Emergency-hired teachers without degrees as effective as licensed educators • Hacker News Board

Re: Emergency-hired teachers without degrees as effective as licensed educators

#71

Post by jbellis » Sat, Jan 20, 2024, 4:50 PM UTC

lolinder wrote: post #23

germinalphrase wrote: post #4

As a former high school teacher, I am in favor of reduced requirements to enter the profession; however, I taught in two states that supported these types of on ramps, and they didn’t seem to make a notable impact on applicant numbers (that is, out of the hundreds of educators I worked with over the years, I knew only one who came in via a non-traditional pathway after working in a different field (engineering)). Tha…

I would love to teach high school but there would need to be some major changes to the system before I would be willing to. What I really want is to be able to teach the kind of CS courses that I took in high school—they were optional classes that kids chose to be in because they were interested, and the teacher had full discretion on what to teach. Unfortunately, that's not the typical high school class, and most te…

And the GPA-grubbing is ridiculous to the point of being comical.

Re: Emergency-hired teachers without degrees as effective as licensed educators

#72

Post by hnthrowaway0328 » Sat, Jan 20, 2024, 4:50 PM UTC

Licenses are more to protect the interest groups and deflect legal fights.

Re: Emergency-hired teachers without degrees as effective as licensed educators

#73

Post by scruple » Sat, Jan 20, 2024, 4:50 PM UTC

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #67

scruple wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teachers need graduate degrees to teach K-12?

It depends on the state, but in some cases yes. In New York there are undergraduate programs which provide an "initial certification", which is sufficient to teach in a public school for X number of years. However, you must obtain a masters degree before the initial certification expires.

I Googled around a bit. Looks like Connecticut, Maryland, and New York requires them and a small set of other states lock specific licensures behind graduate degrees. I sincerely had no idea this was happening. I have young kids, in California, but we haven't hit kindergarten yet.

Re: Emergency-hired teachers without degrees as effective as licensed educators

#74

Post by wrsh07 » Sat, Jan 20, 2024, 4:50 PM UTC

xhkkffbf wrote: post #16

mjburgess wrote: post #11

I'm a strong advocate for scrapping all degree requirements to every profession, perhaps even in law (ie., banning most employers from asking). This shifts the burden on to the employer to make a reliable assessment of the applicant. This would have two, imv, favourable effects: 1) a university education would compete on its merits as education with all alternatives; 2) breaking the rent-seeking monopolies universiti…

Law? Medicine? Engineering? Would you want the bridges to be designed by anyone with any degree? I realize there's lots of sillyness in degree programs, but certainly the rigor is worth something, right?

It's challenging because good architects (ones you've heard of!) weren't necessarily qualified as architects, but the person designing the thing doesn't need to be the one deciding if it's structurally sound

You do need that validation step somewhere, though, and it feels quite reasonable to have stringent standards for that.

One way to work around not knowing if something is structurally sound subject to the pressures it will be under is to over build (this is what we did before we had super accurate computer simulations)

Anyway, I found this episode of 99 percent invisible to be great, especially "Escarping Imprisonment by Kurt Kohlstedt"

https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/mini-stories-volume-1...

Re: Emergency-hired teachers without degrees as effective as licensed educators

#75

Post by fredgrott » Sat, Jan 20, 2024, 4:53 PM UTC

lolinder wrote: post #43

khzw8yyy wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You interacted with a homeschooled student who made it to college. Huge difference compared to the average homeschooled student.

Can we please not get into the homeschool flame war here again? Every time it comes up it turns into a pointless war of anecdotes, because the data on outcomes simply isn't strong enough for it to be anything else (trust me, I've tried).

contrary O....during WI defense hired people that came up with the first IQ test for soldiers...that data shows home schooled people at less IQ than those who went through public schools at the time...actual real data...

Re: Emergency-hired teachers without degrees as effective as licensed educators

#76

Post by wharvle » Sat, Jan 20, 2024, 4:54 PM UTC

kube-system wrote: post #38

rr808 wrote: post #9

With working from home getting popular, even fewer people want to be a teacher. 5 days a week starting at 8am. Not going to happen.

But the flexibility during the summer beats many other jobs.

The stress when it’s in-session is pretty bad, though. And a lot of teachers work a summer job to make ends meet, it’s often not time off.

The summers off are basically the only notable perk, too. At least in my state. Healthcare’s expensive and bad and gets worse every year. Pay’s bad. Work environment is usually bad. Retirement’s ok-ish but doesn’t close the gap on the poor pay.

Re: Emergency-hired teachers without degrees as effective as licensed educators

#77

Post by mildchalupa » Sat, Jan 20, 2024, 4:54 PM UTC

khzw8yyy wrote: post #20

pard68 wrote: post #5

Makes sense to me. I attended public school all my life. Everyone I knew more or less had the same out look on formal education, means to an end, can I just get the spark notes, thanks. In college I interacted with a strange life form called a "homeschooler". Almost without exception they were smarter, better read, and had a desire to learn. Educating children seems to be far more than degrees, licenses, and CE credi…

You interacted with a homeschooled student who made it to college. Huge difference compared to the average homeschooled student.

Probably a bimodal distribution here in terms of homeschool education.

Though the entire set is probably more useful and practical.

Re: Emergency-hired teachers without degrees as effective as licensed educators

#78

Post by s1artibartfast » Sat, Jan 20, 2024, 4:54 PM UTC

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #39

I am very close to obtaining an elementary school teaching degree (46 of 49 credits completed), and as of this year I am a full time teacher at a private school (which doesn't have to care whether I officially have a license). My masters program is considered among the best in the state. Unfortunately, I don't have many good things to say about my masters program. The majority of my classes have been interesting but…

The correct answer is obviously "insufficient information"

Maybe company 4 is the best, but I don't see why no information on weights implies equal weights.

Edit:

After thinking about this phenomenon for a while, I think there is an argument for testing implied or unstated prompts. It is frustrating to have to read minds, and quess what expectations are in different contexts. However, building a mental models of other people is an important skill.

I dont know that I would want to hire someone entirely incapable of it, who routinely required complete and explicit instruction.

That said, I dont think this kind of cognitive test is what they were going for

Re: Emergency-hired teachers without degrees as effective as licensed educators

#79

Post by jbellis » Sat, Jan 20, 2024, 4:55 PM UTC

api wrote: post #12

Piecemeal, perhaps, but I wonder if this would scale. A whole lot of the HR problems that things like degrees and certifications solve are problems that happen at scale. If you suddenly drop the licensing requirements for teaching, you'd now have a new job available to anyone in the job market that would start attracting different profiles of people than you will get when emergency hiring teachers. Also emergency hir…

I'm pretty sure that "too many applicants" counts as a first-world problem for most schools.

Re: Emergency-hired teachers without degrees as effective as licensed educators

#80

Post by lolinder » Sat, Jan 20, 2024, 4:55 PM UTC

bitzun wrote: post #57

lolinder wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we please not get into the homeschool flame war here again? Every time it comes up it turns into a pointless war of anecdotes, because the data on outcomes simply isn't strong enough for it to be anything else (trust me, I've tried).

Sorry, I jumped in because I hadn't seen it before. I agree it's difficult to generalize at this point, I just chafe at the suggestion that homeschooled kids do better overall since I've heard it my whole life and my experience was so different.

All good—this difference is why it always turns into a war of anecdotes.

Homeschool outcomes are as diverse as parents are—in public schools we at least try to standardize, but not so for homeschool. And since emotions surrounding our parents are some of the strongest that we have, everyone who's been homeschooled has strong opinions of some sort about how it turned out.

I'd be happy for the conversation to happen if there were data, but the big problem is that for every study that leans one way there's another that goes the opposite, because the outcomes are so incredibly diverse and the numbers involved are so small.