Ed prof: teacher certification 'has next to no effect on teacher performance'

Robert Maranto is the 21st Century Chair in Leadership at the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas. He also serves on the Fayetteville school board. He previously worked for the Brookings Institution and for the Clinton administration. 

"In contrast to other professions, studies show that certification has next to no effect on teacher performance," he wrote last month in The Wall Street Journal.

Instead it’s is a rote exercise providing the mere appearance of professionalism. There’s a reason the prep schools attended by Barack Obama (Punahou), both Presidents Bush (Phillips Academy), Chelsea Clinton ( Sidwell Friends ) and John Kerry (St. Paul’s) hire uncertified teachers. That certification is the main qualification for public-school teachers shows how differently the country’s elites treat your kids and mine.

Ed schools are educationally worthless

"Study after study has found no relationship between teacher training and educational outcomes," Greg Forster writes. "Saying 'ed schools are educationally worthless' is about as shocking to education researchers as saying 'smoking causes cancer.' Yet reforming ed schools is a fool's errand. Oklahoma should make an end run around them." Join the conversation here.

Relax school regulations

"In Oklahoma and across the nation, we’ve been trying to improve education by tightening regulations on schools," Greg Forster writes. "The 1889 Institute recently published a database of mandates that Oklahoma public schools have to follow, and it’s a mind-boggling experience. The irony is that better educational results actually come from giving more freedom and responsibility to schools, principals, and parents—which means relaxing central control."

Oklahoma teacher hiring devastated by emergency ‘common sense shortage’

"Oklahoma’s education establishment and click-addicted media benefit from public hysteria about a 'teacher shortage' and 'emergency certifications,'" Greg Forster writes. "But the general consensus is that the empirical research does not find evidence of educational value—at all—to teacher certification requirements. These arbitrary and educationally useless requirements do nothing to improve educational quality, and much to hinder schools’ ability to hire teachers."

Read the whole thing here.

How to run the government-school monopoly better

Oklahoma policymakers should take a hard look at school board elections, building-level autonomy, principal training, transparency measures, and other public-school governance reforms, Greg Forster writes in Perspective.