ATTENTION TEACHERS!

[sinjin]

After talking to the state myself I understand this is designed to weed out the teachers who want to teach subjects they are not certified to teach. I do not have a problem with this. Yes, it will be hard on coaches going to new schools. If they do not have the certification for teaching positions that are available then they will not be hired by that school.

If you teach in the area you are certificed you will be deemed highly qualified. If you teach in a subject area you are not certified in then go back to school and get certified. If you do not want to go back to school then do something else.

 

TNBballman- I believe if you get your degree in Business Education and you teach in that area then there will not be a problem. You will be deemed highly qualified because you will have to pass the praxis test.

 

I know a coach who has been teaching for 6 years. He has not passed the praxis test. Failed it numerous times. He continues to receive a waiver by the school system. These are the teachers that will be affected.

[ELA]

sinjin, you are right in a sense, but it is much more complex than what you have described. There are many middle school teachers who are certified in elementary education (4-8, etc) who have education degrees but not high concentrations in a specific field of study outside of education. These teachers will have to go back to school to pick up a few classes in each area the school wants them to teach in even though they may already be "highly qualified" in the area they have been teaching for years. I have a minor in political science and I have been teaching government for seven years, but I will have to go back and pick up two additional classes to be considered "highly qualified" even though I have a Master's Degree in Education with a B.U.S. in Social Studies. The problem is our Tennessee Certification and the Federal Laws don't match! My history certification will be fine, but all of my other secondary certifications will have to be re-qualified. The real problem will be with teachers who have been teaching for thirty years and they have "Permanent Teaching Certifications" that were given back in 1973-75. These fine teachers are the current heads of departments and they have been teaching the subjects for many years. For the federal government to tell someone who has a P.H.D. or M.E.D. in Education that they are no longer qualified to teach a subject they have been teaching for thirty years just because the Federal Government says they can't is absurd! Somewhere in America, a teacher will lose her job in 2005 because of this new law, and that person will be asked by the AFT or NEA to sue the school district, state, and/or Federal government for the loss of their "Permanent Teaching Credentials." It will be someone with impeccable credentials and multiple higher degrees so that it will become a TEST CASE to go to the Supreme Court of the United states. Mark my words, this will happen! The NEA is already searching for the right teacher to take this to court down the road. The only time someone teaches "outside of their area of certification" is when the school administration assigns them to do so and applies for the waiver. Regular teachers are allowed to teach ONE class per year outside of their area of certification IF their is a lack of certified teachers at that school. What will happen is that many smaller schools will begin to scale back elective classes because they will not be able to make schedules work with the limited number of teachers available under the new restrictions.

 

Thanks for your input!

[LiLolme]

The act you speak of is a FEDERAL act applying to teachers who seek the national certification.States are left to fund education due to is absence from the constitution(see school finance 101) .You are crying wolf over a 0subject based on hearsay.Federal funding is very limited.(see;vouchers,school lunch,504 ,special ed.) you say wait and see! I say the same. maybe those principals just didn't want to hire you and fed you a line of.....no they would NEVER do that! hahahahahah!

[Guest region4fan]

Ela...so you are telling me that a teacher straight out of school who just passed the Praxis is Highly Qualified, and a teacher who has been teaching for 20 plus years who was not made to take the same test when he graduated is NOT??? This is crazy! I am telling you that my son had Mrs. Levi for English at Oakland. I am sure that she has been teaching long enough that she did not have to take this test. She is an excellent teacher and just earned the title TEACHER OF THE YEAR in Rutherford County. You are saying that a fresh-faced kid right out of school is SUPPOSEDLY more qualified to teach than her????? Oh yes ,there will be LAW SUITS aplenty on this garbage.What about teachers who just took extra classes to get their license re-newed? The state just told them they were certified to teach another ten years. How can they come back and change it??? Oh yes......MAJOR LAWSUITS ARE A COMIN'!!!!

[VolunteerGeneral]

I have read through the posts on this thread and have to ask the question...What has the TEA and the NEA done for you in this situation? So many of you who are teachers seem to be taking this as news. This was passed in 2001. It is now 2003. Ask yourself if your unions have totally informed you of your employment situation. Many of you have legitimate questions. Has the unions you pay dues to not previously informed you of the new procedures? If not, ask yourself why you spend money that you earn to these unions.

 

I agree with ELA, short term this may be bad, but long term good. Welcome to the real world teachers. No disrespect, but this will enhance education. We must now follow this up with a reciprocal pay. Get rid of tenure teachers! Earn your way. As a parent, I want you to be educated in your subject, but more importantly I want you to have the ability to teach.

 

Don`t place the blame on parents. Ask your self how many times you have taken the initive to call a parent up to praise a child. Parents eat this stuff up. If you want parental involvement, then get parents involved. Don`t be one of these teachers who say "I DON`T HAVE TO DO THAT".

We need a system that requires evaluations from parents and students.

 

VG

[ELA]

You've got it right! The sad thing is this is being done in the name of children! I want to see my politicians take the Federal Government out of the classroom! I am shocked that the Republican party is behind this legislation because they are the ones that are always talking about reducing red tape and federal interference at the local level. This is one big mess that started with very good intentions. I have no problem with doing away with teacher waivers, but don't tell the state governments how to certify teachers! The U.S. Constitution doesn't give the Federal Government any power in the field of education. PLEASE read it... folks it's just not there! WHERE IS MY MAN SWAMP! My best guess is this is the ultimate stretch of the Interstate Commerce Clause!

[ELA]

Vol gen... you are on the wrong side on this topic. Tenure laws are a great thing for the education profession! I wish every teacher was required to join the AFT and tenure was provided to all teachers (public and private) after a reasonable amount of time for quality evaluations. You can't make a kid learn and you can't judge a teacher in an inner city school based on students test scores. IT IS JUST PLAIN WRONG!

 

Let's say you sell insurance. Can I pay you based on how many claims your clients file or don't file? Maybe you sign up 100 people a month who never file claims on their insurance and the company makes a lot of money. OR maybe you sign up 100 people and 22 of them have major claims within the next year. Should we take that percentage out of your paycheck? NO! I have seen many of these so-called TESTS, and some of the questions asked don't have any relationship to the material taught or required to teach in a class. Can you imagine teaching a history class covering 8,000 years of history, and being asked to answer 15 questions on a test about that material? How many dates out of the 1000's possible are you going to ask a child to memorize? It is just stupid! We are not asking them to take the bar exam, we are just asking teachers to do their best with what they have. Math is easier to test because you can create more definable requirements, but I challenge you to look at the requirements for history. The state mandate doesn't provide one person's name, or any dates to apply to the testing of history. I have a Master's Degree in History and education and I could make out a test that my fellow history teachers couldn't pass. It's all about being a good teacher and relating to students, not having a bunch of politicians try to tell me how to do my job! Boy this subject just makes me mad!

[ELA]

Let's forget about tenure and the NEA and get back to the new law. You guys who are not teachers will never understand the purpose of tenure laws and the teacher associations. I'll gladly give up my membership when all professional associations are abolished. No more special interest groups, no medical associations, no school board associations, no lawyer bar associations, no electrical trade associations, no business professional associations, no AFL-CIO, no PAC's, no political organizations or associations of any kind! Get rid of them all, and then we'll walk away from ours! UNTIL THAT TIME COMES, WE WILL JOIN and ASSOCIATE TOGETHER as education professionals!

 

Let's get back to the NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND ACT of 2001.

[VolunteerGeneral]

Ela...if you are hired to lay bricks and you can`t do that well then you shold be fired. If you are hired to teach and you dont do that well, then you should maybe try laying bricks.

[VolunteerGeneral]

Ela...explain why you think tenure is a good thing.

[CoachD33]

Well spoken and worthy of a good mark. If you're not a teacher this thread is relevant to you only in how it will affect your favorite athletic team. The coaching carousel as people like to call it will grind to a halt with the NCLB. I agree ELA this appears to be good intentioned but has serious short-term ramifications!

[ELA]

You can't measure teaching in the same way you measure the structure of a solid object. We are talking about the human mind which has a free will!

 

Here is a great example from a good friend of mine who is a minister. If you are a pastor of a church, do you want to get paid based on how many people join the church and don't "backslide?" Or do you pay the man for doing what is right and being patient and kind to his flock? We are more like pastors than we are like masons. We work with children who can elect to study and learn or not! The brick doesn't talk back to the mason, it can't choose to accept or reject the actions and craftsmanship of the mason. People are very different. we have a free will and I promise you it is like comparing apples to motorcycles. You are making an oversimplification of a very complex issue. I had a young girl sit through a semester long class on the civil war. I was shocked when she failed to answer almost any question correctly on the final exam. I asked her after class why she didn't do well on the test, she told me her boy friend had broken up with her and she just didn't want to take the test so she just filled in the blanks. This is the reality of education in America.