alternative teacher certification

Every state is asking two critical questions right now; how do we increase our chances at Race to the Top funding and how do we find new ways to cut education budgets? The guidelines from the US DOE and a new study show that having non-university based alternative teacher certification is the answer to both questions.

Both Flypaper and Eduwonk pick up the New York Times story on alternative teaching. Been a great week for ABCTE even while I am down with the flu (not the H1N1 variety).

We continue to stay in the news in Indiana as SUPERintendent Tony Bennett pushes for major reforms in education. This is great to see as you have a teacher speaking out in favor of these reforms and the SUPERman himself pushing hard.

Let’s break it down – shall we?
1. Teachers have the greatest impact on students

I had the pleasure of attending the Alliance for Choice in Education event in Denver this week. Many out there in the education world hate choice and think it is a bunch of rich white guys trying to foist their economic principles on the education system.

But in Denver it is about saving kids. ACE knows that they cannot save every child stuck in poverty, but they feel strongly that saving one at a time from a destiny of failure is a worthwhile cause.

Here at ABCTE we do a lunch time book club of sorts. Every six months we pick a professional book to read and then discuss. We meet in groups so that I can get to know our great staff better and they can become more familiar with each other and me. We started with 7 Habits last year and had some great discussions on how we can improve ourselves. The current book we are reading is the Tipping Point.

Last night Governor Brad Henry of Oklahoma signed SB582 into law allowing ABCTE teachers to teach in Oklahoma. This is the 9th state that now accepts ABCTE teachers and the unanimous passage of this bill in the Oklahoma House says some pretty great things about our program.
1. The content we have added to the program makes it easier for states to accept our teachers
2. The data we have gathered is compelling evidence that our teachers are doing well in the classroom
3. Alternative certification just isn’t so radical anymore

Today in the Oklahoma House, Senate Bill 582 passed with a vote of 99 for and 0 against. A unanimous vote for the ABCTE alternative teacher certification program to be accepted in Oklahoma. This is pretty stunning as our program has, in the past, faced stiff opposition from the education establishment.

Pretty interesting day for education in the press as they are finally breaking the story that I broke on March 20, 2009 about the pending “tsunami” of teacher retirements. USA Today has a piece about it quoting Tom Carroll from NCTAF saying that “we will lose one third of our teachers in the next 5-6 years”.

I would urge you to go to the Meet our Teachers section of our website. It is really quite incredible and the reason we exist. Here you will learn about Angela Moore who worked in the military and other careers before finding teaching as her calling. With her spouse in the military, it was tough for her to complete any teacher preparation program that did not have an independent study option. With ABCTE she was able to teach. With our scholarship program, she could do it now.

Yesterday we went around to all the House Education committee members in Oklahoma to ensure passage of the alternative teacher certification legislation SB 582. We had some very good questions from all the members. The most striking discussion with one of the Democrat members was that she told us that a math teacher/department head had called her and told her she had two math teachers who needed to be fired because students in their classes were not learning math. But she couldn’t fire them because she had no one to replace them.