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Teaching Critical Thinking Is Essential Education

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Lost and not knowing which way to go is a concept that has greater meaning and worry in our world today. There are an abundance of noises and loud voices with few guiding lights and fewer guardrails for what is real and valid. Thinking critically is a skill set educators can and must teach children to use for finding their way.

What should a person who is lost do to find their way forward? If physically lost, there are a series of well-advised steps to take, like staying calm, stop wandering, retracing your steps, using landmarks, and using devices like GPS and maps to find your way. Finally, stay put and wait for help. As helpless as being physically lost seems, there are real and tangible things to do.

Being figuratively or mentally lost is a similar conundrum, but also significantly different. Staying calm, using devices, and waiting for help can apply. But the mind does what the mind wants to do, and it wanders and often becomes more lost and mired without a way forward. The absence of physical and tangible remedies causes being mentally lost to seem increasingly overwhelming.

What do we know?

Moore’s Law spoke about the rate of transistor development and the increasing speed of change. The world sped through that law, yet Moore and the speed of change can be applied to change in the world as a whole. The political, economic, social and cultural landscapes of our world are changing at Moore-like speed. Given the amount of vastness of changing things and all the crappola flung about, it is easy to feel lost and adrift in the world.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law

Facets of this changing landscape are the ever-increasing sources of information that are available to every “connected” student today. On any question, a student can find similar, different, conflicting, fact-based and alternative fact-based information at a moment’s notice and tomorrow there will be more. For a growing mind, noise and voices are bedlam. And to make it even more difficult, listeners in the beldam are told who to believe and who not to believe as often as they are told what to believe.

In the 60s and 70s some young people were so abused by disinformation systems that “dropping out” of mainstreamed culture was an attractive option. In this century, disenchantment with adult voices of all persuasions leads to Millennials and Zers becoming semi-isolates, to prioritize self-reliance and collaboration instead of following and looking for ethical leadership.

Teachers are empowered to teach critical thinking.

Wisconsin Statute 118.01(2)(a)(2) instructs public educators to teach “… analytical skills, including the ability to think rationally, solve problems, use various learning methods, gather and analyze information, make critical and independent judgments and argue persuasively.” It may appear to be cherry picking to isolate this singular statute, but in a culture that is unable to attach whimsical decisions to bedrock, identifying a state statute is a true anchor.

Critical thinking also is an identifiable thread running through each of the disciplines of the Common Core curricula, adopted and incorporated into Wisconsin’s Academic Standards.

https://dpi.wi.gov/standards

What does teaching critical thinking look like?

In its simplest terms, critical thinking is an intellectual, brain-based process of careful evaluation, analysis, and synthesis of various pieces of information to create a rational, and thought-out judgment or decision about a targeted question. Everyone has the capacity for critical thinking. However, many choose to be told rather than to think.

All teachers, regardless of grade level or subject, can teach children to understand and use critical thinking skills. These skills can apply to every question or substantive decision in a child’s school and personal life, though many daily decisions are semi-baked into a child’s education and training. For example, looking both ways before crossing a street does not require critical thinking. But trusting adults a child does not know does. And understanding daily news does. And understanding personal relationships does.

While we do not want to paralyze child decision making, we do want to teach them how and when to exercise deeper thinking skills to navigate through their growing up.

These elements are foundational to critical thinking. As practitioners of critical thinking, we teach children to –

  • evaluate by assessing the credibility and relevance of information. Who says it, why do they say it, who do they represent in saying it, what do they want to achieve by saying it? Children need to understand and recognize bias in information and voices. They need to discern facts from opinions, and in most recent terms, false facts and disinformation. Critical thinkers verify the accuracy of the information they consider by asking questions and reading/listening to diverse points of view.
  • analyze information by finding similarities and differences in what the information says, breaking these into smaller bits from which patterns and relationships in the information can be identified, and creating a concept or theory that explains, in the student’s own words, what she has learned and knows. She understands perspective while knowing that some information does not make sense in a coherent argument.
  • synthesize the bits, connections and disconnection, and relationships needed to make an informed and personal statement. While evaluation and analysis deconstruct information into smaller bits, synthesis is constructing a meaningful statement based upon sorting and valuing the bits.
  • reason with others. This the hardest step in critical thinking. When a student reasons with others, she puts her understandings and informed conclusions against those of others. It is a testing of a student’s evaluation, analysis, and synthesis. Good reasoning sometimes requires accommodating well-reasoned arguments from other students.

If not teachers, then who?

It is difficult to be young today. Maybe it always was, but in this decade even more so. It is hard for adults to sort the chaos and find their own truths when every statement in the news conveys the speaker’s or writer’s self-interests and biases. It is equally difficult to find incontrovertible sources of information. It is hard for adults; it is really hard for children.

We need to make classrooms into laboratories for critical thinking at all ages and levels of cognitive development. As teachers and public education leaders declare classrooms to be apolitical and agnostic regarding social, political, economic, and cultural controversy, teachers and students are free to investigate issues, ask insightful questions, and use critical thinking to derive informed answers. This is why teachers are critical to critical thinking.

Secondly, teachers are prepared to develop critical thinking skills, not rush them. Critical thinking fits well into an educator’s understanding of “developmental appropriateness.” Our youngest primary students can observe, listen, touch and feel, and constructively identify what they learn about things, ideas, people, and their world. They identify information and begin to evaluate it. Primary aged children are not ready for deeper analysis, synthesis, or reasoning.

Intermediate grade level students can begin analyzing information. Hilda Taba, a curricular theorist and student of John Dewey’s, gave us a method for analyzing information and using critical thinking inductively for students to create their own informed concepts and generalizations. Students in the intermediate grades begin using Taba techniques to analyze information on the way toward generalizations.

http://mrbeasleysaigsite.weebly.com/tabas-concept-development-model.html

Secondary school is ripe for critical thinking in every area of our curriculum. Every teacher can meaningfully ask, “what do you know about…”, “what do you observe about …”, “what do you think about …” questions and move students through evaluation and analysis into synthesis and reasoning. Given the range of cognitive development in secondary students, all students, even those still immature in their reasoning skills, benefit from being engaged in formulating their thoughts and explaining and supporting their reasoning.

Taba died in 1962, but her words ring true more than 60 years later.

“One scarcely needs to emphasize the importance of critical thinking as a desirable ingredient in human beings in a democratic society. No matter what views people hold of the chief function of education, they at least agree that people need to learn to think. In a society in which changes come fast, individuals cannot depend on routinized behavior or tradition to make decisions, whether on practical every day or professional matters, moral values, or political issues. In such a society, there is a natural concern that individuals be capable of intelligent and independent thought.”

So, if not teachers, who do we want to teach children to be critical thinkers. Our elected leaders? Our social influencers? AI?

Teachers cause learning.

Master Teachers Know How to Correct Errors in Student Learning

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“What, Romeo and Juliet die! They were young and in love. Did I miss something?”

Teaching and learning are not a linear transaction – a teacher speaks, and students do not always learn what the teacher wants them to learn. There are too many variables that intrude between the teacher and the children being taught. The eyes and ears and brains of children are not constantly connected to what the teacher is saying, doing, demonstrating, and explaining. In a child’s head, it does not take much, just an errant thought about a recent conversation with a friend, a side glance out the classroom window, a rethinking of a text the child read on the way to school, or an anticipation of after school doings, and whatever the teacher said, did, or showed was missed or received incorrectly. Or a child may get tired of reading and not finish the rest of the story. Or a child may rely upon what their small group mates tell them what they should know and not upon their own study. In these moments, correct learning lurches, and incorrect learning takes its place.

Best practice teaching also requires the pedagogic ability to clear up and clean up errors in student learning.

Identify errors in learning early.

A teacher must have ears that clang whenever she hears incorrectness. The clang occurs when a child says “2 + 2 = 5” or “Me and my friend …”, or “George Washington was President during the Civil War” or “Newton’s first law says objects are independent and move randomly.” CLANG!

Each clang requires correction. The issues for a teacher become when and how to make the necessary correction. “Do I stop everything, stop the lesson I am teaching, or the small group I am leading to correct a single student on a single point of misinformation?” Or “does every incorrect thing a child says need correction? If it does, I will never be able to teach anything new because there are so many little incorrect things children say or do.”

Yep, teachers need to plan how to correct errors, now or later. Identify and correct errors when they occur or as quickly as you can after you identify them. Student reality is that errors in their learning are reinforced and are used to distort subsequent learning the longer you wait to correct them.

No fault insurance – learning is what matters.

When correcting student learning, don’t place blame or fault on what caused the incorrect learning. Fault finding is a lonely and dangerous road. Use a “your fault, my fault, or anybody’s fault – I don’t care. We are going to correct this now” mindset. You want to correct learning and not focus children on faults.

If 100 children hear something that a teacher says, statistically only a fraction of them truly comprehend and internalize it accurately. The variables in attention, interpretation, and understanding mean that not all children are in sync with the instruction at hand. This discrepancy highlights the critical need for the teacher to hear the clangs of incorrect learning and make corrections. Given this, there is no time for fault finding; only correcting errors in learning and then moving forward.

The decision is either to make the correction now or at the end of the lesson or, if more than several students demonstrate the same error, to form a tier 2 small group for corrective teaching. Just do it.

Isolate the incorrect – replace with the correct.

Once the decision of when to correct errors in student learning is made, the steps for correction are similar.

  • Explain to students that you and they are going to correct errors in their knowledge content, or conceptualization, or skills they have learned because the error in learning will cause them to have learning problems in the future.
  • State the error in what they learned. “The idea that Romeo and Juliet do not die but live happily ever-after is an error. They die. Their deaths are what makes Romeo and Juliet and tragic love story.”
  • State the corrected learning. “Due to a tragic misunderstanding, Romeo kills himself with poison and Juliet uses Romeo’s knife to kill herself.” Romeo and Juliet die. No need to be graphic, just exact.
  • Give the students the context for their corrected learning by reviewing the family feud between the Montagues and the Capulets that prevented Romeo and Juliet from marrying, the friar’s plan to resolve the feud by faking Juliet’s death, and the scene when Romeo finds Juliet lying death-like but not dead. This review need not take long, just enough to give context to the conclusion – Romeo and Juliet die.
  • Have the students retell this conclusion and the summary of its context. It may seem like overdoing, but if there is a small group of students in this corrective, require each student to make a correct statement and summary of the context. Stating the corrected learning replaces the error with the correction.
  • Conclude by restating the importance of correcting and clarifying what students learn if we know it was not correct. And thank them for doing so.

The Big Duh!

I turn wood on a lathe to make a variety of products. Like any craftsman, my work is not always perfect. Flaws in my use of a bowl gouge combined with unanticipated changes in the wood cause mistakes. Craftsmen are not always error-free 100% of the time, but 100% of the time craftsmen know how to clean up their errors. Cleaning up takes time, effort, and technique. It is the correcting of errors that defines craftsmanship.

So, it is with teaching and learning. Teachers are craftsmen in causing children to learn. Teachers do not need to be effective 100% of the time in their instruction, but 100% of the time teachers need to correct errors in student learning.

We would rather a teacher use the time and effort to identify and correct errors in student learning and not teach everything in a year’s curriculum than teach every lesson in a year’s curriculum even though children have many errors in their learning. Errors in learning, like potholes in winter streets, only grow to cause major disruption later in the student’s life.

If test scores are that important, eliminate all else in public education but testing and test scores

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Tired of the annual and uninformed complaints about student test scores in our nation’s schools? Weary of the complaint that we spend too much money on public education only to create low-scoring students? Annoyed that politicians use public education as a partisan punching bag always taking their hardest punches at our children’s achievement in international comparisons? Peeved that while conservative critics complain about test scores in public schools, they keep shifting public tax funds to parent vouchers for private education?  

It is a wonder that critics are not as vociferous in complaining about athletics because half of the teams in any conference will have losing records for the season, some for seasons on end. Or concerts in which some voices and instruments are out of harmony. Or math teams that fail to solve any higher math problems. Or school bus routes that run late. Of too much pizza on the lunch menu. I am not encouraging complaint for complaint’s sake but simply pointing to the silo of criticism about academic test scores.

To the annual critics of public education who whine about the status of academic test scores, I propose that we give them what they want. Let’s strip everything out of our public schools but academic test preparation, academic testing, and make this the singular public education program of every school. If test scores matter that much, schools should be all about test preparation and test results.

Announcement – Tests Only Matter Schools (TOMS)

Beginning today:

  • The only educational programs approved for children in public schools will be academic instruction in preparation for annual MAPS testing, reading assessment in third grade, and NAEP testing in grades 4 and 8. All other academic instruction, arts, athletic, and activities programs are hereby eliminated from public schools.
  • Contracts for all teachers except those specifically assigned to teach reading, ELA, and mathematics are immediately voided.
  • All children from age 3 through age 13 will attend school five days a week for 40 weeks each year. School instruction will be provided in four (4) ten-week blocks with three (3) weeks of no school between each block. A school day will be four hours in duration beginning at 8:00 a.m. and ending at noon.
  • Parents of school-age children are responsible for transporting their children to and from school each day.
  • Attendance is mandatory with parental incarceration the penalty for student truancy.
  • Children aged 3 through 5 will receive pre-reading, literacy, pre-composition, and numeracy instruction every day.
  • Children aged 5 through 8 will receive reading for understanding, grammar mechanics, composition, arithmetic, pre-algebra, pre-geometry, pre-statistics/data understanding instruction every day.
  • Children aged 9 – 13 will receive reading complex text and literature, advance composition, algebra, geometry, advanced algebra, trigonometry, probability and statistics, and problem-solving instruction every day.
  • Annual MAPS testing will be used to assess each student’s progress in preparing for the national third grade reading test and the 4th and 8th grade NAEP tests. The three-weeks between each instructional block provides reading, ELA, and math teachers time to evaluate each child’s academic progress and plan personalized instruction for the next ten weeks.
  • Only children who are prepared for the third-grade national reading assessment and the NAEP tests will be allowed to take the tests. Preparation means achieving scores of 85% or better on pre-tests for these assessments. Unprepared children will be recycled in third, 4th, and/or 8th grade until they are prepared to take these assessments.

TOMS reduces the cost of public education.

The immediate cost saving will be mind-blowing, and every proponent of TOMS will beat their chest with pride.

  • Teacher and support staff payrolls will be reduced by 90% or more.
  • School administration, counseling, curriculum and instruction, and campus supervision will be streamlined.
  • Athletic, arts, and activities budgets will be eliminated.
  • There will be no need for food services or school transportation.
  • There will be no heavy budgeting for technology education, science labs, art or music studios.
  • The school’s utility costs will be minimized to HVAC, water, and sanitation. There will be no after school/evening programming.
  • School taxes will be greatly reduced. The state’s per pupil formula will fund TOMS and no revenue limit override referenda will ever be needed again.

TOMS succeeds!

The United States will top the annual lists for international student academic achievement, all children will achieve high academic standing, AND the cost of public education will be a pittance of what it is now. The critics of current public education will be able to say, “I told you so.”

Oh, and TOMS only applies to public schools. Children enrolled in private schools will have their activities, arts, and athletics programs because there are no public complaints about test scores in private education.

The lesson.

“We only appreciate what we have when we lose it.” (Isabel Allende)

And “we get what we settle for.” (Thelma and Louise)

If TOMS don’t work for you, please choose future leaders who understand that public education is an investment in our commonwealth and our commonwealth is worth the investment. We are our commonwealth.

If Learning Gaps Were Important, We Would Teach Differently

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How many times do educators read in the media that their students suffer from gaps in their basic understanding of reading, writing, and arithmetic? Learning gaps are unsuccessful or incomplete learning of content, concepts, and skills that are required building blocks for future learning. It is like seeing a picture of a smiling person missing two front teeth and wondering how that person chews food. Gaps in learning, like missing teeth, make it hard if not impossible for children to “bite into” more complex instruction.

Learning gaps are becoming a standard fixture of educational reports. They beg the questions – when we know something is a significant problem, why don’t we fix it? What keeps us from doing what we know we should do?

What do we know?

To understand learning gaps, I do what most of us do today; I make an AI search of “gaps in K-12 student learning achievement in the United States and in Wisconsin (my state)” to get a rough portrait of learning gap problem areas. In a quick summary of student learning gaps, and as a generalization about all K-12 students, a high percentage of school children today show gaps in

  • Automaticity of basic arithmetic skills, understanding conceptual concepts in algebra, fractions, and math reasoning and the application of math skills to their real-world experiences.
  • Decoding of words leading to struggles with fluency and comprehension, vocabulary development, understanding complex texts, using what they have
  • Organizing their thoughts into writing or spoken conversation, constructing written or spoken arguments based upon evidence, understanding of grammar and language mechanics.
  • Understanding and applying scientific theories and practices to their real-world experiences, development of inquiry skills to investigate their real world, and the interpretation and understanding of data to interpret the patterns and trends in the world.
  • Knowing and understanding governmental rights, responsibilities, and organization, looking at historical and current events from multiple perspectives, understanding patterns and trends in global issues, and having a clear understanding of global geography and socio-economic-cultural differences.

We recognize the above gaps by taking a 1,000-foot overhead view of K-12 education and considering student achievement from a multi-year analysis of data.  The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) makes national studies and points to these shortcomings for Wisconsin 4th and 8th graders.

NAEP Reading: 32.6 of 4th graders achieved proficiency (67.4% were not proficient) and 32.4% of 8th graders achieved proficiency (67.6 were not proficient)

NAEP Math: 42.9% of 4th graders achieved proficiency (57.1were not proficient) and 33.2% of 8th graders achieved proficiency (66.8 were not proficient)

From a ground level view of statewide assessments, children in Wisconsin demonstrated more pointed gaps in learning in 2024.

  • Math – 42% of 4th grade students achieved proficiency in math and this falls to 37% for 8th graders.
  • Reading – 31% of 4th grade students achieved proficiency in reading and the same percentage (31%) were proficient readers in 8th grade.

When learning gaps are disaggregated by race and special learning needs, children of color and children receiving special education services score 30 to 45 points below white children and white children without special learning needs.

We attempt non-instructional for instructional challenges.

School districts annually respond to the educational reports with a variety of actions to address learning gaps. Actions range from

  • Identifying students with gaps using formative assessments and standardized test data and grouping these children for targeted instruction.
  • Small group instruction that personalizes the focus on each student’s gap needs.
  • Response-To-Intervention protocols that increases instructional supports based on student needs.
  • Tutoring.
  • Culturally sensitive instruction.
  • After school programs.
  • Saturday instruction.
  • Summer school.
  • Community partnerships that support families and provide additional tutoring.
  • Professional development to strengthen teachers’ instruction.
  • Social-emotional support for students.

Yet gaps persist. The effectiveness of these outcomes mirrors the proverbial Dutch boy trying to plug leaks in a dam wall with fingers.

Mastery learning for core outcomes.

We need to teach children differently if we want to achieve different outcomes.

Mastery learning is not a new concept education. To generalize, mastery learning makes learning achievement the instructional constant and time an instructional variable. All children successfully learn all core outcomes no matter how long it takes. Repeat – mastery learning teaches until all students meet the outcomes of success.

In contrast, most classes in our schools are organized using traditional instruction practices. In traditional instruction time is the constant and achieving successful is a variable – in the time allowed, many children cannot achieve successful learning. Repeat – children run out of time to successfully learn their lessons.

What does this look like?

We identify the core outcomes every child must learn in their grade level or course curriculum. The core outcomes are the building blocks that allow the child to continue learning in their grade level or course and be ready for success in the next grade or course. There is a lot of content knowledge and curricular activities in each grade level and course curriculum that add value to the core, are good for children to know and experience but are not core. The non-core lessons in each lesson take time for planning and teaching.

A mastery learning curriculum isolates the critical knowledge, concepts, and skills a child needs to know and be able to do to achieve success in a grade level or course. Let’s drill down. These are the math standards that are essential for success in second grade math and readiness for third grade math.

1. Operations and Algebraic Thinking (2.OA)

• Represent and solve problems involving addition and subtraction.• Solve one- and two-step word problems within 100 using addition and subtraction. • Add and subtract within 20.• Fluently add and subtract within 20 using mental strategies. By the end of second grade, know sums and differences of numbers up to 20 from memory. • Work with equal groups of objects to understand multiplication:

• Determine whether a group of objects (up to 20) is even or odd. • Use addition to find the total number of objects arranged in rectangular arrays (up to 5 rows and 5 columns) and write equations to show the total.

2.    Number and Operations in Base Ten (2.NBT)

• Understand place value. • Understand that the three digits of a three-digit number represent hundreds, tens, and ones. • Count within 1000 and skip-count by 5s, 10s, and 100s. • Read and write numbers up to 1000 in numerals, words, and expanded form. • Compare two three-digit numbers using >, <, and = symbols. • Use place value understanding and properties of operations to add and subtract. • Fluently add and subtract within 100 using strategies based on place value.

• Add up to four two-digit numbers. • Add and subtract within 1000 using models, drawings, and strategies, and explain the methods used. • Mentally add or subtract 10 or 100 from a given three-digit number.

3.    Measurement and Data (2.MD)

• Measure and estimate lengths. • Measure objects using standard units like inches, feet, centimeters, and meters. • Estimate lengths using appropriate units of measure. • Compare lengths of two objects and express the difference. • Relate addition and subtraction to length. • Use number lines and rulers to solve addition and subtraction problems involving lengths. • Work with time and money. • Tell and write time to the nearest five minutes, using analog and digital clocks. • Solve word problems involving dollar bills, quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies. • Represent and interpret data. • Generate measurement data and show it on a line plot. • Draw and interpret picture graphs and bar graphs to solve simple problems.

4.      Geometry (2.G)

• Reason with shapes and their attributes. • Recognize and draw shapes like triangles, quadrilaterals, pentagons, hexagons, and cubes. • Partition shapes into equal parts and describe the parts using words like halves, thirds, and fourths.

A mastery learning teacher carves enough time out of every school day and week for daily instruction of units and lessons that teach these to all children in the class. Instruction is explicit with formative assessment to ensure students understand initial instruction and enough guided and independent practice to reinforce student learning. Summative assessments document student learning success, but if a child is not successful the child must repeat instruction until the content, concepts, or skills not met are successfully learned. Children must be proficient in each day’s lesson before they advance to the next lesson.

When learning outcomes are non-negotiable constants, there are no learning gaps. But when time and the calendar are constants, learning stops when time and the calendar tell instruction to stop and learning gaps are obvious outcomes. Reconsider the second-grade math standards. Which of these can we say, “It is okay if you do not learn this (these) standards this year?”, however in third grade we will assume you know these standards.

The following two videos display how Sal Khan and the Khan Academy perceive mastery learning and our need to change from traditional instructional models to a mastery model.

Let’s Teacher for Mastery – Sal Khan

Khan Academy View of Mastery Learning

Reality leads to learning gaps.

I have participated in this conversation repeatedly over the past decades. Many strong arguments have been made for infusing mastery learning in our schools. We examined models of direct instruction, explicit instruction, and outcome-based instruction as they are prime ingredients in mastery models. However, whenever these are discussed and even in early implementation, the issue of time and priorities arise. Predominantly, the issues boil down to –

  • If some or most of the class were successful in learning the lesson, what do we do with them while we wait for those who were not successful? The logistics of management are both worrisome and tiresome. We are not willing to change our paradigms of whole class teaching.
  • The time it takes to ensure mastery for all reduces the time for other curricula. Time must come from somewhere and it comes from non-core curricula. We are not willing to change our preferences for a comprehensive curriculum for all with learning gaps for some to a targeted curriculum of no learning gaps for any in the core curriculum and a reduced non-core curriculum.

While we decry learning gaps, we are not willing to let go of the traditional school day and school year or prioritize core curricula over non-core.

Hence, school boards as representatives of their community and the community’s concept of public education, abandon mastery learning in favor of traditional learning, happiness for the majority instead of success for all. And the acceptance that some children will suffer learning gaps every year and these gaps will plague them for a lifetime.

As I participated in these discussions over time as a teacher, principal, superintendent, and school board member, I always was aware of the whimsy and politics of public education. We would rather endure learning gaps of traditional teaching models than face the stresses of teaching differently.

When There Is a Shortage of Teachers, Will Any “Teacher” In the Classroom Do?

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Every year school principals post openings for classroom teacher vacancies with the intention to hire a licensed teacher with the academic and pedagogic preparation to teach the children a school curriculum. However, the shortage of licensed and prepared teachers seeking employment as teachers means that a principal may not find any candidates with a valid license to teach the posted assignment. This is New Personnel 101 for principals in thousands of schools every year – how to make do without a licensed and prepared teacher.

So, a principal scrambles to hire the next best – a teacher with a different license but who knows how to teach. Or a long-term substitute teacher without a teaching license or academic and pedagogic training. Or an apprentice teacher who is enrolled in an on-the-job teacher preparation program but not yet fully trained. Or a local resident well known in the school who has a baccalaureate degree and is willing to try out as a classroom teacher. The WI Department of Instruction has protocols for issuing permits or temporary licenses with stipulations that allow a school board to employ any of these people who are explicitly prepared for the vacant teaching assignment. Or the principal may give up on finding a teacher and reassign the children to other classrooms. Each of these options has an immediate upside and a longer downside.

New Personnel 101 does not go away when an unlicensed, unprepared teacher is hired. The principal is supposed to continue posting this position as a teacher vacancy until a licensed and prepared teacher is hired. If an unlicensed teacher with a temporary license is hired, the principal is responsible for assuring and supporting the “temp” in meeting the stipulations of the temporary license. That amounts to significant extra time and effort. New Personnel 101 is an ongoing unanticipated and unwanted work effort.

The rub comes if the principal believes the “next best” is good enough and that reposting will not find a better “next best.” This is acutely true if there are no student discipline or parent issues arising from a “next best” teacher in a temporary assignment. The WI DPI will renew a temporary license with stipulations almost indefinitely, if the temporary teacher continues to make “efforts” to remove the stipulations of the temporary license. It does not take much to be an “effort.”

The sad outcome of New Personnel 101 is that a continuing contract for “next best” who never completes a licensing program but never has classroom problems gets lost in all the other high demands a principal faces in the business of administering a school. When the critical attribute for good enough is the absence of discipline problems and parent complaints, the good enough of New Personnel 101 makes the expediency of putting a teacher in the classroom more important than giving all children the quality instruction they deserve and need.

The reality of New Personnel 101

There is a significant corps of unlicensed teachers in our classrooms. “Different sources estimate between 42,000 and over 100,000 unfilled teacher positions nationwide. Moreover, another 270,000 to 365,000 employed K-12 teachers are reported to be unqualified or not fully certified for the teaching assignments that they have been given. In some areas, the inability to find qualified teachers is so bad that anyone who passes a background check gets hired, even without holding a relevant degree.”

In Wisconsin, there are 2,400 unfilled teacher vacancies for the 2024-25 school year with 4,057 unqualified teachers in classrooms.

https://www.fullmindlearning.com/blog/teacher-vacancies-by-state-us?utm_source=chatgpt.com

Apprenticeship resolves New Personnel 101.

One of the options available to school boards is to employ apprentice teachers. An apprentice teacher meets four immediate criteria. An apprentice must –

  1. Have an earned baccalaureate degree. Although this baccalaureate is not in education, it signifies that the apprentice has intellectual knowledge and skills for a college degree and the capacity to become a trained teacher.
  2. Be enrolled in an educator preparation program (EPP). There are a variety of EPPs in Wisconsin and most are affiliated with Cooperative Educational Service Agencies (CESAs). The DPI teacher licensing department supervised EPPs to ensure that the EPP’s teacher training program meets WI’s statutory requirements for teacher training as well as the initial teacher preparation standards for a teaching license. For example, all licensed math teachers must meet the preparation standards of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM).
  3. Be employed by a school board as an apprentice teacher assigned to a classroom aligned with their educator preparation program. Employment as an apprentice is a HUGE asset for apprenticeship programs – apprentices earn while they learn. Unlike enrollment in a college or university teacher prep program that require almost full-time class attendance, apprentices teach classes in school, attend the EPP’s online courses, and have an ongoing income that meets their life needs.
  4. Pass a criminal background check. This is the same requirement for all public education teachers.

The essential benefit of the apprenticeship program is that a “next best” teacher is not hired and forgotten. Apprentices are supported by

  • EPP instructors. I use preparation for a math teacher as an example. As apprentices learn each of the seven NCTM teacher prep standards, the instructor uses course assignments that directly connect each standard to the apprentice’s teaching assignment. Apprentices use their daily work as the application of each standard. Instructors are first-hand supporters of the apprentice’s daily teaching practices.
  • EPP licensing observers who observe the apprentice teaching and coach the apprentice to apply what the apprentice learns in EPP courses into practice in classroom teaching.
  • School principals who make required evaluative classroom observations of the apprentice’s teaching and provide the apprentice with both critical and constructive recommendations.
  • School mentors who teach the same grade level or the same courses as the apprentice.

The downside to hiring an apprentice teacher is that on the first day of classroom teaching the apprentice also is in the first days of course work learning how to teach. As a teacher, the apprentice immediately is a work in progress.

The upside to hiring an apprentice is that the apprentice is constantly learning about the best teaching and learning practices. There is not a settling for good enough that never changes because the apprentice is constantly learning how to become a fully prepared licensed teacher. And at the end of the apprentice’s EPP courses the apprentice has pedagogical training that is equal to the preparation of any university or college depart of education.

The Big Duh!

New Personnel 101 leaves school boards and principals with critical decisions to make when they cannot find a fully licensed teacher that meets their employment needs. They can settle for a “good enough” adult to be a classroom teacher.  They can allow “good enough” to become a permanent employee forgotten in the grind of a school year’s work. Or they can work with an EPP and hire an apprentice and collaborate to create a fully prepared and licensed teacher.

I endorse the employment of apprentice teachers. Through personal and professional experience, I know that this program works when school principals and EPPs collaborate to educate, train, and grow a new teacher one at a time.

New Personnel 101 is not going away. The lack of new teacher candidates is a recurring fact of school life. The question of how to make do with less than fully prepared teachers is our problem and requires school boards and principals to invest in new strategies for causing all children learn.