Mississippi’s Department of Education obviously had to make some adjustments on testing requirements for prospective teachers when most everything shut down in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
It would be irrational to demand teacher hopefuls to take licensure tests that no one is presently giving.
But MDE went too far in its accommodation by basically excusing this fall’s crop of new teachers from ever having to pass the tests that are designed to ensure they know enough about the subject they plan to teach as well as possess the basic skills of an educated person.
Instead, the teacher class of 2020 will need to only have a bachelor’s degree in the area they intend to teach or a bachelor’s degree in any subject along with at least 18 hours of coursework in the area in which they wish to be licensed.
An organization that advocates for high teacher quality says that Mississippi’s approach is more lenient than that taken by most other states. Kate Walsh, president of the National Center on Teacher Quality, told Mississippi Today that the more typical response is granting a one-year emergency license but stipulating that for the license to be renewed, the teacher will have to meet the testing requirements when the testing resumes.
With Mississippi’s approach, there’s a strong likelihood that teacher candidates who would not have met the standards in the past are going to be licensed, and they will be able to keep those licenses indefinitely — regardless of their competence — as long as they do their continuing education hours.
Mississippi seems to be using the new coronavirus as an excuse to further water down standards and help school districts with teacher shortages to fill their openings.
There has been a growing pressure in this state to get away from objective measurements — such as the Praxis tests — as a way to increase the pool of teachers. A couple of years ago, Mississippi reduced its passing score on the math portion of the Praxis test because too many teacher hopefuls were having trouble passing that particular test.
Those who argue against such tests claim there are talented prospective teachers out there who just don’t test well. That’s mostly nonsense. The reason that would-be teachers struggle to pass these tests is because they didn’t get a well-rounded education when they were younger and have been unable to make up the deficit while in college.
That’s a pity. Should anyone, however, be presiding over a classroom who can’t read, write and do math on an eighth-grade level? Should they be allowed to teach a subject for which they cannot demonstrate a modest level of mastery?
No matter how desperate Mississippi might be for teachers, lowering standards is not a solution. It just swaps the problem, trading teacher shortages for teaching mediocrity.
Letting some weak teachers into the classroom for one year may be unavoidable because of the pandemic. But adopting a policy that would let them stay after that is a bad idea.
