Government Licensing; S. Yates

THEFREEMAN IDEASON LIBERTY Government Licensing: The Enemy of Employment by Steven Yates N ot long ago I found myself without ajob. The experience offered me some insight into the causes of unemployment in Amer ican society. I knew that occupationallicen sure was both a stumbling block to would-be entrepreneurs and a spur to joblessness because it prices entry into markets out of many people's reach and creates disincen tives to hire. I now have firsthand experi ence of how government bureaucracy sys tematically blocks individuals' efforts to offer services to others in order to improve their own wellbeing. When I found myself with no university teaching appointment last summer, I did what any responsible believer in individual liberty would do: I took stock of my strengths. I had seven years offull-time, university-level teaching experience, and additional years of part-time teaching. Though my doctorate is in philosophy, I had once been a science major with a year each of undergraduate mathemat ics, chemistry, geology, and physics. So I formulated my options and realized I had the background and skills to teach high school math and science. While there may be a glut of philosophy professors, there is a wellDr. Yates is Bradley Visiting Fellow at the Center for Economic Personalism at the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty. He is the author ofCivil Wrongs: What Went Wrongwith Affirmative Action, published by ICS Press in 1994.

publicized shortage of math, science, and foreign-language teachers. It is one thing to grasp a problem or situa tion intellectually. It is quite another to expe rience it in "real time." What I learned from the experience of actually seeking a public school teachingjob made me recoil in horror. "Are Y00 Certified?" The first thing I did was go to a local high school with my resume, and transcript in hand and advertise my availability to teach math or science. I naively thought my experience as a teacher, combined with the course work clearly evident on my transcript, would make an impression. I'd hoped that all I would have to do is apply and, perhaps, take a test to demonstrate my grasp of the subject, and I'd be set. No sweat, right? Wrong! A receptionist immediately confronted me and asked, "Are you certified?" Know ing what I knew about government licens ing, red flags went up at once. I replied that I wasn't, and requested more information. I was directed to an office about a mile away.

There, again, I was unable to get past the receptionist who asked the same question, as if by rote. Again I said no and requested an application for certification. She had none,but gave me the phone number of the teacher certification division of the South Carolina Department of Education. 501 502 THE FREEMAN • JULY 1996 I called and made an appointment. On the designated day I drove to the complex in downtown Columbia where a number of state offices are housed. The Department of Education takes up ten floors of the Rut ledge Building; the teacher certification di vision is on the tenth floor. A women about my age gave me an informational package including brochures with titles like "Ques tions and Answers Related to Teacher Cer tification," lists of instructions on "How to Apply for a South Carolina Teaching Cre dential," request forms for official tran scripts to be sent, a "Verification of Teach ing Experience" form, a long application for an "Initial Teaching Credential," another to take an Educational Testing Service stan dardized examination given four times a year, and so on. A final form required fingerprints of all ten fingers to be sent to the FBI; a memorandum identifying the specific legislation behind this requirement (some thing called Section 59-25-115) was in cluded.

None of this is free. The fee for the ini tial application for certification is $25. The registration fee for the standardized test is $30; the fee for the test itself runs anywhere from $25 to $85, depending on the content. The fingerprint review costs an additional $24. Because there are critical shortages of teachers in certain subjects, such as math ematics, the sciences, and foreign lan guages, the teacher certification division developed a Critical Need Certification Pro gram. Since the purpose of that program is to get teachers into the classroom quicker, I initially opted to pursue it, thinking I could be teaching in less than a year. Wrong again. Despite the science and math on my tran script and my evident ability to research topics quickly, teaching in any of these areas required at least a bachelor's degree, as well as a passing score on the equivalent Na tional Teacher's Examination. My degree was in philosophy; thus my seven-years plus university-level teaching experience was meaningless. Even with a math degree, though, the most I could have gotten in one year was "conditional certification."

More Requirements A forest of additional requirements would have stood between conditional and actual certification, including (1) attendance at a pre-service institute at one of the local colleges "designed to prepare these pro spective teachers for the opening of school and their initial involvement with students, peers and the instructional environment"; (2) attendance at eight once-a-month ses sions during the school year "designed to provide a specific instruction component in addition to planning and interaction with other conditional teachers"; (3) attendance at an in-service institute the following sum mer "designed to address specific teaching techniques, classroom management, lab skills, etc."; (4) attendance at four addi tional once-a-month sessions the following school year; and (5) completion of three education courses that address such matters as "student growth and development,"

"exceptionalities [sic] of children," "teach ing of reading in the content area," and so on. All that, of course, is in addition to the responsibilities teachers assume once they set foot in the classroom, including class preparations, grading, tutoring, informal counseling, and the like. The government stipulates this forest of extra requirements to obtain an occupa tional license. Some of the language is sufficiently vague as to drive a one-time logic teacher like me up a wall. What, for example, is a "specific instruction compo nent"? And what do they mean by "student growth and development"? Do they mean something besides learning the subject mat ter of a course? But that is the nature of bureaucratese. Remember, too, that the bureaucrats who originate those brain storms draw higher salaries than do class room teachers. There are, of course, many would-be teachers willing to put up with this non sense-they want to teach badly enough.

That is fortunate, because without them there would be even greater shortages of qualified teachers. I decided I wasn't one of them. My disdain for "educrats" is simply GOVERNMENT LICENSING: THE ENEMY OF EMPLOYMENT 503 too great. While reviewing the licensing procedure I would have to go through to teach in a South Carolina high school, I thought of Francisco d' Anconia' s remark in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged about how "when you see that in order to produce, you must obtain permission from men who pro duce nothing . . . and your laws don't pro tect you against them but protect them against you . . . you may know that your society is doomed." Entrepreneurship,Not Bureaucracy That may be overstating the case a little. But we know that public education is in trouble, and we know most of the reasons why. As we would expect from government bureaucracy, there are too many adminis trators and too few teachers, too much paperwork and too little teaching, too many discipline problems and too little freedom to do something about them, too much "self esteem" psychobabble and too little encour agement of the values that lead to happy, successful lives. The source of the trouble: public education is not run by educators but heavy-handed bureaucrats obsessed with rules and procedures imposed from outside.

For the bureaucrat, regulations matter, and for good reason: untying our hands would instantly send them scurrying to the want ads. As far as the actual business of edu cating goes, they have little to offer and they accomplish little except to get in the way although they excel at interpreting every attempt to derail their gravy train as an attack on education itself. The solution is obvious: get rid of the government licenses, get the bureaucrats out of the educational system, and sell the schools to private educational entrepreneurs to run as businesses. There is no danger that getting rid of government licensure in educa tion will permit a flood of incompetent teach ers into the classroom, for individualschools willhave to compete for the best teachers and the best pupils. Reputations spread. Poor teachers will have to pursue other lines of work, and inefficientinstitutions will soon be out of business. Schools can administer tests and identifytheir own criteria for determining who is best, but there won't be room for bureaucratic foolishness.

Thus not only will there be attainable teaching jobs, but the quality of education willgo up across the board. So will salaries. Schools will have to offer teachers wages at market rates in order to attract the best, with salaries increasing in those areas of under supply. Also, fewer administrators and less overhead will mean more money for teach ers and their immediate needs. Instruction will proceed without the need to jump through bureaucratic hoops. Most of this is probably obvious, and much is common knowledge. Let's remem ber, though, that this isjust one occupation. Today, most occupations are licensed, reg ulated, and ultimately controlled by the ever-present state. In some cases, the price tag for admission to the club is many times higher than it is for teaching. That gives us a ready explanation for why entrepreneur ship is so difficult in today's society, and why many people who want to work cannot findjobs. The question is: when are we going to do something about it? D THEFREEMAN IDEASON UBERTY When Entrepreneurs BecomeVictims by Patrick Groff F or a capitalist economy to function, entrepreneurs must not be subject to gratuitous or.capricious government action.