- Many states, including North Carolina, are suffering from a teacher shortage
- Teaching certificates are a barrier to entry for teachers, making it more difficult for people to enter the profession
- The evidence is mixed, however, that the certification process improves teaching quality
Written by Tyler Bonin
Across the United States, the number of incoming college students seeking a career in education has been in steady decline over the last several decades. This trend also correlates with teachers leaving the profession, thus leading to a subsequent teacher shortage in many states, including North Carolina.
Richard Ingersoll, professor of education at the University of Pennsylvania, points out that a main reason why teachers are leaving the profession is dissatisfaction. Specifically, Ingersoll notes that teachers lack autonomy, are bound by a rigid testing regime, and are increasingly micromanaged. These are all elements of an inflated educational bureaucracy that subjects teachers to bureaucratic diktat.
In order to overcome teacher shortages, some state legislatures (including California) have eased certification requirements. Commenting on the Kansas legislature’s move to waive teaching restrictions in order to mitigate severe teacher shortages in the state, Mark Farr, president of the Kansas National Education Association, stated that this was both an attempt to de-professionalize the teaching profession and “…circumvent collective bargaining and regulations designed to ensure fairness, safety and quality.” Farr is not alone in this view.
Criticism such as this brings us to several larger questions.
Does teacher certification necessarily mean teaching efficacy? Evidence of teacher certification improving educational outcomes is mixed. For instance, in a study of certification requirements’ impact on teacher quality, Angrist (MIT) and Guryan (University of Chicago) note that “on balance, our results are reasonably consistent with the view that testing has acted more as a barrier to entry than a quality screen.”
Furthermore, in a recent study from the Brookings Institution, Brian Jacob notes that both teacher certification and tenure have demonstrated themselves to be inadequate predictors of teacher success. His study outlined other measures (as viewed through the interview process) to be more consistent predictors of teacher success.
The attainment of a teaching certification is both a lengthy and costly process for those seeking to enter the profession. If the effect on educational outcomes associated with teaching certification is negligible, then it is safe to assume that the process presents a barrier to entry that is costly both for those seeking a profession in teaching and for society at large. Furthermore, teaching certification fails to account for both hard-to-quantify intangibles, such as enthusiasm for one’s subject, as well the rigor of one’s undergraduate and graduate education.
So, do measures by state legislatures to waive teacher certification requirements necessarily lead to “de-professionalization” of teaching? Can a person with a rigorous academic background and a history of positive student engagement be considered to “de-professionalize” teaching if he or she seeks to enter the field without a certification?
Many newly minted PhDs with undergraduate teaching experience are failing to enter K-12 education because of the certification process, which may often take two years of student teaching and additional coursework. There’s nothing like completing more than five years of graduate school just to be told by the state that you need more education in order to teach your subject, or to more fully understand the student experience.
What is even more telling is the move by many state legislatures to ease certification requirements being met with a national backlash that this will hinder teachers’ collective bargaining ability. This fact alone underscores the teaching certificate’s true purpose: a barrier to entry, intended to protect its holders by limiting competition.
Charter schools have traditionally had more freedom in hiring teachers without certification. Has this lack of vetting restrictions for teaching candidates created a negative outcome in charter school classrooms? A quick look at the U.S. News & World Report’s rankings of schools in North Carolina demonstrates that three of the top-five ranked schools in North Carolina are charter schools. Moreover, myriad private schools hire teachers without regard to certification. Nevertheless, this leads to a final question with far-reaching implications.
Even if states continue to eliminate teaching certifications as hiring requirements in order to overcome shortages, will these teachers stay? What of teacher dissatisfaction? Again, it is helpful to look at charter and private schools for this question. Discretion in hiring is one element of the larger autonomy enjoyed at these schools. Teachers enjoy greater latitude in curriculum decisions at charter and private schools. They also enjoy having a voice that matters in decisions that directly affect their classroom. They enjoy the opportunity to be treated like true professionals, by way of autonomy and not simply by attainment of a piece of paper.
Reducing barriers to entry such as waiving certification requirements is one way states like North Carolina can help to reduce bureaucracy in the profession and also address the need for more high quality teachers in the classroom.
Tyler Bonin is a contributor to Civitas
This a jumble of issues that NCCivtas tries to together to belittle public education. Just for starters, how about enlightening readers on the benefits of certification. Throwing in the fact that Charter Schools are on the top of the list and have flexibility in hiring is meaningless and a misuse of correlations.
George-
Good job. I can’t think of any benefits to certification either. Now that we’ve established that….we can get on with getting good teachers in the classroom.
In addition to the issues discussed, the state Department of Public Instruction licensing practices are bureaucratic, confusing and take too long to complete for all teachers, especially for teachers from other states and lateral-entry teachers.
I am a licensed graphic design public school teacher in South Carolina. In May, I received an offer to teach at Vance High School to start its new graphic design program. I waited for one month to hear an update from the Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools licensing department, and I received an offer of only $40,000 in an email. Keep in mind, I have two master’s degrees (integrated marketing communications and publishing – two graphic design/communications fields) and more than 25 years of professional work experience before going into education. Additionally, I have all of my requisite certifications in Adobe software.
Two weeks later, the licensing person at CMS calls and states that my education may not meet the DPI standards. I thought the person’s statement made no sense because she listed one of the bachelor’s degrees required was in communications – a category in which both of my master’s degrees fell. Then I received a call from a person in human resources asking me to be a substitute for $80 per day until the state can review my license, which the human resources person said it would take six to eight weeks.
When I applied for a teacher’s position in South Carolina, I had a representative from the Department of Education’s Career and Technical Education department call me and expedited my application. I received approval for a provisional license in two days. I completed my three-year plan for a professional license in two years. Moreover, I had interviews with five schools in two weeks (including an administrative position in a district office) and received two offers. In North Carolina, it’s the opposite approach with talking with the schools and applying for teaching positions. It’s almost like the schools are very standoffish and have little engagement in talking about their vacancies.
In North Carolina, I continually see stories where superintendents such as Clayton Wilcox discuss the teacher shortage in CMS. Yet I have seen and experienced where teachers from other states have had their credentials questioned and denied when the credentials in reciprocal states seem similar. The people in the CMS licensing and human resources offices are not familiar with the fields in which they are reviewing licensing. The person in CMS licensing clearly knew nothing about my field or what to evaluate on my transcripts but kept saying one of my graduate degrees is not a communications degree when it stated it is a communications degree.
Even when I explained that my degrees are terminal degrees in the communications and graphic design fields – among other things, I have received offers from colleges to teach graphic design, such as the University of South Carolina-Upstate and two community colleges in North Carolina – and I actually taught graphic design in South Carolina public schools, she called Vance High School and denied my application out of apparent exasperation with my questions. When I explained the application process to a representative at the state DPI and we reviewed the qualifications, she could not understand how a person with a master’s degree in communications/graphic design, teaching experience in the field and Adobe certifications was told by CMS he is not qualified.
Schools systems cannot opine in the public about the shortage of teachers in North Carolina but yet are turning away qualified teachers from other states who want to teach in the state. It sounds like the crisis is more of a self-fulfilling prophecy, compounded by bureaucracy and people making arbitrary decisions that make no sense. When school systems such as CMS become more serious about recruiting and retaining educators, then maybe out-of-state and lateral-entry teachers will take them seriously.