- Jan
17
2013
At peril of making the news about myself, I offer myself as an example of one thing that might be wrong with our K-12 system. I currently (and proudly!) teach French at Spearfish High School and direct drama next door at Spearfish Middle School.
If you review my teaching certificate, you will see I am certified to teach French. That certification comes from a minor in French that I finished at SDSU in 1990. I did nothing with my French (other than stammer at a pretty Frenchwoman in St. Petersburg) for 21 years, until Spearfish hired me in 2011.
Drama appears nowhere on my teaching certificate. One needs no such endorsement to coach extracurriculars. I have K-12 acting and directing experience, but on paper, my only formal preparation for directing school plays is some speech and lit classes.
But here I am, large and in charge of two important school programs. The same was true in my last big teaching job, at Montrose, where I taught speech, composition, literature, and drama, even though I don't even have a minor in any of those subjects. South Dakota may be the only state in the union where I could have built the K-12 résumé I have.
South Dakota, don't get me wrong: you've been very good to me. I appreciate the opportunities you've given me to work with students and language and art. But if we're committed to the highest-quality K-12 education, I have to ask: should you be letting me teach?
Granted, things are a little tougher for new teachers. Since my certification in 1994, the state has (or, I should say, bought from an other out-state corporation) a certification exam. New teachers have to sit for exams with questions on their content area and on teaching theory and practice. There are still a number of subject areas that don't require a Praxis test (French does, but my other big language, Russian, does not).
I've not had the pleasure of taking the Praxis™ (and I welcome the comments below of teachers who have!), but I have a feeling it's not quite as rigorous as, say, the South Dakota bar exam, which requires aspiring lawyers to sit for two days worth of essay and multiple-choice questions. If I understand it correctly, prospective teachers can retake their Praxis test as many times as necessary to reach the cut score. South Dakota bar exam takers get three tries.
Joel Klein thinks teachers should face a rigorous bar exam... and then some:
We need to start by insisting on a rigorous entry exam for those who teach, along the lines of the bar exam for lawyers or the national medical exam for doctors. Shanker actually proposed a three-part national exam: first "a stiff test of subject matter knowledge," followed by a second test on "pedagogy ... [including] the ability to apply educational principles to different student developmental needs and learning styles." Then, for those who passed both, he recommended a "supervised internship program of from one to three years in which teachers would actually be evaluated on the basis of how well they worked with students and with their colleagues" [Joel Klein, "The Case for a Teacher Bar Exam," The Atlantic, 2013.01.10].
I love taking tests (which also translates into a love of creating tests, much to the chagrin of my ever-suffering students). Bring on a bar exam. But how about that three-year internship? Do we have time to subject students to that much practice teaching without radically restructuring their undergraduate education or requiring every prospective teacher to obtain a graduate degree?
And can South Dakota, where rural districts often must take utility players like me and plug them into whatever openings they have, afford to hire only teachers with professional preparation of rigor and length equal to that of lawyers?
20 Responses to “Think South Dakota Education Needs Reform? How About a Teacher Bar Exam?”
Do it. Then pay teachers $150-250/hour and $5,000 for test (trial) days, per day.
Taunia beat me to the issue of compensation.
There is a market reality to deal with with teaching as a profession, especially in SD. Any reasonable student has to weigh the cost of a degree with the potential to recoup the work and effort of that degree once in the profession.
Many proposals, even in SD, are focusing on better teacher education (please, can we stop calling it training - one trains a dog, not a professional). If education wants to truly draw the best and the brightest, then education has to employ the market forces, wages and benefits, to make teaching as attractive as law, medicine, engineering, and business. If education is not to be the fall-back career, then it ought to pay better than fall-back wages compared to the fields we hope to draw candidates from. Even now, proposals to make student teaching a full year are being piloted; if that requires an additional year of college to complete, how would that make sense economically for a student?
In my mind, I hope there are rigorous qualifications for teachers. I hope that getting a teaching job is as difficult as anyone could imagine. I want the state to create such a need for qualified teachers and not accept anything less so that they are forced to pay the wages that will result from that created need. If history can be a guide, that will not happen. Wages/funding will drive policy more than quality.
Coming to grips with the question, "How can we get bright, dedicated students to go into education then retain them for a professional career in SD?" should be the center piece of the discussion in Pierre. Mandating quality is not enough; it is time to use those "free-market" forces I hear so much about to fix problems.
Parents are responsible for teachng their chldren, the need no governemnta;l bar exam. You control freaks are not only ineffective, but alsovery expensive as proven by Taunia's comment. No wonder we have an out of control federal debt problem.
Sibson, I just want to kiss your face off and tell you I appreciate that you are part of a society that loves you in spite of your daffy ways, every time I see you post. I don't read very much of what you write, but I still love you. Hang in there, Sibson. You're amazing.
I fully expect you to disagree with this post. I know you won't disappoint me. <3
There are still many qualified teachers looking for work. It was not long ago that you would hear of a position opening up and you would have 40-50 applicants per job. I don't know what the current status is but things have to be tighter than ever.
Mr. Sibson's "parents are responsible for teaching their children" is a philosophical perspective to which I don't necessarily disagree. But the fuller picture is that public education is mandated by our state constitution: "The stability of a republican form of government depending on the morality and intelligence of the people, it shall be the duty of the Legislature to establish and maintain a general and uniform system of public schools wherein tuition shall be without charge, and equally open to all; and to adopt all suitable means to secure to the people the advantages and opportunities of education." S.D. Const. art. VIII, § 1.
I agree with Mr. O'Brien that the central question our lawmakers need to adress is "How can we get bright, dedicated students to go into education then retain them for a professional career in SD?"
Steve, be fair. You don't get to beat me up on the gun debate by saying the Second Amendment is a Constitutional issue, therefore absolute, then come over to the education debate and advocate ignoring the Constitutional responsibility for our state to provide education.
Also, to be clear, I believe there ought to be accountability and rigorous, fair evaluation of teachers. I see that as a local district level responsibility; local boards/superintendents hire the teachers so local boards/superintendents should be responsible for those teachers' quality. They should answer to their communities' voters on that issue. The state's role is to give locals ALL the resources to achieve those aims.
Both Steve and Fred point out "How can we get bright, dedicated students to go into education then retain them for a professional career in SD?"
I tell all of the best and brightest I come across to look for other career choices. Education produces the same number of headaches, heartaches, and churning stomachs that other professions do, but the other professions are accorded more pay and more respect.
LK, I find myself believing that although teaching is a wonderful profession, SD is not the right place for its practice. Embrace the headaches, heartaches, churning stomaches (and the value of molding these bright youth - it's not all downside), but practice in a state that will pay you your professional value - not two-thirds of that value.
Even though because of budget cuts we eliminated the financial incentive to be nationally board certified, it's still an exercise similar to a bar exam. I feel strongly that incentive should be reinstated because the teachers that became certified were obviously top tier teachers and a way to demonstrate that the extra money is getting results.
A bar exam is easy to create for the law. After all, the law is the law; it is black and white. Being right about the law means you win. Teaching is less that dichromatic. Certainly on matters of fact there is the right and wrong: 2+2=4; Washington was the first president; Gerunds operate as nouns in sentences. However, looking at the pedagogy, the skill of teaching, doesn't lend itself so well to testing. A bar exam for teachers would probably end up limited to looking like the Praxis, a content area test.
I have had teachers who were "a lesson ahead of the kids" who were remarkable in their ability to explain and create understanding - they were good teachers. I have had teachers who were brilliant in their content knowledge, but incapable of getting that material into my head - they were not good teachers.
I think Cory's point is well taken, that some teachers are out of their element content wise, and in some cases that is a detriment to their teaching. I just want to throw in that content knowledge is not the singular measure of a teacher. Good evaluation will take that into account as a factor, but it will also look at all the elements of instruction, professionalism, and interpersonal strengths that embody good teaching and good teachers.
Whether teachers or students, testing is seldom the easy answer.
Fred & Steve, the state is constitutional responsible for education our children on a state level, right? Then why are they letting the feds run the show? There is nothing in the federal constitution that says they can stick their nose into our children's minds.
I will put forward one modest proposal to improve education in South Dakota: Stop hiring people to be coaches first and teachers as an afterthought. If there is only one position that must fulfill both roles, it would be far better to have a good teacher as a mediocre coach than the other way around.
I am not saying that coaches can't be good teachers; one of the best high school teachers I had was also a coach. But coaches can also be outstandingly awful teachers.
To address Fred's question: Start some entrepreneurial education from the very first math lessons. If all the focus is on getting a good job--well, frankly, there are some good jobs here but lots of better jobs elsewhere. As I said to convince my husband to move back home with me six years ago: "South Dakota is a place where you make your own opportunity." We need to start planting the seed that creating your own career is possible, in which case "getting a job" is a stepping stone to that end instead of the ultimate goal.
Can teachers get paid like lawyers then?
I have not kept posted on the certification requirements and the changes. Until the last five years or so of the time I taught at NSU, our teacher ed students were aggressively recruited on a national level. There came a time each year that I spent a tremendous amount of time writing letters of recommendation, for which was asked very specific evaluation information on student performance in specific classes. Many of our students intended to teach in South Dakota at that time, but found the professional opportunities offered elsewhere too attractive by comparison. During my last years of teaching, I recall that the school districts were asking for waivers on the certification requirements so that provisional certificates could be issued and positions could be filled with the people available. Another factor in the last half decade of my teaching was the change in students. The brightest and most intellectually ambitious students on campus were in the teacher education program. But the brightest students began to consider other professions. I can name quite a few of our most promising students in teacher education who chose not to teach after their practice teaching experience.
What Shanker proposes in a bar exam was practiced in many states in the past. But then, transcripts were a reliable indicator of competence. With the shift from course rigor, the advent of student evaluations of instruction, and a mission to attract and retain as many students as possible to make up with tuition funding no longer supplied by the state, transcripts and recommendation evaluations became unreliable indicators of competence.
However, many states required lengthy exams in subject matter and method, and I recall students reviewing in much the way attorneys do in preparation for bar exams.
For some time, it has been apparent that teachers have little influence on the state of education. It is now driven by politics, and those who want to substitute the training of workers for the development of well-rounded minds have prevailed.
I question how many people would endure more rigorous education and a bar-like exam for the rewards and general public attitude accorded teachers. Like LK, I advise students with intelligence and ambition to investigate what education has become. That's what happened to those talented ones I knew who chose to change their career paths after experiencing practice teaching.
Sibby, don't worry: if I suggest we have a bar exam for teachers, I'm not conducting some nefarious plot to ban homeschooling. I would only make the bar exam a pre-requisite for obtaining a public school teaching certificate. You know I like homeschooling and wish more parents had the time and income to stay home and do it.
But then as Mr. O'Brien notes (and as I've often argued), good teaching is identified by much more than test scores (either students' or the teacher's). But that's got to be true in law and medicine, too: there must be folks who can ace the professional certification exams but who stink at treating patients or winning cases. So then we turn to the long internships to give principals a chance to observe the newbies on the job and identify the holistic qualities that Steve O. talks about... and then we need more money, because we're delaying those prospective teachers' entry into paying work even longer.
Heidi, you're pointing at the elephant in the room. As long as public schools are in charge of our extracurricular activities (and thus the provision of the largest source of community entertainment—second maybe to beer?&mhdas;in a majority of South Dakota towns), can we do anything to change that coach-hiring bias?
And worse, how can we make any progress in that direction when school board members in Rapid City say that their district needs to focus on improving athletics by getting rid of the "everybody plays" philosophy and helping elite athletes get the attention of college recruiters?
And David notes the major flaw in proposing a teacher bar exam: simply creating another hoop for teacher candidates to jump through drives more of the smart ones to other careers. It was the same with last year's reforms: The Governor would have created a bunch of hoops for teachers to jump through to get extra pay, but teachers could have earned even more extra pay by jumping through just one hoop, moving to another state.
Ryan, curious: would it be better to fund extra pay for those who choose national board certification or to require every teacher to meet tougher certification standards and to pay them all accordingly?
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