While “alternative” routes to teacher certification have proliferated over the past two decades, most of the programs do little to earn the “alternative” label, concludes a report from the Washington-based Thomas B. Fordham Institute.
As a result, the report says, the programs fail to live up to their original goals of opening the teaching profession to talented career-changers and providing quick but successful transitions to the classroom.
Researchers for the study conducted a telephone survey of 49 randomly selected alternative-certification programs in the 11 states most likely to hire alternatively trained teachers.
The study recommends that state legislatures and education departments require alternative programs to limit coursework, raise admission standards, provide intensive new-teacher support, and adopt other measures to distinguish them from undergraduate and master’s-degree programs leading to teacher certification.
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