Not a Joke: NJ Dems Just Ended Reading, Writing Test Requirements for Teachers
Every story of this kind should begin with the same question. Otherwise, one misses the fundamental point.
Specifically, if we could create a public education system from scratch, would it look anything like the one we have?
If the answer is “no” — and it should be “no” — then the Democrat-controlled New Jersey state legislature’s Bill A1669, which prohibited the State Board of Education from requiring certificate-seeking teaching candidates to pass a basic academic skills test, amounts to lipstick on a pig.
Approved on June 28, 2024, and signed into law by Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy, the bill took effect on Wednesday, per the New York Post.
Section 1b, the bill’s major provision, established the ban on testing.
“Notwithstanding any law, rule, or regulation to the contrary, the State Board of Education shall not require a candidate seeking a certificate of eligibility, a certificate of eligibility with advanced standing, a provisional certificate, or a standard instructional certificate to complete a Commissioner of Education-approved test of basic reading, writing, and mathematics skills including, but not limited to, the Praxis Core Academic Skills for Educators test, in order to obtain a certificate of eligibility, a certificate of eligibility with advanced standing, a provisional certificate, or a standard instructional certificate,” the section read.
Of course, Democrats supported the bill for all the wrong reasons.
Conservatives, however, must be clear and honest about why we should oppose said bill.
According to the Post, in 2023 the New Jersey Education Association characterized skills testing as a “barrier” to certification.
Thus, to solve a teacher shortage, Democrats decided to lower the standards.
“We need more teachers,” Democratic state Sen. Jim Beach said when the bill was passed. “This is the best way to get them.”
The notion that one improves upon a bad system by making things easier would occur only to a Democrat.
Meanwhile, conservatives should respond by asking a more fundamental question: Namely, why should the state certify teachers at all? In other words, why do we give the government a monopoly on deciding who has the competence to teach?
Consider, for instance, the present state of public education. Has requiring teachers to obtain a state certificate resulted in higher quality education for children? Or, has it merely produced a bureaucratic monopoly on education policy?
For prospective teachers, the real “barrier” has nothing to do with reading, writing, or mathematics tests.
Instead, the real “barrier” — the factor that makes excellent undergraduate students recoil from the prospect of a teaching career — involves certification itself, for certification means completion of a comically absurd education curriculum, which many education students themselves, in honest and private moments with professors in their fields, have mocked as unserious and therefore beneath contempt.
In short, if Democrats want to attract quality teachers, then they should destroy the current education cartel. No longer should bureaucrats set education standards of any kind. After all, have we not had enough of so-called “experts“?
Instead, allow public schools to conduct their own screening processes. Since those processes will determine the quality of the community’s teachers, we may rely upon their rigor.
Then, having put their prospective teachers through rigorous interviews, let those schools hire whomever they choose. No certification necessary.
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