Hey, teacher, leave that kid alone -- unless you have a college degree

Update: From the Education Policy Analysis Archives (Darling-Hammond, 2000):

"Subject matter knowledge is another variable that one might think could be related to teacher effectiveness. While there is some support for this assumption, the findings are not as strong and consistent as one might suppose. Studies of teachers' scores on the subject matter tests of the National Teacher Examinations (NTE) have found no consistent relationship between this measure of subject matter knowledge and teacher performance as measured by student outcomes or supervisory ratings. Most studies show small, statistically insignificant relationships, both positive and negative (Andrews, Blackmon & Mackey, 1980; Ayers & Qualls, 1979; Haney, Madaus, & Kreitzer, 1986; Quirk, Witten, & Weinberg, 1973; Summers & Wolfe, 1975)... Studies have found a somewhat stronger and more consistently positive influence of education coursework on teachers' effectiveness."

A recent study released by the National Council on Teacher Quality argues that many states are woefully underprepared to meet the 2006 requirement of a "highly qualified teacher" in every classroom as defined by No Child Left Behind. In this case, the NCTQ suggests modifying the NCLB language to mandate:

-The U.S. Department of Education needs to spell out the coursework that represents a college major as being no fewer than 30 credit hours and a college minor as being no fewer than 15 credit hours.

-All high school teachers should have a major in the primary subject they teach and a minor in any additional related subjects they teach. In a sorry nod to political reality, high school teachers who began teaching before 2001 should be considered highly qualified with only a college minor (15 credit hours). While some might argue this sets the bar too low, it may produce better results than the current mix of high standards and abundant loopholes.

On the surface, this sounds great. Everyone knows teacher quality is low; a recent Miami Herald-Tribune series found that as many as 1/3 of Florida's teachers have not passed the state's basic certification exam. So, if you make sure every teacher has a good grounding in the subject they are teaching, that should markedly improve the quality.

But let's dig deeper. The underlying premise here is that having a major (or 30 credit hours) in a subject makes you "highly qualified" to teach it. Setting aside for a moment the arbitrariness of that designation (are you not qualified if you only have 27 hours? Are you more qualified with 36?) is that really true? Teaching -- especially when you're teaching how to think instead of stuffing kids' heads full of facts -- is about way more than content knowledge. The truly exceptional teachers in today's system are the ones who through their command of the classroom and grasp of the craft of education inspire students to want to learn.

Taking 30 credits in biology does not mean you are highly qualified to teach freshman biology. It means you are highly qualified to tell freshman about biology. That's a key difference.

There's another nuance here, because surely it is a problem that 1/3 of Florida's teachers can't pass a basic competency test. The problem, properly articulated, is that many teachers who don't have a major or minor in their content area are unqualified because they aren't adequately educated themselves. Teachers who haven't gone through college at all and who never learned to do anything aside from act as a conduit of rote knowledge are indeed not highly qualified to be in our schools. However, the rough, correlative case between lack of a major/minor and incompetence clouds the real issue, which is that we aren't getting enough highly-educated (in any subject) people to become teachers.

There doesn't need to be much question why. The average starting salary for a teacher is a little below $30,000. Average starting salary for a liberal arts college graduate is a bit more than $40,000. The disparity grows as the years of experience do. College graduates actually have disincentives to become teachers. This also feeds the flawed assumption that you need a major/minor in your content area to be qualified to teach it, since those without the major/minor tend to be those without any solid higher education experience.

Put simply, a good teacher can teach any subject, within reason. Someone who has taught 11th grade math for a decade with excellent results can likely with brief training turn around and teach freshman biology. Moreover, that teacher would probably be superior in the task to a wet-behind-the-ears graduate toting his or her biology degree. This doesn't necessarily hold for quantum mechanics and the like, but those are exceptions rather than the rule. Going down into elementary school and it becomes even more apparent that teacher quality is not necessarily linked to academic achievement in that field, but rather overall intellectual maturity.

All of this is well and good, but surely the NCTQ has numbers to back up their claims, right? Expert studies relating college majors to better student achievement? "As for the requirement that all teachers earn a major in the subject(s) they teach, there is almost no research below the high school level that supports this provision of the law. Specifically, it is not known if middle school teachers with a major are any more effective than middle school teachers with only a minor."

(As for the research at the H.S. level, it would be interesting to see the comparison between teachers with majors/minors in their content area and college degrees generally. I'll try to scrounge up the data and report on that. --ED: See update at top)

Teacher quality is important. There is no denying that. Every study -- every study -- has shown that the singlemost important factor in a child's learning is the teacher. But it's as if the NCTQ (and many folks in education) correctly identified the problem and then solved it in a fairly nonsensical way. It's like realizing you're hungry and ripping out your stomach in response. Having a college major is not the main determinant for teaching quality (do you need that many high-level biology courses to teach photosynthesis, really?), being able to teach is. If we want high quality teachers in the schools, we should figure out a way to actually identify and attract them. Slapping on these kind of requirements, well-intentioned as they assuredly are, will only end up being counter-productive.

-Elliot

Related Link - posted by Elliot H. @ 1:38 AM