In other teacher certification news, we've been following New Jersey's efforts to draft a new set of teacher professional standards for a couple of weeks now. While they seem to have wreaked havoc on the nation's oldest alternative certification program, there are some more positive changes in the works. The state intends to raise its passing scores for its teacher certification exams, moving the cutoff from the bottom quartile of all states to the top quartile. Another possible change is to beef up the 100 hours of professional development that New Jersey requires for renewing a teacher certificate, perhaps doing away with such as in-service coursework like How To Operate An Overhead Projector (we do not exaggerate) in favor of something "based more on content."