Massachusetts News 
By Naomi Schaefer 

May 4--Teachers may be able to bypass professional education colleges and go straight to teaching in classrooms—much to the dismay of Massachusetts teacher’s unions—under a new form of certification. 
 
   “Alternative certification” will reach its goals more quickly and at a lower cost to taxpayers than current certification methods, says the State Board of Education, which backs the change. 
 
   It’s all designed to help change the teaching profession, Board member Abigail Thernstrom told Massachusetts News.  During a recent lecture at Cornell University Law School, Thernstrom asked the student audience: “How many of you would be interested in teaching if the entry requirements changed, the level of professionalism improved, and you could choose a school that matched your educational philosophy?” She says, “an astonishing number of hands went up.” 
 
   The new type of certification would require teacher-candidates to attend a summer institute for 6-8 weeks. This would happen after the candidates had passed the Massachusetts teacher’s test and earned their B.A. or B.S. degree. The purpose is to allow a fast and inexpensive way for qualified beginning teachers and mid-career professionals to enter the classroom, say its advocates. Under the current system, teaching candidates must get a masters degree in education, which requires at least one year of coursework and a significant amount of money spent on tuition. 
 
   The University of Massachusetts will run a pilot program on the new form of certification this summer, before the actual proposal is voted on by the Board this fall. The pilot program is a test, results of which the Board will review before that vote. Participants in the test program will include the roughly 60 teacher- 
candidates who received $20,000 signing-bonuses from the state earlier this year. 
 
   The proposal seems “fairly low cost” to students and would be brief, said Board Chairman James Peyser. “It’s open to anyone who has the basic skills necessary for entering the profession.” 

Union Questions Quality of Program 

   But Kathy Kelley, president of the Massachusetts Federation of Teachers, told Massachusetts News that she’s concerned about the quality and quantity of teachers who would emerge from alternative-certification programs. “You can’t just have a 6-8 week program and some case-study sessions” and expect the same results you get from a longer program, she said. 
 
   Moreover, Kelley said that based on what she has read, “People in alternative certification programs leave the profession at four times the rate of other teachers. … [The Board] should be concerned about the attrition rate for beginning teachers.” 
 
   But these numbers don’t really argue against alternative certification, said Chairman Peyser. “The issue of hiring has much more to do with how long someone stays at a school than the method of certification,”  he said. Peyser also cited another proposal before the board to give principals more power over hiring decisions to ensure that they pick teachers whose teaching philosophy matches their own. 
 
   Said Thernstrom: “You have got to be able to put together a teaching team on the same page educationally, in the way that charter schools are able to do.” 
But Kelley said that teachers are not just leaving because they don’t fit at a particular school. “In the focus groups we have done with young teachers, all of them tell us they need the extra preparation” that education colleges provide, she said. 

More Union Objections 

   Stephen Gorrie, president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, said that not everything can be learned “on the job,” which he thinks this proposal relies on. “We obviously need teachers who have some knowledge of child psychology and pedagogical skills,” he said. 
 
   James Carodonio, the recently appointed superintendent of Worcester public schools agreed. “I think people need to have some teaching courses,” he said. Carodonio recalled running a vocational nursing program in which “a very fine nurse wasn’t making it in the classroom.” He explained to her: “You have nursing and teaching nursing confused.” 

Current Teacher “Training” Is Unnecessary 

   Thernstrom doesn’t agree that pedagogy should be a part of the curriculum. “If all of their pedagogical instruction was doing so much good, why are students scoring so low on their MCAS tests?” (The Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System tests are taken by public school fourth-, eighth-, and 
10th-graders.) 

   Peyser agreed, claiming that judgments about what type of certification is needed  “should be based on performance in the classroom, not on the process.” While Peyser says that the Board needs to “look very closely at the curriculum of such a program,” he has a clear idea about his criteria. “There are minimum requirements for preparation to be able to lead a class,” he said.  “Any elements extraneous to that purpose must be eliminated.” 

   Parts of the proposal seem to have near universal support. For instance, the state has offered to pay for full- and part-time mentors for beginning teachers. “Mentor programs are a wonderful idea,” said Kathy Kelley. 

   Stephen Gorrie also “absolutely favor[s] mentoring.” He recalled a time many years ago as an elementary school teacher in the Winchester public schools, where he was mentored by “the only other male elementary school teacher in the system.” He called the experience “invaluable.” 
 
   While Peyser says that mentoring “is not a measure of performance, it may be part of the answer.” 
 
   Despite Gorrie’s uncertainty about the proposal, he thinks “there should be further discussion about alternative certification.” According to many board members, one goal of an alternative plan is to ensure that mid-career professionals have the option of switching into teaching. “We want to open the door to great people who were in industry and now want to move,” said Carodonio, who strongly supports this goal.  “People make career decisions at different times in their lives.” 
 

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