IT AIN'T ROCKET SCIENCE:

Uncertified Teachers Performing Well, Study Finds (SARAH GARLAND, November 20, 2006, NY Sun)

Uncertified teachers end up performing just as well in the classroom as certified teachers and alternatively trained teachers like Teaching Fellows, a study to be released today says. [...]

"These are people who have no prior experience in teaching and they go into the lowest performing schools, and they do just as well," a Columbia University Business School professor, Jonah Rockoff, who co-authored the study, said. "Where you went to college and what your GPA was doesn't seem to tell you how good you're going to be in the classroom."

In the study, researchers at the Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank affiliated with Stanford University, used standardized test scores to measure the performance of New York City students taught by traditionally certified teachers, uncertified teachers, and teachers who enter the profession through alternative programs such as Teach for America and Teaching Fellows. They found that while alternatively certified and uncertified teachers do worse at first, they appear to improve at faster rates than traditionally certified teachers in their first years on the job. By the teachers' third year on the job, students of alternatively certified and uncertified teachers are performing just as well as those of traditionally certified teachers. [...]

The study shows that uncertified teachers, who are more likely to be minorities than the other groups, end up doing just as well as the alternatively and traditionally certified teachers. Since the Teaching Fellows program was introduced, hiring of minority teachers has dropped significantly, a trend that can be attributed to the effort to remove uncertified teachers, Mr. Rockoff said. Statistics first reported by the Amsterdam News showed that in 2001, 27% of new teachers were black, while this year only 14% were black. The percentage of new Hispanic teachers has also dropped.

The study's authors say they are not "proposing to open the floodgates into teaching" by saying certification doesn't matter. But researchers said the study results showed that school systems, instead of focusing on whether and how teachers are certified before hiring, should worry more about getting rid of teachers who perform badly during probationary periods. Currently, Mr. Rockoff said, large urban school systems like New York with dismal teacher retention rates tend to approve tenure for all teachers who decide to stay on, rarely giving out unsatisfactory ratings to teachers who perform badly. In New York City, half of all teachers — traditionally certified or not — leave after five years.

To become certified, teachers must take a series of tests, have a bachelor's degree that includes education coursework, or complete graduate level education coursework. Alternative certificate programs often allow teachers to do the coursework during their first year of teaching.

A professor at Stanford University, Susanna Loeb, who has conducted a study of teacher qualifications very similar to the Hoover study, said that certification status matters little in determining how a teacher will do in the classroom.

In fact, students would likely benefit from just getting rid of professional teachers and having Charlie Rangel allow young people to teach for several years as part of their national service obligation.

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 20, 2006 7:10 AM