9135 in the collection  

Education Reform Leaves Private Schools with No Way to Get State Certification

Education reforms left private school teachers without a path to state certification. The Diocese of Wilmington wants to change that.

Public schools in Delaware are not the only ones challenged by the state's sweeping education reform laws. The long arm of government accountability has reached into the Catholic school system too - by invitation.

The Catholic Diocese of Wilmington has begun talks with state education officials about creating a student testing and accountability system that would mirror the state's.

"We hope that there is a road there that we can both walk along," said Brother James Malone, superintendent of the diocesan schools.

Diocesan and state officials stressed that the talks are voluntary on the part of the diocese. Given the historical separation of church and state, they are also unprecedented. The accountability system the two are discussing would have to be approved by the state.

Catholic and other private educators in Delaware, however, have no choice but to create such systems if they want state-licensed and certified teachers. In its drive to make public schools accountable, Delaware wiped out the old path to teacher licensing and certification, stranding thousands of private school teachers without a route to gain or maintain certification.

"The young teachers who are with us now, who really value that license, have been calling frantically asking about certification," said Catherine Weaver, assistant superintendent of education for the diocese. There are some 15,000 students in diocesan schools or private Catholic schools this year.

Weaver, who oversees curriculum and personnel for the diocese, estimates that under the state's new teacher certification rules, 40 percent of the 1,165 diocesan teachers lack state certification and any way to obtain it. The percentage could grow because the new rules require teachers to renew their certificates every five years, or 10 if they pass rigorous professional exams.

Private schools are not required by state law to have certified teachers or administrators. Without certification, however, teachers and administrators in private schools cannot easily shift to Delaware public schools.

In addition, Weaver confirmed that the Catholic schools tie pay levels to certification, with beginning teachers earning more money as they earn certification. And teachers in the Catholic schools, she said, want the same professional standing as teachers in the public school system.

Lisa Regler at Christ the Teacher Catholic School in Glasgow is one such teacher. Her teaching license, she said, "is considered inactive until I take a job within a public school in Delaware."

She's in her second year of teaching after switching careers and returning to college at a cost she estimated to be about $20,000. She and six other new teachers at her school are in the same situation, she said. They have no way to become state certified unless they move into the public school system.

Historically, public and private schoolteachers earned state certification along a common route. Today, teacher licensing and certification is bound up in the state's educational accountability system, which rests on state standardized testing and annual teacher evaluations based in part on student performance. Delaware's standardized test is not given in private schools.

The Catholic schools are the only private schools to approach the state about certification, state officials said. Other schools may or may not follow. "We've personally never encountered a shortage of qualified applicants for our jobs," said Michael Morgan, communications director for The Tatnall School in Wilmington.

A complex undertaking

Weaver said she hopes the Catholic school system here can set up a state-approved accountability system within 12 to 18 months. But accountability is a complex undertaking. It's taken the state a decade to work out the details. "To be honest, we're at the very, very tip of the iceberg with it," Weaver said.

The crucial issues are the same two that have bedeviled educators, elected officials and taxpayers nationally: student testing and job performance evaluations for teachers.

Delaware set rigid rules regarding both three years ago when it adopted its school accountability law. The Department of Education and public school teachers had to devise new licensing and certification rules that made certification and renewal dependent, at least in part, on student performance.

The law says that 20 percent of a teacher's annual job performance evaluation depends on student performance. But the state and teachers are still debating such details as whether to use test scores.

The problem for parochial and private school teachers is that the law pertained specifically to public schools. "As a result," State Secretary of Education Valerie Woodruff said, "we [were] unable to license and certify diocesan teachers."

To begin rectifying the situation, the state Legislature, at the request of the diocese, passed a bill this summer that allows parochial and private schools to develop state-approved testing and accountability systems under which their teachers can work toward certification.

Weaver said pieces of accountability are already in place in the parochial system. The schools test their students and evaluate teachers, she said. "What we're working on right now is, we have a process of evaluation, where does it match up with the process used by the state?" Weaver said.

Under the new state laws, teacher licensing and certification are tiered. The new state teacher certification rules say that teacher licenses are activated as soon as teachers begin teaching, provided they have done student teaching and passed a national teacher exam called Praxis.

The beginning teachers are not certified for three years, during which time they must be mentored and given job evaluations annually. Two of the three must be satisfactory to move to certification.

Once certified, teachers step onto a five-year track toward renewal during which they must take 90 hours of professional development training and continue to earn good evaluations.

Testing and accountability are not new to Catholic schools, Malone said. Catholic schools in Oregon, where he used to work, he said, test their students using standardized state exams.

"We have no problems with standards," he said. "We certainly have enough of them."

Melding religious and secular agendas, though, is tricky. Louisiana proposed administering state reading, math and science tests this spring in private schools getting public money through school vouchers. The idea was nixed by the Catholic schools. Some other private schools would have to have been exempted from the science test because they do not teach evolution.

Mimi Schuttloffel, a professor of education administration and policy at Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., said she was curious to see whether a state and a diocese could work out an accountability plan acceptable to both.

"One does not want to lose the distinctiveness of the Catholic schools for the sake of certification," she said.



— Michelle Fuetsch
Catholic schools adapting
The News Journal
2003-12-05
http://www.delawareonline.com/newsjournal/local/2003/12/05catholicschools.html

---

INDEX OF OUTRAGES

Pages: 366   
[1] 2 3 4 5 6  Next >>    Last >>