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Out-of-Field Teaching Is Hard To Curb

Faced with a proposal requiring that schools notify parents if a child's class was being taught by "an uncertified or inappropriately certified individual," the Texas school board reacted decisively this month. It voted 12-0 to reject the measure, which the state's teacher-certification board had hoped would call greater attention to the pervasiveness of so-called out-of-field teaching.

The resistance the plan ran into underscores just how tough it would be to eliminate the long-running, albeit lamented, practice. Not only is the issue linked inextricably to the market forces affecting the big demand for new teachers, it also raises fundamental questions about what constitutes a qualified educator.

In debating the Texas measure, which elicited three abstentions along with the 12 negative votes, some state board members said the word "inappropriately" sounded too vague. Others feared maligning teachers who hadn't earned a certificate but still knew their subject matter, like an aeronautical engineer brought in to teach physics. And many asked why they should force districts to make themselves look bad, when schools are just making the best...