High quality teachers needed

All 50 states have teacher-certification requirements, the justification being that, in order to determine who is a qualified teacher, prospects must be subjected to a lengthy process of schooling and testing. Typically, certified teachers have completed a degree in education (or have taken upwards of 30 hours of education-related coursework), completed a semester of student teaching and passed several hundred dollars worth of tests (which the would-be teachers usually pay to take).

Even after becoming certified, teachers have to jump through dozens of hoops, including more coursework, more seminars and more testing. But, as it turns out, all of this effort, testing and screening is for nothing.

The left-of-center Brookings Institution recently published a report called "Identifying Effective Teachers Using Performance on the Job," and found that certified teachers are virtually indistinguishable from alternatively certified and uncertified teachers when it comes to educating and improving student achievement.



The above graph overlays the bell curve for each category of teacher – Traditionally certified, Alternatively certified and Uncertified – for their ability to positively or negatively affect student performance.

As the Brookings Institution discovered, an uncertified teacher is just as likely as a certified one to improve a student's level of educational achievement. So why is Nevada keeping qualified but uncertified teachers out of the classroom? Wouldn't students be better off if we were to replace certified but unqualified teachers with qualified but uncertified (or alternatively certified) teachers?

Nevada needs to focus on hiring quality teachers, and de-emphasize certification. We need to figure out how to hire and retain the teachers on the right side of that graph – those who can improve student achievement – while getting rid of the teachers on the left, who do the opposite.

Rhee-forming education

Serious education reform is getting some unlikely allies these days. Washington, D.C.'s new school chancellor, Michelle Rhee, has become a no-holds-barred agitator for genuine education reform – starting with the administrators and then the teachers.

After just one year, Rhee already has replaced 50 principals and dismissed 93 staffers at the central office. Rhee has even gone so far as to close failing public schools – something unheard of out here in Nevada. Beyond hacking away at ineffective administrators and school managers, Rhee is targeting the sacrosanct teacher contracts and their most perverse rule – tenure.

Rhee has stated: "When you are talking about a contract or a collective-bargaining agreement that has provisions in it that I do not believe are in the best interests of children, then I refuse to sign my name."

Rhee understands that tenure – a policy under which the mere length of employment makes it very difficult for teachers to be fired – creates a disincentive for hard work and innovation in the classroom. Older teachers are protected from competition from newer teachers, and older teachers only have to perform adequately and avoid being found guilty of a felony to avoid termination.

The elimination of tenure and the creation of merit pay for D.C. schools have become the main agenda items for Rhee, who is giving the teacher union no quarter.

Rhee's plan allows existing teachers to sign one of two new contracts. The first contract allows the teacher to retain tenure protection in exchange for lower salary increases in the future. The second, or "green" contract, eliminates tenure and puts the teacher on a one-year probationary period and gives the teacher the opportunity to earn up to $131,000 if he or she proves to be an effective teacher. All new teachers would be placed on the competitive "green" contract which would, over time, eliminate all tenure contracts.

Rhee hopes that the monetary reward of higher salaries for good performance and the threat of termination for poor performance will not only boost existing teacher performance, but also attract high-quality educators to the nation's worst school district.

Merit pay for Nevada's educators would be an important step toward meeting our state's educational needs, and it is something our policymakers should look into without haste.