WINTERS: Qualified teachers wanted

"The lesson of this research is that variation in the performance of teachers appears to be the result of innate characteristics that are unaffected by training. Some teachers are good, some are bad." ...which is an important reason why homeschooling works. When parents decide to teach their own children at home, they are acting on those "innate characteristics" of parenting which include teaching our children, combined with a dedication to seeing our children succeed in whatever their calling is in life.

THe chances of large-scale or even significant alternative teachers being employed in the U.S. is signifdicantly smaller than even the chances of a vouchers system to get around the monopoly of the NEA and AFT unions on control of teachers. Until the individual schools regain the right to determine the pace and content of curriculum, pregress will be slow and for the most part non-existent.

One of my fellow professors, he was one of my favorite profs when I was a student, told me that most of his high school teachers had Ph.D.s. That must have been in the fifties in New York City. I was shocked and dissapointed when I learned that I could not teach high school if I wanted. I am qualified to teach college but not high school. Well I decided the solution that I would seek if I were governor of Oregon ever, would be to arrange things such that all of Oregon's college graduates were certified to teach in Oregon at any level. I do not know what the minimum is that it would take to make a non-education major qualified to teach school but I think we could achieve that.

Why should presidential candidates discuss education issues? There is no Constitutional justification for any federal involvement in education. That is a state/local responsibility. Unless and until the citizens of each state/locality get serious about education and break the stranglehold of the NEA/AFT, nothing will happen. We've been sold a bill of goods that these "professionals" will take care of everything because they're trained to teach. Hah!