Program helps teachers qualify

Many states give teachers another option to prove qualifications.
HARRISBURG (AP) -- Thousands of Pennsylvania public school teachers who aren't considered "highly qualified" to teach major academic subjects will have to decide by July whether to pursue an alternate route toward proving they know what they teach.
Pennsylvania's new bridge-certificate program is designed to provide another choice for teachers who don't meet the subject certification standards of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, but who also don't want to add another college major or take a test to demonstrate mastery of subjects such as English, math, science or social studies.
The State Board of Education adopted regulations creating the program in June, and it approved a system for teachers to complete it last week.
In other states
Pennsylvania is among a growing number of states that are providing similar options for experienced teachers. But a national nonprofit group considers many of those alternatives to be poor substitutes for standard certification practices.
Earlier this year, the National Council on Teacher Quality published the first of a series of reports on state efforts to implement No Child Left Behind certification alternatives. The group examined 20 of 30 states that had finalized their standards as of March and gave 14 of them grades of "C" or worse.
Failing grades
Failing grades went to states such as Virginia for requiring teachers to take just two classes to prove their subject knowledge, and California for providing "an excessive number of options" for teachers to demonstrate they are highly qualified.
Council president Kate Walsh said states don't share the concern Congress has that teachers aren't sufficiently knowledgeable.
"Their response ... has been that there are other things teachers need to be able to know. Nobody is disputing that," Walsh said. "But the teacher could have all the wonderful personal skills and classroom management skills, and that teacher will not be effective if he or she is teaching eighth-grade math and doesn't know math."
Pennsylvania's program is intended for four types of secondary-school teachers who don't hold subject-specific certificates: special education, English as a Second Language, alternative education and middle school teachers who are certified at the elementary level.
How many are eligible
As many as 20,000 teachers in the state could be eligible to apply for a bridge certificate; they must decide by July whether they wish to do so.
Qualifying teachers receive a three-year certificate upon entering the program and obtain full certification upon completion.
Ethan Cancell, a special assistant to state Education Secretary-designee Francis V. Barnes, said that although it is "theoretically possible" for teachers to complete the program without any additional work, it's unlikely that any could realistically do so.
"If you have all of these college credits anyway, then you're qualified," Cancell said. "You can't water it down."
At least 44 other states have adopted similar alternative programs, said Carolyn Snowbarger, who oversees the federal Education Department's Teacher to Teacher program. The program sends top educators around the country to share teaching tips with others in their field.
And although the programs do not need federal approval, officials will be monitoring them as part of compliance checks they will be conducting between now and the spring of 2006, she said.
"The law is very straightforward. There are certain standards that need to be uniformly applied to all teachers at the same grade level," Snowbarger said.
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