Opinion | Does your child’s teacher know how to teach? - POLITICO

Opinion | Does your child’s teacher know how to teach? - POLITICO

Does your child’s teacher know how to teach?

The pandemic pushed a lot of ‘alternatively’ credentialed teachers into schools. That’s a problem.

The Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated harmful educational inequalities in the preK-12 public education system. The nation’s poorest students, Black and Latino students, and our disabled students have been the most negatively impacted by school closings necessitated by the pandemic. Black students in high poverty schools have been especially hard hit because of the racialized, historic and ongoing disinvestment in the education of Black children and youth.

One of the most obvious — and dangerous — ways this inequality shows up is by channeling a proportionally larger share of less qualified or alternatively credentialed teachers to schools with higher percentages of Black, Latino and disabled students. Black and Latino students are more likely than their white peers to be taught by teachers in training who are in alternative teacher preparation programs. These alternative route programs differ from traditional teacher preparation programs in at least one significant way: Most alternative route teacher interns become teachers of record prior to completing any teacher training. This means that as teachers in training, they are not profession-ready on Day 1. They are training on the backs of our neediest students — the students who most need a profession-ready teacher.

The pandemic and racial unrest have revealed just how much further the nation has to go to fulfill children’s constitutional right to equal educational opportunity. State constitutions define this right to an education in beautiful and compelling language as a "democratic imperative," "fundamental value" and "paramount duty." Yet, despite these powerful phrases, nearly 30 years of research shows that in schools serving students of color where 50 percent or more are on free or reduced lunch (one indicator of poverty status), these students are 70 percent more likely to have a teacher who is not certified or does not have a college major or minor in the subject area they teach. This finding holds true across four critical subject areas: mathematics, English, social studies, and science. CONTINUE READING: Opinion | Does your child’s teacher know how to teach? - POLITICO

Teacher Tom: A Profession in Crisis

Teacher Tom: A Profession in Crisis

A Profession in Crisis

The pandemic notwithstanding, if 25 percent of our nation's doctors were planning to quit the profession, it would constitute a national crisis. If my neighbor Amazon got word that one in four of their professional employees were going to walk away, it would be a disaster. Indeed, if any profession or employer had that much of their workforce ready to walk away, not for "better jobs," but because their current job was too dangerous, stressful, or demoralizing, it would be time to call in the calvary. 

According to a recent poll of public school K-12 teachers, a full 27 percent say they are considering leaving the profession due to the the pandemic. This is on top of pre-pandemic polling that found that half of all teachers were already considering a job change because of low pay, bad working conditions, lack of respect, and an ongoing degradation of learning conditions for students. This is not a new crisis, it's an old one on steroids.

In our state, there are, as far as I know, exactly zero plans to address this issue. The obvious answer of increasing play, bolstering psychological and mental health support, and providing more autonomy for educators to teach the way their students learn, is apparently not being seriously CONTINUE READING: Teacher Tom: A Profession in Crisis