In an otherwise barren summer on the teacher policy front, Florida keeps providing us with something to write about. Two vignettes remind us why we are so enamored of state certification systems…it’s the entertainment value!
First, most states require teachers to take courses as part of renewing their teaching licenses (“recertification”). These requirements are the bane of hardworking teachers–as well as those teachers who just want to spend their summers poolside, drinking a margarita or two. That’s why enrollment in feather-light courses like “How to Operate an Overhead Projector” and “Designing Your Bulletin Board” tend to be oversubscribed, in contrast to courses addressing topics like Shakespeare or the Protestant Reformation. While states may boast of the high standards they have in place for keeping their teacher corps’ knowledge fresh and up-to-date, most teachers regard the process with about the same enthusiasm as designing their requisite pretty scrapbook–no, no!–we meant to say portfolios.
Still, we have to admire the chutzpah of William McCoggle, who apparently built quite a nice business for himself peddling bogus continuing education credits to teachers seeking license renewals, offering classes where showing up wasn’t even a requirement. McCoggle, in partnership with the geographically suspect Eastern Oklahoma State College, offered continuing ed classes in which, according to the grand jury, “There were no tests; there was no homework; there were no assignments and there were no class discussions…No teachers actually attended any classes.” Almost 200 South Florida teachers took McCoggle’s phantom classes, helping McCoggle pocket more than a quarter of a million dollars.
Meanwhile, also in Florida, James Majors, a 24-year-old teacher who claimed to have earned bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in the space of three months, got caught. Turns out he only had the bachelor’s, and that was from a now-defunct diploma mill in upstate New York. Majors was only found out when he tried to transfer from Miami-Dade to another county. As State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle put it, “Parts of our education system, both locally and statewide, missed the clues that were readily available.”