One day, America will brag that every child, regardless of race, ethnicity, and socio-economic background, receives a quality education in this land of opportunity. That day is sadly far away. Like many students living in environments where landing in prison is the dominant reality, education once represented an empty promise to me. The Bronx had methodically chased me away from ambition: first, the raw energy of hopelessness engulfed me, and then the schools confirmed that I was hopeless. I started assimilating. Academic probation, detention, and suspensions quickly followed. I was headed down the road most traveled. Ms. Brady saved my life. Now I’m a Harvard student.
When I walked into her eight-grade English class, I made it a point to say that it would be the last grade I completed. She smirked. Not a trained teacher, she entered the classroom through an alternative licensing program—a dirty word in today’s education reform circles. Yet Ms. Brady was young, intelligent, and committed, and took an interest in my learning. She gave me rigorous work, demanded excellence, and accepted nothing else. I enjoyed it. Before fully blending into the Bronx, Ms. Brady taught me that there wasn’t anything wrong with sticking out. Her message carried me into college.
Why then, are thousands of students denied a Ms. Brady each year? The education reform pundits, rightfully intent on improving academic performance in poor school districts, have mistakenly equated more rigorous entry requirements into the teaching profession with teacher quality. These barriers take on a variety of forms: higher standards to enter teacher education programs, completion of internships, and behavioral assessments. The misguided logic underlying these policies is that more requirements will weed out the weak candidates, resulting in a more qualified pool of candidates. No evidence confirms this theory, yet it’s the rallying cry for education reformers—Conservatives and Liberals alike. Much to their dismay that answer is much simpler: easing licensing standards.
Like passing the Bar exam for lawyers, or the licensing tests for doctors, teacher licensure is intended to determine who has mastered the necessary teaching skills to succeed in the profession. The analogy is flawed. Unlike law and medicine, there is no general consensus about the qualities that determine a competent teacher. What follows is that licensing exams cannot serve as an adequate indicator of teacher preparedness. Unsurprisingly, there is no significant correlation between correctly answering questions on a test about teaching and actual student achievement outcomes.
We should open the entryway to teaching. The Fordham Foundation, a leading education think-tank, notes that the burdensome certification requirements deter well-educated and eager individuals who might make fine teachers but are put off by the cost, in time and money, of completing a conventional preparation program. An improved teaching pool would increase teacher quality by allowing principals to satisfy the demand for teachers with young, bright, motivated individuals—the “Mr. Bradys.” At the very least, it provides better choices than the teachers that underperform.
This is not to say that anyone should teach nor does it mean that deregulation is the panacea that automatically leads to a quality teacher in every classroom. But we shouldn’t be afraid that easing restrictions will lead to the collapse of public education. A study conducted by the Mathematica Policy Research group comparing the impact of Teach For America (TFA) teachers, an alternative licensing program, within a school revealed that on average TFA teachers had a positive impact on the math achievement of their students. The impact was equivalent to roughly ten percent of a grade equivalent, or about one month of math instruction. In reading, TFA teachers made no appreciable impact in reading test scores for students. The evidence suggest that if the alternative licensing programs is rigorous enough, it can have the impact of attracting to the classroom individuals who can, despite their informal training, significantly contribute to student achievement. At worse, these teachers do as well as others who have completed the normal, protracted teaching licensing requirements.
America deserves a reason to brag. Rather than look to restrict entry by erecting further regulations, the teaching profession would benefit by lowering licensing standards. The justification for the teacher testing, completion of internships, and behavioral assessments do not show any discernible impact on student scores. Easing restrictions, on the other hand, would allow principals to select from a wider pool of applicants to fill empty teaching slots, reducing the desperation tactic of filling the classroom with an unqualified teacher. How many Ms. Bradys are we turning away? Better yet, who are we denying a Ms. Brady to?
Marvin Figueroa is a student at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where he focuses on policy, urban education, and teacher effectiveness. Before entering his program, he served as an administrator in high-achieving progressive charter schools across the country.
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