Getting it wrong on threats to teacher quality

Even in the divisive world of education policy, everyone agrees that children deserve competent, properly educated teachers. And many educators concur that initiatives are needed to upgrade the quality of the nation’s work force of teachers. But consensus breaks down over how to accomplish such an upgrade. In particular, disputes arise concerning which teaching skills tend to be weakest and thus constitute the most urgent threats to teacher quality in our nation ‘s schools. The requisite skills of teaching expertise have been broadly categorized as including content knowledge (i.e., familiarity with the subject being taught) and pedagogical knowledge (e.g., familiarity with techniques for teaching the subject).¹ But which of these sets of skills is more frequently the main cause of ineffective teaching?

According to an increasingly visible group of educators, too many teachers have insufficient expertise in the subjects they teach, thus making deficiencies in content knowledge far and away the more pressing teacher-quality problem. ² This group further claims that teachers with deficiencies in content knowledge are regrettably in abundance in low-performing schools — a situation thought to contribute significantly to lagging academic performance in such schools.³ Teacher preparation programs and state teacher certification regulations, so the reasoning goes, underemphasize content knowledge and overemphasize pedagogical knowledge and thus do little to remedy what’s really ailing schools. As a result, this group further argues, teachers with severe content deficiencies gain certification, while talented individuals who hold baccalaureate degrees in content areas but lack training in pedagogical knowledge face unnecessary obstacles to certification.

Hence, a radical proposal is put forth: deregulate teacher certification to allow “qualified college graduates who may not have completed coursework in educational methodology or received a degree in education to receive state teaching certificates.”⁴ This strategy is needed because “burdensome teacher 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 teacher preparation program.” ⁵ From this. point of view, alternative certification programs would facilitate an influx of better-qualified teachers who would be likely to usher in significant improvement in public schooling — especially in low-performing schools where content-deficient teachers purportedly constitute an especially urgent threat to student learning.