By Joe Hadsall

jhadsall@joplinglobe.com

A nationwide organization says Missouri gets “dismal” marks for its statewide teacher policies.

Kansas gets the same ranking from the study, and Oklahoma is marginally better, earning a ranking of “weak but progressing.”

The grades come from the National Council on Teacher Quality, a group that conducted a three-year research project on each state’s policies for educating and certifying teachers.

The council’s study, the “State Teacher Policy Yearbook,” was released Wednesday at a Washington, D.C., event. The study says states must revamp regulations to improve teacher quality.

The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education had no response to the study when contacted by the Globe. Officials with the Missouri National Education Association, a teachers group, did not return calls requesting comment.

Glenn Coltharp, dean of teacher education at Missouri Southern State University, said the study identifies areas that need improvement, but that the conclusions may be unfair.

“There is a lot of information in that study,” he said. “But much more goes into teacher-education programs than what can be measured in black and white.”

Missouri and Kansas take hits in the study for having standards for elementary teachers that do not clearly refer to the knowledge and skills the teachers need before entering the classroom. That increases the likelihood that teachers will enter classrooms with significant gaps in their knowledge of essential core subjects, the report said.

Sandi Jacobs, vice president for policy with the national group, said that criterion was developed using the No Child Left Behind Act as a rough guideline. The act calls for teachers to be labeled as highly qualified to teach subjects they are asked to teach.

Dennis Burke, superintendent of the Baxter Springs (Kan.) School District, said getting that qualification can be difficult.

“Our problem is with those labels,” he said. “An American history teacher would likely be a successful world history teacher, as long as they have passed their other pedagogy levels.”

Webb City Superintendent Ron Lankford said specificity is important, but so is knowing how to be a good teacher. He compared teaching to a doctor’s bedside manner.

“There is a high degree of correlation between a physician’s empathy and a patient’s recovery from illness,” Lankford said. “That has nothing to do with content or knowledge, and everything to do with bedside manner.”

MSSU’s teaching program is fully accredited by the state and by the National Council of Accreditation for Teacher Education. Gaining that accreditation requires keeping up with changing education standards, Coltharp said.

“Our students must pass a national exam in order to earn their certification,” he said. “If a student has to pass that national test, we’re meeting the standard.”

Missouri and Kansas also are criticized in the study for not requiring annual performance reviews for teachers. Though the study says annual reviews are a fact of life for most businesses, Missouri requires them once every five years. Kansas requires them every three years.

School superintendents say districts are free to review employees more often, and that they often do.

Rhonda Moore, a physical-education teacher at Webb City High School, expects such a review every year, even though she is a tenured teacher.

“We are held highly accountable,” she said. “We are evaluated every year, and receiving professional development services every other week.”

Moore said the curriculum she took at Evangel University to become a teacher was rigorous. It involved an intense block of courses about basic curriculum, instruction methods and student teaching, she said.

Burke, at Baxter Springs, said incoming teachers in his district have two evaluations a year before becoming eligible for tenure in their fourth contract year.

The study gives Missouri credit for requiring teachers to be in the classroom for five years before gaining eligibility for tenure.

Kate Walsh, president of the nonpartisan national council, said all 50 states have impeded efforts to ensure that every classroom is led by a quality teacher, despite good intentions. She said she hopes the study will spur change and force state legislators to act.

“State governments — not the federal government — have the greatest impact on the work of America’s 3.1 million teachers,” Walsh said in a news release. “With leadership and will, these policies are eminently fixable.”

The study notes that many states’ regulations were written in a different era, when the supply of teachers was plentiful. But, the organization does not call for a nationally standardized set of criteria for teachers.

“State context matters when setting state laws,” said Jacobs, the group’s vice president. “We think that these goals suggest what states should be doing, and lay out a blueprint to do it, but there is not one way to put that into effect.”

Lankford, at Webb City, said the study is a model developed in an attempt to parallel a business operation. But that model doesn’t quite work for public schools, he said.

“We do not set the parameters of the raw material used to make our product,” Lankford said. “We don’t get to decide what kind of students we take in.”





Methodology, funding



The State Teacher Policy Yearbook, developed by the National Council on Teacher Quality, is the product of a three-year study. Twenty-seven goals in six areas were developed with assistance from educators. States were asked about their policies in relation to those goals.

Funding for the study was provided by several private foundations, including the IBM Foundation, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and the Koret Foundation. The council says it accepts no government funding.