The Rise of Alternative Teaching Certification in Relation to Students Who Are Impoverished, Ethnic Minorities and Change in Teacher Salary in United States Public Schools

Over the last three decades, alternative teaching certification (ATC) programs and policies have been rising on the United States (US) public education landscape. In this dissertation, I investigated various dimensions of alternative teaching certification. Specifically, I discussed the theoretical applications, development, characteristics and outcomes of this teaching certification phenomenon. Further, I conducted quantitative analysis on a population of 35 US states across two multiple regression prediction equations employing the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). In the first prediction equation, I regressed the numbers of alternative teaching certificates granted during the 2003-04 public school year in 35 US states on various school district, teacher and student characteristic predictor variables. In the second prediction equation, I regressed the change in teacher salary between the 1979-80 and 2003-04 public school years in 35 US states on various school district and teacher characteristic predictor variables. Upon review of all bi-variant and multi-variant correlations for the population of 35 US states under study, results showed the numbers of individuals earning alternative teaching certificates had a weak statistical correlation with the proportions of students who were impoverished in each state. On the other hand, the numbers of individuals earning alternative teaching certification had a stronger statistical correlation with the proportions of ethnic minority students in each state. Moreover, change in teacher salary was found to have a weak statistical correlation with the numbers of individuals earning alternative teaching certification. In sum, indicators for the numbers of urban-area school districts exhibited the strongest statistical relationships across both prediction equations. Further analysis of these findings and others are discussed in this dissertation. Implications for future research and practice are also addressed