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Re: [Phys-L] teaching credentials +- qualifications +- administration



On 10/18/2013 09:10 AM, Edmiston, Mike wrote a thoughtful
and informative note:

In many states, including Ohio, there is a serious problem in the
administration of the rules for what a teacher can teach.

There are two topics here: The meaning of credentials, and
the administration, management, and judgment (or lack thereof)
in the educational system.

These are both important topics, but I would like to emphasize
that they are not the same topic.

In a primary or secondary school, the first-line manager is the
/principal/. One could imagine a world in which the first-line
manager is entrusted with wide authority over the hiring. If
you take away the manager's authority and discretion, and instead
hire based on credentials, that is far from ideal. It means you
are transfering the authority from the manager to whomever is
issuing the credentials. That is clumsy at best, and almost
the only way it could make sense is if you don't trust your
first-line managers, in which case you have grotesque problems
that no amount of credentialing and no amount of bureaucracy
will ever solve.

For example, there are some programs that lead to a teaching
certificate that require an undergraduate GPA of 3.0 or better,
i.e. a "B" average or better. No exceptions!
http://rhodeislandteachingfellows.ttrack.org/HowtoApply/Eligibility.aspx
This is of course not the only way to get a certificate, but it is what
it is.

Do the state officials who set the rules for this program really
think that half of the students graduating from Princeton are
too stupid to teach school in Rhode Island?

And conversely, I've known lots of people who earned a B
average from some third-rate school and obtained a certificate.
That meant they were "qualified" to teach in some legal sense,
but meant nothing of the sort in any practical sense.

Seriously, suppose we have the choice between (a) lots of
paperwork and lots of checking of credentials, (b) replacing
most of the red tape with good judgment, or (c) replacing
most of the red tape with bad jugdment. Clearly (c) is a
step in the wrong direction, but (b) is a step in the right
direction. Hire principals that you can trust, and then let
them do their job. Similarly, hire teachers that you trust,
and then let them do their job. If they screw up, fire them
and get somebody else.

The certificate doesn't tell you what you need to know. It
may be necessary in the legal sense (but even that can be
fudged, as M.E. pointed out). More importantly, it is
neither necessary nor sufficient in any practical sense.

One can point to extreme examples, such as hiring an
astrophysicist to do microbiology:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Delbrück
but there are millions of less-extreme examples all around us.

I have seen good standards -- comprehensive, performance-based
standards -- for relatively simple tasks. Conversely, the
idea of a brief, superficial standard for a task as complex
as teaching is ludicrous on its face. The idea of basing a
"standard" on courses taken, when the courses themselves are
not standardized, adds another layer of travesty.

There is a role for paperwork, process, and procedure, as an
aid to making good decisions. Those are the tools of the
trade. However, as in any other trade, the tools won't do
the job by themselves. You have to wield the tools with
judgment and skill. Generally speaking, first-rate institutions
tend to trust their own judgment and get by with very little
red tape. Third-rate institutions try to use process and
paperwork and credentials as a /substitute/ for judgment,
and it never works right.