Minnesota was hoping for $330 million in grants, which go to states deemed innovative in their school policies. In the next round, Minnesota can’t get more than $175 million.
Pawlenty wants more latitude to let experts become teachers without going through traditional routes, to reassign teachers based on effectiveness and to more closely link teacher pay to student performance.
Democratic state Rep. Mindy Greiling said the alternative licensure proposal has a better shot than the others.
Related: An Email to Madison Superintendent Dan Nerad on Math Teacher Hiring Criteria by Janet Mertz:
Part of our disagreement centers around differing views regarding the math content knowledge one needs to be a highly-qualified middle school math teacher. As a scientist married to a mathematician, I don’t believe that taking a couple of math ed courses on how to teach the content of middle school mathematics provides sufficient knowledge of mathematics to be a truly effective teacher of the subject. Our middle school foreign language teachers didn’t simply take a couple of ed courses in how to teach their subject at the middle school level; rather, most of them also MAJORED or, at least, minored in the subject in college. Why aren’t we requiring the same breathe and depth of content knowledge for our middle school mathematics teachers? Do you really believe mastery of the middle school mathematics curriculum and how to teach it is sufficient content knowledge for teachers teaching math? What happens when students ask questions that aren’t answered in the teachers’ manual? What happens when students desire to know how the material they are studying relates to higher-level mathematics and other subjects such as science and engineering?
The MMSD has been waiting a long time already to have math-qualified teachers teaching mathematics in our middle schools. Many countries around the world whose students outperform US students in mathematics only hire teachers who majored in the subject to teach it. Other school districts in the US are taking advantage of the current recession with high unemployment to hire and train people who know and love mathematics, but don’t yet know how to teach it to others.
I don’t necessarily disagree with Janet on her call for better math education for middle school teachers, but would raise a significantly different issue.
Her analogy to the requirements for a foreign language teacher should not hold. Math courses are taught at every grade level from K-12, so by the time of high school graduation, every student who is qualified to go to college and become a teacher should have the knowledge needed to teach middle school math courses, just from their studies in K-12.
I would expect there should be no need to take Spanish ed courses in college for foreign language teachers to teach Spanish, if all students took 13 years of Spanish on their way to getting a high school diploma.
Should a teacher be required to minor in reading in college before they should be allowed to teach reading in middle school?
The point to me is, then, that K-12 math education is so poor that K-12 years of math studies would not qualify a graduate to teach middle school math without at least minoring in the subject in college.
I can not think of a more damning indictment of K-12 education than to admit that middle school teachers need math courses in college to gain middle school math knowledge. But that, in fact, is what is being proposed and is likely necessary.