Teachers pan task force report

Asking teachers to renew their teaching certifications every five years is an attack on teachers themselves, says the head of the Alberta Teachers' Association.

Educators across the province are deep in debate this week over a raft of reforms proposed Monday by the province's Task Force For Teaching Excellence.

The 25 recommendations tabled by the group, if implemented, will bring sweeping changes to teaching in Alberta, including mandatory one-year internships for new teachers and rules to allow more non-certified instructors into the classroom.

Likely the most controversial recommendation is a call to have teachers maintain or renew their teaching certificates every five years.

Just 38 per cent of Albertans surveyed by the panel were confident that complaints about teacher competency were effectively addressed under the current system. The panel also noted that no teacher had had their certificate revoked by the Alberta Teachers' Association due to incompetence in the last 10 years.

“Given the province has over 40,000 teachers, the Task Force found this statistic almost inconceivable.”

The panel called for the creation of a new province-wide evaluation system for teachers to maintain their certifications.

The panel was vague on the details, but suggested that teachers will keep their certification if they showed continued growth and competency under provincial teaching standards as judged by staff, students and parents. Principals will advise teachers on their progress towards meeting the requirements for keeping certified each year.

ATA president Mark Ramsankar blasted the panel for making this proposal without talking to teachers about it first, calling it an attack on the teaching profession.

“When you talk about sweeping changes that directly affect our profession as teachers, it is an insult.”

Proposal questioned

Education Minister Jeff Johnson said an Alberta teacher can currently get a teaching degree, do nothing for 30 years and still be certified to teach.

“That's different from pretty much every other profession,” he said. “Once you've got it, your certificate, you have it for life.”

This five-year review was no different from the requirement that doctors have to do a certain number of hours of practice and training a year to keep their license, he said.

It's also what the ATA already does, Ramsankar said.

All teachers must submit plans each year saying how they will improve their skills and meet provincial teaching standards, and get constant feedback on their progress from principals. Those that consistently don't improve go into a review process that can lead to the loss of their certificate.

Most bad teachers leave teaching far before that happens, Ramsankar said.

“If you're not up to snuff, you're not in the profession.”

St. Albert Public School superintendent Barry Wowk questioned the need for teachers to renew their certification every five years.

“I see no need for recertification,” he said, adding that he wanted to hear more about the panel's reasoning before passing judgement on the proposal.

“If there were teachers we weren't happy with, there are processes in place for me to deal with them.”

Wowk did like the panel's idea of a province-wide mentorship program for new teachers, noting that St. Albert schools already has one.

“It gives new teachers confidence. It gives them a chance to share with each other and another teacher some of the challenges they're facing.”

The province has not accepted any of the panel's recommendations at this point, Johnson said. Instead, it wanted residents to comment on them over the next 30 days before it made any decisions.

Ramsankar said the province should stick with its current evaluation system for teachers, and rejected the idea that the ATA was sheltering bad teachers.

“We didn't become one of the best education systems in the world because we employ mediocre teachers and because we have an association that protects misconduct and incompetence.”