We’re all aware that standards create accountability. They give direction and focus to all that are involved. Later, we can discuss standards that are arbitrarily high (California’s teaching standards) and close to impossible to meet.

I received my teaching credential in 1991 and, unable to get a teaching contract, spent a year as a substitute teacher (before the birth of teaching standards, learning standards, professional standards, etc). After a year, still needing to feed my children, I stopped working as a substitute teacher and returned to the private sector to earn an income.

In 1999 I returned to teaching… not with a contract… “just” as a substitute teacher. Wow! What a difference.

California had implemented teaching standards and I could walk into any classroom and immediately know what grade- level I was in, see what was being taught in that classroom and more importantly the students were able to see what was expected of them, the direction and purpose of their learning.

School improvement is such a courageous endeavor. We insist on using student test scores as our measuring stick for student success/achievement when, for some of our students, actually getting to school each day is a big achievement. How do we measure that? We don’t. We measure our teachers instead.

Current educational reforms, looking towards school improvement, focus on ensuring that students are exposed to quality teaching by qualified teachers. Because it follows, doesn’t it, that public school students would maximize their academic achievement every year that they’re in school and that by 2014 they’ll all have become proficient in every subject they undertake at their grade-level?

Primarily, quality teaching is measured by student test scores… I see a problem here.

What makes a teacher qualified to teach?