What's good for the goose is good for the gander

Education at it's best. I went to a job fair for teachers a week ago only to crushed by the overwhelming majority of college seniors, most of which were pretty young girls, wanting to teach elementary school. My admiration of these young teachers is quite huge because I know what it's like to teach one subject much less five at one time. Still as I was bouncing around from table to table talking with principals dressed like Robin Williams from Pink Cadillac, I was amazed at what I kept hearing.

"Unless you have a Texas teaching certificate you are not going to get a job in the public school system. Per NCLB, we have to hire certified teachers."

My response, "Whether they can teach or not?"

Sure there are plenty of good teachers who are certified, but there are also plenty of teachers who aren't certified who can teach just as effectively. What bothers me most is that even though I have taught in a classroom before that waivers none on the teaching ability issue. So as long as have a certificate than you have a job. So no matter how low a schools needs are for a teacher they must have a certificate to teach.

NCBL is the biggest joke in the teaching world. Even in the great state of Texas where they push this crap like it's free gasoline everyone sees the flaws. It'll be gone as soon as Bush is gone. Accountability is the hot term in education in which every parent blames the school system or the teacher if the student fails. School systems will not be able to advance and become better if they can't diversify the talent that comes through the interdepartments. I don't have all the answers for this major problem, but I can tell you this getting all teachers certified isn't going to make it better. Teachers get paid well below their means, and if you were to balance out the weight a teacher has over that of any profession you can see they are not justified in terms of workload. Then again that's why school boards throw accountability around in the hopes of scaring teachers into passing all their students. And teachers can all throw back in thier face, well you made get certified so that means I must be able to teach.