NCREL Policy Issues
Issue 12, November 2002
The Impact of Alternative Certification in the Midwest
Literature Review
Background
Alternative certification has both supporters and critics. Supporters argue that the United States' need for teachers in the coming years exceeds the capacity of traditional teacher education programs. The often-cited need for 2.2 million teachers over the next ten years has spurred educators to seek alternative routes to fill teaching vacancies, which has led supporters of alternative certification programs to suggest that we need to supplement the pool of potential new teachers with an approach that brings in people from other fields. This pool of potential teachers includes those who have decided to change careers, have left the military, have graduated with degrees in areas other than education, or have received teaching certificates or education degrees years ago and now want to teach. Some supporters also contend that, overall, colleges of education have failed to provide the United States with a sufficient number of teachers who are well prepared and able to educate all of our students (Haberman, 1991). As a result, supporters argue that alternative approaches to traditional teacher preparation are acceptable since these programs allow new teachers to learn in the "real world." Further, alternative certification supporters contend that these programs could do no worse than traditional, but inadequate, teacher education programs.
Opponents of alternative certification programs disagree with all of these points. They argue that concerns about massive teacher shortages in the near future are somewhat misplaced. Where shortages do exist, they appear to be specific to particular regions and subjects. (Overall, there is actually a good supply of teachers across the country, as will be discussed later in this paper.) Opponents of alternative certification programs also argue that, while many traditional teacher education programs could stand to be strengthened, many schools of education have moved (and continue to move) toward more rigorous, standards-based approaches to teacher education. From this perspective, the answer to the problem of inadequate teacher preparation is not to circumvent college-based programs but to continue to strengthen these programs through two methods: first, through adherence to strict standards (e.g., those of the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education) and second, through demonstration of teaching skills prior to the start of a teacher's career. Skeptics of alternative certification programs point out that in no other profession with the potential for inadequately prepared practitioners to do harm (e.g., medicine, law, and psychology) are the requirements for extensive college-based instruction, supervised internship, and testing viewed as optional.
Two additional reasons cited by supporters for the need for alternate routes to teacher certification include the desire to address regional and subject-specific teacher shortages and the desire to diversify the teaching force particularly in urban areas. This is because teacher shortages are more likely to be found in urban and rural schools than in suburban schools (Berry, 2000) and in specific subject areas such as math, science, and special education. Many states and school districts have created alternative programs to address these particular issues. In terms of diversity, Feistritzer and Chester (2000) note that 9 percent of teachers and 26 percent of students in the U.S. are minorities. Alternative certification programs have the potential to recruit qualified people of color into the teaching profession.
Analysis of these assumptions by skeptics of alternative certification programs cast some doubt on their validity. For one thing, concerns about the overall teacher shortage are somewhat inaccurate. While there is little doubt about certain demographic trends such as the aging of the teaching force, closer examination of the data reveals that the impending dramatic shortage of teachers may be overstated. Many vacant teaching positions will be filled in the future, not only by new graduates of teaching preparation programs but also by teachers who have relocated, left positions for other reasons, or returned to the teaching force after an extended absence. Data from the National Center for Education Statistics showed that less than half of the teaching positions across the U.S. were filled by teachers who had just completed teacher education programs (Feistritzer & Chester, 2000). The rest of the positions were filled by people who had either earned their degrees over one year before or who were returning to teaching after having left for a period of time. Feistritzer and Chester (2000) estimated that colleges of education graduate more than twice as many new teachers each year (over 100,000) as are hired by teachers who have relocated, left positions for other reasons, or returned to the teaching force after an extended absence.
Data from the National Center for Education Statistics showed that less than half of the teaching positions across the U.S. were filled by teachers who had just completed teacher education programs (Feistritzer & Chester, 2000). The rest of the positions were filled by people who had either earned their degrees over one year before or who were returning to teaching after having left for a period of time. Feistritzer and Chester (2000) estimated that colleges of education graduate more than twice as many new teachers each year (over 100,000) as are hired to teach immediately after graduation, and that about 25 percent of all current teachers hold undergraduate degrees in fields other than education. This means that there are actually plenty of people with education degrees, and if we consider the fact that many teachers hold degrees outside education, the pool of potential teachers is actually quite large. The frequently cited figure of two million teachers needed over the next ten years becomes less daunting when one considers that schools of education will graduate over one million potential teachers in that period, and that many more potential teachers will come from other fields. The regional and subject-specific shortages described above will certainly continue to be significant problems, but they are really issues of teacher distribution rather than availability.
Some proponents suggest that alternative certification programs offer the chance to circumvent inadequate schools of education and to increase the number of minorities entering the teaching profession. Opponents counter that less preparation is hardly an answer to concerns about teacher quality (Tozer & Miretzky, 1999). In addition, they note that in urban districts with high percentages of students of color, almost 40 percent of the teachers are minorities.
Regardless of the arguments, alternative programs have proliferated substantially over the last 30 years. The number of alternative certification programs (as defined by Feistritzer & Chester, 2000) has grown to at least 85. In 1998-1999, about 24,000 teachers gained certification through alternative programs (Feistritzer & Chester, 2000). More recently, Feistritzer and Chester (2002) stated that alternative certification programs can be found in 45 states and the District of Columbia. The authors estimate that over 175,000 teachers have been licensed through alternative programs.
While the components of alternative certification programs vary widely from state to state and region to region, they typically involve some period of intensive, condensed academic course work or training. In addition, they usually require a period of supervised, on-the-job training in which new teachers are expected to learn their teaching skills in the classroom. Supervision ranges from very little to intensive oversight and mentoring on a constant basis for at least the first year. Typically, new teachers are expected to eventually pass certification tests and become fully certified teachers.
Research and evaluation
As the number of alternative certification programs continued to increase during the 1990s, research on their structure and effectiveness became more intensive and pervasive. Today, there exists a substantial body of literature on alternative certification that includes discussions of research, policy, and practice. Overall, the research to this point has been unable to clearly substantiate the effectiveness of these programs. Several studies have found positive or mixed results, but a significant portion of the research on alternative certification programs has arrived at negative conclusions.
One recent study that compared alternatively and traditionally prepared teachers began with a review of research and cited a substantial body of research that found either better or similar results for alternatively certified teachers when compared to traditionally prepared teachers (Miller, McKenna, & McKenna, 1998). However, the authors stated that, overall, the research on alternative certification programs is "inconclusive and somewhat contradictory" (p. 166). This is due to the fact that a variety of methodologies has been used to study alternative programs, a variety of outcome variables has been examined, and a variety of operational definitions has been used to define variables.
Other problems that tend to confound studies of alternative programs include inappropriate comparisons of alternatively certified teachers to nonequivalent groups from different regions or states. Comparisons of the qualifications of alternatively certified teachers to those of traditionally prepared teachers are somewhat disingenuous. For example, teachers in alternative programs may in fact have higher GPAs than traditionally certified teachers, but this is usually due to high screening standards and high ratios of applicants to openings. Studies that attempt to compare the teaching of alternatively certified teachers to that of regular teachers often employ weak or nonsystematic approaches to the assessment of teacher performance, rely on state or district measures, or have extremely small sample sizes (Hawley, 1990). Reliance on district or state data to assess classroom teaching is inappropriate because these data are typically measures of student, not teacher, performance. In addition, these types of data are typically standardized, aggregated test score data that are difficult to use in assessing individual teacher behavior. Finally, studies that compare alternatively certified teachers to traditionally prepared teachers are problematic because the teachers used for comparison most likely graduated from schools of education before the recent shift toward an emphasis on standards and outcomes. Studies that conclude that alternatively certified teachers differ little from other teachers beg the question of the quality of those other teachers.
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What can we learn from the divergent findings reviewed here? Some studies find positive results from alternative certification programs, some find negative results, and others find some positive and some negative. Positive results reviewed include these:
Problems with alternative certification programs include the following:
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In attempting to address some of the methodological weaknesses of the alternative certification research, Miller, McKenna, and McKenna (1998) designed a series of studies, both quantitative and qualitative, to examine the effectiveness of an alternative program. The results showed that after three years of experience and mentoring, the two groups were basically the same. While this study compared the two groups after three years, many critics of alternative certification programs are more concerned about the impact on students of teachers with little training during the first year. The authors suggested that in order to see similar results in other programs, the intensive three-year mentoring and support that were central to the program should be a model for other alternative certification programs. This begs questions regarding the costs associated with such thorough mentoring and is an example of a variable of interest in the study of alternative certification programs that requires further research.
Data on the characteristics of alternatively certified teachers and their impact on the diversity of the teaching force are also mixed. An examination of survey data from over 14,000 teachers compared the responses of traditionally and alternatively prepared teachers (Shen, 1998). Results of this study showed that a higher percentage of minorities enter teaching through alternative certification programs than through traditional ones, and teach in urban schools with high percentages of students of color. Results of this study also indicated that alternative programs are effective at recruiting math and science teachers who have degrees in those fields. On the negative side, the researcher found that while alternative certification programs recruit and prepare minority teachers with high education levels, they also bring in minority teachers without college degrees.
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Characteristics of Effective Programs Feistritzer and Chester (2000) offer a six-point model for effective alternative certification programs and suggest that quality programs should do the following:
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Studies of teacher performance are no more conclusive than the research discussed above. A review of the literature on the performance of alternatively certified teachers in comparison to graduates of teacher preparation programs found several studies that supported the idea that regularly certified teachers outperformed those from alternative certification programs (Jelmberg, 1996). This review also found studies that provided evidence for the quality of alternatively certified teachers, and still others that had mixed results. In an attempt to sort out the issue, the author analyzed survey data from recently certified teachers and found no differences between alternatively certified and traditionally prepared teachers in terms of academic credentials. Jelmberg did find that after three years of teaching experience, the overall ratings of teacher performance by principals were higher for the graduates of traditional teacher-preparation programs than for the alternatively certified teachers.
Perhaps the most vocal critics of alternative certification have been Linda Darling-Hammond and her colleagues (Darling-Hammond, 1994; Darling-Hammond, 2000; Darling- Hammond, Wise, & Kline, 1999). Darling-Hammond has been a staunch supporter of the need for sound and thorough preparation of teachers that includes rigorous academic coursework at the undergraduate level, highly structured and supervised internships, full licensure before a teacher candidate is given control of a classroom, and ongoing professional development. Many critics of alternative certification programs would contend that assigning students to teachers who have entered through shortened preparation programs is as inconceivable as entrusting them to the care of a doctor who has had six months of intensive course work and a mentor in the next room.
A review of one of the most well known alternative programs,Teach for America (TFA), was scathing in its criticism (Darling-Hammond, 1994). The author cited several anecdotes about TFA recruits entering classrooms entirely unprepared to teach on their own, with substantial negative consequences for both the teacher and the students. She went on to criticize the costs, training, and quality control of the project, and argued that, far from being equal to teacher education programs, the TFA does not come close to adequately preparing participants to teach.
Quantitative research studies of TFA are not nearly as pessimistic. One study conducted by Kane, Parsons, and Associates examined the ratings of TFA teachers by the principals who supervised them. TFA teachers were rated as "good" or "excellent" on 23 indicators of successful teaching by over 90 percent of the principals surveyed (Kopp, 2000). Another study, conducted by CREDO (formerly the Center for Research on Education Outcomes), looked at the effects of TFA teachers in the Houston school system on student achievement as compared to other teachers. The results of this research suggested that students of TFA teachers achieved at slightly higher (although not statistically significantly higher) levels than the students of other teachers (Raymond, Fletcher, & Luque, 2001).
Beyond the points highlighted in the sidebars, other suggestions for ensuring the quality of alternative certification programs include rigorous screening and high-quality preservice training in pedagogy, classroom management, and human development. In addition, there needs to be a highly structured, well-supervised induction period that includes close supervision and guidance by an experienced teacher for at least one year, plus ongoing professional development and post-internship training (Duhon-Haynes, Augustus, Duhon-Sells, & Duhon-Ross, 1996; Littleton & Larmer, 1998; McKibbon & Ray, 1994). Some skeptics of alternative programs have suggested that alternatively certified teachers should be expected to pass all certification exams required for standard certification before taking over a classroom of students on their own. However, one of the central components of most alternative programs is that candidates learn in the classroom before gaining full certification.
Limitations of alternative certification research to date
There are several important issues that need to be considered as research on alternative certification programs moves forward. First is the issue of comparison groups. Most studies that attempt to compare the performance of alternatively certified teachers to the performance of another group naturally compare them to teachers who gained their certification through the traditional route, a bachelor's degree in education. In the last several years, however, colleges of education have been increasingly criticized for not doing a good job of preparing teacher candidates for the classroom. In response, many colleges of education are moving toward a standards-based model of teacher preparation. The bottom line is that the methodology of comparing alternatively certified teachers to traditionally prepared teachers is questionable if there are concerns about the quality of the comparison group. This issue is particularly salient in urban areas where alternative programs are proliferating at the same time that issues of quality and full certification are being raised about urban teachers who graduated from colleges of education.
Other research issues include the difficulty of evaluating alternative certification programs that vary widely in terms of their program components and number of participants, making the comparison of programs and effects difficult. Finally, the typically short length of time involved in studies of alternative programs is problematic. It is difficult to assess the quality of any new teacher. Studies that examine the performance of first- or second-year teachers, over a short time span, are confounded by the fact that most new teachers need a year or two to settle into their roles and "learn the ropes." In addition, it is impossible to compare attrition rates with research that is short in duration and looks at teachers in their first years on the job.
The second half of this Policy Issues focuses on the NCREL region and provides an overview of the state of alternative certification in the Midwest. The section begins broadly and progressively narrows. First, we review broad data on alternative certification in the NCREL region through an analysis of the Schools and Staffing Survey data set, then we review the specifically legislated programs in each state. Next, we discuss the findings of our survey of principals in the region and present some specific, if qualified, findings regarding teachers from alternative programs. Finally, we offer some policy recommendations based on the findings of our research.
