Teacher shortage, teacher pay

Which is worse: Having no chemistry teacher in a high school, or having chemistry taught by a teacher who has had little training in the subject?

In West Virginia, the solution is to throw whatever warm body is available behind the desk so you can say you offer a class in chemistry.

Bill Rosenberger, a reporter for The Herald-Dispatch, had a long story in Sunday's edition focusing on teacher pay.

"When we have 56 percent of our chemistry teachers not certified in chemistry, that's a real problem," Hale said.

Hale being Judy Hale, president of the American Federation of Teachers - West Virginia.

I'm not worried so much about the teaching of chemistry as I am the teaching of science in general. Science, like math, should be a discipline in which the knowledge we have is secondary to the way that knowledge was acquired. When we have a shortage of people who teach subjects that rely heavily on critical thinking skills, the entire community suffers.

A former supervisor here at The Herald-Dispatch once told me the biggest problem she had with young reporters fresh out of college was their deficiency of critical thinking skills. You hear stories of phys ed teachers who don't want to be laid off, so they use their seniority to claim jobs teaching subjects they really don't know that much about. Back in the 1980s, Anna Whitehead, a member of the Ironton Board of Education, used to complain about the number of former coaches in that Ohio city's school system. It seems the district always needed a volleyball or soccer coach. It would hire a teacher who could also coach. As soon as the teacher received a continuing contract, said teacher lost all interest in coaching.

Back to my main point: I would have more sympathy for teachers' pay raise requests if they would give up some of their union rhetoric and adopt some market strategies. If there is a surplus of elementary ed teachers and a shortage of middle school science teachers, then there should be some pay differentials to encourage some elementary teachers to consider teaching subjects where there are shortages.

And maybe school boards should not be allowed to have a teacher in a classroom when a teacher is not certified to teach that subject.

On second thought, forget that. It assumes the education and training of children comes first. We all know it's the teachers' morale and equality among peers that takes precedence.