5.4.5 Departments of Education

Now, the state department of education has the regulatory authority including basic teacher certification. Now, here I'm not much of a fan of state departments of education the way they are now operated. Because I think they tend more to get in the way than they tend to facilitate things. But they are only doing what they are expected to do. They're not villains, they're not bad people, they're doing what they are expected to do. I just think we expect them to do the wrong thing. For example, in terms of teacher certification, in the name of creating higher standards the legislatures have encouraged the school boards to get very stringent with teacher certification standards. You know that you are endorsed to teach only the subject you are endorsed to teach. Now, I trained in a much gentler age. I have a lifetime teaching credential for secondary education in the state of California. I can teach any subject to any student grades 7 through 12. Now the fact that my subject matter expertise is 50 years out of date let alone the fact that I never had any subject matter, for example officially I could teach English in the California schools. I could not teach English in a Virginia high school because I'm not endorsed in English. My endorsement is Social Studies and Math. In Virginia I could legally teach Social Studies and Math. I could not teach English. However, one of the things I have taught here at ODU is English, freshmen English even though the highest level English class I ever had was Freshmen English at Stanford University. And I taught it successfully. Now that is the problem with credentialing. I can teach freshmen English more successfully than many people who have beaucoup requirements in terms of their certification. Why? Because I know how to use the information I have and how to get the information I need which is a very important kind of skill. Now, what I would like to see, my recommendation on certification and those of you who have my book will find this in my book, the certification that I recommend is that you evaluate all the schools in the Commonwealth and the schools that are the top third in terms of their results, the schools that are doing a really good job, one of their rewards for doing a good job is that they can hire any teachers they want. Because if a school is doing a good job and knows how to do a good job, then I would assume that they would know how to select good teachers. And they're not going to select teachers that do a bad job because they don't want to lose their status in terms of their ability to select good teachers.

Who has authority over basic teacher certification?

Ms. Wilson is a student teacher and has almost earned a master's degree in elementary/middle education with concentrations in mathematics and social studies. She elects to teach in the Pineville Public School system, and she is
hired to teach a fourth grade class after graduation. In this school system, all teachers in the K-4th grade levels are required to teach all six core subjects to a class of thirty. Since she is only certified to teach math and social studies, should Ms. Wilson be teaching this gade level?