Most of us can fondly recall a good teacher in our lives, an accomplished man or woman whose compassion, commitment and high expectations were the spark that opened up a world of knowledge hidden to our eyes. If we are lucky, we do not have less happy memories of teachers -- of those who were tired, cranky or simply unqualified.
Yet bad teachers co-exist with the good in America's schools, and it is not a judgment of the teaching profession to say so. After all, life is such that there are good journalists and bad, just as there are excellent lawyers and ones who are mediocre.
But teachers touch young lives personally in more important ways. Any serious discussion of improving the education system must focus on improving the education, recruitment, career development and supervision of those who teach. And that was the focus of a multipart series titled "A Question of Quality" in the Post-Gazette last week -- with an important postscript in Sunday's paper.
Members of the PG education team spent several months reporting and writing the series and along the way uncovered a number of insights on what is being done right and wrong. The series should be required reading for parents, who, next to their children, are the best customers of the system.
As the series showed, what ordinary people learn anecdotally about the effect of good teachers and bad is borne out by research. (For example, a study in Tennessee found that students who had good teachers three years in a row scored significantly higher on state tests than those who had poor-quality teachers for the same period.)
The bad news is that standards for the education and evaluation of teachers are uneven. In fact, most older teachers in Pennsylvania never had to measure up to stringent standards. New requirements have been put in place, but loopholes abound. Nationwide, more than half the teachers don't have a major or a certificate in the subject they are teaching. In Pennsylvania, a study found that 22 percent of teachers don't even have a minor in the subject they teach.
As for getting rid of incompetent teachers, that can be difficult, the series showed. Only 11 Pennsylvania teachers have lost their teaching certificates for incompetence in the past decade.
But none of this is a counsel of despair. Yesterday, a committee directed by the Harrisburg-based Education Policy and Leadership Center released its "Teacher Quality and Supply Project" report, which contains a number of worthy suggestions. The 27-member group was led by former Pittsburgh superintendent Helen S. Faison, now the director of the Pittsburgh Teachers Institute based at Chatham College.
Among its proposals, the report suggests that every school district develop a written, detailed hiring plan (currently, many don't have one and their hiring practices tend to be seat-of-the-pants efforts). On the need for better evaluation of teachers, the report suggests that school districts should be required to use newly revised teacher evaluation forms.
The Post-Gazette would differ with one proposal made in the report -- to drop the basic math and reading test for teachers and use the funds instead to pay for training for administrators on how to use teacher evaluation forms. Although the tests are controversial with teachers and their unions, we see them as at least providing some sort of knowledge base line. They should be improved, not junked out of economic expediency.
Taken together with the PG series, the proposals do serve to set the table for a town meeting hosted by the Post-Gazette and presented by Duquesne Light Co. tomorrow evening at Carnegie Mellon University. Members of a distinguished panel will be asked "Do Teachers Make the Grade?" So many people have registered for the event that no more seats are available, which can be taken as an encouraging sign that education is a subject of vital public interest and concern.
E-mail this story 
