Meaningful Change In Education

11 Pages 2816 Words

tiveness while simultaneously accelerating the replacement pool of teachers.
One result of the teacher shortage is now an over-dependence on emergency preparation and/or alternative preparation procedures to staff classrooms. Emergency-credentialed teachers have provided a short-term solution to long-term problems. Superintendent Thompson (Clarion-Ledger, May 2002) has advocated for a three-week summer “boot camp” to infuse more people into the classroom. Most educators and administrators realize this is a quantity response to a quality problem. Unfortunately, simply increasing quantity may whiplash the profession by suppressing salary advancement, perpetuating public criticism of instructional effectiveness, and placing a “faculty” (people) that may be difficult to remove once employed. Simultaneously, the traditional, accreditation-driven structure inherent in university teacher preparation programs may have exacerbated the impact of the personnel shortages by delivering a product, which is often considered out of synch with publ...