A large study comparing the effectiveness of traditional teacher training with alternative certification programs finds no difference in student outcomes. The Mathematica study examined 2,600 students in six states at 63 schools with at least one alternatively certified (AC) teacher working at the same grade level as a relative novice teacher who graduated from a traditional certification (TC) program. The major findings include:
- No statistically significant difference in performance between students of AC teachers and those of TC teachers.
- No statistically significant differences between the AC and TC teachers in their average scores on college entrance exams, the selectivity of the college that awarded their bachelor’s degree, or their level of educational attainment.
- No evidence that greater levels of teacher training coursework were associated with the effectiveness of AC teachers in the classroom.
“This study found no benefit, on average, to student achievement from placing an AC teacher in the classroom when the alternative was a TC teacher, but there was no evidence of harm, either,” the report concludes. “In addition, the experimental and nonexperimental findings together indicate that although individual teachers appear to have an effect on students’ achievement, we could not identify what it is about a teacher that affects student achievement. Variation in student achievement was not strongly linked to the teachers’ chosen preparation route or to other measured teacher characteristics.”
Teacher Beat’s Stephen Sawchuck points out the Mathematica study is “a big deal” because most alt cert studies have focused on the elite programs like Teach For America. “This looks at a bunch of regular, state-run programs,” he notes. At the Quick and The Ed, Chad Alderman notes there’s nothing here that will challenge anyone’s preconceived notions or biases about alternative vs. traditional. That’s probably true, although it’s possible that ed schools may have a little more ’splainin to do about why their graduates aren’t more capable of hitting the ground running than alt cert people.
The more interesting question is beyond the scope of this study: are there long term differences in performance of each group? Regardless of how you came to the classroom, first year teaching is about the journey from unconscious incompetence (not knowing what you don’t know) to conscious incompetence (knowing what you don’t know). It’s what you do with that, I think, that makes the difference in effective and ineffective teachers.
Full disclosure: I came to teaching through the alt-cert route, via the NYC Teaching Fellows in 2002.
Robert, the study also compared teachers from 0-5 years of experience to try to measure if there were any differences in growth by certification method. It found no reliable difference.
Did the study find that anything made any difference?
That in itself would be interesting, and its possible that in looking at teacher certification we’re looking at the wrong piece of the puzzle — and that, as Robert suggests, its what happens in the first few years of teaching that makes the most difference.
It seems to me that in focusing on connecting teacher evaluation to teacher compensation, a lot of reformers are reaching a bit too far. It might be better to start with a large scale effort to identify the characteristics that effective teachers tend to have in common, and figure out how to promote them.
Chad is correct, although there were comparatively few teachers with 5 years in the classroom. Most were first or second years. Here’s a pertinent passage from the report:
“We found no evidence that students of AC teachers with less experience (1 to 2 years) had statistically significant different math or reading achievement, relative to their TC counterparts, than those with more experience (3 to 4 or 5 or more years). The one
statistically significant difference pertained to students of low-coursework AC teachers in their third or fourth year of teaching, whose students scored lower in reading and math than students of their TC counterparts. Inferences based on these findings should be made with caution because the subgroup sizes were small and the experience levels of the TC comparison teachers varied.”
From the Executive Summary:
“An important distinction of this design is that because certification routes are not randomly assigned to teacher trainees, the estimates of the effects on student achievement and classroom practices of teachers who were trained through different routes to certification pertain to those who chose to participate in these programs. Because of likely differences in the types of people who attend various certification programs, the results cannot be used to rigorously address how a graduate of one type of program would fare if he or she had attended another type.”
The results of this study are not nearly as slam-dunk as one might think, especially in terms of policy implications and recommendations. Much of it turns on the definition of “alternative certification” (which Mathematica divides into “high coursework” and “low coursework”–between which there is a distinction, although not quite statistically significant). And the distinction noted above: people who seek alternative routes into the classroom are a whole different pool of candidates. They may have worked in an engineering career for 20 years, have teenage children, lived in the community where they’re seeking to teach. All of these factors are huge.
What Mathematica proved here was that it’s not a whole lot better to have 400 hours of coursework than 200–that other things matter more than the number of hours one spends in class, preparing to teach. And–didn’t we already know that?
Rachel has again hit the nail on the head–what really matters most is what happens when the novice teacher is inducted (or tossed) into the profession.
A lot of traditional programs are full of crap, particularly regarding practical classroom control, something with which my professors were not remotely familiar.
I started with no training at all, when NYC was desperate for teachers, and I was terrible at first. The in-school training I was required to take was a waste of time. But I quickly learned I could not tolerate not being in charge, and I was lucky enough to have an AP who was supportive and helpful. I did eventually take all the teacher courses and get traditionally educated. Honestly, outside of subject area courses, the ed. stuff was crap.
And that’s a shame, really. We could help our teachers and make them better. You’re absolutely right that it’s what you do that matters. But the answer is not eliminating teacher education–it’s improving it, which would benefit potential teachers from any and all programs.
I entered teaching through the alt. route program in NH and have been teaching for 10 years. I received a “Teacher Excelllence Award” after 3 years of teaching. I believe my program was a good, strong cross curiculum learning experience.
Michele