No longer "just a test"

For years we have fought the mantra that ABCTE is just a test. Those opposed would just continue to say we offered no pedagogy even thought it was patently false (see here). Now comes the Indy Star with this quote:

"» Nonteachers could become teachers without going through a school of education by taking a curriculum offered by the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence."

Finally, people are realizing that we have a curriculum. How huge is that?? And with Indiana's great new state superintendent, this could be a great new state for us.

Oklahoma is the 9th ABCTE State!

Last night Governor Brad Henry of Oklahoma signed SB582 into law allowing ABCTE teachers to teach in Oklahoma. This is the 9th state that now accepts ABCTE teachers and the unanimous passage of this bill in the Oklahoma House says some pretty great things about our program.
1. The content we have added to the program makes it easier for states to accept our teachers
2. The data we have gathered is compelling evidence that our teachers are doing well in the classroom
3. Alternative certification just isn’t so radical anymore
None of the education groups opposed the bill. This leads to the conclusion that, with the changes we have made, our program is a common sense solution to math/science teacher shortages. Left to make a decision on their own, all of the House members in Oklahoma decided that common sense should prevail.

Also note that the changes we have made to the program were due to the input from education groups. So the result is that by listening to them, we can improve the program yet remain true to our goals. A pretty good feeling.

Nice coverage from Steve Sawchuk on the Edweek blog here. Now on to the 10th state…..

More on alternative certification

Matt Ladner does it again on the Jay Greene's Blog with a great post looking at the Brooking's data on teacher certification and the Paul Peterson paper. Similar to what I did back in November with this post - but with a lot more gusto.

Take a look - it is worth the read.

WSJ Nails it!!

The Wall Street Journal has an excellent summary of the recent research on teacher certification. It is great to see the Journal take on teacher quality and advocate for more alternative teacher certification programs like ABCTE.

Wall Street Journal

We responded with the following letter to the editor:

Letter to the Editor – Wall Street Journal:

As the president of a non-profit alternative teaching certification program, it is great to see the Journal weighing in on teacher quality and helping to debunk the myth of certification in “The ‘Certified’ Teacher Myth” (Dec. 13).

In all eight states where our program is now accepted I am asked why the teacher’s unions oppose us when, in theory, we create more union members. The Journal’s premise that the issue comes down to basic economics is correct and, unfortunately, while union opposition to alternative certification programs may be in the best interest of members because it limits the supply of teachers, it is not in the best interest of students; the Peterson study referenced by the Journal is shedding much-needed light on this issue.

There are other studies that demonstrate the benefits of alternative certification programs. For example, the Brookings Institution gathered performance data on over 195,000 students and found no difference between those taught by alternatively certified teachers versus those taught by teachers certified through standard routes.

State leaders need to look at the facts on alternative teacher certification, which can increase the quality and the racial diversity of their teaching workforce. They must understand the economic motivation of teacher’s unions on this issue and make the choice that is best for students.

DAVID SABA
President
ABCTE
Washington, D.C.
www.abcte.org

The American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence (ABCTE) is a non-partisan, non-profit 501(c)(3) organization founded via a grant from the U.S. Department of Education and committed to recruiting, certifying and

Malcolm Gladwell is throwing the certification baby out with the bath water

In many areas of education, it is interesting to observe how easily wrong conclusions can be drawn from data. In a recent piece in the New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell implies that because there is no difference in student performance between certified and non-certified teachers that we should eliminate the certification process altogether. You may label this the "Let them all in and sort them out later" strategy.

It is true that if the bar is set so low that it does not improve quality, you should eliminate it altogether. The bar is useless. But you should only do that if you are getting the quality necessary for great schools. This is obviously not the case.

We need to raise the bar, not eliminate it. The McKinsey study says that selectivity is the key to great schools. Our current teacher certification processes are anything BUT selective. Our Ed schools are not all that rigorous to get through and most state teacher tests have pass rates over 95%.

This is not highly selective. Therefore you would not expect to see much difference between a certified and uncertified teacher.

Choose the right inputs to measure in potential teachers - the ones that lead to greater student achievement (we do). Set the bar high enough to ensure people have the skills and knowledge to perform and you will see better results. Don’t end certification. Make it relevant and make it rigorous.

Hopping over the low bar

Ed Sector has some great discussion on teacher certification and is using the graph from the Brookings Institution study of LAUSD teachers. The study showed almost no performance difference between alternatively certified teachers, teachers certified through standard routes and teachers with no certification. This is mainly due to the wide variation in teacher performance in all three groups.

The main issue is that there is no selectivity in the current teacher certification process in most states so of course they come out no better than teachers with no certification. The current process is just a matter of completing a series of tasks. It is rare to fail these programs and rarer still to fail the teacher certification test so the certification does not actually do anything for the teachers.

When the bar is low – everyone can jump over. And if everyone can jump over, it is just the same as having no bar at all. Therefore, these results are not surprising to anyone who works in certification.

Our pass rate is less than 35% through the ABCTE program. We have a very high bar so that only the best can make it into the classroom. Mathematica will have the first indication on student achievement on our teachers this winter. Based upon some of the other studies, the higher bar should give us better results.

Thank you Governor Blunt!

I first went to Missouri two and a half years ago and knew nothing about the legislative process. I learned the hard way. We didn’t even get our bill out of committee that year. But last Thursday I was standing next to Governor Matt Blunt as he signed the very first bill he approved this legislative session – the bill to allow ABCTE. A very hard fought victory to help school districts with their teacher shortages. Once the politics is done, the real work takes over.

Due to the press coverage the Governor received in signing the bill, over 400 Missourians have asked for more information about our alternative certification program and we have now had 11 enrollments in the first week from Missouri. Our enrollments include 4 biology candidates, 1 physics candidate, 1 general science, 1 math and the rest in English. Last year, Missouri ed schools graduated 5 potential physics teachers for the entire state. We just increased that by 20%. Not bad for a days work.

I got to meet one of our new potential Missouri teachers. She wanted to teach but did not have the money to pay to take the large amount of course work required by a so-called alternative teacher certification program. She also couldn’t sacrifice the time away from her family.

From the St. Louis Today article about the bill signing: “Heather Meert of Imperial holds a bachelor's degree, a master's degree and credit toward her PhD. She loves working as a substitute teacher for the Fox School District, but it would take a couple of years and thousands of dollars to actually get certified to teach. "I have all this education, and it didn't make sense for me to go back to school," she said.”

Too many people like Heather don’t get into teaching because of the cost and time required for so much course work. The immediate interest in our program in Missouri demonstrates that a streamlined, yet rigorous, alternative certification can attract more great talent into teaching. And the principals who hired out teachers are pretty happy that talent is there.

It's Limbo Time!

Where are the teacher unions in Massachusetts? As defenders of the profession, they should be outraged by a bill that will lower the standard for getting into the profession. McKinsey tells us from their research that selectivity is how the best performing schools in the world build a world class teaching work force. Massachusetts is going to keep the bar high to get into teaching unless you can't reach the bar.

Massachusettss going to allow people to appeal if they fail their teaching exam. They will be able to meet other criteria to get their certification because too many can’t pass. My favorite quote is from a school board member Christopher R. Anderson who said: "These are people in the anecdotal cases I've seen who we don't want to see pushed out of the profession, and the lack of the appeals process has been a hurdle to retaining them"

Alert the Journal of Anecdotal Evidence – once again, we dramatically change an education system designed for large numbers based on anecdotal evidence.

And in a nod to the education groups who love to compare teaching to lawyers and physicians, Republican lawmakers put forth amendments to let doctors and lawyers practice even if they failed their certification exams. Seems that comparison is only good in certain situations.

We will never develop a world class education system without a world class teaching workforce that we will never have until we build more selectivity into the system. We are stuck in a downward spiral – we can’t get teachers who can pass a test because their education wasn’t that great so we are going to lower the bar and let them in anyway, lowering the education prospects of a new generation of students who wont be able to reach this lower bar to get into teaching – and so on.

Thank you Massachusetts for taking a giant step backwards.

The Fox Guarding the Hen House

Yesterday in Nevada, I again was subjected to the harsh conflict of interest that exists in Teacher Certification. Many states, like Nevada, have professional standards boards to approve changes to teacher certification that are made up of - SURPRISE - Ed School Deans and professors!! Woohoo. Now, normally they try to take the high ground and not appear blatant about protecting their monopoly – but yesterday was an extreme exception.

The chairman of this task force, Dr. Luft, Associate Dean of Education, University of Nevada Reno, stated that if he voted for approving ABCTE he would be “hung from the elms in the quad” at his school. Later in the discussion he said that they couldn’t vote for this as it would hurt the ed schools financially. Now if your conflict of interest is that deep, don’t you think maybe you should recuse yourself from the proceedings – not preside over them.

If anybody wonders why alternative certification programs end up looking like regular certification programs you only have to look at the make up of state agency set up to approve the programs. I don’t want to be too subtle here so let me explain it in layman terms:

IF YOU PUT ED SCHOOLS IN CHARGE OF APPROVING PROGRAMS – THEY WILL ONLY APPROVE ED SCHOOL-LIKE PROGRAMS.
Duh.

Alternative Certification Isn't

Obviously we are thrilled with the recent study by Fordham and NCTQ revealing that Alternative Certification in the US really isn't. I remember back a few years when I briefly thought about going to law school and looked into a couple of night schools. I found out that they basically consisted of the day time program crammed into the night - it wasn't spread out or really designed for busy professionals to complete their course work. It was designed to work well for the university.

So to with Alternative Certification programs - and it is not surprising since most states put union members and ed school professors on their certification approval committees. Can anyone really be surprised that the programs they approve all include course work? The sad thing is that most of the course work is done during the first year of teaching. So this new teacher has to learn the craft, create great lesson plans, grade their papers, build their stamina (let's not kid ourselves - this is key) and then go to classes at night?? Gee - I wonder why they don't stay around long.

Also - it gets really annoying out there when everyone thinks that Teach for America, The New Teacher Project and Troops to Teachers are alternative certification programs- they are not. They are recruitment strategies (that work by the way!!). They recruit prospective teachers and help them get through current certification methods accepted in the state.

One can only hope that people read this and understand that to truly attract more people into teaching, we need alternative certification routes designed to attract professionals who want to work with America's students.