Alternative Certification of Teachers

The hiring of teachers not regularly certified by government agencies through traditional university-based training programs and endorsement has grown rapidly since 1985. More than 60,000 alternatively certified teachers are now employed in the nation’s schools, both public and private. The chances that a private secondary school teacher is uncertified doubled (from 25 % to 50%) in the 10-year period from 1993 to 2003. Teachers without regular certificates or licenses tend to be clustered in poor urban schools with high minority enrollments. Some regression studies show a relationship between higher percentages of regularly certified teachers and higher academic achievement of their students. A few experimental studies give conflicting findings on the ability of “Teach for America ” teachers to produce higher achievement among their students. Discrepancies among the studies hinge on abstruse matters of statistical methods. There is little reason to expect any consensus on the question of relative effectiveness, or to expect test score data to quiet th