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Nah, just abolish teachers certificates -- anyone with a bachelor's in whatever can teach that subject. It's quite a comfy job for smart slackers, just that the pipeline tends to push those people on to something else -- which by the time they are done, another two years to get suitable indoctrinated is a bridge too far to consider.
Teacher's certificates are already not required to teach in private schools, or charter schools in some states. In some states, it's quite easy to get a teaching certificate -- people with a BA can attend night school while teaching full time (and the classes aren't all that hard). Difficult while raising young kids, but otherwise not too bad.
These states do not have better test scores. These states still have teacher shortages.
It's fine with me to let people with a Bachelor's in something, anything, teach in their area of competence. The teaching programs I've participated in were not particularly grounded in reality. But this is extremely unlikely to make things significantly better, because the cushy jobs for smart slackers (which is to say, the jobs where the main job is communicating information, rather than "community building and classroom management") already have adequate teachers. And that community building and classroom management is not particularly about intelligence. It's basically orthogonal to academic ability.
Those states aren't taking my suggestion -- night school to get a teaching certificate may seem like a trivial inconvenience, but it's a quite a bit higher bar than "submit a resume, criminal record check, and interview".
So which jobs are contributing to the teacher shortage? (real question, idk -- but if they are not focused around "communicating information" (aka "teaching") my instinct would be to eliminate those jobs -- et voila, shortage eliminated!
I would personally be fine with that, but unfortunately, "willing to put up with BS administrative tasks, which are often long and dull" is actually part of the job. Working in public schools is a long procession of trivial inconveniences.
Special education, bus drivers, custodians, less than full time positions, bilingual positions, educational assistants who make ~$20,000, normal teaching positions in the sort of school where the "students" are getting into knife fights, yelling down the teachers, throwing furniture at teachers, and the administrators are yelling at teachers in the hallway. Also some of the schools where the "students" can't speak English, but the teacher is teaching entirely in English. Maybe also some math and science, though the last time I've seen those positions going unfilled was quite some time.
I suspect that the deal with things like bus drivers and custodians is that they still have to pass a background check and be proven safe with kids, but there's no status, and they don't pay well. Educational assistant jobs also pay terribly, and they can be transferred to super unpleasant and sometimes dangerous one on one behavioral special education positions.
You might naively think "I am not a special education teacher, and so I would not have to teach special education students, about whom I know very little." This is not true. More than half the elementary classrooms have a couple of children in them who have pretty high support needs, need a great deal of individual attention, but won't get it, because there are also at least 20 other kids, simultaneously learning normal kid stuff. I'm not going to describe the people in question in too much detail here, but it can get rough. Especially since everybody has to be super vague about the situation.There are also a lot of "BIPs" now -- behavior action plans, which mean that every time the child acts badly, the teacher is punished by having to fill out a lot of forms (while they are "teaching" -- elementary teachers do not necessarily get a prep period every day), and the child is sent to the counselor for a doughnut or something.
The aggressive classrooms are self evident. I knew someone who became a professional dancer after having a desk thrown at here, and the district did not do anything about it, and the offender came right back. I knew a shop teacher who quit mid-year after a young person was running around with sharp tools and propane torches, but could not be removed from the class.
In one sense, there is a clear and obvious route to correcting these situations: perhaps it was unwise to make public schools the childcare/detention facility of last resort. Perhaps that shouldn't be the job of schools. Yet here we are. And the legislature could probably go ahead and say "anyone who can pas this fairly difficult test is free to teach," and that might be a good idea, but it will still not improve conditions, so it would still be a pretty hard sell outside of a couple years of idealism for most people who aren't committed enough to at least take a couple of night school classes while applying.
Edit: also, this https://educationrealist.wordpress.com/2012/06/14/difference-between-tech-hiring-and-teacher-hiring/
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There are alternative certification programs that allow people who already hold a random bachelor's degree to to become teachers without going back to school for two years. I myself did the online, self-paced American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence (ABCTE) program and found a position that way.
Alternatively, I could have gone to a local community college and completed their one-year, two-semester Educator Preparation Institute (EPI) program, but that would have been more expensive (I got the ABCTE program on sale for $1550, while 21 credits for seven courses would have come out to about $2500) and involved more work (ABCTE only required two high-stakes tests, one for the subject area and the other for pedagogy). Admittedly, the EPI programs include student teaching, while ABCTE does not. I was worried that the lack of field experience would hurt me, but I got an offer anyway.
I am aware -- two years seems like way to much of a barrier for somebody considering teaching as a fallback career. (I think there used to be a similar one year option in my jurisdiction, but it was eliminated by 'big teacher' or something. Ironically due to covid they were prepared to waive any of these requirements due to extreme shortages -- but you were capped at the bottom of the salary scale (like ~40k) and would be fired once the crisis resolved. So they definitely weren't attracting 'smart' people of any kind there.)
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That would not seem to address OP's concerns re improving the quality of education.
I am more qualified than the average high school teacher to teach any of math, physics, or computer science, at least -- I have a BSc, and therefore would need at least 2 years of indoctrination at the Education department before I would be allowed to teach high school in my jurisdiction.
I am a smart slacker, and could certainly get into earning ~80k p.a. for short days and summers off -- indeed I considered it prior to getting into remote software development. (yes I know most teachers do a lot of work outside of school hours -- they are not smart slackers)
But two more years of university is a bridge too far, so I find something else to do -- I submit that the population of people like me is much larger than the one that pursued teachers certificates -- so much so that even if there is no selection effect against being smart and nuanced in the teacher's certificate population, you would have many more such people considering teaching if you removed the need for an education diploma.
I hope this is clear?
Two more years is probably too long, and there's too damn much indoctrination going on, but in reality you can't just walk out of your college degree course and into a classroom and start teaching.
You can try, and this is the fun part of seeing student teachers doing practical work becasue the twenty or thirty eager little blossoms sitting before them in the classroom are quite likely to try and drive them crazy just for fun, but you do need practical instruction in pedagogical methods, supervision by experienced teachers, and learning how to control the little - darlings so they'll sit down, shut up, and learn something.
What about 10-20 years in industry? I would be an excellent CS teacher, and I'm quite sure I could wrangle math/physics to at the very least the low bar set by teaching diploma recipients who happened to take a couple of such courses at the 1-200 level during their four year indoctrination.
If you're talking about further/continuing education for adults, I'd agree. (Even 20 year olds might or might not be capable of sitting down, shutting up and learning).
But if we mean "average bunch of 12-15 year old kids, particularly boys" then nope. You can't use "your job depends on you not openly sassing your boss, which is me" against them to get them to sit down, shut up, and learn.
But I have a secret superweapon -- I was a 12-15 y.o. boy, and know what kind of thing they are interested in. This allows me to manipulate them into learning stuff without making the mistake of trying to be bossy. (which was pretty common with the teacher-teachers at my high school anyways, as I recall)
I do think that 'actual deep knowledge of the material' is a pretty significant advantage here -- kids can tell when you are just regurgitating the textbook at them and don't actually know what you are talking about -- which I would think would be quite common in someone who has a four-year teaching degree with a couple of STEM electives in the mix teaching grade 11/12 physics/math/CS/Chemistry/etc.
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Yes, I understand that your suggestion would increase the supply of teachers. But what I expressed skepticism about was that it would improve education. How is it that attracting slackers will improve education? I taught high school for many years, and there is no way that a slacker is going to be an effective teacher, with the possible exception of someone who is a genius.
I did specify smart slackers -- the goal is to provide some diversity of thought. Based on what I'm seeing with my kid that's going through this right now, this would be much more impactful than any 'quality' boost provided by teacher training. You think that I need two years of diploma to teach high school algebra? I'm already teaching it to my kid because his actual teachers seem to be failing miserably.
The teaching certificate may provide some sort of quality control, so you'd want to replace it with IQ and subject-matter tests (although those might be racist).
I (and probably gdanning) agree this would be a net benefit. But I think it'd close more like 5% of the gap between 'very intelligent teachers' and 'where we are now'. There are a four million teachers in the united states!
Also, why do we want very-smart teachers teaching not-smart students? It's probably better for 'society' that your time be used developing software, even if that software is p=.3 useful and p=.7 optimizing ads for video games or something.
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Again, my point is that slackers are unlikely to be effective teachers, so a "more slackers" policy is unlikely to improve education. I an not arguing for requiring teacher training. I am arguing against encouraging slackers to become teachers.
Eg: Bob teaches history. He requires students to write 10 papers per year. With 150 students and 10 minutes to grade each paper, that is 15000 minutes of grading per year. In contrast, Joe, a slacker, gives multiple choice scantron tests. Total grading time:3000 seconds. Which teacher would you choose for your kid?
High school students seem by and large incapable of writing papers these days, so Bob's approach seems like either a waste of time or a way to fail 90% of the history class. (or both) The scantrons at least will teach the students to get a decent grade on their AP exams.
A smart slacker will probably find some sort of middle ground -- but the important point is that when he's like, y'know, teaching he may be able to bring some depth to the curriculum for the 10% who would benefit from it.
Who's a better history teacher -- someone with a history degree who did summers digging up native archeological sites, or a teaching degree and a few 2-300 level history courses?
They'll teach the students how to best guess and get a reasonable result on a mechanised test. They won't teach them anything about the subject.
If we want to produce kids who are "I can just look it up on Google anyway" when they go to work, okay. This may even work 'good enough' for some things. But it's not education.
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Well, slackers always convince themselves that hard work is a waste of time
You seem to think that I am advocating for dumb, hardworking teachers in lieu of smart slackers. I'm not. I am advocating for smart, hardworking teachers. Because that is what you would get if teachers were paid like lawyers.
This is a complete red herring. As I just said, I am not advocating for or against teaching degrees. I am arguing against encouraging slackers to become teachers.
Finally, I note that you did not answer my question.
Well I am mostly advocating against teaching degrees -- strike the 'slacker' comment from the preceeding conversation if you like; it was mostly playful rhetoric anyways. Maybe you will get hardworking history grads who's other option is baristadom.
I thought it was fairly clear that my answer was 'mu'?
Neither of those teaching methods are bad per se -- it mostly depends on the teacher's knowledge and enthusiasm for the subject.
My AP Western Civ teacher was no dummy, and not lazy -- I think he taught his other history classes in a Bob-ish way. (although I doubt he ever had 150 essays to grade, and I'm absolutely positive that he didn't spend 6*40 hour weeks per year on that.) But as AP History is (mostly? I forget) a scantron test, he taught us how to get fives on that first and foremost. He also had an amazing depth of knowledge on European history, and was happy to go down whatever rabbitholes in class time. The test/assignment balance was irrelevant to whether he was a good teacher or not -- as was his teaching degree.
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In the private sector lawyers are frequently paid on their performance / success.
In the public sector, the median doesn't look too different from public education.
https://www.ilrg.com/rankings/law/median/1/desc/MSPrivate
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