Miller defends vote on interns
Opponents insist there was no need to rush
Congress on Tuesday broadened the definition of a “highly qualified teacher” to include the 10,000 novice or intern teachers in California who are working toward their teaching credential. The clause was inserted into the Continuing Resolution to temporarily fund the federal government. It passed, as expected, last night.
Critics assailed the new definition as a retreat from higher standards of the No Child Left Behind law. Proponents of internship programs said it was necessary for second-career professionals and others to be able to afford a credentialing program while working as a teacher.
Democratic U.S. Rep. George Miller of California, the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, defended the vote on teachers in a statement yesterday, but called it “only the beginning of the conversation about the shift we need to make in our schools in regards to teachers and the measures of teacher quality.”
In September, a three-judge federal appeals court panel in California struck down a federal regulation that permitted states like California to designate intern teachers as highly qualified. The judges said that the regulation was out of step with No Child Left Behind, which clearly defined a highly qualified teacher as having completed a teaching credential.
In the past, Miller has sharply criticized California for weakening the definition. But his latest statement was not as specific, saying, “Every child in this country, including students with disabilities and English Language learners, not only needs, but deserves, access to an outstanding teacher,” and promising to work toward a bipartisan solution in the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind law.
Miller, along with his counterpart in the Senate, Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa, defended Congress for changing the definition of highly qualified as part of the budget bill. The appeals court’s ruling “could cause major and unpredictable disruptions” if it were allowed to go into effect before Congress could fully address issues of teacher preparation, Miller said.
Under No Child Left Behind, districts would have had to tell parents that their children were not being taught by a highly qualified teacher; they would have to distribute intern teachers equitably among all schools.
But John Affeldt, lead attorney for Public Advocates, which had brought the successful suit over intern teachers, disputed Harkin’s and Miller’s rationale that Congress had to act now to avert problems. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is appealing the appeals court ruling – a process that’s expected to take months. There would be no impact on intern teachers in the classroom this year, Affeldt said.
Instead, he and others suspected a power play by Teach For America, which saw the appeals court ruling as a threat to its program to place high-achieving college graduates – 4,500 this year – into urban schools after only a five-week summer training. TFA members and other intern teachers earn their teaching credential at night while teaching their first year.
In response to yesterday’s post on this issue, several readers emphasized that highly qualified under federal law should not be confused with highly effective. They said that credentialing programs did not adequately prepare them for the classroom; one called it a joke. That’s been a frequent criticism, and the California State University recently committed to redesign its program.
But Affeldt says the effectiveness of teacher credentialing programs is a separate issue. Federal law requires a credential as a minimum requirement for teaching. Intern programs fall short of that, he said; it’s no accident that most interns end up in high-poverty, low-performing schools.
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Let me second the lousy CSU credential programs. In that program right now, and let me tell you what some already know: it doesn’t prepare teachers for teaching effectively. Rather, it reaches you to deal with the bureaucracy and how to interact with your union and administration. In its current form, the CSU credential programs are utterly useless. And don’t get me started on how pathetic the teachers within the program are.
I weep for the future.
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Jim B., I’m curious: how do CSU credential programs train teachers to deal with the union? My question is a honest one. I’m in the dark on this one. You’re saying that all teachers in CSU programs are pathetic? That’s a rather strong general assertion that I find hard to believe. When I hear statements like that left completely unsupported, I’m suspicious about someone who may have either a strong vested interest or a strong ideological bent. Correct me if I’m wrong.
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The CSU teacher preparation program in which I participated two years ago was definitely weak.
Core faculty members reported (glibly, in one case) having had only a few years of K-12 teaching experience, often in the distant past. Given the evolution of workplace demands in the field, such people necessarily lacked hands-on experience with mainstreaming of special education students, with differentiation for English Learners, with standards-based instruction and assessment, and with K-12 classroom technology. It is better when instruction is backed by recent, first-hand experience. Alternating one or two years of K-12 teaching with one or two years of school of education professorship would, it seems, be ideal, but not even the best teacher preparation programs develop their human resources that way.
One professor, who served in a leadership role, bluntly told us not to bother with faculty evaluations because he was tenured, and just two years shy of retirement age. Queries on the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing Web site revealed that some faculty members lacked K-12 teaching credentials.
Academic advising was nil, with phone calls and e-mail messages ignored and appointments very difficult to get. For lack of appropriate technical advising, several of my intern classmates ended up signing teaching contracts which incorrectly classified them as “temporary” instead of “probationary”, compromising their layoff process rights and delaying their access to tenure.
There was one bright spot, a non-Ph.D., non-tenure track faculty member who, after retiring from 30 years of classroom teaching, led an excellent introductory course. Unlike so many school of education faculty members, she practiced what she preached, modeling good teaching every day.
In keeping with its assigned role in the Master Plan for Higher Education, CSU is a second-tier, non-selective institution. Some of my classmates had strong academic backgrounds and showed themselves to be active, hard-working students and critical thinkers. Others had just graduated from CSU Liberal Studies programs, armed with 2.75 GPAs and (gasp!) internally-vetted subject matter examination waivers based on undergraduate coursework. Still, it is hard to fault anyone who, in today’s climate, is willing to make the sacrifices necessary to serve as a teacher. Public school teaching in California has become more an irrational act of charity than a rational career choice.
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