Credentials and advanced degrees tell you nothing about a person's actual ability to teach. The best teacher I ever had (kindergarten through law school) was a retired Marine officer. He had a bachelor's in history and taught AP American History and AP Modern European History in grades 11 and 12. He knew his material and demanded achievement (or else). Of course, this was a private school, where he was free to demand excellence.

Teaching "credentials" are like certification for a programmer. They doesn't hurt, but they doesn't tell you much about a person's skills, either. As a result, they should not be held up as a gatekeeping requirement.

Don't, rather. Sorry, changed my "it" to "they" and forgot to change the other words. That's kind of ironic.

In the early 1990's, a close friend (African-American male) who graduated from a prestigious local private school and Ivy League university (BS in Mathematics) wanted to return to DC for a couple of years to teach middle school math before going onto an MBA at Harvard. He wanted to inspire youth as a potential role-model at a time that the crack epidemic and other ills were dominant in DCPS.

The DC certification process rejected his application because he hadn't had college calculus. While this is true, the process wouldn't acknowledge his degree (he had taken advanced calculus in high school and thus placed out of it at college) and other credentials which qualified him for the teaching position.

Not all credentials mean anything to school boards, apparently. I have a PhD in history, but when I spoke with someone about the possibility of teaching for Arlington County Public Schools I was told I would need about a year of coursework to get the necessary certificate.

I was a substitute teacher in southwestern Virginia, a job with which I supported myself as I worked on a master's degree in secondary English education. Circumstances forced me to move to the DC area before I could complete the student teaching phase of my degree. (I had completed my bachelor's degree only a year before I began the post-graduate coursework, so this is not a situation where my first degree was too old to be relevant.)

Virginia, Maryland, and DC - take a guess which locality not only did not allow me into a classroom, but would not return my phone calls.

I have all the credentials and junk to teach and went through college as an ed major. On the Praxis II Content Knowledge, I scored in the top 15% of the last 7 years of test takers. And I sucked at teaching in public. I couldn't take it. I quit.

Credentials don't mean everything, for sure, but some training should be required. I'm not sure where the right approach is, but being crazy about all standards for everyone is silly. Not everyone takes the same route to everything.

As a side note - in most fields where a post-graduate degree is required, the salary is sufficient for survival in the DC metro area.

*Expecting* a post-graduate degree for a job that pays less then forty thousand dollars a year borders on the insane.

The situation is way more complicated than it appears.

My wife taught a year of high school science with no certification because she wanted to and the school system needed anyone who could teach AP Physics. My father tried to teach high school history, because he had a PhD in History, taught college history in the 1950s, and just retired from 35 years at the Pentagon. The school system he talked to said they needed him to do a teaching certification class first. My father, bless him, is a boorish jerk who didn't really want to TEACH, he wanted to tell those lazy brats how smart he was. Plus what advantage is it for the school system to hire a 62 year old? No, my father wanted to do in history what my wife saw many scientists attempt to do- they wanted to get paid for a retirement job that they thought would be a cakewalk compared to their careers. My wife complained that she was the only science teacher in her school who cared to teach- the others wanted a 9 month-per-year semi-retirement position in late middle age where they didn't have to keep up with the journals like you would in a lab. My father still complains to anyone that would listen that the school system is corrupt; they refuse to recognize real talent when they see it, because they wouldn't hire him. I nod and change the subject.

I mean, at some level, the school system was really angry at my wife because she taught for a year while writing her dissertation and then left- they invested money to train her but she quit. The school system really wants young teachers who can teach for 20 years- otherwise they spend more money on training than they get out of the teachers.

I had some great teachers in my life and some lousy ones. I researched the lousiest one and it turns out she won county awards for her techniques- and she was the meanest, angriest, nastiest teacher I ever had in my entire school career. I also remember a teacher who was beloved by all, but stopped teaching us entirely when her husband was paralyzed in a car wreck- we never learned out times tables and I never recovered my math skills deficiencies. we just did the same handouts over and over again while she sat at her desk, grading them.

If getting a certification separates the people who really want to teach from the hobbyists looking for a retirement career then so be it. I don't think schools really need someone who comes in, teaches for a year, then leaves, do they? I don't doubt we need a better system, but I'm not upset that certifications are used as a gatekeeping device.

It depends on what the certification is based upon to determine if it's worth the paper it's printed on. If certification is based on someone taking a class, learning material, and then regurgitating that information in a test then no, it's a worthless measure of that individual's ability to actually teach/perform. If the certifiation is based on the individual's performance (demonstrated, proven, and attested performance) then the certificate is of value. Only when certification is performance based it is ever going to have any value.

Training any person for the sake of training doesn't begin to get to the root of the performance problem. So how can one prescribe training when it's not known what is causing the performance problem in the first place? This is the major failing of the TRaining & Development mentality. It doesn't get to root causes of performance problems.

The public school systems need to apply the proven Human Performance Technology (HPT) approach to solving the performance problems with substandared teachers. Until then school systems will continue to go around in circles. Google Human Performance Technology to learn more.

I think a difference between private school and public school teachers is that public school teachers are quite likely to belong to an employees union. So they aren't employed "at will" and have more avenues for hanging onto their jobs.

What that says to me is that you need to be fussier about hiring them. I was never interested in education because I thought all the education coursework you had to take in college looked dull -- and I still think that.

When hiring employees who will be difficult to let go I think it's important that they meet professional standards.

If they don't or won't bother to meet those standards in the beginning that says something to me about what kind of employees they'll be. If they were 'at will' employees who could be let go without cause I might think differently.

I believe that DC should look at how it credentials teachers, but we need to realize that just having a degree in a subject, even a PhD. does not make one a good teacher.

In today's classrooms teachers are asked to be teachers, social workers, guidance counselors and a host of other specialists. They do need some pedagogy as to how to teach a child at a certain age and level. I have had terrible grade school teachers and some great ones- i have had terrible college teachers and some great ones.

Again I agree degrees and credentials alone don't make for great teachers but a knowledge of what is required in today's classrooms along with some student teaching and a knowlege of the pedagogy do help anyone going into the field of teaching.

It really depends on where in Indiana Ms. Kaplan taught and what level as to whether she would be able to walk right into a DC school and teach. And yes she may be more able to teach at GW than at DC schools. That is a possibility.

Requiring certification means anyone can teach, regardless of whether or not that skill is ingrained in them. It's like allowing someone to get a certificate and then letting them play professional sports, even if they aren't good athletes. Anyone can study hard for a test and pass it. Doesn't mean squat if they don't have the innate ability to use that knowledge.

I went to a school that has one of the "best" education programs in the country. You know what type of classes these teacher wannabes went through? They had entire lectures on how to write on a chalkboard, how to decorate a classroom, and things of that nature. Yeah, graduates were certified, but just because they can cut out construction paper flowers and put them on a wall does not mean they can teach.

To be a good teacher, you have to have leadership skills, creativity, and patience. Those things can't be taught.

Educators are born. Teachers can be trained to educate. However, most teachers are not educators. A true educator is a special breed. Too many people think the two are synonomous--and they are not.

Actually, there was an article a while back in the Post about the "professionalization" of so many careers. What they meant by "professionalization" was the requiring of certificates and training and degrees that did not used to be necessary for the job. It's not that the job had changed and now required additional training. Instead, it's a way to get paid better. The people who make up the professional organization of whatever start to say that you aren't really an "X" until you've completed these courses and gotten some certificate.

Well, it's essentially the same thing with teaching. Having a teaching certificate tells you nothing. Moreover, the classes in college necessary for an elementary ed major are incredibly easy and dull -- they just require you to go to them and do absurdly easy work. It's all a joke.

And, most important, as Jay Mathews has written about, there's no standards involved in going through an education curriculum in college, making having an ed degree even more meaningless. Plus, as he's also pointed out, such degrees or training bear no relationship with one's ability to teach.

Educators are born. Teachers can be trained to educate. However, most teachers are not educators. A true educator is a special breed. Too many people think the two are synonomous--and they are not.
--------
Care to explain in a way that makes sense?

I suspect of the article. Looking into one case example told from a non journalist is suspicious. You are not making widgets--you are educating children, and as "archaic as it sounds" the actual certification of teachers was something Dr. Janey scrubbed clean. If there was a bad teacher in a classroom the article--in a reactionary tone would be upset about the lack of certfication. Try again

I may also add that teaching college is actually extremely easier than teaching children. a professor can come into a classroom drone on at the front--wether the student observes the information or not is their problem. When you are teaching high school/junior high and elementary you have to be skilled in engaging the student.

I am a little short with the papers these days because education is the number one topic---everyone has their two cents --and if that is the value that could only be given the advice. One idiot on this blog wrote because of the pay they should not request a degree--conversely your plumber is paid well should he go to Harvard??

This is the future of America people!! There are so many requirements in the classroom because you need to know what you are doing. Just because someone is gifted in a subject area that does not mean he/she can speak about it must less teach.

Stay out of education

Based on 411's comments (spelling, grammar, organization) I suspect that he or she might just be an (certified) English teacher - and that demonstrates the scope of the problem.

The current fashionable approach to education is market based. The market rewards good performers and flushes out bad ones. It is the philosophy behind charter schools: let anyone start a school and give the parents freedom to choose where their kids will go. The popular (read: good) schools will end up well funded, and the unpopular (bad) won't survive. It is also the philosophy behind teacher hiring in private and charter schools. They'll hire you if you've shown good past performance, and they'll reward you if you continue to perform, but otherwise they'll fire you.

The problem with this market based approach is that there will always be winners and losers. Some schools will get shut down, and some teachers will be fired, and in the mean time, they've done a poor job of educating the kids who were unlucky enough to be stuck with them. So the traditional approach has been to use certifications as a way to ensure bare minimum performance.

I don't think there's a problem per se in enforcing some bare minimum of performance, instead the problem is that having a certification does not correlate with how well you actually teach. I'm not in the education field, but I'd imagine that the best indicator for future performance is past performance. Maybe instead of certification, schools should look for appropriate education and pay attention to student teaching experiences, or other past teaching type experiences (employee training, tutoring, private school teaching, college teaching, etc.). Of course if it's school systems, not schools doing the hiring, I doubt they'd have the manpower to review all applications holistically like that. Certifications are a means of standardization to make the hiring process easier.

I can see two possible solutions. The first and most obvious one is to leave hiring decisions up to individual principals. The second is to use the market to solve the certification process too. Instead of forcing bureaucratic city, county, and state governments to come up with certification requirements, allow private companies to perform certification. Let them worry about reviewing applicants more holistically and deciding if they've had enough training. Let them act as teacher placement services. They'll have an incentive to only get good teachers so that school systems will continue to use them (there could be more incentive if they were forced to provide a monetary guarantee) and the work of figuring out who makes a good teacher would be outsourced to them.

"But consider that in teaching, many of the most highly admired schools--and especially the best religious and private schools--often have hiring approaches that pay zero attention to certification and put little premium on advanced degrees."

True, and often pay less besides. They also have more freedom to be selective as to which students they matriculate and have greater freedom to expel students. Likewise, parents often have to jump through hoops to gain admittance making it more likely to have an involved parent base which also boosts achievement.

Of all factors that schools can control, there is no single correlating factor that has a stronger relationship to student achievement than teacher knowledge of subject material.

Once again, someone who has never been in charge of a classroom misses the boat entirely. Comparing unlicensed private school teachers to licensed public school teachers is comparing apples to oranges. Private schools can be selective about what students they accept, while public schools serve all students, regardless of financial status, intelligence, disability, language spoken, and familial involvement in the whole education process. Private schools also are not held to the same assessments that the government requires of public schools, and therefore have the ability to do much more in the classroom than the teaching-to-the-test that public school teachers simply have to perform. There are too many factors that differentiate private and public schools to make a comparison of teachers based just on certification.

As for certification vs. non-certification in public schools, there do need to be some baseline requirements for those who want to teach. Does a candidate have an understanding of subject matter? Does he or she have a working knowledge of how different students learn differently, and how to reach all of those students in one classroom setting? Educational methods courses are as boring as they could be, but they are necessary.

As for the power of teachers unions - in most places teachers are not legally able to strike or take any union action whatsoever. Teachers unions in most places (not all, but most) are utterly powerless.

"I can see two possible solutions. The first and most obvious one is to leave hiring decisions up to individual principals."

Hiring decisions ALREADY ARE left up to the individual principals. That is, the principal is allowed to hire anyone who meets minimum standards. In my case, I had not completed education coursework, but had worked in the field for years. I was hired and had three years in which to complete the required coursework. Yes, most of the coursework was a rehash of what I already knew. I had taught some of this material to undergraduates, and at times I felt I could have taught the course better than the person teaching it. But the reason for the requirements is so that the school system knows you have been exposed to (and hopefully learned) a core set of information.

It is too bad about Kaplan and the DC schools. I fought a similar battle with FCPS, trying to locate a way to access all the credits I needed without taking too much that I didn't need to take (I took nine classes in three years as it was). The representative from the licensing department assigned to my case kept telling me that I should just enroll in a grad program for teacher licensing. However, I didn't need the entire program, and I didn't need a master's degree. He had also failed to respond to my first emails to try to get information about how to proceed. I finally copied his supervisor on the email, and that got a response--but it was really me who ended up digging up all the information I needed. I guess that is part of the teacher weedout process

My late sister was a very gifted teacher. She was certified to teach both elementary school and secondary math. She chose elementary school because, as she said, I don't teach math, I teach children. Having great expertise in a particular subject area, like history, or math, or physics may indicate that you know a lot about the content area. But if you don't know anything about children, about how people learn and remember, about how to evaluate learning, about how to scope and sequence a curriculum, then it doesn't matter how great your knowledge of the subject is, you will not be very good at teaching that content, or anything else. That is what teaching certification, with its courses in pedagogy, learning theory, etc. are designed to assure. Are they always of high quality? No. But a certificartion does assure that the teacher at least knows something about children in addition to what he/she knows about history or physicis, or math.

Certification requires a teacher to take child psychology, curriculum development and classroom management courses.

Just because someone has a degree in a subject (English, Math, History) does not necessarily mean that they know how to convey the material to students of all ages, abilities and socioeconomic backgrounds.

That said, certification itself does not guarantee a good teacher - but it is a baseline. What should be required is student teaching and practicums for those who have never set foot in a classroom.

"If getting a certification separates the people who really want to teach from the hobbyists looking for a retirement career then so be it. I don't think schools really need someone who comes in, teaches for a year, then leaves, do they? I don't doubt we need a better system, but I'm not upset that certifications are used as a gatekeeping device."

This would be a terrible use of credentials. The purpose of formal credentials - in any field, not just teaching - is to certify that an individual has a certain level of knowledge or skills. While important, that is not enough to ensure that someone will actually do a good job, and formal training is not the only way to attain knowledge and skills.

As with any other job requirement, this sort of credentially must be handled intelligently (with an understanding of what you're really trying to accomplish) to be successful. Otherwise, you end up making foolish decisions that allow you to check off all the boxes on your list, but completely suborn the purpose of the exercise.

"Comparing unlicensed private school teachers to licensed public school teachers is comparing apples to oranges."

Perhaps. I'd be a heck of a lot more sympathetic to this argument if it weren't for the fact that private schools are consistently whipping the butts of public schools.

Really - which do you think provides the better education? Who do you think is doing the educating in those private schools - fully credentialled education fairies that just happen to magically appear in any classroom with an unlicensed teacher?

Really - which do you think provides the better education? Who do you think is doing the educating in those private schools - fully credentialled education fairies that just happen to magically appear in any classroom with an unlicensed teacher?
----

having switched my kids from public to private I would answer without hesitation:

THE PARENTS

There has recently been a spate of columns on teaching certification and how it's totally unnecessary. These same columns usually disparage master's degrees in education, stressing how there are just so many great teachers who have no certificates or masters degrees. This is obviously some nonprofit organization or perhaps the Hamilton Project which has an agenda all its own. One, get rid of unions; two, make it easy for people to make career switches into teaching; three, push the Teach for America idea where college grads teach for two years (for practically no pay). This is subversive. The truth is that those who could not pass the courses and tests required for certification usually applied to private and parochial schools. They took these jobs where the pay is much lower than in public schools. Public school teachers also need to learn all the bureaucratic and legal ramifications of teaching under NCLB and IDEA - where parents can sue you and the school if a mentally disturbed kid is not treated properly or the school can lose accreditation if it doesn't follow the law. None of this applies to private schools or even charter schools. Subject matter degrees are required (and should be) for middle school and high school teachers. So that's their Bachelor's degree. What do you think their Master's degree is for? Yes, child development, psychology, pedagogy, practicum, etc. and student teaching. As for elementary education teachers, most do not have Master's degrees because their Bachelor's is in elementary education. This is not enough. Today we need our elementary ed teachers to learn subject matter also at the undergraduate level and then get a Master's degree in education. Oh, that is another reason why the Hamilton Project types want to disparage the need for Master's degrees - so that their pay isn't higher than those without Master's degrees. There are bad people out there pretending to "care" about pulic education and pretending that they know how to fix it. They are sending material to all the columnists to coerce the media into their subversive activities. I have no problem with trying to eliminate the unions because they do not do anything for the teachers, like demand that principals and teachers can throw kids out for misbehavior even if they are "with disabilities." So be my guest as far as the unions are concerned. But this other stuff is hogwash. Now it sounds like the District is wrong in its approach to accepting other states licenses - they may have ulterior motives. But most states are very, very good about state to state certification, and usually grant them if the teacher gets a job offer in another state. The reason for this is that if the teacher was good enough to impress a principal where he/she has relocated to, that he/she would be offered a job, then probably their certification should be acceptable to the new state's licensing authority. I also wish people would stop thinking that educating children and young adults is such a piece of cake. (I am not a teacher.) But it seems that every newspaper columnist (Jay Matthews included) and reporter and politician and parent thinks they know more about teaching and how to run a school than those who have worked for years in the school systems. Not everyone is perfect, but in what field, pray tell, do you find that to be true. With the number of kids (35%?) who are real troublemakers, discipline problems, mentally disturbed, austistic, or who simply don't want to be there or are into crime, drugs, violence, there aren't enough teachers - period - who are brave enough to enter these classrooms. You couldn't pay me enough money to teach in some of these classrooms with these kids who think they are owed something - and whose parents threaten to sue for anything. So just remember, some teachers don't need to know how to teach at all. They just need to know how to be police officers, baby sitters, mental clinic supervisors, or social workers. And even they have to actually try to teach them something because of testing. It is not the teachers, believe me, who need more "training" - it's the parents and it's the kids who need to understand that free public education is a privilege, not a right. We need to throw more of them out of school and make their parents accountable. Too much taxpayer dollars are spent on those who don't deserve it, instead of those who do. Back to the topic, though, this column sounds like Fisher was on the receiving end of a sales pitch from one of these so-called "think tanks" who have their own agenda anyway.

St. Albans, Sidwell, Visitation, Georgetown Day... None of these schools gives a hoot about accreditation as a gatekeeping mechanism. They hire teachers who can teach and who know their subject matter. Unfortunately, the education establishment focuses on understanding in great detail the failures of students and their families. Obviously, Ms. Kaplan was not well enough versed in coddling failed sudents but instead was focused on teaching her pupils real knowledge. Obviously a bad fit for DCPS.

"Of all factors that schools can control, there is no single correlating factor that has a stronger relationship to student achievement than teacher knowledge of subject material."

This statement confuses me. Perhaps, this is an example for highter grades. But for the youngest grades this cannot be the standard. No matter how bad a teacher they can read, write, add and subtract. I think this debate should be broken down by grade level. Perhaps, someone teaching kindegarten needs more of the how to teach, how to recognize a learning disability and how to manage a class courses and certifications than someone hired to teach an AP history class. I can see how mastery of the subject would be a huge benefit in the higher grades but not a useful measure in the lower grades.

St. Albans, Sidwell, Visitation, Georgetown Day... None of these schools gives a hoot about accreditation as a gatekeeping mechanism. They hire teachers who can teach and who know their subject matter.
-----
well Visitation is basically run by the Sisters of the Visitation so "hired" is a funny way to describe how nuns get jobs, if not altogether wrong.

Care to explain in a way that makes sense?

A teacher is someone who gets paid by a school system to teach a subject. They could have received training of some sort in a teacher prep program and attend workshops and seminars to improve their craft. They can be very knowledgeable about their content area and can excel. But they are not an educator.

An educator is someone who is born to educate. It is in their blood. They can create lessons off the top of their head and can make produce extraordinary results from the most basic lesson plan. They are always in educate mode at all times whether it is in a classroom or anywhere else.

It is their way of life. With that being said, an educator and teacher may have the same profession/occupation but they are not on the same level when it comes to their commitment to the kids, their content area, and their craft.

Furthermore, the problem is that most people think they are synonomous and they are not.

I could go on and on. Perhaps this answers your question.

"Certifications are a means of standardization to make the hiring process easier."

Part of the problem, nationwide, is that certifications are NOT standardized. It is not just uncertified prospective teachers that face these hurdles. Each state has its own set of rules and requirements (ie, hoops to jump through).

I went through a M.Ed. program in VA and have since moved to the other coast. It is STILL more coursework. There are K-8 schools here. My VA 7-12 doesn't count at these particular schools, even though I applied to teach only 7/8 grades.

"The state of Maryland happily granted Kaplan a standard license to teach secondary school English, but not the District."

I'd really like to know how this was done by MD!

by Sasha at 12:49pm:

"I'm not in the education field, but I'd imagine that the best indicator for future performance is past performance."

Speaking as a (now former) education professional who still pays a lot of attention to the research side of things, I would say this is true with two qualifications.

The first of those qualifications is that good performance of teachers is very hard to measure. Most proposals focus on the results of testing on state tests - a hardly agreed upon benchmark. Local Principals can probably do a good job measuring the quality of their teachers, but may be powerless to oust "low performers" because they could not find a replacement - something particularly true in the maths and sciences.

The second is that qualities of the students have a far greater impact on classroom results than teacher ability. This is evident in the comments already made about comparing public and private (or even university) education. This is why programs such as Pre-schooling and Kindergarden are important, doubly so in the cases of parents who are not engaged in early childhood education in their homes (reading to kids being an excellent example).

by Anonymous at 2:23pm

"Perhaps. I'd be a heck of a lot more sympathetic to this argument if it weren't for the fact that private schools are consistently whipping the butts of public schools."

I don't think this can be stated as fact as there is a good bit of debate in the research. There are good and bad public and private schools.

This is not to dispute that there are things that private schools as individual units do correctly that public schools coule learn from as institutions. There are many fine private schools in the Washington, DC area, and I do not think that the selection is representative of private schools as a whole.

Reading my own post I should add that in the context of the debate over certification, one of the things that certain private schools do well is mentor their new teachers and cultivate them as educators. I would say that particularly when it comes to new teachers who might have just come out of an ed progam, that mentoring can make the difference between a good educator down the line and a bad one (or burned out one).

Follow the money.

The education schools make money by teaching teachers.

The teachers can get higher salaries by restricting
the number of teachers.

The ed schools and teachers benefit by requiring
more credentials and classes.

Stewart,

You may have a point about the Ed. colleges, however, career teachers are hardly in it for the money. I would gladly take a pay cut in order to cut my class size by hiring another teacher or two.

"I don't think this can be stated as fact as there is a good bit of debate in the research. There are good and bad public and private schools."

This is, of course, quite true. Both public and private schools vary in quality.

But I suspect the anonymous poster was getting at something else here. There's a widespread consensus that, by and large, our large public schools systems are not producing the results we need. There's also a sense among non-educators, at least, that many private schools are doing a better job.

I'd go further and say that there's a general feeling that most established, well-run private schools do a better job.

It's worth asking why that might be.

The person in this story can apply to charter schools, right? Charters do not have to adhere to the DC state certification standards, do they? Can they hire based on their own definition of merit? What about HQT and federal funding?

It's easy to explain why so many people think private schools are "better" than public schools. First, there are elite private schools that only accept the best students, academically as well as extra curricular activities. They're very expensive, but the teachers are not necessarily better, and don't make more money either than public school teachers. The teachers do usually have smaller class sizes but have to deal with helicopter parents who don't like any criticism at all of their kids. Second, there are parochial schools which are selective but always religious and frequently tough disciplinarians. So they get better performance out of their students because they have to behave. Third, there are private schools, some military, for instance, where kids are really sent for "rehab" in a way, and whatever they do, they better do it better than they did. In all cases, private schools do not have to put up with any kid who is lazy, out of control or mentally disabled. They can throw out those they want to, which public schools cannot do. And it's getting harder and harder to do so. Some teachers in public schools are stuck with the kids who will not even try. So it's not reasonable to compare private school and public school teachers. The students are not the same.

DCer--I was gonna say that, but you beat me to it.

If you are going to wake up in the morning and not hate the thought of going to work as a teacher, you had better like kids, understand the psychology of kids, have a thick skin, a strong sense of self and a good sense of humor. While the kids can frustrate you, annoy you, make you put your head down and wail because someone just asked a stupid question---yes, there are stupid questions--it is their parents that will drive you to start your own business, go back to school, etc. At some schools it would not matter if the teachers were all idiots because the parents are involved. There are other schools, given an endless supply of money and the best teachers in the world, that would suck because the kids do not come to school ready to learn. They are hungry, scared, angry, worried, sick, in pain, have no clue how to operate in a group. Or listen.

"So it's not reasonable to compare private school and public school teachers. The students are not the same."

Lots of people say this, but just how true is it? Private schools can't kick everyone out - students do mean revenue, after all - and public schools do have the ability to suspend/expel students who are truly disruptive. It may well be that public schools are too slow to discipline students, or that we've created rules and regulations that made the discipline process ineffective, but if so, then there's one very important lesson we can learn from private schools.

Mimi, reading your post, it seemed to me you were almost making the case for private schools. Parochial schools "get better performance out of their students because they have to behave." Military-style private schools "rehab" problem kids.

As for private school teachers being "better" than public school teachers, I don't think that was really Mr. Fisher's point. It's not so much that public school teachers are bad, but that the DC public schools are unnecessarily cutting themselves off from valuable teaching talent - talent that they need - due to rules that are applied foolishly.

I am tired of the private vs public school debate as if they are comparable. I mean, look at what my company can do (100% of employees have associates degrees or higher, 10% have PhDs) when compared with the US Infantry, where PhDs are unheard of in ground troops. Why can't KIA make a car as good as the Porsche for under $15k?

My brother was expelled from MoCo schools and ended up at Landon where he had a semi-private tutor every afternoon from 3-5pm teaching to the test. MoCo schools do not offer private tutors from 3-5pm.

WHY NOT!?

"Of all factors that schools can control, there is no single correlating factor that has a stronger relationship to student achievement than teacher knowledge of subject material."

Bull. It's class size. Control for everything else and kids in smaller classes do much better than kids in larger classes, especially when you look at lower grades and less-advantaged learners.