Monaghan defends the teaching profession

When Advocate reporter Will Sentell wrote this story about teachers who enter the profession through alternate certification, it was followed almost immediately by a letter from the right-wing Heartland Institute think tank.

That letter, from Heartland's Joy Pullman, created a context that did not exist in the original article, equating teaching to 19th century factory-style jobs. We now live in an age where young workers "switch jobs five times in their first 10 years in the workforce, " she wrote.

But as LFT President Steve Monaghan pointed out in this rebuttal, there is a difference between professions and jobs.

"Teaching, like law, medicine and engineering, is a profession," Monaghan wrote. "We can’t believe that Pullman would make the same assertion about physicians — that the idea of switching professions 'five times in their first 10 years' is a good one. "

For too many so-called reformers, it has become an article of faith that teaching need not be a true profession or calling - that teaching is something anyone can do for a couple of years before going on to a "real" job. All teachers really have to do, they reason, is prepare children to fill in the right bubbles on standardized tests.

That idea has been taken to cynical lengths by some politicians who see it as a way to create education systems on the cheap. No need for salary schedules, expensive health insurance coverage or pension plans as long as schools are revolving doors for idealistic young folks operating on a peace corps model.

Which should not be the point of alternative certification. As Monaghan wrote, "Of course, we appreciate the opportunities and advantages associated with making it possible for people trained in other disciplines to come into our classrooms. They can bring fresh perspectives and specialized information that can serve our students well."

Whether teachers enter our profession through traditional routes, or make a commitment to education through alternative certification later in life, they deserve the respect due to professionals.

"(W)e reject Pullman’s apparent belief that better education for children will be the outcome of a transitional teacher corps' Monaghan concluded. "Pullman’s letter is frankly insulting and does a disservice to honorable members of a most honorable and critical profession."

Bad data interpretations make bad policy

A bad interpretation of an LSU study makes for a poor conclusion in this article by Times-Picayune reporter Sarah Carr.

Most of the article is about U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's unabashed praise for Louisiana's "value added" analysis of student achievement. The model, according to the article, "links the success of educators in the classroom to their teacher preparation program."

There are arguments to be made for and against the value-added model, but that's grist for another mill (although it's a shame that the article uncritically accepts Duncan's premise). Where this article really fails is in its assertion that "novice Louisiana teachers trained through an alternative program called The New Teacher Project on average outperformed experienced teachers in helping their students progress in math, reading and language arts."

If true, that bolsters arguments that teachers don't really need the specialized training provided in schools of education, and that it is not educationally sound to reward teachers for earning advanced degrees.

But the data reported in the article don't really support that conclusion.

The comment is based on a study that LSU did on graduates of The New Teacher Project, which puts prospective teachers on a fast track to certification. Most of Louisiana's Teach for America participants have been certified through a TNTP-like program called the Louisiana Practitioner Teacher Program.

But the problem, as this AFT critique of the study shows, is that the TNTP teachers surveyed in the study were not novices at all, but were in fact veterans of at least two years in the classroom:

This is a critical detail. This means that the TNTP teachers who were labeled
“new teachers” were usually third- and fourth-year teachers. They should not
have been considered “new” because they already had been working in the
classroom for roughly two years while they were completing their 18-month
certification program. For this reason, comparisons to other new teachers in
Louisiana are not valid.

The point is that TNTP teachers are not necessarily more effective because of their training, but because of their classroom experience. It's simply wrong to draw conclusions about the relative worth of experience or degrees from this LSU study.

Some teachers in state not certified

Houma Courier reporter Daniel McBride schools readers on teacher certification in Terrebonne Parish for this article. Statewide, he writes, about seven percent of teachers are not properly certified; in Terrebonne, that figure rises to 10 percent.