Alternative Teacher Certification Programs Are Burgeoning
From the December 2009 Issue of InFocus (PDF)
Alternative teacher certification programs, which offer a route to the classroom other than the traditional four-year education major, are flourishing, with about one-third of new teaching hires coming through alternative routes to teacher certification. All 50 states and the District of Columbia have some type of alternate route to teacher certification, with nearly 500 alternate teacher certification programs spread across the country.
According to the National Center for Alternative Certification, the number of teaching certificates issued to people who completed an alternative route program grew from roughly 20,000 in 2000-01 to approximately 59,000 in 2005-06. This period of rapid growth has been characterized by a shift away from emergency and other temporary routes prevalent in the 1980’s and 1990’s, to new routes designed specifically for non-traditional candidates who have already earned bachelor’s degrees, many of whom come from other careers.
A study by the U.S. Department of Education compared teachers that had gone through traditional teacher certification programs (TC) with teachers that had gone through alternative certification programs (AC). The study broke down AC teachers by the amount of coursework required by their certification programs, and compared them to TC counterparts teaching in the same school. Low-coursework AC teachers were defined as teachers whose program required 274 or fewer hours of coursework, while high-coursework AC teachers were defined as teachers whose program required 308 hours or more of coursework.
The study found that people who pursue alternative certification tend to be older than those in the traditional programs. The average age of low-coursework AC teachers was 34 years, compared with 28 for their TC counterparts. The average age of high-coursework AC teachers was 34 years, compared with 30 years for their TC counterparts. As shown in the accompanying graph, alternative certification also attracts a higher proportion of blacks and a higher proportion of people who have children. AC teachers are also more likely to be taking courses toward an advanced degree or teaching certification than their TC counterparts.
AC teachers from high-coursework programs were required to complete an average of 432 hours of instruction, compared with 607 hours for their TC counterparts. AC teachers from low-coursework programs were required to complete an average of 179 hours of instruction, compared with 671 hours for their TC counterparts. However, there was no statistically significant difference in performance between students of AC teachers and students of TC teachers. There were also no statistically significant differences between AC and TC teachers in average scores on college entrance exams, the selectivity of the college that awarded their bachelor’s degree, or their level of educational attainment.
The U.S. Department of Education estimates that America’s schools will need to hire up to 200,000 first-time teachers annually for the next five years. Recognizing that traditional teacher certification programs will likely not be able to completely fill this need, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has called on university-based teacher preparation programs to take innovative approaches in providing new teachers with the knowledge and skills needed in the 21st century classroom – a charge that many continuing and professional education organizations are already addressing through alternative teacher certification programs.
—Timothy Sloate
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