Views expressed in guest columns do not necessarily reflect the views of Accuracy in Media.
Visit the complete Guest Column archives.
California: Giving Home-Schoolers the Shaft
Guest Column | By Tom McLaughlin | March 14, 2008
There are still excellent public school teachers out there, but mediocre ones are increasing and so are the downright terrible ones…
Teachers' unions are pro-choice on abortion, but not on education. They use their enormous political capital with the Democrat Party to block voucher initiatives in whatever state or municipality proposes them, including in California. Consequently, many parents home-school their children at their own expense, even though they still have to pay local property taxes which are spent mostly on public schools their children do not attend. Right now, about 166,000 California children are taught at home. But last week, an California appeals court declared that all children must be taught by a "credentialed" teacher. It means that most home-schooling parents without teaching credentials would be violating California law and subject to prosecution. This is going to touch off a political conflagration.
The teachers' unions love it. "We're happy," said Lloyd Porter, who is on the California Teachers Association board of directors, to the San Francisco Chronicle. "We always think students should be taught by credentialed teachers, no matter what the setting." A.J. Duffy, president of United Teachers Los Angeles, said he agrees with the ruling. "What's best for a child is to be taught by a credentialed teacher," he told the Los Angeles Times.
Teachers' unions would like to stop being embarrassed by home-schooled kids who continually outperform those taught by "credentialed" teachers in national contests. According to a 2002 article by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy: "Only 2 percent of U.S. students are home schooled. Yet, in the [National Geographic] geography bee, 22 percent of the national finalists and 40 percent of the final 10 students were home-schoolers. Such a showing is nothing short of phenomenal." Home-schooled kids dominate the Scripps-Howard National Spelling Bee as well. In 2000, home-schooled kids took first, second, and third place. Last year, home-schooled kids won both the National Geography Bee and the National Spelling Bee.
Meanwhile, we learn that those "credentialed" teachers so prized by California courts and teachers' unions compare very unfavorably to people credentialed in other professions. To become "credentialed," teachers have to major in education. According to economist Walter Williams: "Students who have chosen education as their major have the lowest SAT scores of any other major. Students who have graduated with an education degree earn lower scores than any other major on graduate school admissions tests such as the GRE, MCAT or LSAT. Schools of education, either graduate or undergraduate, represent the academic slums of most any university. As such, they are home to the least able students and professors with the lowest academic respect."
Clearly, too many "credentialed" teachers don't know much. Or, to paraphrase Maine humorist Tim Sample: "They don't even suspect much." The slow ones - and trust me, there are a lot of slow ones in public education - don't want any light shining on just how slow they are. That's why they fight standardized testing for teachers. The first time Massachusetts forced new teachers to take a basic competency test in 1998, an astonishing 59% of them failed. These were college graduates (education majors) taking a test that Massachusetts House Speaker Thomas Finneran said: "a reasonably educated ninth grader could pass."
Former Boston University President and Massachusetts Board of Education Chairman John Silber wanted to eliminate teacher certification, or "credentialing" as California calls it, because it was keeping really bright people out of the teaching profession. However, teachers' unions blocked him. Why would unions favor credentialing when they disdain standardized tests? Because it's easy to pass college education courses and difficult to pass standardized tests which cannot be fudged. I'll bet a lot of the 59% who flunked the teacher test graduated with honors from their college education departments. Grade inflation there is rampant.
Silber knew there were many mature, successful, college-educated professionals from other fields who wanted to teach and he didn't want to discourage them by requiring they take two more years of largely useless education courses in order to be certified or "credentialed." My school district participated in the University of Southern Maine's "Extended Teacher Education Program," or ETEP, for several years in which aspiring teachers described above could become certified with only one year of coursework and student teaching. I was on teams interviewing promising candidates for whom I might serve as "mentor teacher" during part of that year. As the teams discussed candidate suitability, a disturbing pattern emerged. Several of the above-described "mature, successful, college-educated professionals from other fields" were naturally confident, competent, and bright - as you would expect. But, as such, they were threatening to the insular academics from the university cloister who would have to supervise them. Some interviewers came right out and said the candidates were "too sure of themselves." They were not typically obsequious, worshipful, college students enthralled by anyone with a Ph.D who calls himself "doctor," and so they were passed over.
There are still excellent public school teachers out there, but mediocre ones are increasing and so are the downright terrible ones, thanks to teachers' union protection. They may be happy now, but California's decision on home-schooling will touch off a firestorm the unions are going to regret.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Political Editor Tom McLaughlin is a teacher and columnist who lives in Lovell, Maine. His column is published in Maine and New Hampshire newspapers and you can email: (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or visit his blog Tom McLaughlin Blog.
Guest columns do not necessarily reflect the views of Accuracy in Media or its staff.
84 Comments | Post a Comment
What is MAC? (something tells me it’s a dumb question:D)
I really dont understand why home schooling is frowed upon like that. I have a feeling that people have not yet realised the benefits of home schooling…
Homeschooling is very important, i dont understand why they are doing this. it is sad…
With the way the educational system is set up in this county and the condition schools are in home schooling seems to be the only viable solution.
Any transition serious enough to alter your definition of self will require not just small adjustments in your way of living and thinking but a full-on metamorphosis.
Newspapermen learn to call a murderer ‘an alleged murderer’ and the King of England ‘the alleged King of England’ to avoid libel suits.
The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.
One thing I’ve learned in all these years is not to make love when you really don’t feel it; there’s probably nothing worse you can do to yourself than that.
I don’t believe in intuition. When you get sudden flashes of perception, it is just the brain working faster than usual. But you’ve been getting ready to know it for a long time, and when it comes, you feel you’ve known it always.
Better by far you should forget and smile than you should remember and be sad.
The world tolerates conceit from those who are successful, but not from anybody else.
I lived what most people call the good life. I was happy, but deep inside I always felt that, with the short amount of time we are given to live and love in this world, we spend too much time loving things instead of people.
Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.
When you go into court you are putting your fate into the hands of twelve people who weren’t smart enough to get out of jury duty.
Preserving health by too severe a rule is a worrisome malady.
You must not think me necessarily foolish because I am facetious, nor will I consider you necessarily wise because you are grave.
The problem is never how to get new, innovative thoughts into your mind, but how to get old ones out. Every mind is a building filled with archaic furniture. Clean out a corner of your mind and creativity will instantly fill it.
A minute’s success pays the failure of years.
The price one pays for pursuing any profession or calling is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.
Resolve to edge in a little reading every day, if it is but a single sentence. If you gain fifteen minutes a day, it will make itself felt at the end of the year.
It is nobler to declare oneself wrong than to insist on being right - especially when one is right.
I’ve never quite believed that one chance is all I get.
The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
There is always more misery among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher.
Part of being creative is learning how to protect your freedom. That includes freedom from avarice.
They say such nice things about people at their funerals that it makes me sad to realize that I’m going to miss mine by just a few days.
Every moment of one’s existence one is growing into more or retreating into less.
Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
We don’t know a millionth of one percent about anything.
Music is essentially useless, as life is.
There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and the tired man who wants a book to read.
I have a simple philosophy. Fill what’s empty. Empty what’s full. And scratch where it itches.
You have to have funny faces and words, you can’t just have words. It is a powerful thing, and I think that’s why it’s hard for people to imagine that women can do that, be that powerful.
Truly great madness cannot be achieved without significant intelligence.
Normal is not something to aspire to, it’s something to get away from.
I don’t generally feel anything until noon; then it’s time for my nap.
Set all things in their own peculiar place, and know that order is the greatest grace.
Don’t worry about the world coming to an end today. It’s already tomorrow in Australia.
I’m moving, but don’t worry! [Someone once] told me we’re all on the same planet, so I’ll be okay!
Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb.
An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought.
The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.
The lion and the calf shall lie down together but the calf won’t get much sleep.
We all have strength enough to endure the misfortunes of others.
If the only prayer you ever say in your whole life is “thank you,” that would suffice.
There is an applause superior to that of the multitudes: one’s own.
For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.
While we have the gift of life, it seems to me that only tragedy is to allow part of us to die - whether it is our spirit, our creativity, or our glorious uniqueness.
Fall is my favorite season in Los Angeles, watching the birds change color and fall from the trees.
The excellence of a gift lies in its appropriateness rather than in its value.
If there’s one thing I know it’s God does love a good joke.
Be more prompt to go to a friend in adversity than in prosperity.
I love being married. It’s so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.
People everywhere confuse what they read in newspapers with news.
Let not thy will roar, when thy power can but whisper.
Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.
Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort.
May 3 at 4:16 pm | #1 | Link
Nice! I’ve bookmarked it http://www.propeller.com/submit/checkstory :D