By Maren Johnson

“It’s not a ‘report card.’ It’s a guidance policy with some teeth.”
     ~One individual describing a potential new teacher assignment reporting policy soon to be considered by the Professional Educator Standards Board (PESB).

So what’s going on? Potential new policy would create a public data base on the Professional Educator Standards Board (PESB) website reporting the number of students in each school without properly endorsed teachers.  At the same time, endorsements in areas such as general science might be limited to specific courses—more limited than they were previously. It is important to note that teachers would not be prohibited from teaching outside of their endorsement area, but the numbers would be publicly reported.

Targets would be set, and schools failing to meet these targets would be reported to the state legislature. Finally, no grandfather clause—these new endorsement reporting guidelines for teaching assignments would apply to all current teachers, no matter when they originally received their endorsements, and what specific courses those endorsements were valid for at the time.

Here’s the potential WAC language—it’s from the March 2014 PESB meeting documents: 

Beginning September 1, 2014, the Professional Educator Standards Board shall annually make publicly available a report on the number of students in courses assigned to a teacher of record with or without a matching endorsement appropriate to that course.

No later than September 1, 2017, the Professional Educator Standards Board shall adopt performance targets related to teacher assignments match to state course codes and report annually to the House and Senate education committees of the Washington State Legislature those districts failing to meet these targets.

Without a doubt, it is important to have teachers who are well prepared to teach the courses to which they are assigned. One concern? The report of districts failing to meet these targets might not reflect a problem with the teacher workforce, or a problem with schools making poor staffing decisions. Rather, this report might reflect variables over which the school has no control–for example, the size of the school itself.

Small schools, with their small staffs, find it difficult to hire teachers with exactly the right endorsements for each course—many small schools only have one science teacher! If there are concurrent policy changes such as teachers with general science endorsements not being considered appropriately endorsed for certain advanced science courses, we are going to end up with a very large number of schools reported as “failing to meet the target.” 

Here’s the deal. Up until this point, PESB had a compliance/waiver approach to endorsements and associated teaching assignments. If schools wanted a teacher to teach outside of their endorsement waiver, they requested a waiver. The issue? Some schools were ignoring the compliance requirements—there were no real state consequences. For schools that requested a waiver, these waivers were virtually always granted—the schools had legitimate reasons for making teacher assignments outside of their endorsement areas. (Please note, this is a state issue, and is separate from federal Highly Qualified Teacher status.) 

So what’s the issue? At the same time that this new public reporting tool might be coming into effect, there is also a move to potentially restrict what might be considered appropriate teaching assignments.

This policy would only take into account teacher endorsements—it would not account for other forms of professional development. For example, the College Board and other organizations frequently offer Advanced Placement (AP) training for teachers. An experienced biology and chemistry teacher with both a biology and general science endorsement, under one proposal, would no longer be considered to be appropriately endorsed to teach AP Chemistry, no matter the extent of that teacher’s AP Chemistry training or experience. Again, there would be no grandfather clause—it doesn’t matter if that teacher has already been successfully teaching AP Chemistry for years under their general science endorsement. Yes, that teacher still could teach the AP Chemistry class, it’s just that it would be a negative mark for the school in this new public report. (PESB has no authority over these other forms of professional development, which is why they are not included, but still, in the large picture, they are something to consider.)

Content knowledge is not always the most important factor in what makes an appropriate teacher for a certain position. Many alternative schools, or alternative programs within a school, serve a set of students for whom traditional schooling has not worked. These alternative schools are often smaller, more intimate programs focused on building relationships with students in order to help them be successful. Because these schools and programs are smaller, they employ fewer staff. To restrict the courses these staff might teach also restricts the courses the alternative students might take. The characteristics of a successful alternative school teacher are different than the characteristics of successful general ed teacher, and teacher assignment policy should take this into account.

Sometimes, because a school is configured as a 7th-9th grade junior high, or to offer accelerated options for younger students, science classes traditionally taught at the high school level, such as physical science, are offered at the middle level. One potential idea is for physical science to not be associated with the middle level science endorsement. 

Want to offer physical science to middle level students who are ready, but only have an outstanding middle school science teacher with not-quite-the-right endorsement? Better watch it, or it’s a public mark against your school on this report. Again, having a teacher teach classes outside of their endorsement area would not be prohibited, it would just be very publicly reported.

How about that experienced physics teacher with extensive outside practical experience, personal interest, and endorsements in general science and biology? Forget providing AP training and then offering AP Physics or certain other advanced physics courses–the teacher would not be able to teach those without the school receiving a negative report.

As teaching assignments associated with specific endorsements become more restrictive, teaching outside an endorsement area is often not a result of schools making poor staffing decisions—it’s a result of schools doing the best they possibly can to offer flexible course choices to their students with the very limited staff available. Yes, it would be ideal to have a physics major for all the physics related classes, and a chemistry major for all the chemistry related classes, and so on, but that is not always possible. For example, I am the only full time science teacher at my school, and I did not major in every science area!

This public reporting policy combined with limitations on the general science endorsement could limit what science classes our schools are willing to offer because they only happen to have one or two science teachers on staff. Yes, this policy guides towards best practice in teacher assignment, but there are many legitimate reasons that this best practice might not be met, and those reasons will not be apparent from looking at a publicly available online report just listing the number of students being taught outside of an endorsment area.

My general view on this issue? Let’s set the bar high for new teacher licensure and endorsements. Let’s establish high standards for entering the teaching profession, but once individuals have met those high standards, let’s give those teaching professionals (and their schools!) some flexibility in the courses they teach.