But is this a bad thing?

Thanks to Dangerously Irrelevant, I found a post at This Week in Education about the Illinois teacher's test being too hard.

What is wrong with that?

I mean we tend not to let morons into the medical field, right?

Yet, that's not the case in education. I mean how often do teachers talk about their own education programs - aside from their area of emphasis - being ineffective or a joke?

John Merrow called for one way to quickly improve education: make it harder to be a teacher.

And it seems that Illinois is doing just that.

Now, some people aren't on board with this. Critics argue that minorities are doing poorly on the test. Is that bad? We need to have the best people - from every race - in the education field. Not just those who apply. Not just those who fill a void. Not just those who coach. Not just those who fill a quota.

With minority students already behind on national tests, why put ineffective teachers in their class, regardless of their race.

Make it more difficult to be a teacher. Only let the brightest teach. Then select from that pool.

Now that just makes too much sense.

But how often does that happen?

A colleague and I were talking the other week that it used to be standard practice in many a district (and very well may still be) to hired a teacher not on their ability but whether they are licensed to coach anything.

But there have been changes made there too to avoid that.

Hire the smartest people and let them teach. Just teach. Let others coach. If people got in to teaching to coach, let them get out of teaching to coach.

If people got in to teaching because they couldn't do anything else, force them to leave.

Then we'd put the lie to that old standard: those who can do, and those we can't teach.