Nicholas Giordano is a professor of Political Science, the host of The P.A.S. Report Podcast, and a fellow at Campus Reform’s Higher Education Fellowship.
Would you trust a surgeon who was never required to pass anatomy or board a plane with a pilot who didn’t have to demonstrate flying proficiency? Of course not. So why are millions of students forced into classrooms with underqualified teachers and professors who lack the skills, subject matter expertise, and training necessary to provide a quality education?
New Jersey’s recent announcement that it will eliminate basic reading, writing, and mathematics proficiency exams for aspiring teachers is a symptom of a much broader problem. The real crisis is the failure of our education colleges to maintain high standards. Many of these institutions have steadily lowered standards, rather than equip aspiring teachers with the knowledge and tools they need to succeed in the classroom. This failure has created a vicious cycle from kindergarten through college in which underqualified educators produce mediocre graduates. Many of these graduates will become teachers themselves, and so the decline continues.
Teachers are the vanguards of society, yet the low admission standards in many college education programs illustrate that the profession is no longer held in high regard. According to a study conducted by the National Council on Teacher Quality, only 51% of education programs require a minimum GPA of 3.0 or higher for admission. Compare that to engineering and bu tudents master that very content.
For example, in 1984, education majors at SUNY Cortland were required to take just six education courses, with the majority of their coursework dedicated to mastering their chosen subject matter. Today, the number of education credits has doubled as required subject matter courses have been eliminated. Courses like “Gender, Race, and Class Issues in Education” promote activism rather than equip education majors with a deep understanding of the core academic content needed to teach their subjects.
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Organizations like Teachers Test Prep have emerged as a direct response to the failures of our education colleges. These organizations offer tutoring services to help prospective teachers pass basic proficiency exams. After years of attending college, aspiring teachers should not require such services as they should already possess a strong command of the basics. It is this reality that highlights the urgent need to reform our education colleges and how they prepare the next generation of teachers.
To fix this problem, colleges and universities must immediately raise the admission standards for education degree programs. They should also require mandatory proficiency testing in reading, writing, and subject-specific content. This will help ensure that prospective teachers are prepared for the classroom. We must stop with the excuses. Lowering credentialing standards for teachers is nothing more than a cover-up that continues to perpetuate a failed system.
There are a lot of great educators who have dedicated their lives to the field, but they are being let down by a system that lacks an effective infrastructure and continues to lower standards. It has become a system that prioritizes quantity over quality and values bureaucratic compliance over academic excellence. If we are serious about fixing our education system, we must overhaul how we prepare, train, and credential teachers and hold them to the highest standards. Anything less is a disservice to our students, our teachers, and our society as a whole.
Editorials and op-eds reflect the opinion of the authors and not necessarily that of Campus Reform or the Leadership Institute.
This article was originally published at campusreform.org
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