Real Alternative Education?

I have long felt that the teaching profession is a guild that, while it serves teachers well, does not necessarily do so for students or the broader community. Yes it keeps rates of pay reasonable, and this is a good thing, as it attracts excellent teachers who might otherwise look to more lucrative work. But it also gives a group with a somewhat narrow and conformist view of what education should be and how it should be done almost total control.

So beyond the usual (and, lets face it, sometimes valid) complaint that it handsomely rewards sloth and incompetence there is the perhaps more powerful suggestion that this monopoly prevents the type of innovation that education seems to so desperately need. On The Atlantic's Ideas site, there is a thoughtful piece on abolishing teacher licensing and opening up the profession to those without degrees in education but with other university training. Key passage:

When it comes to hiring teachers, much of what we thought we knew turns out to be wrong. Performance on teacher-certification tests is a poor indicator of success in the classroom, and research shows that teachers who come from traditional schools of education aren't necessarily more effective than those from alternative certification programs, such as Teach for America. It's time we scrapped our outdated and inefficient system for recruiting and training teachers, and allow anyone with a college degree and a background check to teach.

The article proposes that rather than have graduates of education programs initially meet licensing standards after which they are effectively granted tenure, candidates with a wide range of qualifications, should be brought in as apprentices, as in a traditional trade, and trained and evaluated over the first several years of their careers. Malcom Gladwell, for one, suggests that

. . . an apprenticeship program that trains teachers and evaluates them while they're teaching, not before they begin. This isn't dissimilar to what many alternative certification programs do with their recruits, focusing on character and past accomplishments during selection, and then putting the novices through a grueling summer training program, with instruction and feedback that continues through the school year. Last year, an Urban Institute study found that high-school students taught by Teach for America educators in North Carolina actually performed significantly better on end-of-course assessments than those taught by educators with three or more years of experience. Yet even Teach for America participants are required to attend graduate courses at night and eventually do earn their certifications. By that time -- years into their teaching careers -- isn't a license something of a moot point?

Indeed, the Teach for America program has been a huge success, attracting graduates who want to dedicate the first few years of their career to giving something back. These young people bring their students a wide variety of life experience and a degree of enthusiasm that is so often missing in the classroom.

This is not an argument for abolishing collective rights for teachers and for the gains that they have made over the past two generations in pay and working conditions. But it is an argument for real diversity among those who have such an impact on our childrens' lives.