retirements Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

Retirements are increasing from a baby boomer generation of teachers and others in the state's public education system, taking with them years of invaluable classroom experience.http://louis1j1sheehan1.blogspot.com

As many as 12,000 retirements are expected this year alone by the Pennsylvania Public School Employees Retirement System, while the Pennsylvania State Education Association says 30 percent of the state's teachers -- there were more than 123,000 in the profession as of 2005-06 -- are within five years of their normal retirement age.

Officials of several midstate school districts say colleges are producing enough capa ble graduates and that many are more sophis ticated in technology and other modern edu cation than prior generations.http://louis1j1sheehan1.blogspot.com

But short ages exist in key subjects such as math, language, physics and chemistry -- skills needed by employers and ones that likely are going to become even more crucial in the future. There also continues to be a lack of minorities going into teaching, an issue that urban districts in particular are finding challenging.

The Harrisburg School District, for example, had a 94.7 percent minority student population last year, but only 23 percent of its teachers represented minorities.

There is much to be said for teacher training and majoring in education in terms of one's ability to be effective in the classroom. But the retirement wave on top of shortages of teachers in certain subject areas and the dearth of minorities reinforce the need to revisit federal and state certification requirements that have been tightened in recent years under the No Child Left Behind Act and Pennsylvania's Teachers for the 21st Century Initiative.

Although perhaps well-intentioned, they have presented huge obstacles for nonteaching professionals looking to make a career change and who have much to offer students. Prior to No Child Left Behind, a school district would take a person with an MBA and a background conducive to teaching math, economics or business, put him or her in the classroom immediately and have the individual work toward completing a list of courses needed for teaching certification.

Now, the certification must come first, meaning the applicant would likely have to bear the financial hardship of quitting his or her job while taking classes.

They do have the option of taking and passing the national teachers exam, something Mark Holman, director of human resources for the Harrisburg School District, has compared to "trying to pass the bar exam before going to law school."

Meanwhile, since the 2003-04 school year, the initiative launched under the Ridge administration require teachers graduating college to have a 3.0 grade point average. But some students for reasons of maturity, homesickness or personal hardship struggle with their studies their freshmen and sophomore years, then turn it around and become A and B students their remaining years. In those cases, the GPA is misleading.

The state should reconsider these GPA requirements and Congress should revisit the certification issue while debating reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act. Not only have the federal and state governments usurped local discretion in the hiring process, they are keeping some potentially good teachers out of the classroom.