Idaho Shows How Not To Fill Empty Teaching Jobs

If you are trying—and failing—to buy a Porsche for $1.98, you have a couple of options.

You could make a better offer. Or you could print out a copy of a Porsche logo, slap it on a bicycle, and announce to the world that you are driving a Porsche.

As many states try to address trouble in attracting teachers for their classrooms, Idaho has moved in the direction of logos and bicycles, a direction likely to yield long term problems: redefining what “teacher” means.

Last year, the Idaho House considered HB 221, which allowed local districts to make their own rules for who could be certified as a teacher. The only state set requirements would have been for those certified to be at least 18, to be free of infectious disease, to pass a criminal background check, and to hold a bachelor’s degree. Additionally, the district issuing the certificate would have to promise to make sure that the teacher gets mentoring and professional development.

That bill was passed by the House 54-13 (the no’s were all 12 Democrats and a Republican who is also a teacher). Then the bill went to the Senate, where it died quietly in committee.

The idea returned this year in SB 1291, which gave that same broad licensing power only to charter schools.

Charter schools in Idaho may now issue charter-specific teaching certificates to any disease-free adult with a bachelor’s degree. The advantages to the certified individual are limited; the charter-specific certificate is non-transferable to any other school. But it makes filling positions inexpensively easier for charter school operators. While supporters of the bill argue that it is the charter’s best interest not to certified highly unqualified persons, that’s hardly a guarantee that they won’t.

Supporters for the new law argue that it’s a necessary remedy to the teacher shortage. But solving a “shortage” by redefining the thing you are having trouble finding doesn’t actually solve anything. You don’t solve an automobile shortage by redefining “automobile” as “anything with wheels.” Nobody would want to see a hospital solve problems recruiting surgeons by redefining the job requirement, saying, “Anyone who can hold a knife can now be hired as a surgeon here.”

The trouble filling teaching positions is not new, and it’s not a teacher shortage. It’s a failure of leaders to foster teaching as an attractive, rewarding and sustainable career.

Recently Hillsdale College president Larry Arnn recently drew flack for saying of teaching that “basically anybody can do it,” while Tennessee Governor Bill Lee listened without objection. Idaho has made that statement policy with this bill. That is not the kind of statement about teaching that makes the profession more attractive; in the long run, this kind of ill-advised policy will simply make the “shortage” worse.