Hiring Policy
Pathway for STEM Professionals to Teach Part-Time: Montana offers the Class 8 Dual Credit-only Postsecondary Faculty license. Applicants must be current faculty members at an approved college/university to qualify. The Class 8 license permits candidates to teach only dual credit courses in their identified field, essentially high school courses taken for college credits. Class 8 candidates must provide a recommendation from an accredited college or university stating the applicant's degree/major and verifying competency as it relates to instruction.
Employment with this license is not restricted to teaching part-time, nor is it restricted to teaching only STEM subjects. This license is valid for five years and may be renewed.
Subject-Matter Test: Montana does not require candidates to pass a subject-matter exam.
Induction Support and Evaluation Systems: Montana does not explicitly require individuals with a Class 8 license to have access to induction support or evaluation systems.
Other Licensure Requirements: Montana requires candidates for the Class 8 license to complete a background check.
Offer a license that allows content experts to serve as part-time
instructors.
Montana's Class 8 license only serves to allow college faculty to teach dual
credit courses to high school students. The state should expand on this idea and
offer a license that permits all individuals with deep subject-area knowledge
to teach a limited number of courses without fulfilling a complete set of
certification requirements. The state should verify content knowledge through a
rigorous test and conduct background checks as appropriate, while waiving all
other licensure requirements. Such a license would increase districts'
flexibility to staff certain subjects, including many STEM areas, that are
frequently hard to staff or may not have high enough enrollment to necessitate
a full-time position.
Montana declined to respond to NCTQ's analyses.
Part-time licenses
can help alleviate severe shortages, especially in STEM subjects.
Some of the subject areas in which states face the greatest
teacher shortages are also areas that require the deepest subject-matter
expertise. Staffing shortages are
further exacerbated because schools or districts may not have high enough
enrollments to necessitate full-time positions.
Part-time licenses can be a creative mechanism to get content experts to
teach a limited number of courses. Of
course, a fully licensed teacher is best, but when that isn't an option, a
part-time license allows students to benefit from content experts—individuals
who are not interested in a full-time teaching position and are thus unlikely to
pursue traditional or alternative certification. States should limit requirements for part-time licenses to
those that verify subject-matter knowledge and address public safety, such as
background checks.
Part-Time Teaching Licenses: Supporting Research
The origin of this goal is the effort to find
creative solutions to the STEM crisis. While teaching waivers are not typically
used this way, teaching waivers could be used to allow competent
professionals from outside of education to be hired as part-time instructors to
teach courses such as Advanced Placement chemistry or calculus as long as the
instructor demonstrates content knowledge on a rigorous test. See NCTQ, "Tackling the STEM Crisis: Five steps your state can take to improve the quality and quantity of its K-12 math and science teachers", at: http://www.nctq.org/p/docs/nctq_nmsi_stem_initiative.pdf.
For
the importance of teachers' general academic ability, see R. Ferguson,
"Paying for Public Education: New Evidence on How and Why Money
Matters," Harvard Journal on Legislation,Volume 28, Summer 1991, pp. 465-498.
For
more on math and science content knowledge, see D. Monk, "Subject Area Preparation of Secondary Mathematics and Science Teachers and Student Achievement," Economics of Education Review, Volume 13, No. 2, June 1994, pp. 125-145; R. Murnane, "Understanding the Sources of Teaching Competence: Choices, Skills, and the Limits of Training," Teachers
College Record, Volume 84, No. 3, 1983, pp. 564-569.