Michael Poliakoff of American Council of Trustees and Alumni here reviews Sandra Stotsky’s book An Empty Curriculum.

The point of her book, Poliakoff writes, is to “explode the convenient and comforting belief that state regulations are a reliable assurance that teachers are academically competent to teach the subjects they are legally licensed to teach.” Often they aren’t.

A large amount of the blame falls on our glorious schools of education, whose faculty, Stotsky shows have positioned themselves so they’re able to influence the questions that make it into a licensing exam. They then make sure that the questions correspond to things covered in their programs.

Moreover, efforts by Congress to make ed schools improve have flopped. The 1998 reauthorization of the Higher Ed Act required that schools report their pass rates on licensing exams, but the schools merely redefined who was a “licensure candidate” to include only students who had managed to pass!

Besides, the tests are often absurdly easy.

Stotsky believes that the way to improve ed schools is to have better teacher licensing tests. I wouldn’t disagree, but think we’d get better results quicker if we dispensed with state requirements that schools only hire people who have government licenses. Private schools can usually hire without regard to official credentials and seem to get mostly good teachers and avoid really bad ones.