Ritchey, 8:00 a.m.:

I was asked to initiate a debate on the following subject: “the impact of teacher certification on student achievement.” First, the requisite full disclosure note: I am Executive Director of the Association of Teacher Educators, whose members are associated with teacher education at all levels (and in many cases certification at the state level). Next, my own personal caveat: opinions expressed are my own and do not represent “official” policy of the Association of Teacher Educators or its members. My position as Executive Director of ATE may have been responsible for my being asked to participate in this debate, but I am not speaking for ATE in this blog.

My opening propositions may cause some problems for the debate since I may not be providing the expected knee-jerk defense of certification as it currently exists that might have been expected.

Proposition 1: Alternative certification routes can be worthwhile and necessary. This country faces a severe teacher shortage in certain areas, and programs like Teach for America and Transition to Teaching can get people with subject knowledge into areas where they are desperately needed. However:

Proposition 2: Those who take alternative certification routes need mentoring, professional development, and preparation in some basic skills (such as developing a lesson plan) before they go into the classroom. There is a big difference between, say, leading a seminar on new computer software usage for corporate employees and trying to get a group of 30 teenagers who may not want to be there to focus on algebra concepts in an inner city high school. Wait a minute: preparation, mentoring, professional development… isn’t that what teacher preparation programs are supposed to be doing?

Proposition 3: Teacher certification programs aren’t perfect. There, I said it. But they have evolved and continue to evolve. A generation ago, an education major could graduate from a college or university having taken very few, if any, courses outside of the education school. Today education preparation programs are tied in closely with the rest of the college campus, and those who want to teach will have taken a large number of courses outside of the education departments and in many cases, especially for secondary school teachers, will be required to major in the disciplines they wish to teach rather than “education.” This evolution extends beyond curriculum requirements for teacher candidates. Three of the most exciting trends that have come about recently for teacher preparation programs are (1) the rapid embrace of technology, to ensure that teachers will not only be comfortable with technological changes on the horizon but will be able to utilize them in the education of their students; (2) an emphasis on “teacher as researcher,” so that teachers will be encouraged to discover what works and use new techniques in the classroom; and (3) partnerships such as Professional Development Schools, in which the college and university education schools partner with p-12 schools in their regions to provide an even greater opportunity for mentoring and professional development for the teaching staffs. Certification requirements have similarly changed and are changing regularly, and the introduction of alternative certification routes can be seen as another movement in this evolution.

I do not agree, however, with those who would propose eliminating all certification requirements except for, perhaps, a clean background check and a B.A. or B.S. degree. This is a “baby and bathwater” approach that would unfortunately get rid of some necessary things. I believe teacher preparation programs have developed some very worthwhile techniques for dealing with classroom diversity, discipline problems, learning difficulties, and so on. The radical approach may be a result of not seeing how teacher preparation has changed recently. The old paradigm of the education college as an “island” in the university where teacher candidates could spend all their time has passed by completely. Teacher preparation programs are partnering in creative ways with the universities, communities, and school districts, and this creative evolution coordinates with the changes in state certification requirements.

Note I have not addressed the original question, tying student achievement to teacher certification. One reason for this is that a number of studies have addressed this question and have come to very different conclusions. For each study you can provide showing there is no relationship between certification requirements and student achievement, I can usually poke holes in the research method and at the same time provide other studies showing correlations (which are open to your hole-poking). Teach for America, as one example, is a highly worthwhile program that calls upon the best instincts of our most motivated young. It is, however, extremely competitive and can afford to take only the most highly qualified candidates from the best schools. It might be unfair, therefore, to compare student achievement for TFA teachers to student achievement for the much larger body of teachers who have received state certification.

I continue to be an optimist. I think the debate going on is good for teacher preparation and for education in general. We might disagree on methods to do it, but we can agree that education in this country is critical to our future and we can always work to improve it.

Carey, 1:38 p.m.:

Thanks to Edspresso for hosting this debate, and to David for his thoughtful comments on teacher education and certification. Like David, I'm not an extremist on these issues–I'm not, for example, one of those foolish people who believe, as George Will said recently, that the quickest way to improve the public schools would be to "close all the schools of education."

However, I don't think the case for teacher certification is as strong as David suggests. There are two questions to address here:

1. What should the minimum qualifications for teaching in public schools be?
2. Who should set those standards?

The first question has historically been answered in terms of teachers' educational credentials, usually the completion of a state-approved teacher training program. In recent years, new teachers have also been asked to pass standardized tests.

The answer to the second question is: state governments, which, with a few exceptions, legally prohibit schools from hiring teachers who don't meet the state-created standards.

I think there are serious problems with both of these approaches.

First, there's a lot more to being an effective teacher than course credentials and the knowledge needed to pass tests like the Praxis (which aren't very difficult to begin with). Qualities like work ethic, organizational ability, knowledge and experience from outside education, the ability to work in teams, critical thinking skills, and high expectations for oneself and one's students all contribute to success in the classroom. A teacher short on formal training but long on all of those other qualities is arguably more than minimally qualified to teach.

Second, the person in the best position to make that kind of complicated judgment is the person doing the hiring, usually the school principal. Mandatory certification takes that discretion out of local educators' hands, preventing them from hiring people who want to teach and whom they believe have what it takes to succeed.

So the question is whether mandatory certification based on a limited subset of important teacher qualities is worth the cost, both in terms of the large financial and human resources needed to create certification regimes and send millions of teachers through mandatory training, and in terms of the lost opportunity to hire people who could be good—or even great—teachers.

The evidence suggests it's not. David is correct that some studies show benefits of certification and others don't, but I think that inconsistency is, itself, an indictment of teacher certification. Even the studies that find benefits don't find particularly large benefits. Given the mount of time, effort, and money that go into creating and maintaining certification regimes, and the undeniable cost in terms of keeping potentially good teachers out of the classroom, the benefits should be large and unambiguous, not small and subject to debate.

The case for certification is also undermined by the fact that educational institutions that aren't required to hire certified teachers often don't. Private K-12 schools, which by and large perform as well as public schools even after controlling for student demographics, could choose to make certification mandatory. Most do not. And of course schools of education themselves, like all universities, don't operate under state government regulation when it comes to who they hire to teach their students.

Moreover, I don't think that eliminating the legal mandate for certification would necessarily lead to a "baby and bathwater" situation. States could maintain certification processes but simply remove the legal prohibition against hiring teachers without those credentials. If schools of education provide the benefits they say they do, then schools hiring teachers will still require most new teachers to have that training, and most people wanting to be new teachers will seek out those credentials to enhance their prospects in the job market. But if the balance of other qualities makes a particular non-certified candidate the right person for the job, schools should be able to hire them.

I also think there's real potential to implement new policies designed to raise minimum standards and increase teacher quality by focusing less on teacher inputs like training and more on teacher outcomes, like student success in the classroom. But since we've got four more days of discussion, I'll save the details for future posts.

Ritchey, 9:35 a.m.:

I am looking forward to future installments in this debate as well. Kevin has raised some very good points regarding certification, but by highlighting the role of states in the certification process he has opened the door to a discussion on equity.

Certainly we’d want all teachers to be dedicated, moral, strong on organizational ability, and devoted to their profession in all the ways Kevin describes. State certification obviously isn’t going to guarantee this, and unfortunately I don’t believe relying on principals in individual local schools will guarantee this either -- not because the principals can’t make the kinds of decisions Kevin describes but because in many cases they don’t have the resources to attract and keep teachers with that type of dedication. The reality is often that wealthy school districts are able to hire and retain the types of teachers Kevin refers to, while the less wealthy school districts make do with teachers who may not be well prepared, may have much less experience, and who may be anxious to move out of those districts to wealthier districts as soon as they can. This is a reality the principals simply can’t control.

Disclosure: I used to work for the Association of School Business Officials International, so I have a little understanding of school finance issues and I’d like to bring this perspective into the discussion. I believe there’s a parallel in the history of state and federal involvement in education in general, including school financing, and state and federal involvement in teacher certification.

Historically the responsibility for education was left exclusively to the localities. States got involved only when it became obvious that different localities would be unable to provide comparable levels of education. The goal of this state involvement was to level the playing field to some degree, so that state revenues could be diverted to less wealthy localities and other state decisions would help to guarantee all citizens access to quality education. Obviously the outcomes of this involvement can be debated, but I believe the intention of state involvement has been to make sure quality education was available to all.

The federal government’s involvement in P-12 education generally dates from the 1954 Brown v. Board decision. Later involvements included Head Start and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. The intention of this federal government involvement was again, I believe, to guarantee access to quality education for those who might not otherwise be able to gain this access. This has culminated in No Child Left Behind.

State certification and requirements for passage of tests like Praxis are at least theoretically useful in guaranteeing minimum prerequisites for teachers regardless of where they teach. One of the reasons No Child Left Behind originally received strong bipartisan support was the recognition that inequalities across school districts had progressed to such a level that even the states were unable to address these inequalities and the federal government had to step in. Title II of NCLB focuses on teacher preparation exclusively, attempting to guarantee that each classroom shall have a “highly qualified professional” in the teaching position. Certification requirements were recognized in the final law as an indicator of qualification, although NCLB still left it up to the states to determine what those requirements should be.

I don’t think state certification requirements have removed much if any control from the individual school principals, and their value in providing at least some minimum level of preparation and continuing education across all types of school districts, rich and poor alike, is important.

One area not addressed so far is the role certification has played in making sure teachers continue to maintain and improve their skills (at least theoretically). This gets into the full range of teacher preparation. As Kevin points out, a minimal set of skills and passage on a standardized test won’t provide sufficient guidance on how well teachers teach. The most exciting aspect of teacher preparation is the feedback that is going on, a quest to find out “what works” and replicate that across the school districts. It may be that in-school teacher learning communities, mentoring, and other forms of professional development that are making great strides now in helping people become better teachers would not have been instituted without certification (and recertification) requirements. Certainly certification makes it more likely that teachers will participate in such unique experiments, because they get recertification points for their participation. I mentioned previously that teachers are becoming “researchers” through such practices; they are learning about techniques that have worked for others, they are finding new ways to assess the skills of their students and reach all students, and they are using more and more sophisticated feedback mechanisms. Certification encourages this innovation, I believe.

Some have described certification as a gate-keeping method for controlling entry to the teaching profession (using the guild model), as if there’s a large number of potentially great teachers out there anxious to go into the classroom and dedicate their lives to teaching but who are frustrated by the state certification requirements and so are forced to turn to other ways to make a living. If this were so it would be a wonderful argument for at the very least radically changing the certification process. I disagree strongly with this argument, however; historically, as pointed out, certification requirements were developed not to keep all those dedicated people Kevin describes out of the profession. They were developed to ensure some level of equity across school districts. States today are aggressively looking at ways to open the doors to dedicated prospective teachers through alternative forms of certification with relatively minimal entry requirements. The key is to provide the mentoring, continuing professional development, and community-based feedback loops that enable teachers to learn about what works, participate together to improve their teaching methods, and share their knowledge and learning. This is teacher preparation and mentoring at its best. I believe state certification requirements help foster this innovation.

Carey, 3:24 p.m.:

David is absolutely right to note that disadvantaged students don't get their fair share of good teachers. This is a huge civil rights issue, one that has historically been under-reported and unaddressed. But I don't think certification helps that problem as much as he suggests. In some ways, it makes it worse.

David argues that since schools serving disadvantaged students tend to end up with the least effective teachers, certification ensures that there's at least some kind of legal floor in place as to how ineffective they can be, which is better than no floor at all.

There are a couple of problems with this kind of "bottom-up" approach to improving teacher quality. First, given the inherent limitations of existing certification regimes to ensure quality—a point on which David and I seem to agree—disadvantaged students still end up with far too many sub-standard teachers.

Second, disadvantaged students need much more than the least-ineffective teachers–they need the best teachers to have a fighting chance at getting ahead. Raising the floor isn't nearly good enough—we need to reverse the current distribution and match the most effective teachers with the students who need them most. But because certification gives the false impression that all public school teachers are "good enough," the pressure to take action to get more truly effective teachers in the classrooms of disadvantaged students is reduced.

Moreover, I think David is far too quick to dismiss the idea that there may be "a large number of potentially great teachers out there anxious to go into the classroom and dedicate their lives to teaching but who are frustrated by the state certification requirements." Teach for America had 19,000 applicants this year, every one of them wanting to teach in a high-poverty school. The New York City Teaching Fellows program—another alternate route to teaching—had 2,500 applicants for 350 available positions in its first year of operation, and the number of applicants has risen sharply since. There are now over 7,000 Teaching Fellows in NYC schools, roughly one out of every twelve teachers in the system. A recent study from the New Teacher Project found that, contrary to popular belief, many of the best teacher applicants choose suburban schools over urban schools not because of an aversion to urban schools but because inefficient urban district human resources offices wait too long before offering them a job.

In other words, one of the most promising strategies to redressing the maldistribution of teachers to disadvantaged students that David cites is to lower barriers to entering the profession created by certification.

David cites the value of the ongoing teacher training and professional development required by most certification policies. He's right to emphasize the importance of continual learning and professional growth. But the current requirements for training after entering the classroom suffer from the same flaws as the requirements for training before entering the classroom—they're based on seat time in courses of questionable quality and have little or no direct link to boosting student achievement.

Instead, the whole issue of improving teacher quality and ensuring minimum standards should be re-oriented toward the thing that matters most: concrete evidence of improved student learning.

Brookings published a report by Robert Gordon, Thomas Kane, and Douglas Staiger titled "Identifying Effective Teachers Using Performance on the Job" a few months ago that does a good job of making this point.

Kane and Staiger analyzed the performance of roughly 150,000 students in 9,400 classrooms in the Los Angeles Unified School District each year from 2000 through 2003, identifying three distinct groups of teachers who taught those students: those who were certified when hired, those who were uncertified when hired but were participating in an alternative certification program, and those who were uncertified and were not participating in an alternative certification program. They found that "controlling for baseline characteristics of students and comparing classrooms within schools, there is no statistically significant difference in achievement for students assigned to certified and uncertified teachers."

They did find, however, huge variation in the achievement of students within each of the teacher categories. This is consistent with more or less every study of teachers and student achievement that's ever been conducted: more variation within certain populations of teachers, however defined, than between them.

The authors then take the implications of their findings to their logical conclusion, recommending the following:

1. Reduce barriers to entry based on certification.
2. Make it harder to promote the least effective teachers to tenured positions.
3. Provide bonuses to highly-effective teachers willing to teach in schools with a high proportion of low-income students.
4. Evaluate individual teachers using various measures of performance on the job, which could include meaningful principal evaluations and classrooms observations (not the pro forma evaluations often used today), parent feedback, and "value-added" measures of student learning growth from the beginning of the year to end.

In other words, stop basing the entire regime of teacher training, certification, compensation, distribution, etc. on factors with only a limited, tangential, and often terribly inaccurate relationship with success in the classroom, and start basing them on actual success in the classroom. Give school leaders the ability to make informed judgments about which teacher candidates are most likely to succeed, move those candidates who don't succeed out of the classroom, and reward those who do succeed, particularly if they're willing to teach in high-need schools.

Not sure I follow (or accept) the logical leap implied in Kevin’s statement, “(B)ecause certification gives the false impression that all public school teachers are ‘good enough,’ the pressure to take action to get more truly effective teachers in the classrooms of disadvantaged students is reduced.” The alternative may be true: without the “floor” of certification requirements, classroom teachers in the hard to staff schools might be even less effective. The argument that certification by itself is evidence of a highly qualified teacher has evolved significantly recently. Certification is not an “end,” but rather a process in which teachers are encouraged to continue to learn. The National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future published a 2005 study on teacher induction (available here) which provides a useful evolutionary illustration. The 19th Century “factory” model had the teacher alone in the classroom, with the assumption that the teacher was ready to teach once he/she came out of education school and would need no further study. The 20th Century “solo teaching” model continued to rely on the teaching degree as an end but incorporated the recognition that brand new teachers would need at least some mentoring and set aside a year for this. The 21st Century “learning community” model sees teachers as members of a professional community with shared expertise, where through induction and other techniques they are learning about teaching and discovering new ways of being effective educators throughout their careers. I think Kevin’s arguments address the 20th Century model, and most school districts and teacher preparation programs have progressed to the 21st Century model.

Kevin takes me to task for “dismissing” the dedicated types who want to teach but may be barred by certification requirements, and he uses as examples Teach for America and the New York City Teaching Fellows. In hard to staff school systems and with today’s alternative certification possibilities, I still don’t think there are huge numbers of people who would take on the classroom tasks in these schools except for the certification requirements; the high numbers of applicants for the two programs he cites are perhaps indications not of dedication to teaching but rather examples of the success unique and innovative programs can achieve with the infusion of resources. I couldn’t have more respect for either program and for the people who participate in them, but I don’t think they represent answers that could by themselves replace the current system which incorporates a wide range of alternatives to get dedicated teachers into hard to staff classrooms. I expressed some reluctance in the first installment to open this debate to specific examples of research linking teacher certification to student performance. I confess here that my primary reason for this was my own lack of sophistication; other people could argue for or against different research conclusions much better than I. However, the research is pretty clear on two conclusions: First, teachers can make a difference in student performance; and second, experience is a factor in teacher quality, that is teachers who have been on the job for two years or longer tend to do better than brand new teachers. This is why teacher retention for the hard to staff schools is so important.

Teach for America is a great program. Linda Darling-Hammond (an outstanding researcher who could make the case for the importance of teacher certification much better than I) and several colleagues conducted a 2005 study (available here) comparing uncertified and certified classroom teachers in Houston. The study included TFA teachers in the comparison. The results indicated students of certified teachers performed better, and those of TFA teachers who became certified performed as well as students of other teachers. The key point for this discussion, however, is that “nearly all of them [the TFA teachers] leave within three years.” TFA picks the top students from the best colleges and trains them in an intense but shortened program, and after the training they can do very well in the classroom. Unfortunately, the initial commitment of TFA teachers is for two years (and according to Newsweek magazine, 10% to 15% drop out before this minimal commitment is through, as written here), and once they complete that commitment most TFA teachers leave the teaching profession. A Catalyst/Chicago 2004 magazine article noted that more than half of TFA teachers in Chicago left before three years was up, “the commitment required of teachers in other alternative certification programs [by Chicago Public Schools].” Entire article here.

The New York City Teaching Fellows is another excellent program attempting to address the problems related to hard to staff schools. Their website, www.nycteachingfellows.org, describes the certification they receive as follows: “Rather than completing a traditional teacher education program prior to entering the classroom, Fellows engage in a short, intensive pre-service training program and complete further academic requirements while they teach.” In addition, Fellows are automatically enrolled in Master’s degree programs (could this be a “seat time” training effort after entering the classroom that Kevin is so opposed to?). As noted in the first installment, I am in favor of such alternative certification programs where they are needed and when they provide resources teachers will need, and both Teach for America and New York City Teaching Fellows emphasize at least some intensive introduction to teaching methods before putting their candidates into the classroom as well as ongoing learning-community style assistance and professional development.

Two quick final notes: Kevin also takes me to task for supporting ongoing professional development. Again, I think he is focusing on the 20th Century model. Professional development for teachers has progressed far beyond the “seat time” example he used. Principals now have much more leeway to define professional development (see Kevin’s comments about principals in his first installment), and in many cases they can encourage their teachers to participate in the learning communities and other innovations by offering recertification credit for this participation. The best professional development opportunities are those that incorporate learning communities, research on student performance, and feedback (getting closer to the value-added model proposed in the research he cited). Finally, the teacher preparation “regime” (his words) is moving toward an emphasis on discovering what works in boosting student achievement and improving classroom teacher performance, perhaps much faster than Kevin acknowledges.

Carey, 3:08 p.m.:

David says of Teach for America and the New York Teaching Fellows:

"I still don’t think there are huge numbers of people who would take on the classroom tasks in these schools except for the certification requirements; the high numbers of applicants for the two programs he cites are perhaps indications not of dedication to teaching but rather examples of the success unique and innovative programs can achieve with the infusion of resources."

This seems rather ungenerous to the many teachers who entered the field through these programs and are working hard on behalf of low-income children. Moreover, these programs are not unique, and if they're innovative, good–isn't the whole idea to learn from innovation and apply it more broadly? As to the role of an "infusion of resources" – nobody is bribing these teachers into the classroom, and these organizations aren't swimming in extra cash by any means.

David says later in his post that "I am in favor of such alternative certification programs where they are needed and when they provide resources teachers will need." But yesterday David made some great points about the widespread maldistribution of teachers. In other words, alternative certification programs seem to be needed in many places, and we have some models that have proven to be successful in giving teachers the resources they need. Why not expand them greatly? In fact, why not make them the default model for all teachers?

Whether tens of thousands of annual applicants to alternative routes to teaching like TFA and others does or does not qualify as "huge numbers" I'll leave for our readers to decide. It certainly seems like a lot to me. There's a pretty consistent pattern in education reform, whereby when a new way of doing business is first proposed, defenders of the status quo say "Sure, it sounds good in theory, but it won't work in practice." Then when someone actually does it, people say "Sure, it might be working there, but that's a special case, it can never be brought to scale." Then when it starts to grow and become more widespread, we argue about how big is big enough to count. That's about where we are with alternative certification today.

It's true that less than half of TFA alums are still teaching, but nearly two-thirds stay in education in some capacity, either as teachers, school leaders, or working in various education policy positions. The founders of the well-regarded KIPP charter schools, for example, were TFA corps members. They're technically not teachers, but all things considered their entry into the profession through TFA has worked out pretty well for thousands of low-income students.

As to the effectiveness of TFA teachers, readers should also be aware of this study published by Mathematica in 2004, which found that student test scores for TFA members met or exceeded scores for veteran and regularly certified teachers. Other researchers have also looked at TFA results in Houston and found more positive results than were reported in the Darling-Hammond study.

Perhaps most importantly, nearly three-fourths of actual school principals who have employed TFA corps members rate them as more effective than other beginning teachers, and nearly two-thirds rate them as more effective than their overall teaching faculty. (link)

I don't share David's optimism that "most school districts and teacher preparation programs have progressed to the 21st Century model." I suspect that were one to travel to a typical school or poll a representative group of teachers, most would tell you that they're still stuck in the 20th Century, or even, as David defines it, the 19th. For example, the state of Maryland recently surveyed over 30,000 teachers to ask about their professional development experiences. (link) The majority of teachers reported not having access to high-quality professional development. We have a tendency in education to tackle difficult reform issues by simply asserting the adoption of a new set of values and principles, while avoiding the hard work of actually implementing them in a meaningful way.

David concludes by stating that teacher preparation "is moving toward an emphasis on discovering what works in boosting student achievement and improving classroom teacher performance, perhaps much faster than Kevin acknowledges."

Okay, I'll bite: can you point to a single example of a teacher preparation program (other than Teach for America, obviously) that has conducted and released to the public a study of how effective its graduates are in the classroom, in terms of student achievement, when compared to either (A) other preparation programs, or (B) all other teachers? Even one?

Ritchey, 8:53 a.m.:

Regarding Teach for America and similar programs: I apologize to all those who have participated in these programs if I sounded “ungenerous” toward them. Another personal disclosure: More than 30 years ago I participated in a program that was very similar to Teach for America, the Neighborhood Youth Corps. NYC programs were based on Nixon-era block grants to states, so each state’s program was different. In the program where I taught, I received a provisional Adult Basic Education certification with nothing but a college degree and was put into a class of high school dropouts in a high needs area. My classroom was in a former post office so I had little interaction with public school classroom teachers, and my fellow NYC teachers were very spread out; the next closest to me about 20 miles away as I recall. So I had virtually no preparation or mentoring/induction. The experience left me with several things, including an incredible respect for the work of classroom teachers. It also gave me a respect for the teacher preparation process. If I had had more preparation, I might have done a better job myself. If I am one of the “Sure, it sounds good in theory…” types Kevin describes, shame on me. Thirty years ago I was optimistic enough to believe such programs made a difference, and I still believe they can make a difference today.

Regarding examples of teacher preparation programs that have released studies of their effectiveness, this question is way too easy. There are many more programs working to improve teacher effectiveness through better preparation and continuing education than I could possibly list here, and they are virtually all attempting to conduct research on student achievement results. I’ll point to a few:

Professional Development Schools. As mentioned in the first installment, these represent alliances between college and university teacher education schools and neighborhood K-12 schools, and they use the induction, learning communities, and similar professional development models to not only upgrade the high needs schools but also to better prepare teacher candidates. Studies on their effectiveness are easy to find. Here are a few:

How Professional Development Schools Make a Difference: A Review of Research. (Second Edition, Revised, 2004). This 44 page monograph was written by Lee Teitel, University of Massachusetts-Boston. It reviews research studies about PDSs that report outcomes for preservice teacher candidates, for experienced teachers, and for P-12 students. A five-page bibliography is included. The analysis suggests several directions for strengthening PDS research and the impact of PDSs on student and professional learning.

Professional Development Schools: Weighing the Evidence. (1998) Ismat Abdal-Haqq. Corwin Press, Inc, Thousand Oaks, CA 91320. Available from the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, 1307 New York Avenue, NW, Suite 300, Washington, D.C. 20005-4701, (202) 293-2450.

The St. Louis Professional Development Schools Collaborative has a website devoted to linking student outcomes with the work of the collaborative. It’s here.

Linking School-University Collaboration and K-12 Student Outcomes. Donna L. Wiseman & Stephanie L. Knight, Editors. The authors attempt to answer the question of whether the partnerships are making a difference in the achievement of K-12 students and suggest a framework for considering what is needed to strengthen the case for such linkages. The studies include large, comprehensive reform efforts, targeted programmatic initiatives, and action research.

(Two notes: First, it’s interesting that Kevin uses the example of Maryland teachers to argue that “We have a tendency in education to tackle difficult reform issues by simply asserting the adoption of a new set of values and principles, while avoiding the hard work of actually implementing them in a meaningful way.” Maryland has aggressively used the Professional Development School model; I believe they are the only state to require PDS participation by all schools of education in the state. Implementing reforms like PDSs is hard work, but Maryland has committed to the task. I think if a similar survey to the one he cites would be conducted of classroom teachers in Maryland in two to five years, the results might show their recognition of the value of professional development participation through PDSs. Second, research linking student achievement to teacher preparation programs (or other inputs) is difficult to conduct at best. The U.S. Department of Education has recognized the difficulties in such research. Their promotion of the “growth model” may help gather such research more reliably. Again, as an optimist, I continue to see progress.)

National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. NBPTS is recognized for developing the professional standards that define what accomplished teachers should know and be able to do. NBPTS also administers National Board Certification, a voluntary assessment program that certifies educators who meet those standards. Some research efforts, all available from the NBPTS website, www.nbpts.org: An Examination of the Relationship Between Depth of Student Learning and National Board Certification Status. Appalachian State University, June 2005. Is National Board Certification an Effective Signal of Teacher Quality? The CNA Corporation, November 2004. Comparison of the Effects of NBPTS-Certified Teachers with Other Teachers on the Rate of Student Academic Progress. SAS Institute, March 2005. National Board Certified Teachers and Their Students’ Achievement. Arizona State University, September 2004. Student Achievement and Performance. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, June 2005. Teacher Effectiveness and Student Learning. University of North Carolina at Greensboro/SERVE, June 2005.

The National Institute for Community Innovations. Its mission is to foster local economic and social well-being through educational innovation, especially in economically distressed communities. Its primary services support K-16 reform efforts in educational equity, education technology, K-16 partnership, and data-driven staff development and school change.

NICI offers a whole range of research opportunities through “portals” that teachers and others can use. These portals, developed by leading experts in critical dimensions in education reform, point educators to (a) information on promising and best practices in a given dimension of education reform (e.g., digital equity and technology applications for learning), (b) individuals and organizations skilled in helping educators plan for and implement these practices, and (c) research and evaluation data that validate the effectiveness of these practices and resource providers. Their website is here.

The Data Driven Reform Network is a catalog of resources addressing using data to drive and inform school change. Their website is data.edreform.net.

The Network for Equity in Student Achievement is a group of urban school systems that formed in 1999 to share data, resources, and ideas with the ultimate goal of closing the racial gap and raising achievement for all students. Participants include the Atlanta Public Schools, Buffalo City School District, Fort Wayne Community Schools (Indiana), Hillsboro County School District (Tampa, Florida), Houston Independent District, Indianapolis Public School District, Jackson Public School District (Mississippi), Jefferson County Public Schools (Louisville, Kentucky), Norfolk Public Schools (Virginia), Oklahoma City Public Schools, Richland County School District One (Columbia, South Carolina), and Sacramento City Unified School District. For details on this and other reforms, including statistical results, visit the Annenberg Institute for School Reform’s website. See in particular this article.

There are many more examples of teacher preparation and professional development programs that have attempted to measure student performance, and their studies are widely available. I continue to believe that teacher preparation programs are making differences and teachers, students and the larger communities are benefiting from these innovations.

Carey, 3:28 p.m.:

I appreciate David's lengthy response to my question. The logistics of these daily debates leave me a little short of time to respond fully, particularly since I wasn't able to find copies of some documents–like the first two–on the Web. The St. Louis PDS collaborative does provide some outcome measures, but they're focused on the impact of pre-service teachers, not teachers once they've graduated and are working in schools.

Most of the rest of the resources David cites seem to focus in various ways on using data to inform instruction, school reform, etc. Which is, don't get me wrong, a great thing to be working on, an extremely important and worthwhile thing. But it starts to run a little far afield of our topic of teacher certification.

So if David could pull a few specific results from any one of the examples he cites, results that demonstrate the effectiveness of a specific teacher preparation program, in terms of objective measures of student learning growth and relative to either other teacher preparation programs or all other teachers, I think our readers would find those numbers of great interest.

David also cited the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, which is very relevant to this debate since it's basically a nationwide super-certification program run by a non-profit organization instead of a state government. I'm of two minds on NBPTS. On the one hand, I admire the underlying commitment to professionalism and high standards in the teaching profession, the in-depth nature of the process and the fact that certification is not an easy slam-dunk to acquire.

On the other hand, NBPTS seems to share many of the inherent weaknesses of state certification systems. Most of the studies David cites generally find some positive link between NBPTS certification and effectiveness when comparing NBPTS-certified teachers to others. But the differences aren't very large, particularly in the context of the considerable amount of time and money involved, both to run the program and for individual teachers to participate. Other studies, like the SAS study David notes, are less positive, finding little difference at all. And like regular certification programs, NBPTS isn't much help when it comes to equity—the data suggest that its teachers are maldistributed away from high-poverty, low-performing schools.

This kind of brings us back to the central issue of this debate (at least as I see it), which we've been getting somewhat away from: the distinctions between preparation, voluntary certification, and mandatory certification.

I absolutely believe that high-quality teacher preparation is an extremely necessary thing. Ditto with high-quality professional development. But that's not at all the same thing as believing that state governments should legally prohibit people from teaching who haven't earned a degree from an approved teacher preparation program, or who, once they've entered the profession, haven't earned X number of credit hours of training from an approved source or in an approved way.

The essential problem with teacher certification as it exists today is that it's an inherently regulatory construct. I'm not one of these knee-jerk anti-government guys who think that regulation is bad by definition, far from it. I was once a state government bureaucrat and thought it was time well-spent. But there are things that regulation can do, and things it can't do.

Put simply, you can only regulate things that can be accurately and consistently counted or measured. Like, for example, degrees, credit hours, and standardized test results. You can't regulate things that can't be consistently counted or measured–like, for example, work ethic, ability to function and thrive in teams, various professional and life experiences, high expectations for oneself and one's students, etc., etc.

Thus, certification regimes warp and skew our notions of teacher quality toward the measurable and countable. Those things become too important, and the uncountable things become not important enough.

If the countable things were highly correlated with the uncountable, if they were reasonable proxies for work ethic, etc., then the system would work well. But the consistent body evidence finding no or little differences between certified and un-certified teachers—and just as importantly, the huge differences among certified teachers–suggests that this simply isn't the case.

The fact that teacher certification is regulated by the government also makes it unduly subject to political pressures–one reason, I suspect, that the standards for entering the teaching profession are much lower than standards for law and medicine, two professions to which education is often compared, but whose standards are set by professional, not governmental, organizations.

These phenomena aren't unique to teacher certification–they also distort teacher compensation, for example, by limiting teacher pay to easily countable, measurable things like years of experiences and educational credentials. Less easily countable things, like the aforementioned work ethic, etc., as well as evidence of student learning growth, are left out. As a result, teachers long on experience and education and short on the other less countable things are paid too much, teachers with the opposite set of qualities are paid too little.

All of which makes me seriously question the value of mandatory, government-regulated teacher certification. I'm all for creating high certification standards that teachers could voluntarily acquire. That's what NBPTS aspires to, although I think it falls short by not relying enough on objective evidence of student learning growth. I'm all for investing in better models of teacher preparation and ongoing professional development.

But I think we can do all of those things while also loosening the rigid mandatory certification processes that unnecessarily perpetuate the tyranny of easily countable, measurable things. In fact, I think one of the big reasons teacher preparation and professional development have been of such historically uneven quality is the fact that mandatory certification made them relatively immune to any kind of accountability for quality. It didn't matter so much if your program was good or bad, because teachers had to come to you if they wanted to teach.

So in the long run I don't believe moving away from mandatory certification and moving toward high-quality preparation and training are at odds. Instead, I think they're one and the same.

Ritchey, 8:35 a.m.:

Kevin and I have different world views on the role of certification requirements in education, and I’m afraid our week-long debate probably hasn’t changed either of our positions greatly – at least, my opinion is still basically the same. I share his frustration with the time deadlines inherent in this debate and feel there is much more that could be said, particularly in the area of investigating some of the research that has been conducted and research that is currently being conducted.

I don’t see certification requirements as tyrannical intrusions by government regulatory bodies. Certification requirements were instituted historically because states felt they were needed to help balance inequities across school district lines, not because the teachers “guild” wanted to keep out any who hadn’t attended education schools and gone through the requisite training. I feel teacher certification continues to be worthwhile for two reasons. First, it has provided a recognizable “floor” of quality for people who want to teach, particularly those going into hard to staff schools, along with a recognition that there is a “body of knowledge” teachers should possess. This body of knowledge varies greatly depending on grade level and subject area taught, but there are some pedagogical techniques that can be passed on in teacher preparation programs that will help new teachers survive those critical first two or three years. Certification requirements recognize that there is more to teaching than subject area knowledge; how to teach, how to deal with classroom problems, how to develop lesson plans, and specific pedagogical training for different subject areas such as reading or math are all very important topics and valid areas of study. Certification requirements are also evolving. States have incorporated levels of subject area knowledge into the certification requirements. Second, certification has encouraged innovations in professional development for classroom teachers. By requiring them to recertify at different time intervals, it helps ensure that teachers will continue to be exposed to concepts such as learning communities, the role of teachers as researchers, and so on.

There are many reasons why I don’t feel that certification requirements necessarily keep those who are interested in teaching out of the classroom, particularly in the hard to staff schools. Every state offers alternative certification opportunities, and the federal government has backed programs like ABCTE and Transition to Teaching in an effort to further open the profession to highly qualified individuals who may not have gone through the traditional teacher preparation process. We have discussed other programs such as Teach for America that move qualified people into the teaching profession where they are needed. In this environment, certification restrictions for beginning teachers are evolving all the time, but I believe induction and continuing professional development become even more important.

Certification is one part of the entire teacher preparation/continuing professional development model for teachers. Kevin rightly says this debate has drifted from the original question, which was to look at the effects of certification requirements on student performance. I’m probably responsible for the debate drift and I added the subject of continuing professional development for inservice teachers purposefully. I said at the outset I don’t have a problem with alternative certification models, as long as they incorporate some form of teacher preparation and continuing professional development. The examples we have discussed, I believe, all incorporate teacher preparation (although perhaps more intensive and shorter than the traditional pathways to certification) and most of them rely on continuing professional development through mentoring, induction, learning communities, and other forms of cooperative honing of skills.

Regarding data comparisons that would link student achievement to teacher certification (or other indicators of teacher quality), I am not sure the information we currently have available is sufficient for such comparisons. We are moving in the direction of gathering such data, however, and I believe in a few years we will have sufficient data to conduct a debate specifically on student outcomes. One website offers online guidance for teacher development along with a catalog of current research into student achievement and directions for future research that is very exciting and should be quite relevant. The Teacher Quality Data Systems Roadmap (available here) attempts to catalog teacher quality data systems across states. The website was developed by the Center for Teaching Quality (formerly the Southeast Center for Teaching Quality) with support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Two elements that can be reached from this website are particularly significant for our discussion: the Data Quality Campaign (available here), which is initiating efforts to collect longitudinal data on student achievement along with comprehensive data sets on teacher quality; and a description of value-added methods, similar to the growth models the Department of Education is looking at (description and link to a pdf paper available here).

My thanks to edspresso.com for hosting this debate and asking me to participate, and to Kevin for his many thoughtful insights. I confess I was worried at the outset that the debate might degenerate into name-calling or something worse, but Kevin has stated his position with candor, honesty and flexibility, and I have attempted to do the same. We both share a concern for education in this country, and we’d both like to see it improve. We just differ on the techniques to get there, not the ultimate goal.

Carey, 2:05 p.m.:

Thanks again to Edspresso for hosting this conversation, to David for his many gracious and thoughtful comments, and to our readers who've stuck with us throughout the week. Your generosity is greatly appreciated.

From David's final comments and consistent open-mindedness regarding alternative certification, I wonder if there isn't a middle ground to be found in this debate, something that might be termed "strong mandatory alternative routes to teaching." Teachers would still need certification to enter the classroom, and certification would still require some kind of formal preparation. But the types of preparation that would qualify would be greatly expanded beyond those currently provided by traditional colleges and universities. Short but intensive and high-quality training like those provided by TFA would be eligible, low-quality programs would not.

Teachers would have the option of entering the classroom without having first completed the training, but in return, they would (A) have to complete it within the first few years, and (B) commit to being strictly evaluated based on objective measures of student learning growth, like growth test scores. In other words, give principals the option of hiring people they think can succeed, but follow up with training and strict accountability for success.

This might still be too bureaucratic and process-y to fit my taste, but it could form the basis for some productive conversations.

This also brings up the question of principal capacity to make smart hiring decisions. It's undoubtedly true that some school leaders are ill-equipped to hire teachers from an open market lacking the assurances that current certification models bring. But that's because nobody has asked them to do it before. If such tasks become an important part of their jobs, then training, expertise, and experience will follow.

I suspect our commenter below who worries of hiring decisions based on favoritism, physical attractiveness, obsequiousness, etc., would disagree with this. In times past, one could probably get away with such bad leadership. But I wonder if, in our new era of No Child Left Behind and high-stakes accountability for results, school principals can really afford to consistently short-change effectiveness when making hiring decisions. Moreover, I've always believed that public policies based on an underlying assumption of incompetence or bad faith don't work out in the long run. It's better to assume that all school leaders can reach the highest standards of professionalism, support them, and then hold them accountable for results.

In this way, I think this teacher certification debate touches on a much larger issue, which is the degree to which educators are integrated with or isolated from the larger professional workforce.

Teachers frequently voice unhappiness about the way their compensation, status, and working lives fall short of those enjoyed by other professionals whose jobs require similar levels of education, training, and dedication. These concerns are in many ways entirely valid. A great many good teachers are insufficiently respected, badly underpaid, and forced to work under conditions that would appall the average professional.

At the same time, the teaching profession is not like most others. Most professionals work a regular 12 month calendar with only a few weeks of vacation. They have no access to guaranteed pensions upon retirement. They can be hired and fired at will by their employers. They're not guaranteed a raise simply because they've accrued another year of experience. Their working lives are far less stable, but in return the trajectories of their careers are far more a function of their individual merit and success.

These differences, plus and minus, are tightly correlated, and can't be unwound. More status and compensation will require less stability and regulation. Teachers are currently caught in a kind of middle ground between the wide-open but insecure professional lives of 21st-century information workers and the stable, homogenized, regulated lives of 20th century union workers. It's an increasingly awkward compromise for everyone involved.

I think educators would be well-served to definitively move forward in this regard, to embrace the responsibility and rewards of a less-regulated profession. That would mean loosening existing governmental structures like certification, which would undeniably involve some trade-offs and difficult transitions. But in the long, I think such a move would be of great benefit to teachers and students alike.

Again, thanks to David for his many interesting ideas, I've greatly enjoyed our exchange.