New York State Regulators Toughen Standards for Teachers

[Wayne Ross <wross@BINGHAMTON.EDU>]

New York Times

September 18, 1999

New York State Regulators Toughen Standards for Teachers


By ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS

ew York State set new higher standards for teachers on Friday that will for
the first time require all teachers in middle schools and high schools to
have completed specialized college majors in the subjects they propose to
teach.
The new rules, adopted by the Board of Regents Friday, also set up
procedures to penalize teaching schools where students routinely fail the
state's licensing examination for teachers, which is itself being made more
rigorous.

The new standards are among the toughest in the nation, state officials
said, and are part of a national movement in education to improve schools
by setting ever-higher standards. Already New York has introduced new
reading and math tests in fourth and eighth grades and has set rules
requiring high school students to pass Regents exams in five subject areas
for graduation.

"This is a major piece in a structure to raise all children to high
standards," Richard P. Mills, the State Education Commissioner, said
yesterday. "The heart of the matter is teaching."

Mills said the new standards were aimed at addressing the growing concern
that many teachers are trained in educational methods but lack a strong
grounding in the subject -- whether math or American history -- that they
are supposed to teach in the classroom.

Studies show that large numbers of teachers across the country lack either
college majors or minors in the subjects they teach, especially in science
and math, and that the problem is most severe in inner-city schools serving
poor black and Hispanic children.

Beginning in the current school year, at least 80 percent of the students
who graduate from New York State teaching programs must pass the state
licensing exam for teachers or that teaching school can be put on probation
for three years and then shut down. If the 80 percent rule were in effect
today, state officials said, at least two dozen of New York's 113 teacher
education programs could lose their accreditation, including several at the
City University of New York.

The teaching exams are also being stiffened, so that by the year 2000,
teachers will have to answer about 20 percent more questions correctly,
state officials said.

The standards will not be retroactively applied to the current teaching
force. Most will affect prospective teachers entering college next fall.
But state officials said standards would have a major impact in the years
ahead as half of the state's teaching force becomes eligible for retirement
within the next decade.

Randi Weingarten, president of the United Federation of Teachers, the New
York City teachers' union, said she supported the requirements that
teachers have stronger training in the subjects they teach.

But she said she feared that raising the standards would disproportionately
affect black and Hispanic students enrolled in teaching programs that have
historically not prepared their graduates to pass the state exams.

More and more states are tackling low achievement scores among students by
focusing on the training of teachers. Texas has adopted a rule that 70
percent of a training program's graduating teachers must pass the state
exam or the program can lose accreditation -- a somewhat lower standard
than the one passed by New York State yesterday. Educators said that
studies have found that the scores of students on standardized tests
improve in direct relation to the amount of training teachers have in the
subjects they teach, especially math and science.

"This is a huge national issue because in state after state we're asking
teachers to teach to higher standards, but in the core content areas they
don't have the preparation to do that," said Stanley S. Litow, a vice
president at the IBM Coropration in Armonk, N.Y., and a former deputy
chancellor of New York City schools.

A study by the Education Trust Inc., an education research group based in
Washington, found that large numbers of public-school teachers across the
country do not have undergraduate majors or minors in their fields,
including 25 percent of English teachers, 17.4 percent of social studies
teachers, 39.5 percent of science teachers and 34 percent of math teachers.
Lewis H. Spence, the New York City school system's Deputy Chancellor for
Operations, said that while raising the bar is "terrific" in theory, the
city is already having trouble recruiting enough qualified teachers and the
new standards could make that even more difficult. It is possible, he said,
that college students who now choose education as a career will simply
choose other fields, or will choose elementary teaching, where the
standards are lower, instead of high school or middle school.

"The question is, will the pool of people respond or will it simply close
out," Spence said.
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Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company







E. Wayne Ross
SUNY Binghamton

"Most everybody I see knows the truth, but they just don't know that they
know it."                                               -Woody Guthrie

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