberal Arts and Sciences Test (LAST), the Content Specialty Test (CST), and the Assessment of Teaching Skills Written (ATS-W) Exam. If you are like me and you have additional certifications beyond Common Branches (General Education) you have to take an additional CST examination and corresponding course work at an accredited university to hold certification in that area.
Additionally you have to have 75 hours of professional development or 12 college credits every three years to keep your certification from lapsing (as NYS has abolished teacher licensing in lieu of literally enslaving them to student loan debt or an increasingly abusive public climate in order to remain eligible to work in a profession they have a degree in). There’s nothing wrong with PD requirements or continuing ed for that matter, but the fact remains that teachers are heavily vetted, and (though quality varies from program to program, I’ll acquiesce that) well educated in the philosophy and theory of their craft. So most of the recommendations of the AFT are baseless or deceptive as to what teachers have to go through. The statement seems to assert that new teachers are handed a classroom on a silver platter and are simply told “use the force” in terms of pedagogical experimentation and execution.
Thirdly, in an almost hilarious lack of mid-statement consistency Weingarten and the AFT are suggesting that standardized test creators have too much control over the professional and personal lives of teachers, and that the solution to this problem is to construct a standardized test for teachers to take before become the administrators of standardized tests. The statement is tragically comical because it both acknowledges one of the serious hindrances and plagues of the system and its mindset while simultaneously being thoroughly infected and limited by its tenants. The fact that overregulation has become something of a blight over many professions and industries in the country seems to fall on deaf ears when it comes to aging paper pushers who may be reaching their shelf life (if recommendations like these are indications of the freshness of ideas).
There are a few notions—even if not whole ideas—in the statement that are credible as wonderings and paths to be explored. The path of teacher education and what lies within such training should be reconsidered. The emphasis of the Student Teacher should be shifted from the Student end to the Teacher end. While theory and philosophy are important parts of education and pedagogy there isn’t enough quality student teaching time in teacher education. I have often asserted that being a Student Teacher should be more like being an apprentice or journeyman in a guild where you work closely with a master in the honing of a craft or skill and the theory and practice are melded more often in a simultaneous transmission and execution.
In my own Master’s program at New York University I suggested to several professors that the school should open a magnet school where the professors who taught us theory also showed us that same theory in practice—a process which would sew the Student moniker to the Teacher moniker in the Student Teacher designation. Seeing ones professor in action as a teacher is a rarely seen, if ever, event which can cause a disorienting effect on practicing theory as a student as not all teachers are taught the same approaches. The teacher you are assigned to as a student teacher may not know the approach you are being taught in a particular university, or the school in which you are placed may not follow a program that allows for that practice to be attempted. While most agreed with the sentiment and spirit of my idea they simply shrugged the idea off as ideal but technically difficult citing questions such as “who would attend the school?” “where would it be located?” and inevitably “who would pay for it?”. Meaning that the best ideas for teacher education—or at least better ideas—are bogged down by questions that extend well beyond any actual care for the quality of teacher education or student education.
I’ve long argued that as Americans we really don’t care about the education of our children. Not enough to effect change. Like smokers who know that smoking is harmful but are not moved enough to quit, we only want to want to enact a change for the better. In that sense, much like the smoker may start jogging as a red herring to fitness, the AFT is suggesting a bar examination as a cue that, to paraphrase the emcee Canibus, any movement forward is progression. I defy that sentiment but also challenge our culture to seriously consider the priority and the scope of education reform and what education means to us. In the meanwhile our masked apathy towards the education system and the importance of education is an illustrative factor in why we are allowing private interests to overtake our greatest public service, education, in the name of a black bottom line.
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Thanks Brandon, for standing up, and speaking out.