NCREL Policy Issues
Issue 12, November 2002
The Impact of Alternative Certification in the Midwest
By Ray Legler, Ph.D.
Introduction
In response to increasing attention to the issues of teacher quality and quantity, alternative approaches to teacher certification have become widespread. Alternative certification allows individuals who typically (but not always) possess an undergraduate degree in a field other than education to participate in a shortened training and/or on-the-job learning experience that leads to full certification. Alternative certification programs have grown rapidly across the U.S., in large part due to concerns about teacher quantity (Feistritzer & Chester, 2002). Estimates of the increases in numbers of students and teacher retirements over the next decade have led to the suggestion that we will need over two million new teachers in the next ten years (U.S. Department of Education, 1999). While this number is debatable, it has been one of the primary drivers of the alternative certification movement. In the Midwest, where fully one-fourth of the nation's school-aged children reside, the issue of teacher quantity is particularly relevant. A recent NCREL study of teacher recruitment and retention found that 58 percent of districts in the North Central region reported hiring teachers under temporary licensure (Hare & Heap, 2001). This proxy measure of teacher supply and demand indicates a significant need for teachers in our region.
Since alternative routes to teaching have only begun to proliferate over the last 10-15 years, definitions of what constitutes an alternative certification program vary widely, and research on the effectiveness of these programs as a group is mostly inconclusive so far. An example of the definitional problem is illustrated by Fiestritzer and Chester (2002):
"The term 'alternative certification' historically has been used to refer to every avenue to becoming licensed to teach, from emergency certification to very sophisticated and well-designed programs that address the professional preparation needs of the growing population of individuals who already have at least a bachelor's degree and considerable life experience and want to become teachers." (p. 3)
The fact that alternative certification programs are defined differently and include a variety of components limits the ability of researchers and others to make claims about their effectiveness or ineffectiveness. To further complicate the issue is the fact that research in this area has been plagued by a number of methodological problems, which will be discussed on these pages. At a basic level, it is safe to say that there is more that is not known about these programs than is known.
This edition of Policy Issues explores the topic of alternative certification. Rather than attempt to draw specific conclusions about effectiveness, this paper's goals are to review what we do know from the literature and to present some exploratory data on the current state of alternative certification in the Midwest. First, a brief literature review is presented. Following that are three topics: an analysis of the recently released Schools and Staffing Survey, a report on programs in the NCREL region (Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin), and a recent study of alternative certification conducted by NCREL. Finally, policy recommendations based on the literature and our research findings are presented.
In order to assess the impact of alternative certification on the region, we sent surveys to 3,400 principals in the seven states in our region, and received 1,110 responses. We asked them several questions about their experiences with alternatively certified teachers, including questions about the number of alternatively certified teachers that they had hired, the quality of those teachers, and (if applicable) the extent to which hiring those teachers had helped address their teacher shortage problems.
