Big study done by Stanford on the Houston school system showed the TFA test scores were significantly lower than the regular teachers. Almost all TFA teachers leave after their 2 year stint.

Ironically, those TFA “teachers” who go to get real teacher training later see their scores rise.

Uncertified teachers belong in the same catagory as uncertified doctors, uncertified lawyers, uncertified, engineers and uncertified nurses.

It is profoundly insulting to the 120 000 certified teachers working in Ontario to say outragous things like this.

The Tories are contemplating a policy of allowing uncertified teachers. I hope they go for it so they can be crushed.

Personally I would ban uncertified teachers from private schools as well. I would not allow HS credits from uncertified teachers.

Of course the universities tell me they keep a list of schools they have concerns about. All private schools of course.

http://ed.stanford.edu/suse/faculty/displayFacultyNews.php?tablename=notify1&id=389

This makes good sense.  I hope it happens here as well.  Other countries appear to do well by hiring experts in the subject matter, who don’t have teaching certification.  Knowing your subject well is the best way to be able to impart knowledge to someone else!  This is not the case here in Ontario.  I saw examples of this many times while my children were here in school—especially when teachers tried to correct grammar.  My goodness!  I’d teach my kids something, and the teachers would mark it wrong.  When I’d correct it, the teachers’ feelings would get hurt.  They weren’t trained, so how could they teach something they didn’t understand?  BUT they had their OTC’s (meaningless certification). 

Agreed Bev. Something like this is definitely worth considering for Ontario.

Teacher certification is by no means an indication of teacher excellence.

Perhaps those teacher graduates we read about via Chucker’s high distinction could be farmed out to poor and rural neighborhoods to prove themselves?

By all means let the alternative teacher certifications in!

Not going to happen but keep dreaming.

You need 2 things to be a decent teacher. You DO need subject knowledge and you do need pedagogical knowledge. Without BOTH you are useless as a teacher. I find it amusing that those who are not teachers think they know something about this issue. You don’t.

“Alternative” entry teachers have been studied. They can’t teach, they can’t motivate, they can’t plan, they can’t pace and they can’t control their classes.

* Well, when a “teacher” can’t even spell correctly it’s definitely time to try something else!

I’m serious, I’ve had this experience several times with my son correcting what a teacher spelled on the blackboard. And I’m not talking about a typo.

Fortunately, at least the person was an honest human being. She said she didn’t know and they all looked it up in the dictionary. My son’s spelling was the correct one.

* Or the science incident - my son’s class makes experiments measuring forces. They “measured” the force necessary to pull up a mass of 1kg to be 20N ?!!(and not 1 * 9.8 = aprox 10N) 
My son had copied this from the blackboard into his notebook.
Excuse me, you have no basic knowlegde of science if you make such a mistake. You have no business teaching science.

If this is happening, how do we expect kids to believe that school is important?

There are many such stories of incompetence ... actually I would suggest collecting them and posting them on the site so that other parents know that they are not alone and that these are regular occurences.

We need to start destroying the myth that an Ontario Teacher’s Certificate means that the holder is competent in teaching elementary grades.

Are all doctors perfect? No. Do even the very good ones make errors? Yes.

Is it the same for lawyers, engineers, nurses, etc.

I just had an architect make a serious error that cost me $10 000.
Do you hear me saying it is time it is time to let any Tom Dick or Harriet design buildings? No that would be really stupid, just like the idea that uncertified teachers would be a good idea.

I do hope that the traditional cause keeps pushing for idiotic ideas such as this one because it keeps the movement small and margialized.

Very funny!

In most places but North America the reaction would be, “It’s not possible! Such a person would have never become a teacher because they would never qualify to be a teacher!”

Yes, I have had the same experience as Bev: notions “taught” incorrectly.

It is terribly damaging for any student and especially for young ones to not be able to trust and look up to important adults in his life.

Parents are put in impossible situations: shall I let my child learn incorrectly or shall I tell him it is wrong, teach him the correct way and destroy the teacher’s authority in my child’s eyes?

Or how about another story ... my friend’s boy was in French immersion, grade 3. Very little homework, very little practice of new concepts so they are easily forgotten. So my friend gives his boy extra practice at home on the topics covered at school.
After the winter holliday, the boy proudly tells the teacher that he now knows X very well because he has practiced.
The teacher not only doesn’t say good work but gets angry and tells the boy that he shouldn’t practice too much because he can “hurt his mind”!

After that it was impossible for my friend to get his boy to do any extra work at home because his boy would invariably get frightened and angry and tell him that his teachers said that it would hurt his mind.

Your post isn’t funny Europe, but I had to laugh.  These teachers should hurt their minds a little and spend the summer learning their course material!

Teachers colleges have a strange way of accepting students.  In many cases, the bar seems to be very low, as it doesn’t appear that candidates need maths, languages, sciences, nor good knowledge of the English language:  they seem to like the students who study the social ‘sciences’.  Windsor teachers college won’t accept engineers.  I guess they don’t want teachers whose brains have been hurt

“Are all doctors perfect? No. Do even the very good ones make errors? Yes. “

We can choose our doctors and should the make mistakes there are consequences for those mistakes….huge ones in fact.

Not so for poor educators.

Doctors, nurses and engineers are tested and retested to retain their professional status. Not so for poor educators.

Doctors, lawyers, nurses and engineers do not walk out of university as fully qualified professionals. There is an interim period that the graduate must complete before professional status is recognized.

Uncertified teachers teach children every day and do just fine. The Catholic system teaches that the parent is the child’s for teacher, who, before the child enters Kindergarten has taught their child many things.

Coaches are also teachers. Some do a better job of instruction than do certified educators.

The list continues.

I like the idea of alternative teachers - out with the old and in with the new ideas would breath some fresh air into the old stale stuff.

They’ve got to do something.  Teachers colleges are not choosing the right university grads so down the line, we’re not getting teachers who are qualified to teach even the most basic things like spelling and grammar.  The grade 10 literacy test says it all.  I was also shocked that highschool students don’t understand fractions.  As pointed out by Mr. Ng, they think that the fraction of 1/2 is smaller than 1/4! 
With the exception of some excellent staff, education in Ontario seems to be a place to be employed to simply make a lot of money and do as little as possible.  None of the branches, from the teachers colleges; the ministry; the boards; nor the unions is doing anything to improve education.
Kids are getting nothing.

Ya you choose your nurse, good one. Ya you choose your doctor, there is such a shortage you are lucky to get one especially ouside Toronto.

And after all of this your solution is to have uncertified teachers. What a joke, you are talking to yourselves but I do hope Tim Hudak says he is for it. It will cost a lot of votes.

There are ways to ungrade teachers

1) Pay more

2) Use the Finland teacher training system, 2 masters degrees.

I would love to see Bev, Chuck, Sheep, Nancy, etc in a classroom. They would eat you alive.

Big talk for people who don’t actually have to do it.

Big talk from someone who has never said anything concrete about teaching.

Mr.Little, you have never had the responsability to teach something where mastery or non-mastery is very visible and testable.
You have no clue what you are talking about!

Try and teach math or science or grammar!

You will find out very quickly that in order to get results you need to be extremely careful and plan in advance what you say, how you say it, how much information you give at one time, how you give feedback and how to guide a student to practice.

It is very obvious from your comments that you have never had to do any teaching where your students had to prove mastery of the subject.

It’s soo easy to use big words and pose as an “expert” when you don’t need to prove results.

Bev,

About Teachers’ Colleges choosing the right grads - you are assuming that they have a choice.

If you were an A or B student in biology and chemistry, where would you go?  - large drug companies.  If you were an A or B student in math, where would you go? - the info tech, insurance and financial sectors.  If you were an A or B student in engineering, where would you go? Industry.  If you were an A or B student in French, where would you go? Government.

Generally, the best in any field will pursue that field to make money.  I was a solid B student, I made a decision to leave industry and go to teaching.  Very few do.  Unfortunately, that old saying, “Those who can do, those who can’t teach.” actually has a bit of truth to it.  Most of my cohort at teachers’ college were B and C students.  After the teacher shortage scare, the Ministry allowed the colleges to open more spaces.  I have heard of people getting in with D averages (some cases E).

No matter what some bloggers would wish people to believe, we will never have a certification system like a certain Scandinavian country.  Our North American mindset pushes the best and brightest into their field of study, not into teaching.

I’m sure your collegues find you as insufferable and arrogant as I do Wayne.

You’re exactly right Wayne. 

Isn’t it amazing then that those “highest distinction” honours bestowed on the UOIT grads were able to turn mediocre applicants into highly distinct, marketable educators?

Wayne, Bev, Sheep man, Europe - there is much to be learned by entering in discussion here and share experiences.  That’s where the rubber hits the road.

“insufferable and arrogant”  Gee, I’m hurt!  I’m gonna cry!   Certain people should remember this the next time someone calls them a ‘Windbag’ and they go crying to the moderator.

Since certain people are here to ‘provoke’ - they don’t feel the need to actually back up any of their claims.  Rather than simply spouting insults, why don’t they show us the stats indicating that the average grade on intake to teachers’ college is a B, or A and not C or D?

Chuck, I do admit that I did have a laugh over your blog.  It does call into question the rigor that produced all those HD (Heavy Duty?) grads.

I don’t back it up? What part of OECD StatsCan PISA TIMSS don’t you under stand. When I do bury you in evidence you brush it aside and say you don’t care you only know what you see in front of you.

Let me make this clear Wayne. No nation on Earth has ever done as well as Canada at any time in their history or ours. (Except Finland of course).

“...why don’t they show us the stats indicating that the average grade on intake to teachers’ college is a B, or A and not C or D?”

Try answering the question.

Mr. Ng, although I don’t understand how you could stand teaching when the children nowadays are so woefully lacking numeracy skills, I must say that I admire you.

Regarding the students selected for teachers colleges, engineers are not accepted at Windsor teachers college.  Besides the average marks at best, they also accept many students who have majored in psychology, socialogy, etc.  These are pretty soft courses.  They don’t seem interested in the least in looking for our best and brightest to teach school.

We need to distinguish between elementary teachers and high school teachers, because their training paths are different.

I’m just starting to find out information about high-school.

What I know so far is that to be a high school teacher you do need to have a background in the subject you are teaching so for example if you are going to teach math, physics you will need to have a BSc or BMath. Same thing happens with English.

So .. I don’t have information what training the future high-school teachers get in terms of pedagogy but at least they do have subject matter knowledge.

From what I hear around me, it seems that the high-school teachers do try to require high-school performance from their students. However, by grade 9 it’s too late.

Nobody can possibly stuff 8 years worth of learning (grade 5 to 12) into 4 years!
How do we expect students to do high-school level work ...
- to write well built essays when they can’t read well or write correct sentences
- to learn functions when they are not able to verify the result of a calculation without a calculator and even then quite a few of them would get it wrong since their understanding of order of operations is shaky.

How do we expect students to do high-school level work when they have ingrained bad habits such as: guessing, not being used to doing homework, thinking that any answer to a question is a good answer if it is related to the question.

Mr.Ng, what’s your experience with the knowledge level of new grade 9 students?

Europe, I know of a philosophy major who teaches advanced English right up to the former OTC’s (gr 13) and a chemistry major who teaches math and physics.  From what I remember, the ministry doesn’t require a degree in a subject till grade 11, but even still there are teachers teaching subjects, which I’ve just pointed, out who don’t have degrees in the subjects they’re teaching in for grades 11 and 12.  It’s bad over here…

Every time someone at the MOE proposes an increase in teacher cert or a demand that teacher must have a degree in the exact discipline taught, the letters pour in from the boards in northern and rural Ontario that this policy will make the schools impossible to staff. “We cannot offer 40 half time jobs. We can only offer 20 full time jobs and those 20 must be able to cover all subjects.” Picture a school with one Sr chemistry class. Try to staff that with a chemistry major who will now have one-sixth of a job.

Bev, sorry, I’m not familiar at all with the situation outside GTA.

My point was that high-school teachers on average, seem to be more prepared for their job than elementary teachers.

However, the uneven mastery levels due to social promotion all through elementary schools make teaching at actual high-school level next to impossible even for well prepared teachers!

The most logical thing to do in my opinion would be to group students by mastery so that to at least not dumb down the ones that managed to come out of elementary with relatively good basics.

Something is very fishy if - as per previous posts - in a grade 7 class you can have mastery levels anywhere from grade 4 to grade 8 and then, all of sudden in grade 9 magically all the kids fall neatly into two categories: academic and applied and the wide majority is in academic!

Can anybody bring any information about what the academic standard in high school means in terms of expected knowledge?

Do schools exist to provide employment to teachers or to provide an education to students?

Europe,

Many of the problems that I see, you and others have already pointed out:  lack of basic understanding of mathematical operations - especially those involving positive and negative numbers and fractions; over-reliance on calculators and computers to get the answer; inability to solve calculations involving order of operations; total lack of higher order reasoning - ie: algebra; the list goes on.

However, let me put some caveats on that:  we are talking the average here, not every student.  Some students are exhibiting what I am calling compartmentalized knowledge: they are great at one or two things, but have no clue about the rest.  For example, I had a student that was great at fractions, but was lost at calculating the volume of a sphere.  Or, this year, a good portion were great at calculating the area of a rectangle, but were totally mystified with the surface area of a rectangular prism.

Beyond blaming teachers, the education system, and a host of other things, we need to look at what we value in our world today.  The internet gives us a world of information at our fingertips.  We value the ability to gather information and find an answer within an instant.  We have gone from thoughtful information processors to information gatherers.  Students are no different.  They love quick, simple questions like ‘find the area of a rectangle’ because they can quickly plug two numbers into one equation and get an answer.  Ask them to find the area of a picture frame (ie: find the area of two rectangles and subtract) - now they have to think abstractly, now they have to work - now they shut down. I have seen the same thing happen every year.

What no educator or researcher has even begun to tackle is the problem we face getting students ‘unwired’ and thinking for themselves again.

Something is very fishy if - as per previous posts - in a grade 7 class you can have mastery levels anywhere from grade 4 to grade 8

In a grade 7 class, you are likely to have mastery levels from Grade 2 to Grade 10.

In a high-needs school the A and B students will be at least two years below level, so, at a Grade 4-5 level. However the occasional student will be on level or above.

“Social promotion” is not the norm. Students are indeed advanced to the next grade, but (in TDSB anyway) they are not promoted, but transferred.  The June report will clearly state “So-and-so has not met the expectations for Grade X, and is transferred to Grade Y.”

Holding students to mastery criteria is incompatible with the Ministry of Education’s directives on inclusion, heterogeneous grouping and differentiation. It’s not going to happen.

Staffing a school with people with a degree in every single subject taught is impossible in most of Ontario.

Yes, because so many of the students who are accepted into teachers’ colleges don’t have specialized degrees.  As it’s been discussed, they’re oftentimes incapable of teaching the material.  The ministry is also lax in allowing teachers without specialized degrees to teach any subject right up to grade 11. 
In order to have enough teachers specialized in certain subjects, the college has to accept more of them in the first place.

Wayne, Bev, Europe - one of the best things the principal at our elementary school did was to hire specialist Grade 7 & 8 teachers in math and science.

Those two teachers made the world of difference for kids heading to grade 9, particularly in math, when at the time the anti-Harris yippers were scaring kids off the new math curriculum those specialist teachers did the exact opposite and challenged them with their own knowledge of the material so they were more than prepared to tackle the harder work.

Europe - In my experience sometimes the secondary teacher best suited for a subject never gets their desired subject particularly if they’re on the low end of the seniority pole.

Up until this coming school year a teacher with top seniority (and union rep.) got first crack at the Gr. 12 calculus class. Year after year students came out of that class ill prepared and unaware that they had no basics in calculus. They found that out after hitting post-secondary school and finding out just how little actual calculus was taught them - BUT they got marks high enough to get into engineering and sciences.

It wasn’t until both parents and other teachers complained that the newer teacher who does have a calculus and advanced math background is getting those Gr. 12 academic students. 

The union rep/seniority teacher is now getting classes of lower grade math. Let’s hope he’s better at that than calculus.

Oh, and by the way, the only way calculus was delivered in our high school last year was by computer through independent study.

As I mentioned, with schools closing especially in rural Ontario, it will nearly impossible to staff subjects with specialist unless we go to a boarding school model where students only go home on the weekend.

You just cannot go to Wawa and say I want a physics specialist only for physics and a chemistry specialist for chemistry and a biology specialist for biology. That formula does not work. The people don’t exist in one period little parts unless there is massive consolodation of schools. The bussing times are at their limits already.

Keep in mind that boards can’t differentiate between teachers who are exceptional and mediocre; their pays are based entirely on time on the job and credentials.

A board can’t offer a higher salary to someone bringing expertise in science or math than it can to someone with any other area and we all know there’s no shortage of people there so there’s no need to attract more.

Then there’s the issue of whether or not a MEd degree makes a better teacher…?  Does it follow, then, that all the ones we have without it are less competent?

Look, let’s set aside the issue of teacher competence.

Let’s assume we have one normal human being, reasonably competent teacher (B.Sc. + B.Ed) teaching grade 6 math.

I may be stating the obvious, but hear me out.

There is no way a person, no matter how competent he or she is, can teach effectively more than two levels of mastery in one class.
Even with two levels he would need to teach two separate lessons, essentially cuting down the teaching time in half so instead of 45 min he is teaching each group for 20 min.

So, even two levels is less than ideal.

More than two levels, we are lying to ourselves if we rationalize that the students are learning effectively, the only students learning are the ones that can teach themselves and the group the teacher chooses to concentrate on.

Let’s do the math
-one level of mastery
38 weeks x 5 classes math/week x 45 min = 142.5
-two levels
38 weeks x 5 classes math/week x 20 = 63.5
- three levels
38 weeks x 5 clasess math/ week x 13= 41.2
- grade 2 to grade 10
38 weeks x 5 classes math /week x ? = ??

To summarize, if we take as a base of comparison the class with only one level of mastery
- 2 levels of mastery => effectiveness is 44.5%
- 3 levels of mastery => effectiveness is 28.9%
- 4 levels or more => effectivenes is ??%

If this goes on for even one year, none of the students is learning much.

The above assumes a competent teacher, following effective materials so the teacher doesn’t spend any time at all hesitating of making up exercises to be solve.
Take away the competency, take away the effective materials ... than time the result by 28.9% what is the student left with?

With several mastery levels in a classroom, even a very good teacher will have to make a choice who to teach. My guess, because it is the only way to keep some semblance of discipline, either the biggest group or the most troublesome group.
Very likely any quiet student would get ignored most of the time.
Very likely any student that in any shape or form can teach themselves even a little bit, would get ignored other than being given materials to teach themselves or being asked to tutor other students.

The teacher - if he feels any kind of responsability - would probably be exhausted by the effort and on the verge of a mental breakdown because a competent teacher would be aware of how little each student can learn in such a situation.

Who wins? Why are we doing this?
Polical correctness and vague ideas cannot change reality. An hour still has 60 minutes.

Let’s look Reality in the eyes. There is no way heterogeneous mastery levels in a classroom, and especially as extreme as grade 2 to grade 10 could possibly work!

Here is a math review by the NL government, published in 2007. It covers the aspects of what is being discussed by the posters. It is titled, K-12 Mathematics Curriculum Review, and it worth a read, but it is rather long, because it is not only about the curriculum, but covers other aspects as well.

“This review was commissioned by the Department of Education as part of its development of an Excellence in Mathematics strategy for the province. This strategy arose out of concerns about the adequacy of the mathematics curriculum in the province. These concerns centre around perceptions that students are expected to achieve too many outcomes, that the program pays inadequate attention to basic mathematical skills and operations, and that the textbooks in some grades are inadequate.”

Many of the recommendations have already been implemented in NL. Critics of the changes, have charged that the changes are only cosmetic changes, which will repeat the same outcomes of the students. As a parent, I still believe that the changes does not or will not allow adequate time and attention to basic math skills and operations that allows an easier transition to higher math concepts. Math concepts that Wayne has experienced in his classroom. ” We have gone from thoughtful information processors to information gatherers.  Students are no different.  They love quick, simple questions like ‘find the area of a rectangle’ because they can quickly plug two numbers into one equation and get an answer.  Ask them to find the area of a picture frame (ie: find the area of two rectangles and subtract) - now they have to think abstractly, now they have to work - now they shut down. I have seen the same thing happen every year.”
http://www.ed.gov.nl.ca/edu/publications/k12/NLMathReport.pdf

Readers may want to get a copy of The Math Plague by Dr. Sherry Mantyka, a math professor at Memorial U. in Newfoundland. 

http://www.themathplague.com