Alternate route, same destination: all highly qualified teachers
Last month, Congress passed legislation defining “highly qualified” to include teachers pursuing their credential through an alternative certification program. The legislation comes on the heels of a September ruling by the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversing the designation of “highly qualified” for teachers going through alternative certification programs, following the controversial lawsuit by the advocacy group Public Advocates. Before Congress’ recent action, the ruling had the potential to cut off a critical pathway to teaching for many professionals, as well as an important pipeline of effective teachers for California school districts.
At the cornerstone of this debate is whether we should accept the strictest interpretation of what it means to be a “highly qualified” teacher, which according to Public Advocates and the recent U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision, solely applies to teachers who pursued their credential through a traditional preparation program. A traditional program differs from an alternate route program in that alternative route programs provide skilled professionals with quicker access to the classroom, coupled with concurrent coursework and intensive coaching and support.
The California Teacher Corps, the statewide organization representing California’s alternative route to certification programs, disagrees, as did Congress. The legislation is a bold step in reaffirming the validity of multiple pathways into the classroom for prospective teachers, including an alternative pathway, all of which produce highly qualified teachers for our students.
Teachers going through alternative route to certification programs are often second-career professionals, and other content experts, who want to serve their community and teach in the public schools in greatest need, including hard-to-staff and high-poverty schools. They include former scientists, child advocates, lawyers and federal prosecutors, military men and women, as well as other individuals who might not have otherwise entered the classroom if not for this pathway, but who are all seeking to give of their time and talents to better educate California’s students. Our programs attract career changers, under-represented minorities, and homegrown teachers for high-need rural communities, as well as content experts to fill fields with a critical shortage of qualified teachers, such as math, science, and special education, areas in which our state falls behind.
All of these professionals, even before they set foot into the classroom, must pass a rigorous subject-matter competency test and are required to complete an equivalent of a full semester’s worth, or 160 hours of instruction, including pedagogy, classroom management, and lesson design. Additionally, coursework and instruction continue concurrent to teaching in the classroom. Most importantly, our teachers also receive day-t0-day mentorship and coaching for up to two years by veteran educators.
Despite these valuable skills and the real-world experiences these teachers bring with them, as well as rigorous preparation programs, there are those who continue to take an archaic interpretation as to whether they are “highly qualified.”
Recruiting for low-income districts
They also raise concern over the “disproportionate” concentration of our teachers in high-need, high-poverty schools, all of which serve the very students who are in most need of the best and brightest teachers in their classrooms.
We couldn’t agree more, and that is why we proactively recruit and place our teachers in these underserved communities. We know that our teachers, with their maturity, real-world experience, content expertise, and understanding of the community in which they teach, are often the best suited to serve in high-need schools and meet the diverse needs of their students.
In fact, when principals and school districts are asked to weigh in, more than 90 percent rank teachers from alternative route to certification programs as good as or better than teachers from traditional programs, according to a 2009 survey commissioned by the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC). More importantly, nearly 95 percent of principals would again hire additional teachers from alternative route programs.
Over the last six years, alternative route to certification programs have placed more than 55,000 highly skilled teachers in California public schools. This pathway has been used to recruit much-needed math and science professionals into the teaching profession, retrain and shift over 1,500 pink-slipped teachers into the high-need field of special education, assist rural school districts in recruiting and retaining homegrown talent, and place a higher percentage of under-represented minorities in the classroom than are currently teaching within the broader California school system.
Alternative route to certification programs have historically met the varying needs of California public schools, and while doing so have recruited and placed “highly qualified” teachers in classrooms across the state. After all, would you tell Colin Powell that he was not highly qualified to teach civics or history, Steven Spielberg to teach drama or film, or astronaut Sally Ride to teach science just because they have not gone through a traditional preparation program? As we work together to reform the K-12 public education system, we must move past our old assumptions as to what makes an effective teacher and keep the pipeline open to include talented professionals who want to serve the students who need them the most.
The California Teacher Corps is the statewide organization representing California’s alternative route to certification programs. A nonprofit established in 2009, the Teacher Corps has set the goal to place 100,000 highly qualified teachers in California’s communities by 2020. California Teacher Corps membership trains second-career teachers and others committed to working in hard-to-staff schools, who have deep subject-area expertise and who remain in the teaching profession.
Catherine Kearney, president of the California Teacher Corps, is the dean of the Teachers College of San Joaquin and the director of Teacher Development in the San Joaquin County Office of Education. She directs the Project IMPACT District Intern Program, an alternative route to certification program that includes teacher preparation for multiple-subject, single-subject, and education specialist candidates. Before that, Kearney was director of an AmeriCorps program, classroom teacher (elementary, middle, and high school), professor, and doctoral fellow.
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I don’t disagree with you about the quality of intern teachers v. those in traditional programs. I earned my credential as an intern and teach in an intern program. With that said, I disagree with the definitional change of “highly-qualified” – not because intern teachers are less qualified, but because the original intent of the NCLB legislation in this area was to highlight the disparity between credentialed and non-credentialed teachers in harder to staff districts. With intern teachers now counted as highly qualified, the spotlight will be shone less brightly on these districts as the disparity will not be as great. I don’t see a scenario where this is a good thing for students. While interns in your program are probably in it for the long haul, those like in TFA (which I was a corps member) are not. These 2 year intern teachers will do little to close the long-term inequities and merely perpetuate the need to continue the TFA relationship with the districts they serve.
The whole concept of “highly-qualified” is a joke in and of itself, but I don’t see the benefits of this definitional change in the long run.
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I have no problem with Congress’ confirming that interns are highly qualified. As I have pointed out in comments to other blog entries in the “Teacher Development” category, interns reflect a spectrum. All have demonstrated subject-matter competency, but some are indeed entering the classroom for the first time AND are just beginning to study pedagogy. Others, like Early Completion Option interns, have demonstrated pedagogical knowledge and are just waiting to complete one final assignment. A credential is a piece of paper, NOT evidence of any change in an individual’s competence.
I am going to adapt comments I’d written for another blog entry here…
A parental right-to-know/right-to-choose is implied in this lawsuit. Parents are not qualified to assess a teacher’s fitness to teach. This is why we have certification exams, regulated teacher preparation programs, certificated vice principals and principals, and local (specified in collective bargaining agreements) as well as state (specified in the Education Code, as in the case of PAR) teacher evaluation regimes. What would parents do if granted the disclosure sought by the plaintiffs in this lawsuit? Presumably, they would pressure principals to move their children from classes taught by interns to classes taught by credentialed teachers.
The process could be repeated ad infinitum. Parents could ask to move their children from classes taught by holders of preliminary credentials (1 to 5 years of teaching experience) to classes taught by holders of clear credentials (2+ years of experience). Parents could then ask to move their children from classes taught by holders of inferior credentials (Foundational-Level Math vs. Math, Supplemental vs. Subject Matter Authorization vs. credential, Life General Secondary vs. S.B. 2042 Single Subject, etc., etc.). Parents might also want to move their children from classes taught by non-tenured teachers (1 to 2 years of teaching, or a recent layoff, or a recent change of district) to classes taught by teachers with “permanent” status. Assuming that these arbitrary, on-paper, distinctions are correlated with teacher effectiveness (research suggests that there isn’t much of a correlation), can a mass education system accommodate such preferences? If Student A gets to move to a “better” class, Student B from that class must now be shifted to the “inferior” room. This is nothing but a recipe for intRA-school inequity. The one part of the suit that I agree with is the claim that intern teachers are unevenly distributed (intER-school inequity). Of course, we could make the same claim about teachers with few years of experience, or teachers working outside their field of certification, or teachers without graduate degrees. As of 2009-2010, there were only 5,500 interns left in California [see the November, 2009 CTC agenda item], out of a teacher workforce numbering 300,000. The trend is down, and there will probably be even fewer interns next year. If we are going to mandate that the state’s remaining interns be distributed fairly, let’s do it for the sake of the interns themselves, not for the sake of the minute number of students affected.
Why place interns — relative beginners — in the state’s worst classrooms, where they are least likely to succeed? In this matter, I disagree with Mrs. Kearney. Using an analogy from the medical field, would we assign a surgery resident to do a quadruple heart bypass on her first day? Hard-to-staff classrooms are hard-to-staff for a reason: even veteran teachers struggle to meet the needs of those students. Interns (and, for that matter, newly-credentialed teachers who followed the traditional student teaching pathway) need a gentle introduction to the profession. Research shows that teacher effectiveness increases during the first five years. New teachers who want to work with troubled students (not all do, which highlights another problem with our seniority-based and non-consensual approach to assigning teachers) should move gradually to the more challenging classrooms. I will close by pointing out that parents can already find out the credential status of their children’s teacher(s). The information has always been public, and for several years now, it has been available on the CTC Web site. Chances are that if you felt I were not highly qualified to teach your child, I would be happy to see your child leave my classroom!
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(Sorry, the paragraph breaks were messed up when I copied and modified the text for my previous post.)
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The bigger issue is whether the Federal Government should be setting standards re: teacher qualifications in the first place. Education should not be a functin of the Federal Government.
The Department of Education should be abolished. That would effectively remove the “machinery” through which disastrous Federal Legislation such as NCLB, RTT, etc, etc. is channeled to micromanage what should be local and/or state functions. Nothing can be corrected as long as the carrot of Federal $$ ( direct or indirect) exist, for the old “truism” hasn’t changed: “He who has the gold (funding permission) sets the standards”. ESEA which was the camel’s nose in the tent of Federal meddling in schools was only introduced into the education
scene in mid 1960’s or 45 years ago. One can trace a downward spiral of public schools beginning in the 60’s. If federal involvment in schools were a positive thing, it seems obvious that schools should be enjoying praise for excellence across the board, and teachers enjoying
credit for jobs well done…. Not the scenario with which all stakeholders including taxpayers, teachers, and parents wrestle with 45 years later.
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Ms. Kearney mischaracterizes the Renee v. Duncan lawsuit. The suit is not an attack on alternative certification programs. The Renee plaintiffs are simply arguing that intern teachers should not be labeled “highly qualified” until they have graduated from an alternative certification program. The federal regulation they challenged (and now the bogus federal law seeking to overturn the Ninth Circuit’s decision) mislabeled interns who are only just beginning an alternative program as “highly qualified,” thereby allowing these alternative route trainees to be concentrated in schools serving low-income students and students of color and then hiding that fact from parents and the public. In California, nearly a quarter of interns teach in schools serving students who are 98-100% minority.
The Ninth Circuit’s decision would not eliminate alternative certification programs. Districts do, and would continue to, hire interns and other non-highly qualified teachers to address teacher shortages. But, under NCLB, the Court’s decision would require that these teachers be equitably distributed and that districts publicly report they are hiring teachers who are not “highly qualified.” Maintaining the status quo, as Congress sought to do with its recent amendment, masks the fact that low-income students and students of color are disproportionately taught by untrained intern teachers. This allows policy makers to pretend they are providing all students equal access to quality teachers, rather than forcing them to enact policies that attract and retain permanent, fully-prepared teachers to our neediest schools.
If teacher trainees in alternative certification programs like Ms. Kearney’s are so desirable, then why are the highest-performing districts in California not banging down their doors trying to hire them? Our clients, the plaintiffs in Renee, are simply asking for equal access to the fully-prepared teachers that their peers in more affluent communities are provided. What’s wrong with that?
For more information, read my colleague John Affeldt’s Huffington Post columns on this issue: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-affeldt/congress-lowering-standar_b_799523.html
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“After all, would you tell Colin Powell that he was not highly qualified to teach civics or history, Steven Spielberg to teach drama or film, or astronaut Sally Ride to teach science just because they have not gone through a traditional preparation program?”
— That’s carefully worded. Take out the final clause and then, yes, I might debate the premise. In other words, I would not assume that these experts are qualified to teach, but, I wouldn’t express my doubts as a function of their having gone through a traditional preparation.
So, Powell certainly knows his content, but does he know how to plan instruction for eighth graders of varying abilities, special educational needs, linguistic backgrounds, etc.? Can he speak with any authority about varied assessment strategies and how to adjust instruction based on assessment? Can Sally Ride differentiate instruction in science based on the math skills of the 40 students she must manage in a 30-student lab? Can she anticipate the most likely breakdowns in student comprehension of new concepts in physics? Is she patient, caring, consistent…?
In other words, content area knowledge is not necessarily teaching skill. Pam Grossman (Stanford) once told an audience of teachers about a study of elementary math teachers compared to university math teachers. The elementary school teachers outperformed the professors at recognizing the causes of student errors and misconceptions, which is the key to adjusting instruction. The profs look at the mistake and wonder how anyone could come up with that, while the teachers more easily spot the reversals, the problems with place values, problems with sequencing, etc. So, Spielberg might know movies, but if he doesn’t know students, give me a teacher instead.
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Ms. Kini, no school district here in California ‘hides’ credential information from parents. State-mandated school accountability report cards contain statistics about teachers with ‘less than a full credential’, including interns. To find out the credential status of a particular teacher, a parent need only go to the Web site of the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing. Each teacher’s record is public, and instantly available.
As I said in my post, if it isn’t intern status, then it will be years of experience, or achievement of an advanced degree, or calibre of the credential. Do your clients intend to litigate for equalization of those factors as well? The staff of a homogeneous, high-minority, low-income school looks different from the staff of a heterogeneous, racially and economically balanced school. Workload and resources at these two types of schools also differ.
The fact is that most teachers don’t want to work in tough schools. Were you contemplating forcing teachers to work in places where they didn’t want to be? That doesn’t seem like a good way to promote retention.
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If intern teachers are so highly qualified, why not place them in low-need districts, while supporting veteran teachers from those districts with incentives that make high-needs schools (pay bonuses, reductions to class size, time for collaboration, etc.) attractive for career educators?
Intern teachers, particularly those from organizations like Teach for America, are even less likely to remain in the profession. This increases the overwhelming churn at these schools. Transient teachers are less likely to build strong relationships with students and their families – and since many families at high-needs schools have often had poor relationships with educational institutions, these relationships matter. Moreover, the lower seniorities these teachers represent leads to increased disruption through layoffs.
As an educator with ten years’ experience at high-needs schools, I find that high numbers of intern teachers has a negative impact on my practice and development. Since these teachers have immediate pedagogical needs, professional development is geared toward basic topics. I spend a great deal of my time assisting my younger peers in their practice. But if I am interested in professional development on topics in which I wish to develop, I’ll need to pay for it. And my intern colleagues are often so overwhelmed that they cannot offer me the feedback on my instruction that any teacher needs to grow professionally.
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