Virginia Regulatory Town Hall
Agency
Department of Education
 
Board
State Board of Education
 
chapter
Licensure Regulations for School Personnel [8 VAC 20 ‑ 22]
Action Comprehensive Revision of the Licensure Regulations for School Personnel
Stage Proposed
Comment Period Ended on 11/6/2015
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10/24/15  7:19 pm
Commenter:  

Split apart the early childhood and elementary licenses into content areas
 

Today's PreK-6 teachers (including PreK-3 teachers) are expected to be experts in everything which is an unreasonable expectation. We need effective teachers who have a profound understanding of content and how children learn that content -  even in kindergarten. To develop this kind of profound understanding of the content and children's understanding of the content, we need to consider having content specialists in elementary classrooms. Other countries whose students routinely outperform US students in international comparisons have content specialists in their elementary classrooms because they recognize no one can be an expert in everything. Our teachers might be less stressed and students would very likely learn more because their teachers would have the time to develop the profound understanding in one content area. 

CommentID: 42339