Minnesota Teachers Under Siege (Part II)

Consider the lowly teacher. Teachers by necessity are counselors, nurses, disciplinarians, substitute parents, confidants and mentors to their students. They must be masters not only of their subject matter but must also have the ability to think on their feet, differentiate their teaching to meet the needs of learners at many levels, anticipate behavior and attention problems, and be able to engage a student populace that is accustomed to the fast pace of music videos and video games.

Oh, and, don't forget that all those kids need to pass the MCAs, the test by which No Child Left Behind's Adequate Yearly Progress (or lack thereof) is determined.

More is being asked of teachers today than ever before. They wear so many hats during the course of a day and now under No Child Left Behind laws, the very existence of their schools is dependent upon every group of students meeting prescribed benchmarks - even the children for whom English is a second language, those who are challenged by learning disabilities, and children who come to school hungry and without warm clothing on a cold winter's day.

And yet today's teachers (or at least their unions) have become a favorite political target of conservatives who seem to believe if unions were abolished about 90% of the current teaching force would be summarily fired for incompetence, and inexperienced but enthusiastic newcomers would step in and solve all the problems in education today.

To that end a bill in the Minnesota legislature proposes that teachers be placed in the classroom through alternative pathways to teacher licensure.

The bill is presented as a vehicle to let people teach in their area of expertise as a mid-life career change or those who work for entities such as Teach for America to become teachers after completing a short student teaching experience.

This bill is being touted as the answer to the teacher shortage. Teachers in Minnesota will be surprised to hear that there is a teacher shortage. My experience searching for jobs in Minnesota is pretty typical, I believe. Almost every job opening I have applied for in southern Minnesota has had a couple of hundred applicants, and schools with job openings in the metro area can count their applicants in the thousands. In addition to new graduates from the colleges of education at Minnesota universities, there are also many teachers looking for work who have lost their jobs to the chronic budget cutting that goes on in our public schools.

It is also thought that including teacher licensing through groups such as Teach for America will allow for a more diverse teaching force. While that may be true, why would we want these teachers to be placed into the classroom without adequate preparation and experience? Wouldn't increased college scholarships for minority education students be a better solution to this problem?

I, personally, do not believe in motives so pure and suspect this is the latest of another of the Republicans' union-busting attempts. Vouchers didn't work and the promise of charter schools has been unrealized so they are moving onto this option to cripple the teachers' union.

Is it logical that a good accountant will be an effective accounting teacher, be able to handle discipline issues and navigate around the psychology of an adolescent to actually get him to learn something? Does it make sense that a Teach for America student will do a better job teaching inner city children simply because he or she is a member of a minority group?

As a union member and teacher I have, of course, considered that my opinion may be just a little biased. Perhaps our teachers' union does produce an incompetent teaching force.

Maybe we should look at what the world's leading educational powers do. According to Randi Weingarten, AFT President, in her editorial in the February 2011 issue of American Teacher magazine, the top performing countries are Finland, Singapore and South Korea.

Weingarten says that all three countries put emphasis on teacher preparation. They use well-rounded curriculum which a teacher can tailor. They de-emphasize standardized tests (quite the opposite of what you see in America). South Korea provides increased pay, smaller class sizes and more time for teacher collaboration for those working in hard-to-staff schools. (I find it interesting that every time our union pushes for those same things, union teachers are called self-serving.) Perhaps the biggest surprise of all (at least to Conservatives) is that Finland teachers are almost 100% unionized.

With all that is being asked of today's teachers, does putting them in the classroom with significantly less preparation make sense? When you're looking for complicated tax advice, would you choose the accountant who has a four year degree and then went on to earn her CPA or the one who was fast tracked into the industry through a special law?