TEACHER CERTIFICATION GETS NEEDED OVERHAUL

For a lot of reasons, there are quite a few Missourians whose careers are at a point that they might like to leave their jobs and become teachers.

But certification requirements have stood in their way. Now the Missouri Board of Education is revamping those certification requirements, in large part because of a perceived teacher shortage.

As could be expected, the Missouri National Education Association, part of the large national teachers union, objects to the easing of alternative certification as a threat to the jobs of instructors who have met all the requirements, including 36 hours of college course work in education which many analysts have described as little more than useless busy work.

Missouri's move to ease the certification of folks who believe they have something to contribute in a classroom is good.

And, as columnist Dick Snider of the Topeka, Kan., Capital-Journal observed this week, there really is no teacher shortage. There is, however, an overabundance of former teachers who left the classroom for lack of decent pay. The solution, Snider suggested, is to get these former teachers back and pay them what they deserve.