For now. If recent events have taught us anything it’s that this is part of a long-term strategy. There’s a teacher shortage right now in part because the likes of DeSantis, as well as long-term trends, have made it a really unappealing career choice. Teachers are absolutely necessary and yet they’re treated as expendable and subjected to insults from politicians.
At some point those same politicians are going to roll out the next step of their strategy. If it’s not outright privatization and elimination of public schools (that’s likely a later step) it will be even more reductions in teaching standards, all with the goal of poisoning the well.
Worse. They are treated as the Enemy because they teach kids that facts matter, and that thinking for yourself is a good thing. Fascists cannot tolerate this kind of thing and absolutely must root it out.
I feel like this is by design. i.e. Sound tough and piss off the libs, but have little actual effect. Maybe a few veterans who were going to become teachers anyway will take a few years less to do it.
The whole idea of teaching as something anyone can do well, with no training is strange to me, but part and parcel with the American ideas of self-sufficiency and individualism. My mom was a teacher for 32 years at the same school and there is no way any random person, even one who loved literature, could have managed that.
I went through the NYC Teaching Fellows program, which is designed to fill high-need teaching jobs with “career changers”. They would help you fund a masters’ which you worked on while teaching in high need areas. There is a precedent for this kind of “Plan-of-study” temporary exemption from the hiring standards. Can completely confirm, it is absolutely brutal and I was a dedicated but shitty teacher for 2 years. And all of this was for kids who needed MORE experienced, educated and skilled teachers, not less. The rich schools should be the ones who have the teacher training and mentoring programs.
New York also has plan-of-study for early childhood (“Day Care / Child Care”), as we have some of the highest teacher quals in the country. The system has been a mess for years, allowing unqualified teachers to slip through the cracks, but they’re tightening it up now.
The truly politically shitty part is picking who is “trusted” to be on a plan of study, I will say, none of the Teaching fellows or Early Childhood workers are vets, cops or firefighters. They’re usually creatives, Peace core folks, midlife crisis corporate types or, in large part, assistant teachers. But it was open to anyone who applied.
