Tag Archive for 'alternative certification'

Anyone Can Teach!

Published by Robert Pondiscio on February 13, 2009 in Education News, Teacher Training and Teaching. 11 Comments

Training or experience? Pedagogy or subject matter expertise?  Utah lawmakers are weighing what makes a good teacher as they consider a bill that would allow anyone with a bachelor’s degree to become a licensed teacher by passing competency tests in the subjects they wish to teach or demonstrating skills in those areas. The bill, SB48, was given preliminary approval Thursday, according to the Salt Lake Tribune.

Now, most people who lack education degrees but want to become teachers must get approval from the districts in which they hope to teach and then pass subject and pedagogy tests. They may also go through an alternate process that requires them to take education classes before becoming fully licensed, among other things.  SB48 would allow individuals to go directly to the state Board of Education to become licensed and would not require pedagogy classes or tests.

“I know a lot of guys who have retired and are absolutely fabulous and would make wonderful teachers because they understand the marketplace,” says the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Chris Buttars said. “This is long past due.”

“This bill really is an insult to education,” counters another Senator. ”Teachers have a skill set that is unique, developed and is nurtured and trained. I think this bill expands the profession of teaching into a hobby of teaching.”

The bill requires a bachelor’s degree and passing a “rigorous” state test to teach elementary school. Anyone wishing to teach basic middle school and high school subjects would also need at least a bachelor’s degree and would either need to pass a state test or demonstrate competency in the subject with a major, graduate degree or coursework.

The Utah Education Association has come out against the bill.

Alternative Certification vs. Traditionally Certified Teachers

Published by Robert Pondiscio on February 10, 2009 in Education News and Research and Reports. 6 Comments

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.

Does Certified Equal Qualified?

Published by Robert Pondiscio on October 23, 2008 in Education Practice and Educational Policy. 8 Comments

Should mid-career switchers, including former military personnel, be able to go directly into teaching without obtaining certification.  John McCain seemed to suggest as much in the last presidential debate. Over at Teacher Magazine, the question is being hotly debated.  Unsurprisingly most find the idea wanting.  Says one:

If military retirees are allowed to go straight into the classrom, then why not allow all college graduates to do the same thing?  As the nation argues for more accountability for teachers, why would we lower the bar for the necessary post-secondary education needed to become a teacher?

At least one teacher, however, is willing to suggest there is a difference between being certified and being qualified. 

Private schools do not require their teachers to be certified, and many have very qualified teachers….I agree that teachers should have extensive training in pedogogical practices before they become teachers, but I’m not sure if taking the Praxis and doing all of that paperwork towards my certification has made me a better teacher. 

Essential Reading for Teachers

Published by Robert Pondiscio on October 22, 2008 in Opinion. 1 Comment

Dan Brown’s memoir of his first year as a New York City teacher, The Great Expectations School: A Rookie Year in the New Blackboard Jungle, is out in paperback.  I will freely admit my bias: Dan’s book resonated with me because his experience as a New York City Teaching Fellow assigned to a school in the Bronx mirrored my own experience so closely.  Still, Dan is a fine writer and Great Expectations is a great read. 

Top 5 Teacher Books, anyone?  Off the top of my head, here’s my list:

1. Among Schoolchildren, Tracy Kidder
I’d pay to read Tracy Kidder’s grocery list. 

2. Teach Like Your Hair’s On Fire, Rafe Esquith
Esquith’s essential optimism re-energized me on many occasions.  Try to find even a sentence of “woe-is-me-this-is-too-hard” in his book.  The man’s a saint. 

3. The Essential 55: An Award-Winning Educator’s Rules for Discovering the Successful Student in Every Child, by Ron Clark 
The original New Paternalism.  Go ahead and mock Clark’s highly prescriptive measures, but this book made me a better teacher.  What higher praise can there be?

4.  There Are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in The Other America, by Alex Kotlowitz
Not a teacher book per se, but a first-rate account of childhood in urban poverty. Kotlowitz avoids the tendency to sentimentalize the lives of the urban poor, and his book is all the more powerful for it. 

5.  Ms. Moffett’s First Year, Abby Goodnough
My favorite book about the alternative certification experience before Dan’s came along.

While not a teacher memoir, or even an education book, the one I’d make required reading for any new urban teacher would be Random Family by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc.  I wish before I’d become a teacher, someone had merely handed the book to me and said, “Just read this. Everything you need to know is in here.”

TFA=AOL? OMG!

Published by Robert Pondiscio on September 12, 2008 in Teacher Training. 0 Comments

A-Rus at This Week in Education wonders if alternative certification programs like Teach For America are becoming the “AOL of teacher preparation programs — once innovative, and for a time dominant, but now increasingly outmoded.”  He posts a picture of those once-ubiquitous AOL discs to drive home the point.

The cutting edge of teacher prep now seems to be the residency model popularized in Boston and other places, and heralded in a recent report cited by EdWeek (Urban Teacher Residencies Touted). The other reason is that people like Barack Obama are talking about residency programs, not alt cert. TFA has grown tremendously in recent years, and had a lot of Republican support. I’m not sure it will have a similarly privileged position in an Obama administration.

Wasn’t it just last night that both Obama and McCain were pledging to boost America’s commitment to national service?  McCain touted TFA by name from the stage at Columbia and Obama has put forth a plan for “universal voluntary citizen service.”  Aren’t we looking at a need for 2 million teachers in the next decade?  Aren’t lines of applicants still failing to form outside struggling schools? 

We needn’t lose sleep worrying about TFA’s decline.  Russo did make me feel nostalgic for the AOL discs, however.  I used them for coasters.

Something New Under the Sun

Published by Robert Pondiscio on June 20, 2008 in Educational Policy and Teacher Training. 0 Comments

The New York Sun’s Elizabeth Green reports NYC Schools Chancellor Joel Klein wishes for his Department of Education to have the authority to certify teachers and principals.  Ed schools have that exclusive franchise right now.  Flypaper says the Boys of Fordham were at the Excellence in Education summit in Orlando where Klein discussed this idea, and will have more to say about it shortly.   Could get interesting.