New educational requirements may not affect college

Pennsylvania may be tightening teacher accreditation standards, but that may not mean any changes for the University's College of Education, said Horst von Dorpowski, assistant dean of the college.

According to a Teacher Preparation Initiative unveiled by Gov. Tom Ridge in late December, all students majoring in education would have to maintain a 3.0 grade point average to receive teacher certification from the state Board of Education, said state Rep. Kerry Benninghoff, R-Centre. The current standards require a 2.5 GPA.

Aspiring teachers would have to retain a 3.0 GPA in the academic discipline they intend to teach and all subjects related to their specialty, according to a Pennsylvania Department of Education news release.

The initiative, which originated in the Department of Education, has yet to reach legislative form, Benninghoff said. He said he supports the new, higher standards but does not know when they will become law.

"If we want to call (teachers) professional, I would think they'd want to be as well educated as they can," Benninghoff said. "To me it's an issue of quality."

Such a "quality" increase would definitely benefit Pennsylvania's schools and probably not affect University students, said Kathy Coyle, president of the Student Pennsylvania State Education Association. She said she has to maintain a 3.0 for her elementary education major anyway.

"Because there are many limited jobs and there are so many people who seem to be going into (teaching) it's a way of filtering and weaving out people along the way," Coyle said.

Last year the state certified 11,000 teachers, while only 2,000 found employment, Benninghoff said.

Besides the grade requirement, new standards requiring education students to learn to identify pupils with disabilities and deal with social issues in the schools would be beneficial legislation as well, Benninghoff said.

"A particular grade point average should not be the only standard to measure the quality of someone's teaching ability," he said.

Even though the idea that a student with a 2.99 GPA would not succeed as a teacher while a student with a 3.0 would might seem illogical, successful institutions must implement selection criteria to narrow down professions, von Dorpowski said.

Having requirements for teacher certification at the 3.0 mark is definitely a good idea, he added.

And University students will easily meet any new standards, von Dorpowski said.

"If the state were to implement this 3.0, it really would not be much of a problem in our case," he said, "because students are already virtually there each spring."