ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, September 21, 1996 TAG: 9609230023
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A7 EDITION: METRO
ODD, ONE might think, that Virginia's public schoolteachers should add their voices to the rain of criticism falling on their noble profession. But their endorsement last week of a national study that found one out of four teachers woefully unprepared is not a mea culpa so much as a warning, and a plea for help.
Parents, local school administrators, state education officials and the public dare not ignore it.
The national report, "What Matters Most: Teaching for America's Future," presents an appalling picture of unpreparedness in the classroom. One in four teachers has too little or no training in teaching, its authors found, and almost a quarter of secondary teachers do not have even a college minor in the main subject they teach.
Hear, hear, responds Cheri James, the president of the Virginia Education Association. "We can't just continue to put warm bodies in the classroom."
Precisely right.
The devil is in the details, of course. The national report cites the University of Cincinnati's requirements for prospective teachers: a four-year undergraduate major in the subject they wish to teach, a year of graduate education in teaching techniques, and a period of practice teaching. That would be excellent preparation for new teachers, and a high standard against which veterans could measure their own training needs.
An additional layer of bureaucracy to set and monitor training standards does not, however, seem necessary, since the state has adopted learning goals that will hold teachers responsible for the results they achieve. Nor should the hiring of good teachers be blocked by fixation on their formal education credentials, as opposed to knowledge of the subject matter they're teaching.
The other side of professional development and higher pay should be to empower principals to weed out incompetent or disengaged teachers who don't respond to training - never mind how many years they've spent in education courses. Outcome is what matters, ultimately, and holding teachers accountable for the quality of instruction and their skill in delivering it presumably will be all the incentive needed to encourage individuals to identify and fill training gaps.
Even so, incentive is not what most teachers lack. Too many schools give them neither time nor money for ongoing training needs. And here is where the public must not turn a deaf ear.
State-mandated curriculum changes have shifted around what is to be taught at different grade levels. At the same time, schools are in the midst of integrating computers into the classroom - and wiring rooms and buying hardware is the easy part. The real challenge comes with teaching teachers how to use computers, how to teach children to use computers, and how to put computers to full use in teaching other subjects.
State bureaucrats can set all the goals they want; teachers need training resources if they are to be expected to meet them. Those resources are now woefully inadequate.
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