Our new topic page Teacher Certification addresses the issue of whether teachers' education actually sets them up for effectively  educating our children. Much of the research suggests that colleges of education ill-prepare teachers. Moreover, their stranglehold on teacher certification keeps many individuals more talented and well-suited to teach our children out of the classroom. As Kate Walsh points out: "A particularly unfortunate consequence of certification is that it is counterproductive, discouraging those individuals who are more likely to produce greater student achievement from entering the profession. Nationally, teachers generally score about 40 to 70 points lower on their college entrance exams than do college graduates who choose other professions. Teachers who did not prepare in college for teaching careers, but who chose to teach anyway, were more likely to have scored in the top quartile of their entering college class than were those teachers who were prepared in college to teach.”

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Special thanks to our intern Annie Holmquist for creating this topic! If you are interested in becoming an intern at IT, contact us here.