Alt Cert: The Road Increasingly Taken?

It’s
been 30 years since states first began experimenting with alternative
certification (AC) pathways for teachers, and while these routes have become
firmly entrenched in many districts’ talent strategies, the debate over their
value continues.

In
a recent study
in the American Educational Research
Journal, Christopher Redding and Thomas M. Smith contribute some new
evidence around two long contended points—namely, whether alternatively
certified teachers are prepared for the classroom and whether they’re likely to
stick around.

Preparedness. Previous research has established that there is no
clear answer to the question of whether teachers from AC routes are better
prepared or more effective than their traditionally certified peers. As our own review
of non-traditional teacher prep shows, there are some high-quality alternative
preparers of teachers, and there are just as many, if not more, ineffective
alternative preparation options.

Analyzing
data from the government’s Schools and Staffing Survey, Redding and Smith turn
up an interesting new finding on trends in AC. In the 1999-2000 school year, 23
percent of alternatively certified teachers entered the profession with no
practice teaching, compared to 8 percent of teachers entering from a
traditional prep program. By 2011-2012, the proportion of AC teachers with no
teaching experience had grown to 40 percent. Why? 

Retention. If you ask most people about the problems with
alternative routes, the number-one gripe is usually that AC teachers leave the
profession more quickly than traditional candidates. Redding and Smith show
that this is the case, but that it wasn’t
always so. In the 1999-2000 school year, there was little difference in the
retention rates between early career AC and traditionally prepared teachers. By
2007-2008, however, the predicted turnover rate for AC teachers was 10
percentage points higher than that of traditionally trained candidates, even
when controlling for school environment.  

Redding
and Smith’s work serves as another reminder that the quality of alternative
certification programs matters—which is something we’ve been saying for a long
time. Moreover, we’d do well to remember that most alternative certification
programs are expensive to districts, candidates, and communities alike. With
around a quarter of early career teachers now entering through AC pathways, the
need to measure the returns on this investment is greater than ever.