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 Audit
Slams Teacher Preparation Office: July 1999 - June 2002 Examined
Gongwer News Service, August 26, 2004
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The Department
of Education's Office of Professional Preparation Services fails
to adequately check on criminal backgrounds of Michigan
teachers, and that is just one of a wide range of problems an
audit from Auditor General Thomas McTavish detailed about the
bureau.
The audit said the office did not do enough to provide
leadership for teacher preparation, did not use test results
effectively to gauge teacher preparedness, needs to better
evaluate new teacher preparation, did not keep adequate track of
provisional permits to teach and did not adequately link teacher
development to school districts to ensure that pupils got the
benefit of new skills.
The audit also called on the department to ask for an attorney
general opinion on whether private religious schools could be
exempted from requiring their teachers to be certified.
The Department of Education did not agree with some of the
findings, and partially agreed with others (and its
disagreements caused the auditors in some sections to write
rebuttals). But the department agreed that it was not doing
enough to track whether teachers had criminal backgrounds. Since
the time frame covered by the audit, the department said it was
now working with the Michigan State Police to track teachers
through the law enforcement information network to ascertain who
may have criminal backgrounds.
The audit tracked OPPS for the period from July 1999 to June
2002.
The office is responsible for making sure teachers in Michigan's
elementary and secondary schools have valid state credentials,
meet criminal background requirements and complete ongoing
professional development standards. In 2002, the office had 27
employees.
As the audit was conducted the office had not developed a
process to assess whether school districts and county
prosecutors were reporting criminal convictions by teachers and
the office was not regularly matching names to the LEIN system.
The audit found that of 222 teachers that had convictions in
1993-94 when state law required notification of teacher
convictions 80 percent had not been reported to the department.
And it also found that 23 percent of those individuals were
working in school districts in 2001-02, most of those as
teachers, and among those were people convicted of theft,
assault and criminal sexual conduct.
The department said it has since set up a process of regularly
checking the LEIN systems with the State Police.
In other areas, the department disagreed that it should seek an
opinion on whether schools claiming a religious exemption were
in fact exempt from employing certified teacher. The exemption
has been based on the ability of parents claiming religious
reasons to teach their children at home without certified
teachers.
The audit also calls for the office to make better use of test
results to ascertain teacher qualification. In reviewing test
results, the audit said there was a wide variation of results
indicating teachers may not be as well prepared for subject
areas they teach. The department partially agreed with the
finding.
The audit also called for the office to better review education
programs for new teachers. In random checks of various programs,
the audit said the office did not make timely approval, did not
include criteria for evaluations and did not insure that
applications received were properly tracked.
Another concern was that the office did not link teacher
professional development training with school districts as well
as student needs in order to improve student achievement.
That issue is important to ensure that teachers get professional
assistance in areas where a school's pupils need the most help.
The department partially agreed with the finding.
Another major issue in the audit had to do with whether the
office sufficiently tracked and processed applications for
special permits to teach. While teachers are supposed to have
valid teaching certificates, when such individuals are not
available then the State Board of Education may issue special
permits for teachers. But the audit found the office was not
referring late permits to the state's Office of State Aid and
School Finance in a timely manner.
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