Reply #190: This is a sticky point for me.

[LWolf]

Originally, I thought national teacher certification would be a good thing. I was going to go through the process. I hesitated because it was costly, and there were conversations going on about some districts/states helping teachers meet the costs. My district was very encouraging, and really liked the idea of me putting out all that money and time. I began to think that it would be better to include national certification right along with state certification, so that new teachers would automatically be both. National certification should automatically mean certification in any of the 50 states, without more hoops to jump through from state to state.

Then I thought, "in that case, shouldn't they be 'grandfathering' teachers who've already achieved certification in a state, rather than making each certification separate?" I still think this.

Then, of course, NCLB kicked in, and I decided that I didn't want national certification, period. I didn't want some selected rw yahoo in the wh, and his corrupt secretary of education, and a bunch of politicians in washington far removed from understanding pedagogy, but closely linked with education related corporations, to decide what a good teacher should be able to do.

Which is why I also don't want them setting national standards. Frankly, I don't think they are qualified.

If real educators, people with abundant and recent time in the classroom, who were not political appointees, were the ones to set some broad, developmentally appropriate standards, with no specific national measurement or "high stakes" involved, I'd probably agree. I'm just skeptical that this is the way it would play out.