This letter to the editor was submitted to several DC papers:

Education is the civil rights issue of our age. While critics maintain that Mayor Fenty’s takeover emasculated the D.C. School Board, I prefer to view it as an indication of a promising time for D.C.’s public schools. Certainly many problems remain unaddressed, but the consolidation of school control under the executive demonstrates that we have a mayor, a chancellor and so many families that are ready to help our school system live up to its promise.

Yet another group of D.C. residents – one just as eager to improve the public school system – often gets forgotten, or worse yet, intentionally excluded. In the near future, a large segment of the current teaching corps will reach retirement, and it is of critical importance that our school system finds ways to attract and engage passionate, intelligent applicants to replace the veterans that have done so much for this system. And those would-be teachers already reside in the district, filling the halls of our institutions of higher learning.

Unfortunately, young college graduates are too often excluded by a certification system that keeps out the willing and able as frequently as it prevents the incapable from becoming teachers. Every year, the willingness of American youth to join this noble profession increases; this fact is borne out by the swelling tide of applicants to programs like Teach For America. At the same time, school systems nationwide run a deficit of teachers.

In my four years at Georgetown University, I met and worked with dozens of students who were just as eager as I to improve our educational system. I have no doubt that each of D.C.’s other institutions of higher learning are full with the same breed of would-be teachers. It is the responsibility of the Board of Education to encourage them to enter this noble profession, rather than discourage their willingness to teach.

Certification requirements designed to keep out the incapable instead prohibit the able and willing. Certification requirements that are too high harm our children and our school system just the same as if they were too low. While inexperienced in the teaching profession, so many young college graduates and would-be teachers are not incapable, and certainly are not unwilling.

The Board of Education must dedicate itself to redesigning the certification system to maintain the high standards for teachers, while bringing in talented would-be teachers to our school system while making sure they are ready and able to give the District’s children the education they need and deserve.

Jason Crawford
Write-in Candidate for Board of Education Wards 1 & 2

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