TOPEKA, Kan. – Professionals who are feeling burned out in their corporate job and looking for a career that “makes a difference” should consider moving to Kansas.

On Tuesday, the Kansas State Board of Education voted 8-0 to allow classroom access to experts in high-demand subject areas, even though they lack a formal teaching license.

Individuals with at least a bachelor’s degree – or an industry-recognized certificate in a technical profession – “and at least five years of related work experience in the area of science, technology, engineering or math” will be allowed to teach Kansas’ youth, presumably as early as next fall, reports LJWorld.com.

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The Kansas plan has to go through a few more hoops before it becomes official.

The state board will also loosen restrictions for individuals with an out-of-state teaching license, provided they pass a specialized test, the news site adds.

“Interim education commissioner Brad Neuenswander said he expects the changes mostly to affect career and technical classes, where school districts have indicated they sometimes have trouble finding experts who also have education degrees,” CJOnline.com reports.

That’s a logical and reasonable explanation – but it does nothing to soothe the state teachers union, which is warning that experts may know their subject inside-out, but they don’t understand the science of teaching and learning.

“When you take that out of the equation, even though they might have a wealth of knowledge and background in that content area, they will be missing learning theory, missing classroom management strategies, missing pedagogy,” Kansas National Education Association official Marcus Baltzel told CJOnline.com.

Teacher unions make the same argument against Teach for America, a program that places top college graduates – who lack formal teaching degrees – in needy schools. Teach for America has proven popular with school administrators because students appear to learn more when they’re being taught by really bright and talented people, a concept that’s only surprising to union Kool-Aid drinkers.

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Union leaders fight against allowing unlicensed adults in the classroom because they want to maintain their status as gatekeepers of the nation’s K-12 schools. The unions’ argument against alternative teaching qualifications is very ironic because there is abundant proof that an official teaching license is no guarantee an individual will be an effective educator.

America’s education system needs fresh, out-of-the-box thinking – like the kind demonstrated by the Kansas State Board of Education – if it’s ever going to stop the academic slide it has been in for the past four or five decades.

Mark Tallman, a lobbyist for the Kansas Association of School Boards, said it best when he reminded the worrywarts that the Kansas plan really just places trust in local school officials to hire the best person for each available job.

“Remember, a person can’t get hired unless they can convince a local board to offer them a contract,” Tallman said.