Task Force On Teaching As A Profession

Panel Named To Lay Groundwork For National Standards Board CHRISTOPHER CONNELL September 5, 1986 WASHINGTON (AP) _ A Carnegie Corp. panel named 33 prominent educators and civic leaders, including a bevy of award-winning teachers, on Friday to lay the groundwork for the first national standards board for the teaching profession. ″This can be the breakthrough that will really get America on the course of having superb schoolteachers,″ former North Carolina Gov. James B. Hunt Jr., chairman of the planning group, said at a news conference. The planning group formed by the private, non-profit Carnegie Forum on Education and the Economy includes the presidents of both major teacher unions, the governor of New Jersey, the state school superintendents of California and Minnesota and a dozen public school teachers. Hunt said their aim is to establish within a year the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards to certify teachers who pass its muster. Marc Tucker, the Forum’s executive director, said it will be three to four years before the ″revolutionary new methods of assessment″ are developed and in place. All 14 members of the original Carnegie Forum task force sit on the planning group. The national certification idea was the centerpiece of Carnegie’s plan for radical changes to upgrade teachers’ status and give them far more control over what and how they teach. The Forum suggested creating a new category of ″lead″ teachers who would command salaries of $65,000 or more. The National Governors Association two weeks ago threw its support behind creating the national standards board, and the idea was backed this summer both by the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers. Teachers now are certified by the states. Under the Carnegie plan, states would continue to license teachers, but a teacher with national certification could command higher pay and status. ″Our goal is to have teaching become a profession in which the term ‘board-certified’ says the same thing to our citizens that it does in the medical profession,″ said Hunt. Eventually, school districts may vie for the services of board-certified teachers, he added. In addition to Hunt, NEA President Mary Hatwood Futrell, AFT President Albert Shanker, New Jersey Gov. Thomas H. Kean, California Superintendent of Public Instruction Bill Honig, and Minnesota Commissioner of Education Ruth E. Randall, the group includes these members of the original Carnegie task force: Lewis M. Branscomb, a retired IBM executive teaching at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government; Alan K. Campbell, executive vice president of ARA Services Inc. in Philadelphia; John W. Gardner, former secretary of health, education and welfare; Fred M. Hechinger, president of The New York Times Co. Foundation; Oregon Speaker of the House Vera Katz; Michigan State University Dean of Education Judith E. Lanier; Arturo Madrid, president of the Tomas Rivera Center in Claremont, Calif., and Shirley H. Malcom, program head of the Office of Opportunities in Science at the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The other 19 members are: Karen Dreyfuss, a language teacher at Miami Southridge High School in Miami, Fla., and Dade County’s teacher of the year; Clifford Freeman, a public defender in Portland, Ore., and president-elect of the National Association of State Boards of Education; Sonia Hernandez, a 6th grade social studies teacher at Emma Frey Elementary School in San Antonio; Shirley A. Hill, professor of education and mathematics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and past president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. Also, Sue Hovey, coordinator of programs for gifted students at Moscow High School in Moscow, Idaho, and member of the NEA’s executive committee; Susan Adler Kaplan, an English teacher at Classical High School in Providence, R.I., and coordinator of secondary writing programs for the Providence schools; Nathaniel H. LaCour Jr., president of the United Teachers of New Orleans, an AFT affiliate; Margaret J. Lathlaen, a teacher of gifted children at Westwood Elementary School in Friendswood, Texas, and a finalist in NASA’s teacher in space program now on sabbatical at the Johnson Space Flight Center in Houston. Also, A. Robert Lynch, an economics, psychology and American studies teacher at Jericho Public School in Jericho, N.Y., a director of the National Council for Social Studies and treasurer of an AFT local; Helen E. Martin, a 7th and 8th grade math and science teacher at Unionville High School in Unionville, Pa.; Deborah Meier, principal of Central Park East public schools in New York City; Thomas W. Payzant, superintendent of the San Diego city schools and president of the Council for Basic Education; Claire L. Pelton, English teacher and coordinator of the School Site Council at Los Altos High School in California. Also, Doris D. Roettger, reading and language arts coordinator at the Heartland Area Education Agency in Johnston, Iowa; Leonard Rovins, a New York lawyer, member of the Westport, Conn., school board and president-elect of the National School Boards Association; Mary Budd Rowe, professor of science education at the University of Florida and president-elect of the National Science Teachers Association; Thomas F. Sedgwick, math teacher at Lincoln High School in Tacoma, Wash.; Edith L. Swanson, 6th grade teacher at Edmonson Middle School in Ypisilanti, Mich., who sits on NEA’s board of directors; and Peggy A. Swoger, an English teacher at Mountain Brook Junior High School in Mountain Brook, Ala.