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Are Teacher Education and Teacher Certification Standards Enough?

Educating the youth in America is extremely important and when looking at how to most
successfully educate students, it is crucial to look at the preparedness of the country's teachers.
Teacher preparation and certification has come under much scrutiny over the past years and
many are seeking to find out whether or not teacher education meets important standards in order
to produce teachers who are going to properly educate students. Current teacher certification
standards have to be evaluated, the correlation between teacher preparation and student
performance needs to be figured, and the many different proposed plans to reform teacher
certification need to be researched in order to decide if teacher certification standards need to be
changed.
In order to figure out where to go in the future with our teacher education standards and
the certification process we must look at the past. According to David Angus in his article,
Professionalism and the Public Good: A Brief History of Teacher Certification, during the
nineteenth century, the school system took two different paths, mostly separated by the type of
area, either rural or urban (4). Angus states that, Those in rural communities especially tended
to believe that good teachers were born rather than made, and that they needed only a little bit of
pedagogical training, (4). By pedagogical training, they simply mean training related to the
education of teachers. As time passed, professional educators were put in charge of deciding who
would teach in local classrooms, and eventually, university-based education requirements for
teachers replaced the old certification exams, which the professional education establishment
belittled as a back door route that allowed poorly qualified persons to infiltrate the nations
classroom, (5). Throughout time, and up until present day, many people have been skeptical
about the education of teachers, and the quality of the teachers of the country is under question.

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Donald Boyd, Donald Goldhaber, Hamilton Lankford, and James Wyckoffs article, The
Effect of Certification and Preparation on Teacher Quality, state that the most common route to
becoming a hired teacher is to go through a school of education and complete all requirements
for the teacher certification program (46). Some schools though, have a hard time finding
teachers to fill positions at their schools, so they end up hiring those who are not certified
teachers, therefore creating schools with low-performing students (47). This is one reason that
teacher certification is so important. In places where schools, for some reason, cannot hire
certified teachers, creates schools with the lack of the ability to educate students. If a school
cannot properly educate its students, then what is the point?
As with any other topic wanting of a solution, many people have proposed ideas on how
to solve the problem of our certification standards for teachers and how to improve the education
of teachers. These proposals come from people far and wide, and while some may think that they
are all new ideas, since the people of America have been suspicious of this process for many
years, most of them have been proposed many times, by many people, over decades and decades
of time. One of the biggest issues many people have with the system by which teachers are
educated and certified is whether or not teachers are being highly educated in their specific field
of study. Many people feel that teachers are more heavily educated on how to educate in general,
rather than how to educate students in specific fields. In his article, The Grand Paradox in
Teacher Preparation and Certification Policy, Thomas Brewer discusses how that statement may
be true. He believes that many teachers are shown more methods of teaching rather than being
given knowledge about the field in which they will be teaching. Brewer, and many others, feel
that while it is important to know the best methods to teach, it is more important to be extremely

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knowledgeable in the subject field. Brewer speculates that we may be producing teachers who
lack competence in their field of study, creating an environment in classrooms where students
are not being given enough information from the teacher in order to be successful in the class. If
a teacher is not knowledgeable in their subject field, students are not able to inquire and receive
answers on problems the teacher and students both may not be familiar with. Brewer insists that
teachers who are educated in their subject field and also educated in methods of teaching, are the
most successful teachers.
One proposed plan talked about in the article, The Case Against Teacher Certification,
by Dale Ballou and Michael Podgursky, was given by the National Commission on Teaching and
Americas Future (NCTAF). The authors state that while its name may suggest otherwise, the
organization does not hold any commission from elected officials. The NCTAF plan, as the
authors refer to it, suggests professionalizing teaching. By this, the organization means to shift
control of accreditation and certification from local school boards and state education agencies
to private education organizations, (18). The NCTAF plan, while it does not give its own ideas
for the standards of teacher education and certification, it does state that it wants professional
educators to make those decisions.
Along with the NCTAF plan for reform in teacher preparation and certification, Gary
Griffin, the author of, Rethinking Standards Through Teacher Preparation Partnerships,
discusses the use of teacher preparation programs participating in school-university partnerships
in an effort to examine issues of standards in teacher education. Griffin goes in depth over six
particular examples of programs using these school-university partnerships and discusses the
benefits of them.

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Similarly to the research discussed in the article by Griffin, Courtney Bell and Peter
Youngs article, Substance and show: Understanding Responses to Teacher Education
Programme Accreditation Processes, talks about a case study conducted in Connecticut. The
case study examines the accreditation policies in the state between 2002 and 2006 (298). The
researchers found through interviews with 17 faculty members and administrators at schools
including two public universities with large teacher preparation programmes, a third public
institution with a small programme, and two private universities with small programmes, that
many of the schools realigned their programs with an emphasis on assessing teacher candidates
and took greater interest in collecting data. The authors point out that although some may
question whether or not any substantial changes were made in the accreditation process, there
was evidence of both substantive and symbolic change occurring, (300, 305). The authors
conclude that these changes in the process were beneficial in creating higher and better standards
for future teachers.
The NCTAF plan and the plan observed in the article by Courtney Bell and Peter Youngs
stated that changes to the certification and education of teachers would be highly beneficial,
while the plan proposed by Xiaoxia Newton, Rebecca Poon, Nicole Nunes, and Elisa Stone in
the issue of Evaluating and Program Planning on, Research on Teacher Education Programs:
Logic Model Approach, used a different approach to teacher education reform.
In the article by Newton and associates, the proposed logic model approach was
described and discussed. The logic model approach refers to the idea that there are other logical
links between the preparation of teachers and the performance or learning of students. The
researchers use a longitudinal study, one conducted over a period of time, to demonstrate their
own use of the logic model approach. The article included a figure depicting the theory tree of

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the logic model approach. The tree showed the theorized principles, components, and outcomes
of the program. The principles of the program included things like focus on content, promoting
inquiry, practicing equity, creating community, and sustaining cohesion in the program. From
that, the figure shows the components branching from the principles. This section includes
disciplinary coursework, K-12 classroom field placement, and program coursework. The figure
also shows that the program would include assessments on the participants SAT and ACT scores,
GPA, and the background of the participants. From these principles and components, the
researchers theorized that the outcomes would include knowledge on instruments used, writing
lesson plans, and would have reflections on their field work. The figure also includes the
theorized benefits of the logic model approach. They would include purposeful and cohesive
disciplines in the math and sciences, a focus on active student learning and the construction of
knowledge, the idea that knowledge is a malleable trait, the idea that teaching is an
intellectual and personal act, and that it is a reflective process (90). The article is concluded by
the statement that the process of teacher education is lacking and that the logic model approach
was formed through great research and collection of data, and should it be adopted by teacher
education programs, it would benefit the system by which teachers are educated and certified
(95).
Some may say that the teacher education programs and the certification standards for
teachers in America are fine and do an efficient job of preparing teachers. Same make the
argument that not only are teachers competent, but they are doing exceptionally in their job.
When looking at the scores across countries in the world, America is ranked 27th of 34 of the
surveyed countries (1). With scores so low that America ranks so low among 34 countries, it is
hard to imagine that it has absolutely nothing to do with the competence of teachers. If schools

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were equipped with teachers who were better prepared and educated, it is extremely likely that
America would move up in the rankings in education.
The standards by which teachers are certified in America are low and the level of
competence among teachers is affecting students ability to perform and learn in school.
Although many people have proposed various routes and ideas to reform and improve the
countrys system by which teachers are educated and certified, finding exactly what methods will
work best is difficult. Through the research I found, it may be that a combination of the multiple
proposed plans may be the best route in reforming the standards of certification and education of
teachers. If states were to incorporate a heavier emphasis on knowledge about the subject field of
teachers, making the education of teachers more professionalized as proposed by the NCTAF
plan, using some of the facets of school-university based partnerships, and using the logic model
approach, or some parts of the theory, the system would be more rigorous and would likely
produce teachers who are competent, knowledgeable, and able to successfully educate students.