Should school officials be limited to considering only teachers who have state licenses? Suppose that those officials (or some of them, at least) thought that individuals without such government approval would be better than individuals with them? Wouldn’t education improve if they could select the prospective teachers they believe best able to do a good job? A recent Pope Center piece by Jane Shaw and Zachary Williams explores that issue.
Specifically, legislation now in the North Carolina General Assembly would allow charter-school leaders to hire teachers who haven’t gone through the state-mandated course of training in an education school. No doubt the guild (i.e., the education schools) will fight against this. They don’t want competition and will proclaim their “expertise” in preparing teachers as the reason to maintain the status quo.