End The Teacher School Racket. (Society).(Tear Down This Wall: The Case for a Radical Overhaul of Teacher Certification)

Frederick M. Hess, Tear Down This Wall: The Case for a Radical Overhaul of Teacher Certification. Progressive Policy Institute, 600 Pennsylvania Avenue S.E. #400, Washington, D.C. 20003

American public schools are going to need several hundred thousand new teachers in the next decade. But today's counterproductive teacher certification requirements ensure that few of our best and brightest will go into teaching. Frederick Hess, a professor of education and government at the University of Virginia, argues that most of the requirements public school teachers now have to meet should simply be eliminated.

Existing teacher certification requirements mandate that aspiring teachers attend a graduate school of education for one or two years. But most of these schools are third-rate institutions that routinely certify 95 percent of those admitted. There is no consensus on what students need to learn in education schools (one pro-certification study called on education majors to learn "valuing in decision-making"). And most education schools are dominated by hard-left dogmatists. The "received wisdom in teacher education," according to Hess, is that "aggressive multiculturalism is a good thing" and that "aspiring white teachers ought to confront society's ingrained racism."

...