What's All the Debate About? How Districts Can Solve the Dilemma Themselves
The National Center for Alternative Teacher Certification
Written exclusively for EducationNews.org
By President, Delia Stafford-Johnson and Vicky S. Dill, Ph.D., Sr. Researcher for The National Center for Alternative Teacher Certification Information at The Haberman Educational Foundation Our simple vision," Finding principals and teachers of excellence for the children and youth of America"

Editorial.

We sit here marveling. The data is conclusive. For two decades, the research has been crunched, bunched and tossed about. No matter. Alternative Certification has a proven record and school districts and universities throughout the states, boast such programs. Trees have tumbled and diatribes have been lobbed. The "research is in." The "Executive Summary" of the Abell Foundation's Report, "Teacher Certification Reconsidered: Stumbling for Quality" ran some eighty pages and Linda Darling-Hammond's retort ran some sixty. Banking on process, we educators learn nothing at all. It is clearly not any inherent traits of the traditional process of teacher certification nor any inherent aspects of alternative teacher certification that automatically produce a good teacher! Process alone tells us nothing. Rather, an astute and rigorous analysis of the product,( i.e. the teacher and student achievement) will reveal what will work for any one school district. School districts can and must decide the debate themselves The students and their parents, who are the clients, deserve nothing less.

The Customer is in Charge.

What can school districts do to decide 1.) if they should build their own alternative teacher certification programs, 2.) hire teachers who are alternatively certified or 3.) hire those currently in an altcert. program? Is there any way to predict which teachers will support student achievement and which ones will stay? We say, yes. (www.altcert.org)

1. Select all candidates, no matter how certified, with the same interview.

A consistent interview will give baseline data that will enable district leaders to compare the student achievement and retention data of individuals hired for particular school settings. Districts should screen all candidates at a central screening location, then release candidates for interviews with site based advisory teams. The interview should ensure teacher success with at-risk students since teachers who are successful with these populations can teach all children while teachers who are successful only with advantaged students may be called upon to teach the "at risk population" and not have the emotional or relationship-building skills to do so.

2. Be relentlessly data-based.

School districts should track the route to certification that each teacher took, even if fully certified when hired. Whether a novice or experienced teacher, it would be advisable for the school district to track the student achievement of each teacher and correlate this to certification route. Trends may be observable which would give district leaders insight about what works for their district. Some schools of education may succeed in producing elementary teachers who can succeed with advantaged kindergarteners; others, perhaps alternative routes, may succeed in producing teachers who can facilitate the learning of at-risk high school students. No one else will manage to gather this data as effectively as district leaders who, as customers of the various certifying entities, have the greatest stake in this knowledge.

3. Analyze the database for cadre-specific techniques and expertise

Some schools of education are especially successful in teaching novices how to work with urban students who are broadly disadvantaged. Or perhaps they target rural youth at risk or in poverty. These populations require possession of unique characteristics among the teachers who serve them - resilience, persistence, a knowledge of how to motivate diverse learners. As the district gathers appropriate data, district leaders may wish to articulate the novices from programs with a history of success with low-SES students to those openings where a larger percentage of those students are likely to enroll. This targeted, focused placement will enable districts to grow leaders who can teach all children, not just the broadly advantaged. Further, professional development can be differentiated for the population of novices being addressed

4. Track specific programs for retention.

Student achievement and retention are both important to track. As most industry experts in human resources are aware, employee turnover costs the organization about two and a half times the annual salary of the employee who turns over. This figure includes the costs of recruiting and hiring, of orienting and professionally developing new hires, and of tracking the progress of novices throughout the special programs which attend them for the first several years on the job. Do alternative teacher certification program interns from a specific program stay longer? Why? Do graduates from Program D at institution A succeed and stay with special education students? Clearly, institutions in most states have no invested interest in following the success of their graduates with specific populations. This task is left to school district officials whose ability to use the data will enable them, over time, to decipher effective programs from ineffective ones.

Conclusion

Save the trees. The debate is over. There are successful traditional and successful alternative teacher certification programs. The process is irrelevant. Selection is key and data tracking is indispensable. We believe there are reasons why alternative teacher certification programs produce more mature, giving, and effective teachers for youth at risk, but you decide! Take the data challenge and see who works best for your students in your district. If you need help, call 713-667-6185 The National Center for Alternative Teacher Certification at The Haberman Educational Foundation ; we're there to help.