Cheapening Teaching Through Alternative Routes

2009

Penny Pinchers Cheapen Teaching Through Alternative Routes

Gene V Glass

Conservative critics of America's public schools who claim that hiring only certified teachers is bad policy are out in force. Kate Walsh, president of the National Council on Teacher Quality, says, "Maryland’s requirement that individuals must complete a prescribed body of coursework before teaching in a public school is deeply misguided. This process … is neither an efficient nor an effective means by which to ensure a competent teaching force. Worse, it is often counterproductive." Frederick Hess, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, thinks traditional pre-service training and certification should be replaced by a written test covering content and a criminal background check. Chester Finn, former assistant secretary for research and improvement in the Reagan administration, expressed mock sympathy for the nation's teachers who are "afflicted" with "a dysfunctional training-and-licensure regimen that, on the one hand, makes it slow, expensive and arduous for eager would-be teachers to enter the public school classroom and, on the other hand, burdens them with useless courses. … Superimposed on this is so-called 'professional development' that much of the time isn't worth the paper it's printed on, much less the money that's spent on it."

Uncertified Gains

The hiring of K-12 teachers not endorsed through traditional university-based training programs is rapidly growing. Though rare prior to 1985 when New Jersey created its provisional teacher program, such training routes are increasingly common. Alternative certification programs range from such minor variations on undergraduate pre-service training as post-baccalaureate masters degrees on the one hand to Teach for America and online certificate programs on the other. More than 60,000 alternatively certified teachers now are employed in the nation’s schools, both public and private. The chances that a private secondary school teacher is uncertified doubled (from 25 percent to 50 percent) from 1993 to 2003. Teachers without regular certificates tend to cluster in poor urban schools.

Some administrators wonder whether the students of alternatively certified teachers learn as much – that is, do they score as high on tests? As is often the case, those seeking answers see what they want to see.

A handful of studies indicate that traditionally licensed teachers outperform alternatively certified teachers. Another handful claim the opposite. But none of the studies makes a convincing case that the differences are of any important size. As with so many issues in education research, the relative effectiveness of alternatively certified teachers degenerates into arguments over tiny differences that appear and disappear depending on which statistician is talking.

If a principal knows nothing else about a prospective hire, are there reasons to hire an alternatively certified teacher over a traditionally certified one? Research doesn't support the claim that either is superior in promoting student achievement. We also know that Teach for America teachers will cost an extra $5,000, which goes directly into the TFA coffers, and the chances that a Teach for America teacher will remain in the district beyond two years are slim.

Moreover, in hiring an alternatively certified teacher, the administrator will be dipping into the same labor pool that increasingly staffs the poorest, most challenged school districts in the nation. By 2000, nearly a quarter of all teachers in very poor districts in California were uncertified. If traditional teacher training is the stifling and deadening regimen that some critics claim it is, then it is curious that well-to-do suburban schools are not taking advantage of all the alternatively certified teachers available in the job market.

Disrespectful Actions

So what are the Finns, the Hesses and the Walshes really talking about when they say that traditional teacher preparation "burdens [pre-service teachers] with worthless courses" and is "counterproductive"? They are not talking about quality; they are talking about money. They are talking about holding down the cost of education and taxes. They are talking about how the charter school movement pays unlicensed teachers less than it pays regularly certified ones, and they are talking about how a deskilled trade and a broken union will have little to bring to the bargaining table when contracts are negotiated.

The situation has become so serious in Texas that the State Board for Educator Certification is considering a new rule: Alternative certification programs may accept only students with undergraduate GPAs above 2.5 and who complete a set amount of training before entering the classroom. The board's proposal is opposed by for-profit online certification programs and coalitions of charter and virtual schools.

In many ways, the movement away from traditionally trained and certified teachers represents a pulling back from the challenge to achieve the best, settling for "adequate" instead of reaching for "excellent." At its worst, the promotion of cheap alternatives to the training of teachers is a penny-pinching move that disrespects an honorable profession. Unlike with some professions, the plane may not crash or the patient may not die when teachers are poorly trained, but a society that demeans teaching and degrades education will in time surely see aspirations and hope atrophy and wither.

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Gene Glass is Regents' professor in the Mary Lou Fulton College of Education at Arizona State University and author of Fertilizers, Pills, and Magnetic Strips: The Fate of Public Education in America. E-mail: glass@asu.edu