Bureaucratic Inflexibility

While I a generally supportive of NCLB, although implementation and enforcment concerns need to be addressed, I have come across a number of examples where bureaucratic inflexibility seems to undermine the goal of the law. In Califonia for example, comes this story:

Jefferds Huyck stood in a corner of the gymnasium, comfortable in being inconspicuous, as the annual awards ceremony began one Friday last May at Pacific Collegiate School in Santa Cruz, Calif. He listened as the principal named 16 of Mr. Huyck’s students who had earned honors in a nationwide Latin exam, and he applauded as those protégés gathered near center court to receive their certificates.

Then the principal, Andrew Goldenkranz, said, "And here’s their teacher." Hundreds of students and parents and colleagues rose unbidden in a standing ovation. In that gesture, they were both celebrating and protesting.

As virtually everyone in the audience knew, Mr. Huyck would be leaving Pacific Collegiate, a charter school, after commencement. Despite his doctorate in classics from Harvard, despite his 22 years teaching in high school and college, despite the classroom successes he had so demonstrably achieved with his Latin students in Santa Cruz, he was not considered “highly qualified” by California education officials under their interpretation of the federal No Child Left Behind law.

Rather than submit to what he considered an expensive, time-consuming indignity, a teacher-certification program geared to beginners that would last two years and cost about $15,000, Mr. Huyck decided to resign and move across town to teach in a private school. And in his exasperation, he was not alone.

Two other teachers with doctorates left Pacific Collegiate this year at least in part because of the credentialing requirement, Mr. Goldenkranz said.

I can understand the need for standards for teachers, but common sense, never a bureaucratic strongpoint to begin with, seems to have been thrown out with no regard for the students, like those of Mr. Huyck.

TO call this situation perverse, to ascribe it to the principle of unintended consequences, is to be, if anything, too reasonable. With the quality of teacher training being widely assailed as undemanding, most recently in a report last month by the Education Schools Project, a nonpartisan group, Pacific Collegiate in 2005 had what certainly looked like the solution. Out of a faculty of 29, 12 already had or were nearing doctoral degrees, primarily related to the subjects they taught.

And if the performance of the school mattered for anything, which unfortunately it does not in the credentialing issue, then Pacific Collegiate could show results. Admitting its 400 students in Grades 7 through 12 by lottery rather than by admissions exam, it recorded an average of 1,982 out of a possible 2,400 on the three-part SAT and sent graduates to Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Swarthmore and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, among other elite universities.

Indeed, it would seem that experience and Ph.D.'s don't mean anything to educrats.

The funny thing is, as James Joyner points out, the mere possession of a Ph.D. does not mean the person is qualified to teach anything, a track record of results and a Ph.D. should mean something. Having such teachers waste time and moeny on a course far below their competency level is demeaning, infantile and a waste of valuable resources.

The irony is that the type of person who would not be insulted by such a program is precisely the kind of person we do not want teaching, especially at the high school level.

Unfortunately, the education establishment has been dominated for decades by the teachers’ colleges and their emphasis in pedagogy rather than subject matter expertise. Indeed, one suspects that people on the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing have degrees in Education and actually resent people like Huyck and Whittier for proving that people who actually know their subjects are more effective teachers.

NCLB has been widely criticized for its lack of flexibility. While I tend to believe that regular standardized testing and reporting of results is better for all concerned, but at a time when we as a nation are looking to bring more and better qualified teachers into our schools, putting teachers like Mr. Huyck through bureaucratic hoops accomplishes nothing but drive good teachers away. Surely there must be some sort of way to plot out exceptions for experience and results, a path that can be implemented, but not abused.

Then again, that would be using common sense and that is just not possible.

Update: Eduwonk calls a spade a spade:

But this one is squarely on the states. NCLB only requires subject matter expertise and state certification, what certification looks like is left to the states and unfortunately today it's usually, well, what's the word I'm looking for here...oh yeah...archaic.

Update II: The Ed Wonks note:

This is the kind of cluelessness that prevents so many truly qualified people from even considering a career in public education.