The big reason that a degreed person must go and get a teaching certificate before stepping into a classroom? You don’t know how to teach a class. You may very well be an expert in your subject matter, but stepping in front of a classroom of unruly, generally high-spirited, really would rather be somewhere else, students is a different kettle of fish.

The “certificate” that you’re required to get before becoming a licensed teacher is to make sure that you have learned the classroom techniques necessary to have a fighting chance at being a successful teacher IN THE CLASSROOM.

And the difference with being a college teacher as opposed to a k-12 teacher, well that’s pretty much a no-brainer. College ‘kids’ pretty much choose to be in your class. It isn’t legally mandatory, it’s still a choice. You aren’t going to face the same difficulties in human relations in a college class that you find in a k-12 class.

The additional courses that a degreed person must take to earn a teaching certificate aren’t designed to make the teachers unions into a protection racket. The courses are there to take a highly qualified professional person and turn him or her into a highly qualified TEACHER.

I know this because that’s exactly what I’m doing with my life right now. I’m taking the courses necessary to turn my degree into a teaching license. I’m being taught how to teach. It’s a great deal more difficult than it sounds.

Work hard at developing a system that can be more flexible for those who need it and would benefit from it. A few more hours more a week working on math would have been great for me. There are probably others who could have used the time on the work in English that I breezed through. A wise use of technology might help enable this type of customization for the needs of the student if combined with a different class structure than the majority of schools in this country have.

As far as the qualifications to teach are concerned don’t your schools have systems like most of the ones around here where people like you can fairly easily get the certification to teach? There are several different programs that do that for people with degrees or real world experience around here.

Amen. I have a couple o’ graduate degrees and am qualified to teach college courses, but not high school courses? Heh.

UTeach sounds like a good idea. It’s insane that the requirement for teaching in many places isn’t knowing the subject matter, but having an education degree.

Spain has had vocational training for…well just about forever. Kids coming out of FP (Formación Profesional) have higher employment ratings than college graduates, and almost all find a job in their field. Now they’re slowly getting rid of FP in favor of the more American model, against the wishes of the populace, naturally.

Like I feel pity for these people. Deep, real pity.

They can’t get real attention , from anybody, for doing anything authentic or genuine, so they “decide” they are going to be “certain” choices for people who are not even born yet.

Why not let the kids just live? Would it end the world to just focus on the idiots who want to plan school systems and try to cure whatever mental illness it is that drives them to NEED to tell younger adults, who are probably superior to them , what their choices are?

There might be a 15 year old who could cure cancer , but these people are petrified that that if they let one 15 year old get a hundred million $ for doing something useful, the they would lose their jobs and credibility, they would lose their identity.

I flew an airplane for the first time when I was 14 years old, I could weld, I was a carpenter, I could navigate, and I was set to make $650 dollars a day the day I turned 18 years old.

Then the idiots in my community made me a dishwasher.

They call that “one child left behind,” and I promise you I will never let them, their kids, or their grandkids ever forget it. I will never shut up about what they did.

There were dozens of kids like me who could have been leaders in the 80’s and 90’s but then they equalized us with the “average kids,” who were set up to make less than $650 dollars a day.

Equalize me, and I will eventually equalize your entire society and culture.

Let me tell you my solution, ASK THE KIDS.

the inanity of that bureaucracy pales next to the dullards that dominate many superintendents’ and principals’ offices, especially in large-city school districts.

I don’t think there’s much you can do to de-bureaucrafy the principal’s office. That’s just a hazard of the business.

However, UT in particular and Texas in general, has gone out of its way to make becoming a teacher easier. UTeach is a licensing course that consists of less than a semester’s worth of classes you can staple on to any major. And I believe you can at least Substitute Teach so long as you have a degree to back you up.

But I wouldn’t toss off a Teacher’s License all together, I’d just find a way to get more people licensed more efficently.

Why do we have epic levels of CS, Business, and Engineering grads, but almost no good CS, Business, or Engineering teachers in public school?

The problem is not as much salaries as inane licensing requirements. For example, I have a graduate degree in political science, yet I would not be allowed to teach high school social studies.

The teachers’ unions have successfully lobbied for a system that ignores subject-matter qualifications in favor of building a market for empty-credit courses in education departments. Teaching licenses for elementary and secondary education are predicated on completing these courses in abstract “education theory” (often comprised of little more than political correctness platitudes and vague ramblings — we are usually NOT talking about serious courses in child psychological development here) instead of knowing anything at all about the subject to be taught.

Thus, you could raise salaries all day long and the real experts — the PhDs and those with real-world experience — still won’t want to teach because they won’t want to subject themselves to ideological reprogramming and intellectual bankruptcy in order to get their state-mandated and union-mandated teaching license.

Even if the licensing system were reformed, the intellectually and morally bankrupt work environment would deter many quality subject-matter experts from wanting to teach. I worked for the Defense Department for 15 years and the inanity of that bureaucracy pales next to the dullards that dominate many superintendents’ and principals’ offices, especially in large-city school districts.

I also read the Commission’s report a few days ago and I have to say, the focus on vocational training as a serious alternative to college is something we desperately need. There are dozens of career paths that simply do not require a 4-year degree to develop the necessary skills. I work for an electrical equipment sales and service company and it is extremely difficult for us to find trained technicians when we’re hiring. And that’s an industry-wide problem. Electricians, plumbers, and other traditional blue-caller jobs just aren’t being filled because everybody puts so much emphasis on getting a Bachelor’s Degree and an office job.

Why do we have epic levels of CS, Business, and Engineering grads, but almost no good CS, Business, or Engineering teachers in public school? Maybe because getting a shitty IT job will pay double what a veteran teacher can make. The best high school teachers I had didn’t treat the job like work. They treated it like a hobbie. It was something they did for fun, because they sure as hell weren’t doing it for a living.

That said, getting kids in the classroom sooner makes a great deal of sense. My high school calculus classes were packed to the brim with no small number of Sophomores fighting for slots. My CS classes (despite having crappy teachers) never went without a full rooster. People were taking Chem and Bio at the same time, just so they could fit in Bio II and Chem III before they graduated. Kids are incredibly underestimated in terms of learning capacity, even in the best schools. The sooner you get them started, the better.

It would be fascinating to find a way to increase their involvement.

1. As I see proposals and critique of proposals floated, I’ll share them with you.

2. In my parent-only/non-expert opininion, the ultimate solution is rooted at home, in greater parental involvement, and fewer parental excuses. Without that foundation, I fear every other proposal is doomed. Unfortunately, I’m not sure what it will take to re-engage parents in their child’s education. Some are already. Many aren’t We (especialy my dear wife) tend to be very engaged in our son’s education, but we also send him to a parochial school where involvement is not only expected but required; plus, we only have one child; plus, due to his special learning needs, we have no other choice.