NYC Educator: What Will a Teacher's "Bar Exam" Do?

NYC Educator: What Will a Teacher's "Bar Exam" Do?:

What Will a Teacher's "Bar Exam" Do?

by NYC Educator

AFT President Randi Weingarten is proposing a "bar exam" for teachers. Weingarten thinks this will counter some of the stereotypical perceptions of teacher unions. You know--the stuff you see in the news, the comments you sometimes see on this blog, and the nonsense that emanates from the mouths of demagogues like Mayor4Life Michael Bloomberg.

"They only care about themselves." "We put Children First." "Let's worry about the children in the system, and not the adults." "The bad ones spoil it for the good ones."

Actually I have no problem with higher standards for teachers, be they national or local. UFT has been calling for them for years, so that's nothing new. There are few things more infuriating than idiotic calls to lower standards from the likes of Nicholas Kristof, bolstered by absurd claims that current certification rules preclude Meryl Streep and Colin Powell from becoming teachers. Of course, neither has expressed the desire to become a teacher anyway.

The problem is twofold--one, those who design tests nowadays have shown themselves to be hugely incompetent and self-serving, and are unlikely to do any better for teachers than they do for students. More importantly, prejudice is fueled by ignorance, not reality, and is unlikely to be countered by any such thing as a new teacher test, whatever it may be called. There are already tests to qualify teachers, and that hasn't stopped