by Sandi Jacobs
I owe my career to alternative certification. I began teaching in New York City in 1990 as a Teach For America teacher on an emergency license, became certified, stayed for nine years, and have been in education ever since. My path to certification was certainly "alternative," but I didn't actually participate in an alternate route program. In the pre-NCLB days in New York, it was a much more "do-it-yourself" model of fulfilling various requirements.
Almost two decades later, alternate route programs have proliferated and nearly 20 percent of teachers are now certified through alternate routes. So it seems quite timely to cast a critical eye on these programs to see if they are living up to their promise to provide streamlined but meaningful preparation to individuals who didn't go through a traditional ed school program.
The title of our new study pretty much says it all:
I'll say more about our findings, but first I want to make something very clear: we are not jumping on the bandwagon with those who think the very words alternative certification should be banned. Alternate route programs--when done well--are important and necessary. They attract aspiring teachers like me--good students with strong liberal arts backgrounds who didn't know they wanted to be teachers by the end of their freshman year in college. And they attract mid-career switchers--individuals with deep subject knowledge that they now want to share with a classroom full of students. If the only option for these nontraditional candidates is a traditional route, few of them will end up in classrooms, and that would be a terrible loss for students. We need these programs. But, sadly, they are not being done well, and they need to be fixed.
What needs to be fixed?
No program in our sample fully met the original intent of the alternative certification movement. Ed schools have come to dominate the management of alternative certification programs, and the programs in our study run by ed schools were the least selective, required the most coursework and cost the most. But the programs run by districts and private organizations didn't stand out for their quality, either.
To be sure, individual programs could do much to improve, but this is overall a systemic problem. These programs are poor because the guidelines that govern them are weak and oversight is limited at best. And this has to be addressed at the state level. In our recent State Teacher Policy Yearbook, we analyzed states' alternative certification policies, and found that only 6 states' guidelines offer a genuine alternate route. And our new report demonstrates that these bad laws are resulting in bad practice.
Alternative Certification Isn't Alternative. But it could be, and nontraditional teacher candidates (like I once was)--and their students--need it to be.
Sandi Jacobs is the Vice President for Policy at NCTQ.