Recently, I have been watching my significant other go through the rigamarole of teacher licensing: RESA, standing for Resident Educator Summative Assessment. From my perspective, the requirements are onerous and do not contribute to the education of students.
Nick Sammatinger, a professional educator at the Apollo Career Center in Lima, OH estimates the RESA tasks as consuming 80+ hours of time. Over two weeks of full time work. This is a time demand on top of teaching, grading, commuting, lesson planning, and the other facets of teaching. According to BusyTeacher.org, the average teacher works 60-72 hours per week during the school year. They don’t get summers off; that time is used for lesson planning or obtaining their master’s degrees (another requirement for teachers).
I am unsure how this licensing helps make better teachers. There is little peer input and no supervisor input in the process. Quoting Karen Mantia, Superintendent of Lakota Local Schools in Butler County: “Instead of sheltering teachers from inappropriate workloads, one of the most important goals of the Resident Educator program, the work now required by the program actually takes time away from their classroom.”
There are questionnaires to be filled out, videos to be made, lesson plans and materials to be submitted… none of this contributes to classroom learning. Joe Boggs of the Penta Career Center adds:
I had devoted over thirty hours to work that had little bearing on what I did in the classroom. One of the resident educators who recently left the profession plainly stated, ‘…This program has probably led to me being a worse teacher as my focus has been on completing paperwork for outside of the classroom….’
Jeff Price, Superintendent of the Ohio Hi-Point Career Center states: “I am not convinced that the expenditure of so much time and resources is leading to improved instructional practices and student performance.”The licensing is a classic “barrier to entry”. Investopedia defines barriers to entry as “the existence of high startup costs or other obstacles that prevent new competitors from easily entering an industry or area of business.”
This barrier to entry is incredibly dangerous at a time when new teachers are leaving or avoiding the profession in droves. “Attrition is high, and enrollment in teacher preparation programs has fallen some 35 percent over the past five years — a decrease of nearly 240,000 teachers in all.”
I write this article quickly on a Monday morning after a sight at my work reminded me of the rigours of teaching. At the place where I work, the fabricators have been working overtime to get a project finished before the end of the year. The fabricators are being paid overtime to work all weekend. By the next time they get a day off, they will have had a 12 day work week. They are exhausted.
The description of our fabricator’s week is a good description a teacher’s entire year (minus the overtime pay). I have never truly seen my significant other receive a day off. When school is in session, she works every single day. Too much of this spent time is unproductive RESA requirements that do nothing to help students.
Matt Raska
Contributing Writer