New Route Needed for Certification

January 29, 2004

We've mentioned before that we're not enthusiastic with the entire concept of teacher certification as is stands today. It has two strikes against it, in our view, for not only is an artificial barrier, but it also serves as a process of indoctrination into the values of progressive education. (See our personal experience with certification.)

We'd be pleased if principals of public schools were permitted to hire whom they think would best do the job, certification or not. Shocking? How do you think private schools do it, most of which aren't required to hire certified teachers?

Of course the public at large wouldn't accept the floodgates being opened to anyone with a pulse, especially after years of hearing "we need more certified teachers!" so often repeated on the airwaves. (At the public hearings prior to the opening of one big-city charter school, we heard parents frequently asking if the school hired only certified teachers. It is clear to us the connection they've made in their minds.)

Rather, our vision of "alternative certification" would go something like this:

Take folks with a bachelor's degree in a subject other than education, give 'em some standardized tests to prove they actually know English and are fairly intelligent and/or well informed, in addition to specialty tests in the field or fields in which they want to teach. (The good news is that these tests already exist.)

After passing these exams, give these candidates a provisional certificate, with which they can seek employment.

Then permit these folks to teach! After, say, two satisfactory years of teaching, the provisional certificate would be turned into what is currently the entry-level teaching certificate (what freshly-minted grads from the School of Education receive).

It turns out at least one state thinks this plan is a good one. Since 1985, New Jersey has maintained an alternative route to certification, through which several thousand teachers have passed. Their plan is nearly identical to ours, with the additional requirement that provisional teachers take after-school training in the first thirty weeks of employment.

The Council for Basic Education has a report on alternative-route certification from the former state education commissioner in New Jersey, who writes that not only has that state's teacher shortage been stemmed, but that it has dramatically increased the pool of minority teacher candidates.

It also details some of the current problems with "traditional certification" in that Schools of Education tend to draw from the bottom of the barrel--attracting the lowest-performing of any given crop of college students (often with the next-to-lowest SAT scores of any academic major). The best and brightest are also not attracted to an Education degree (with the attached teaching certificate) simply because such a degree makes candidates next to unemployable in any field besides teaching!

It makes far more sense to open teaching to graduates from all majors (plus older professionals), who have their options open (and actually know something besides Education theory).

Lower the barriers, and let 'em teach!