Bellying Up To The Bar - Again. Why A "Bar Exam" For Teachers Misses The Point

Andrew Rotherham:

Harriet Sanford of the NEA Foundation discusses the idea of rounds - like medical students - and more generally at the problem of reform churn. The idea of rounds and clinical-style training for new teachers has a lot of merit, but more generally it seems everyone wants education to be like medicine - or law. The "new" idea for a "bar exam" for teachers (Albert Shanker floated the concept in 1985) modeled on how they do it in the legal field is back in the news as the AFT rolls it out as a new initiative.

But a few questions don't get asked enough. Perhaps most importantly, what if education isn't really like law or medicine? What if it's more like other professions, say journalism, public policy, or business where credentials are valued but weighed alongside other factors because there isn't a field-wide core of knowledge or skills all practitioners must have? It's a narrow view of "professional" these days that brings you back to just law and medicine.

And what if we don't know as much as we like to presuppose? We don't ask enough about the limits today. In early-childhood reading or special education, there is some professional knowledge that's established and (sometimes) reflected in credentialing regimes. What truly makes a great 10th-grade English teacher or 12th grade government teacher? Outside of content knowledge, that's less clear. My colleagues Sara Mead, Rachael Brown, and I recently looked at this issue in the context of teacher evaluations in this paper but, it's a broader one.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at December 5, 2012 1:13 AM
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