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Teacher Certification: An Irrelevant Process?
A teaching certificate is acquired through a program which emphasizes process not results or, in the jargon, inputs not outputs. Certified and qualified are not interchangeable terms. Even the late AI Shanker, longtime president of the American Federation of Teachers, said that at least a quarter of the nation's teachers are not qualified to be in the classroom.
Nationally about 1200 schools of education prepare teachers. Less than half are accredited, assuming that accreditation has more validity than certification. In addition, if certification is valid, shouldn't education professors have to be certified? Why should certified teachers be prepared by non-certified professors? As it is, many, perhaps most, teachers are certified by an educational process presented by uncertified staff in unaccredited institutions.
Beyond that, large numbers of certified teachers in grades 9-12 have neither a major nor a minor in their subject. Perhaps as many as 1,000,000 of the nation's teachers having no major or minor in their subject. UCLA professor Donald Erickson, the source for that estimate, who is hardly anti- education professor, being one himself, added that "hundreds of studies show that a certified teacher isn't more qualified than an uncertified teacher." Worse yet, in the poorest urban schools 45% of their secondary math teachers lack a relevant major or minor.
A review of 113 studies found no relationship in 85% of them between student achievement and a teacher's educational background. A positive relationship was reported in 7% and a negative one in 5%.
What about educational school standards? In 1997 the combined SAT verbal and math score for all college applicants was 1,013, of a potential maximum of 1600. The average for education schools was 964, and some students had scores as low as 642. It's said you get 400 points on the SAT for signing your name.
Richard Mitchell, who taught English at a New Jersey teachers college, said the last question in an education course there required drawing letters of the alphabet in both upper and lower case. It counted for 52% of the grade. He didn't say how many of the students could meet that standard. New Jersey began an alternative certification program in the mid 1980s. Former NJ Governor Tom Kean noted that, in the first year, the state's public schools hired a Fulbright scholar, five Harvard graduates and a scientist holding two patents. Further, alternative candidates scored higher on the National Teachers Exam than those trained by conventional methods.
By 1994, 41 states and the District of Columbia had adopted alternative teacher training programs, although only 14 were regarded as "true" alternatives. For example, Pennsylvania was said to have an alternative program. This "alternative" was available to someone with no education degree but a "strong knowledge in a specific subject matter." They can enroll in a college or university program, "taking the same education and subject courses required of all certification candidates," which could take up to three years to complete. Some alternative!
The trend is away from conventional approaches. One national survey found 73% of classroom teachers support expanding alternative certification options. Michigan has discontinued certifying administrators, and a number of states, again including New Jersey, have successfully allowed noncertified administrators, including superintendents, in some instances.
The certification process, while going back to the early 19th century for a precedent, is relatively recent. In
1920
not a single state required even a college degree for elementary teachers, most of whom didn't have one. Only ten states required one of secondary teachers. As late as 1948, almost 60% of the nation's teachers still lacked one. Where teachers less able then? Did students achieve less? Admittedly, the public school dropout rate was higher then, but as one who was educated prior to 1948, of my classmates who dropped out prior to graduation, I can't recall even one who wasn't
literate.
During a 1978 Kentucky court case when the state was challenged to produce scholarly research proving that certification equates to teacher competence, or to educational excellence, it could not do so.
Defenders of the certification status quo should be required to prove two things:
That present certification procedures work; and,
That proposed alternatives won't work.
They won't be able to do either.
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