Assistance for Underqualified Teachers: Differentiated Responsibilities

By Dennis L. Evans

Problems associated with underqualified teachers cannot be wished away. Indeed, as the need for new teachers continues to grow, it is predictable that issues related to the lack of qualification of many of those new teachers will also grow and will eventually come to be viewed as a national crisis. Certainly the ultimate solution (if there is one) to such problems will involve monumental challenges and complexities related to changes in society's commitment to schooling, perceptions of teaching as a career, levels of teachers' salaries, and the rigor of preparatory and continuing teacher training. Equally certain is the fact that any long-term solution will require sustained and bipartisan effort.

But what about now and the near future? What can be done in the short term to protect this current generation of students from the consequences of being "taught" by underqualified teachers? The following ideas are in large part based on my 21 years as a high school principal and my eight years as director of a university teacher education program.

Regardless of the school and the general quality of the teachers therein, there will always be some teachers who are simply better than others. That is not a terribly profound insight; in any professional organization involved with a purposeful activity, and wherein practitioner quality is a function of developmental growth, some individuals will always be more experienced and more successful than others. That is true for law firms, hospitals, newspapers, police...