During the first hour of the The Nightside Project on KSL on August 30, Senator Curt Bramble was a guest for a discussion on the voucher issue. At one point (24:30 into the show) a caller asked the Senator if the voucher laws required the private school teachers to be certified.
And he said yes. Listen here.
Did I miss something? Here is what I read in the bills:
HB148
132 53A-1a-805. Eligible private schools.
133 (1) To be eligible to enroll a scholarship student, a private school shall:
...
154 (g) employ or contract with teachers who:
155 (i) hold baccalaureate or higher degrees; or
156 (ii) have special skills, knowledge, or expertise that qualifies them to provide
157 instruction in the subjects taught;
158 (h) provide to parents the teaching credentials of the school's teachers;
HB174 added a criminal background check requirement.
Since when do they have be certified? Having a degree (or special skills) is not the same as being certified. Whether or not they should be certified is certainly something that one could debate. However, unless there is some wording that I am missing, there is no certification required.
So...either Senator Bramble misspoke on the show, was misinformed, or downright lied. Since he was the Senate floor sponsor for HB148, he probably wasn't misinformed, so maybe it's one of the other two possibilities. Which do you think it was?
Update: Make sure to check out Senator Bramble's response and my counter-response in the comments.
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2 comments:
Thanks for the clarification. In the context of the discussion on The Nightside Project , the issue was whether anyone, with no credentials, could teach in a private school that accepted vouchers, or whether there were any pre-requisite qualifications. The question as to whether teachers had meet any "qualifications" is yes. My response was to "qualificaitons" not "certification".
Please accept my apology for the confusion.
Thanks for the correction.
Curt Bramble
Curt,
Thanks for responding. You may have been answering to the general question of qualifications, but if you listen carefully to your response, you said specifically that "teachers are required to be certified." You should have more correctly said that teachers were not required to be certified, but were required to have some qualifications. I think you would agree that there is a big difference.
I think that it is important in the voucher debate that both sides give extremely accurate information. Unfortunately, everyone who listened to Nightside that night heard incorrect information.
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