Public forum, Oct. 30

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October 30, 2009

Anonymous Pharos-Tribune Fri Oct 30, 2009, 08:43 AM EDT

Teaching rules deserve support

About the article and the letter to the editor on the Proposed Rules Revision on Teacher Education and Accountability (Pharos-Tribune, Oct. 29).

The proposed regulations will not “make it easier for individuals to become licensed teachers and school administrators.” There are few changes in the transition to teaching program.

The new regulations will decrease the number of education hours required to become a teacher and require new teachers to major in their content area and demonstrate competence in their content area through a test. This would decrease the number of hours students take in college education departments.

I am not suggesting that is why college education department faculty members are concerned. However, I would have preferred to see distinguished educators such as Stuart M. Green and Julie Saam refer to research showing that the students of teachers who major in education perform better academically than the students of teachers who major in content areas. Instead, they stated the changes to their education program were “based on the feedback of our students who declared a strong preference to earn a degree in secondary education rather than one based in the subject area.”

This contributes to the impression, held by many people outside the field of education, that education as a field is insufficiently founded on results and hard research. If academia in the field of education is not producing the data to support their decisions on how teachers are prepared, then the decisions on how teachers are prepared need to be placed in other hands.

The new regulations will give the people closest to our children, administrators, larger pools of potential teachers. It will eliminate the expensive and time-consuming requirements to obtain college credit to be recertified. Local administrators will now be allowed to decide what training will help teachers improve their students’ academic achievement. By decreasing the number of specialty areas from five to three, administrators and teachers will have more flexibility in using their skills where those skills are needed.

Overall, the new regulations move the focus of teacher licensing/regulation from “What does a professional teacher look like?” to “How can schools produce students who succeed academically?”

I urge concerned parents, teachers and community members to read the proposed regulations at www.doe.in.gov and comment in support of them.

Greta Krawczyk

Language Learning That Works

Logansport

Thanks for support of annual fundraiser

Thank you to all the people who attended or supported the Psi Iota Xi Sorority chicken noodle dinner and baked goods. Proceeds will go to scholarships and many projects for the people of Cass County.

Thanks also to the Pharos-Tribune for the nice picture.

Cheryl Enders

Logansport

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Public forum, Oct. 30

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