Budget Proposal Would Require Ohio Teachers To Get Externships

COLUMBUS, OH — Tucked onto the 1,056th page of Gov. John Kasich's budget proposal is Sec. 3319.236. That smidgen of a section in the massive budget proposal has been a lightning rod of controversy over the past week because it mandates all teachers, statewide, must perform externships, or job shadowing, to renew their teaching license.

The governor's office said the language of the proposal is intentionally vague to allow myriad interpretations by local districts. Ryan Burgess, director of the governor’s office of workforce transformation, told Patch that fulfilling the requirement could be as simple as piling teachers onto a bus and touring local businesses for an afternoon. It could also mean direct externships, like an internship for a professional, for teachers.

The main reason the proposal has been so controversial is that it requires all teachers, regardless of what grade level they teach, to fulfill this requirement. That means kindergarten teachers would have to have an externship or some other type of direct business experience to receive their license and continue teaching.

Burgess says kindergarten teachers would benefit from the experience because they would be able to better respond to early career aspirations. "I think awareness of, for example, when kids say, 'I want to be a doctor,' or they want to be a nurse, and they think those are the only two types of jobs in health care. This would help just to have very early conversations, and create better understanding," he said.

In response to the proposal, the Ohio Education Association sent the following statement to Patch from OEA President Becky Higgins: "Educators have concerns about how this proposal would bring value to the classroom, students, and teaching. Teachers are always eager to grow professionally and we agree it is important to find ways to incorporate job skills and information about careers in the classroom. However, working in an outside business is unnecessary and we oppose this as a condition of being licensed to teach."

How Did This Proposal Come About?

The Executive Workforce Board, which makes recommendations to Kasich on a variety of issues, included a recommendation that teachers get externships to better associate themselves with the local business community and understand the job skills the future workforce may need. The board is comprised of business leaders, nonprofit representatives, four appointed legislators, labor leaders and others.

That board was tasked with finding challenges to training the future of Ohio's workforce and possible solutions, Burgess said. It came back with a report that included about 40 recommendations. About half of those recommendations made their way into the budget, including the section requiring externship experience for teachers.

"The big overarching theme of that report is how do we better align business and education? Business owners are saying we can’t get what we need, people don’t have the skills that we need," Burgess said. He added that the board determined that externships would help teachers understand local business needs better.

If the proposal were to make its way into law, the high-level parameters of what teachers would need to do would be set by the Sstate Board of Education. Then local development committees, which oversee teacher license renewal, would approve the continuing education hours for their teachers, including the externship requirement.

For example, one school system in suburban Akron loaded its teachers onto a bus and had them tour local businesses for an afternoon. Burgess believes that could quality for the required externship hours.

"These solutions came from the Work Force Board, including business owners. They were some of the loudest voices on the board. We think this can move the needle between educators and businesses," he said.

Burgess also said the desire for local authorities to determine their own path forward with the mandate was the reason the language was purposefully vague. The governor wanted to build in some wiggle room.

Teachers Unions Respond

While wiggle room may have been Kasich's intention, the opposite impression is what various teacher's unions received. While saying the idea of further connecting education and business was solid, many union leaders decried the required aspect of the proposal.

David Quolke, the president of the Cleveland Teachers Union, says on-site business experience should be part of the menu available to teachers as they pursue professional development. However, he thinks mandating externships is deeply problematic.

"I don’t even know how the state would roll this out. If you went today and told teachers this is what you have to do...we have 4,000 educators in Cleveland, if you had to find 1,500 internships for them tomorrow or at any specific time, you wouldn’t have robust options," he said.

Melissa Cropper, the president of the Ohio Federation of Teachers, which represents 15,000 active Ohio teachers, agrees. "It’s not practical to even think there are enough high quality places to put teachers, plus it’s an unrealistic expectation to add this to their workload," she said.

Burgess did confirm that teachers, regardless of their experience level, would have to secure externship hours every five years as part of their license renewal process.

Quolke is not dismissing the entire proposal, though. "I think this is not well thought-out," he said. "I think there's room for dialogue. Conceptually, there's a great way to add this to the list of options available to teachers seeking professional development."

Cropper said she also understands the need for a deeper connection between local business communities and school districts. She thinks that road should go both ways, with businesses becoming more deeply involved with local schools.

She also said that her organization has been lobbying against this proposal since before it made it into the governor's proposed budget.

"We have met with the executive director of the Workforce Board. We have met with representatives and senators on that board. The governor’s office doesn’t exactly open its doors to the teacher’s union. I don’t think he wants to meet with us around this particular issue," she said.

In The End

While this proposal has certainly grabbed the attention of teachers and local business communities, it ultimately may not make it into the final budget. Sources say they believe the mandated externships will ultimately be yanked from the governor's budget proposal.

For teacher's unions to support any externship-style proposal, the mandate that all teachers, regardless of grade level, undertake externship hours would likely have to be dropped, as would language making the externships a requirement. Instead, the unions have suggested they would support a proposal that adds these externships to a robust menu of professional development options.

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