In this week’s Pope Center Clarion Call, I write about the recent analysis of American education schools by the National Center for Teacher Quality.
NCTQ’s study is helpful in separating the wheat (it found a small number of programs to praise) from the chaff (most are mediocre or worse) and should spark discussion about how the country goes about training teachers. In my view, the necessary and sufficient solution is to get rid of teacher licensing requirements that ensure the ed schools a market no matter whether their graduates are any good or not. We should allow school principals to choose those individuals who they think have the most promise without regard to where or how they studied. Private school officials who are free from the mandate to hire only government-certified teachers who have taken the prescribed ed school program manage to hire and train very competent teachers. I don’t think we will get any appreciable progress until ed schools have to pass the test of the market.
