Reforming Teacher Certification

Any parent knows that having good teachers is critical to a child’s learning. But too many teachers in America’s public schools lack content knowledge in their subject or are not suited to the classroom. As schools struggle to meet the No Child Left Behind Act’s requirement to ensure all teachers are “highly qualified,” state policymakers need to take a hard look at their teacher preparation and licensure systems. The current approach to training and licensing teachers deters and disqualifies many people interested in teaching, yet still does not adequately guarantee the quality of teachers who are licensed. The problem is that our current approach creates “paper barriers” instead of connecting would-be teachers with opportunities to get the skills they need to begin teaching and helping them develop a professional career path.

To attract more talented and qualified people to the teaching profession, policymakers are experimenting with an array of innovations. One approach is to eliminate the barriers that often deter talented students and professionals from pursuing teaching jobs. Instead of mandating that teaching applicants have a degree in education, this approach requires potential teachers to have: 1) a bachelor of arts or sciences degree from an accredited university; 2) a passing grade on a competency test in the subject they seek to teach; and 3) a clean criminal record. The premise of this approach is to allow any applicant who meets these criteria to be considered for the job, whether or not they are prepared to start teaching.

Instead of focusing on barriers to teaching, policymakers should emphasize induction and training activities for the teachers. While research finds that traditional education courses do not impact student achievement, emphasizing quality, ongoing professional development shows much more promise. Meaningful recruitment and induction programs can include mentoring projects with fellow teachers, additional coursework, and professional collaboration. Policymakers can also fuel excellence by allowing schools of education, community colleges, nonprofit organizations, and other providers to compete for these new, expanded opportunities to train teachers.Depending on their needs and values, states and cities will take different approaches to eliminating statutory and financial barriers to applying for teaching jobs, but all states and the District of Columbia now offer some type of alternative certification. These alternative routes vary significantly state-to-state both in quality and in the degree to which they make teaching accessible to talented applicants.The National Center for Alternative Certification, at www.teach-now.org, was established in 2003 to serve as a one-stop comprehensive source of information about alternate routes to teaching for aspiring educators and interested policymakers. Dr. C. Emily Feistritzer, president and CEO of the Center, estimates that 50,000 teachers per year are now coming through alternative routes. They compose one-third of all new teacher hires in America.Before teacher shortages reach crisis proportions, policymakers ought to draw from one another’s innovations to break down paper barriers to certification and make successful alternatives the norm.

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