by AFT President Sandra Feldman
January, 2002

The new year
should bring a
renewed focus on
teacher education.

As we start the new year with hope for peace and prosperity, we know that America has never been stronger, and that the importance of educating our children for democracy has never been greater.

This week, the President signed into law a significant new education bill passed by Congress. Much attention has been paid to the new requirement of testing all children in reading and math in grades 3 through 8. Less noted, however, are important new provisions that could strengthen teacher qualifications and address major impediments to improving teacher quality--including emergency credentialing and out-of-field teaching (the practice of assigning teachers to classes in subjects for which they have not been certified or prepared).

Both of these short-term fixes have turned into long-term problems--largely because of teacher shortages in hard-to-staff schools and in subjects such as math and science. They’re a major reason for the growing number of under-qualified teachers being put into understaffed schools and overcrowded classrooms--mostly the classrooms of poor children, where the need for qualified teachers is greatest.

The new law requires states to end these practices, and that will be helpful. But we also need to take a hard look at how our colleges and universities are preparing future teachers. Most teachers today will tell you that they were not well prepared for the classroom when they started teaching, and that’s especially true of those who entered the profession through various alternative certification programs.

Critics of current teacher education programs and certification processes--including teachers--differ about how to solve these problems. Some say we should eliminate all certification requirements and simply recruit smart people into teaching. Advocates for this approach have never spent a week in a classroom where they’re responsible for the education of 25 or more youngsters every day.

Others, including the AFT, focus on the need for higher professional standards, more challenging college courses, and examinations that require teachers to have a thorough knowledge of their subjects and how to teach them. 

Raising Professional Standards

Two years ago, an AFT task force composed of K-12 and higher-education leaders delivered a report on strengthening teacher preparation and induction. The report, "Building a Profession," made some bold recommendations, including one calling on universities to establish core liberal arts and science courses required for students to enter teacher education programs and another creating entrance exams for those programs--similar to what pre-med and pre-law students take before beginning their professional training.

The task force advocated that all teachers, including elementary school teachers, complete an academic major in addition to their teacher education courses. It also urged that they undergo a rigorous period of "clinical" experience--interning with master teachers and highly involved education faculty. And, because state teacher tests vary in content and level of difficulty, the task force called for examinations to be based on national standards developed by recognized scholars and educators, in much the same way as the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards developed challenging advanced certification examinations.

Finally, the report called for high-quality mentoring programs, which are helpful to new teachers and enhance the profession in other ways as well.  

Keeping Good Teachers

These reforms would go a long way toward having well-educated and well-prepared educators in every classroom. But alone, they aren’t enough to attract them or keep them there. To do that, we’ll not only have to pay all teachers much more, we’ll also have to make sure that schools are structured to enable teachers to maximize learning opportunities for their students as well as themselves. That means access to materials and resources that are readily available in our best public schools. What we provide to our most privileged students must be the norm for all our students.

Without these supports, even the most highly qualified and dedicated teachers will be frustrated and will continue to leave the profession, just as doctors are fleeing managed care and nurses are fleeing understaffed hospitals.

We know that new challenges lie ahead for our nation. We owe it to our children and grandchildren to give them the education they’ll need to preserve and strengthen our democratic institutions and build a better future for generations to come. Ensuring that all our children have high-quality teachers is crucial to achieving those goals.

As we celebrate the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., let’s also heed his words: "The richest nation on Earth has never allocated enough of its abundant resources to build sufficient schools, to compensate adequately its teachers, and to surround them with the prestige their work justifies."