Omri Ben-Shahar on Teacher Certification

Teacher Certification Makes Public School Education Worse, Not Better

The key to successful education is to attract good teachers. We can try to do so by raising teachers’ salaries (as commonly advocated). But this strategy also seems to fail, partly because higher incomes go to both good teachers and bad, giving bad teachers as much incentive as good ones to become and remain teachers.

If not larger salaries, how about more rigorous screening? Every state requires that teachers be certified. Why not, then, just set higher certification standards for teachers so that we get better ones? This too sounds plainly right: just as we require doctors and lawyers to undergo specialized training and to pass examinations to qualify to practice, shouldn’t we make teachers do the same?

No. On the contrary. For two reasons. First, more stringent certification standards do little to keep out bad teachers. Second, such standards deter excellent prospects from entering teaching.

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