Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, June 11, 1990 TAG: 9006110281
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-3 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: THOMAS BOYER LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Long
Just five years ago, there were predictions of widespread teacher shortages, producing empty classrooms or unqualified instructors. Today, what's in shortest supply are places in Virginia teacher-education programs.
Teaching is still having trouble competing for the best students with such professions as engineering and accounting, statistics show. But there are abundant signs that the academic credentials of today's new teachers are stronger than they've been in a long time.
Anne Byrd of Virginia Beach is typical of the latest generation. Byrd, 23, graduated this spring from the University of Virginia's Curry School of Education, where the path to becoming a teacher is a five-year, double-degree program.
The five-year plan, which has been adopted by many Virginia colleges, allowed Byrd to earn a master's in education alongside a bachelor's degree from UVa's English department.
She said she might never have ended up a teacher if she hadn't seen a brochure for the dual-degree program during her freshman year.
"It didn't make it such a risk, going into that program," she said. Had she decided that life in front of the blackboard didn't agree with her, she still would have her liberal-arts degree, she said.
UVa was one of the first Virginia colleges to switch to the five-year plan, and officials there believe it has paid off in more applications from stronger students. Average Scholastic Aptitude Test scores for students who enter teaching at UVa have improved by about 150 points - roughly one-fifth - since the mid-1980s.
Teacher-ed programs elsewhere have surged as well. Nationwide, enrollment has jumped 61 percent since 1985, according to a survey last year by the National Association of Colleges for Teacher Education.
"We'd have to go back to the mid-'70s to see these kinds of numbers," said Fred Kraemelmeyer, director of teacher-education services at Old Dominion University. Kraemelmeyer said his staff has been overwhelmed arranging student-teaching for 350 students this year, double the number of the mid-1980s.
By this fall, to comply with new state requirements that prospective teachers earn an arts and sciences degree in addition to their education classes, ODU and many other schools will begin to require five years' study in most teacher-education programs.
Kraemelmeyer, whose school lobbied hard against requiring arts and sciences training for all teachers, worries that a five-year requirement will discourage some from applying. For many students, those who must work part time while in school for example, five years will easily stretch to six, he said.
"Looking at six years, when you're 18 years old, that's one-third of your life," he said. "You can become an attorney in seven years, for crying out loud. . . . In a way, it's a good time [for the shift to five years], because we have a lot of students, and business is good."
But Michael Davis, associate professor of teacher education at Virginia Commonwealth University, which changed to a five-year program several years ago, said the additional requirements may have helped recruiting.
"As we see it, we're getting better students," he said. "I think there's some value in students saying, `I'm going to a program where I'm getting two degrees.' I think there's a pride in that. I think there's a degree of pride in saying, `I can compete in the same program as the English major or the psych major.' "
Officials at Virginia Tech and George Mason University also say they've seen a surge of interest in teacher education, and the hottest programs right now may be graduate "career-switcher" programs for people in other fields who want to be teachers.
UVa's career-switcher program got 120 applications for 25 spaces, and the typical rejected student had a B-plus grade-point average along with respectable test scores, said UVa's education school dean, James Cooper.
College officials say the surge in interest in teaching probably results from a mix of trends, from salaries to the state of the economy. Just this year, Virginia's average teacher salary topped $30,000, and starting salaries are usually more than $20,000.
"At least it's comparable to what they'd make in a bank as a trainee," Davis said. "I think the money has helped."
College officials also cite the attention teaching has gotten in the media; movies such as "Stand and Deliver," the story of a math teacher in a tough Los Angeles neighborhood; and a return in student interest in the helping professions.
It also hasn't hurt, they note, that some of the hot careers of the mid-1980s - mortgage banking and stock sales, for example - have flamed out.
Now that education in academia has been overhauled, the next challenge, many say, is to improve working conditions in the real world so that the brightest graduates won't be quickly discouraged.
Cooper, who is leading a task force studying the teaching profession for the state Board of Education, said it is still common for teachers to be treated with less respect than other professionals, from having to proctor lunches to having to ask permission to make a phone call during school hours.
"The pressure's on the schools to create conditions that keep teachers - so they don't leave and drop out," Cooper said.
He said many of the best young teachers will probably leave the profession after a few years anyway, to try their hand at other fields. But that's not all bad, he added.
"I would rather have bright, talented people for a short period of time than mediocre people for a long period of time," he said.
by CNB