The Education Budget #2: Useless Programs at the Professional Educator Standards Board

The Professional Educator Standards Board (PESB) is the body here in Washington State charged with developing the criteria for teacher certification. In the last few years they've been responsible for implementing Professional Certification (which is a miserable flop), WEST-B testing of ed students at the colleges (which isn't doing any good), and the WEST-E alternate pathway to certification (which is poorly designed, stupidly onerous, and isn't working as it should.)

I'm not a big PESB guy.

In the proposed Senate budget, on page 88, you can read the earmarks for the PESB. There's a lot there to talk about:

• The overall budget for the PESB is $5,278,000 in fy2010 and $5,176,000 in fy2011.
  
• Within that, $1,070,000 a year is for operating costs for the PESB.
  
• $3,431,000 is for alternate certification programs, including:
  
  1. $500,000 a year for scholarships for people going into sped, math, science, or bilingual ed;
     
  2. $2,372,000 each year for a different alternative program for the high-need areas;
     
  3. $102,000 for work on the achievement gap in fy2010;
     
  4. $231,000 each year for the "Recruiting Washington Teachers" program;
     
  5. $200,000 a year for the "Pipeline for Paraeducators" program;
     
  6. $244,000 a year for current teachers to switch into math or science endorsements
• $1,146,000 each year to develop a student information database.

Here's the thing: when we're talking about laying off 3,000+ teachers, when hundreds more teachers graduate every year looking for jobs, when hiring at job fairs is waaaaaay down....do we really need to expand the pipeline? Sure, some of those programs are to create bodies in high-need fields, but with less slots (and more people looking to fill those slots!), is the need still there?

My suggestion: suspend all of the alternate-route certificate programs for the next bienium, saving 42.5 teaching positions.