Alternate Route Preparation: Florida
Expanding the Pool of Teachers Policy
Analysis of Florida's policies
Florida's Professional Development Certification Program (PDCP) requires a mentor relationship with a teacher who has at least three years of experience and was rated as effective or highly effective in the previous year. Each program is focused on training in the Florida Educator Accomplished
Practices, and the state has created 20 tasks to achieve these competencies. PDCP teachers do not have a practice-teaching requirement.
Florida also prepares alternate route candidates through Educator Preparation
Institutes (EPI). New teachers participating in an EPI must receive training in the Florida Educator Accomplished Practices and state-adopted content standards. EPI candidates must also have a field experience related to their intended subject areas. In order to complete the EPI program, candidates must demonstrate "a positive impact on student learning growth in a prekindergarten through grade 12 setting and achieving a passing score on the professional education competency examination, the basic skills examination, and the subject area examination for the subject area certification."
Florida's alternate routes make all candidates eligible to earn a Professional
Certificate in three years.
Recommendations for Florida
Provide induction support to
all alternate route teachers.
While Florida is commended for requiring Professional Development Certification Program (PDCP) teachers to
work with a mentor, the state should additionally consider providing sufficient guidelines
to ensure that the induction program for both its PDCP and Educator Preparation Institutes (EPI) are structured for new teacher success.
Effective strategies include practice teaching prior to teaching in the
classroom, intensive mentoring with full classroom support in the first few
weeks or months of school, a reduced teaching load and release time to allow
new teachers to observe experienced teachers during each school day. Mentors should also observe new teachers and provide written feedback.
Ensure program completion in less than two years.
Florida should consider shortening the length of time it takes an alternate route teacher to earn standard certification. The route should allow candidates to earn full certification no later than the end of the second year of teaching.
State response to our analysis
Florida was helpful in providing NCTQ with the facts necessary for this analysis.
Florida noted that Educator Preparation Institutes (EPI) do not have a mandated specified number of courses. These programs are competency-based. In addition, all state-approved programs in Florida (traditional and alternate) must adhere to the same curricula guidelines.
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Florida
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Delivering Well Prepared Teachers
- Admission into Teacher Preparation
- Elementary Teacher Preparation
- Elementary Teacher Preparation in Reading Instruction
- Elementary Teacher Preparation in Mathematics
- Early Childhood
- Middle School Teacher Preparation
- Secondary Teacher Preparation
- Secondary Teacher Preparation in Science and Social Studies
- Special Education Teacher Preparation
- Special Education Preparation in Reading
- Assessing Professional Knowledge
- Student Teaching
- Teacher Preparation Program Accountability
Expanding the Pool of Teachers
Identifying Effective Teachers
- State Data Systems
- Evaluation of Effectiveness
- Frequency of Evaluations
- Tenure
- Licensure Advancement
- Equitable Distribution
Retaining Effective Teachers
Exiting Ineffective Teachers
Pensions
Research rationale
Alternate route
programs must provide practical, meaningful preparation that is sensitive to a
new teacher's stress level.
Too many states have policies requiring alternate route
programs to "backload" large amounts of traditional education
coursework, thereby preventing the emergence of real alternatives to
traditional preparation. This issue is especially important given the large
proportion of alternate route teachers who complete this coursework while
teaching. Alternate route teachers often have to deal with the stresses of
beginning to teach while also completing required coursework in the evenings and
on weekends. States need to be careful to require participants only to meet
standards or complete coursework that is practical and immediately helpful to a
new teacher.
Induction support is
especially important for alternate route teachers.
Most new teachers—regardless of their preparation—find
themselves overwhelmed on taking responsibility for their own classrooms. This
is especially true for alternate route teachers, who may have had considerably
less classroom exposure or pedagogy training than traditionally prepared
teachers. While alternate route programs will ideally have provided at least a
brief student teaching experience, not all programs can incorporate this into
their models. States must ensure that alternate route programs do not leave new
teachers to "sink or swim" on their own when they begin teaching.
Alternate Route Preparation: Supporting Research
For
a general, quantitative review of the research supporting the need for states
to offer an alternate route license, and why alternate routes should not be
treated as programs of "last resort," one need simply to look at the
numbers of uncertified and out of field teachers in classrooms today, readily
available from the National Center for Education Statistics. In addition, with
U.S. schools facing the need to hire more than 3.5 million new teachers each
year, the need for alternate routes to certification cannot be underestimated.
See also E.R. Ducharme and M.K. Ducharme, "Quantity and quality: Not enough to go around." Journal of
Teacher Education, Volume 49, No. 3, May 1998, pp. 163-164.
Further,
scientific and market research demonstrates that there is a willing and able
pool of candidates for alternate certification programs—and many of these
individuals are highly educated and intelligent. In fact, the nationally
respected polling firm, The Tarrance Group, recently conducted a scientific
poll in the State of Florida, identifying that more than 20 percent of
Floridians would consider changing careers to become teachers through alternate
routes to certification.
We
base our argument that alternative-route teachers should be able to earn full
licensure after two years on research indicating that teacher effectiveness
does not improve dramatically after the third year of teaching. One study
(frequently cited on both sides of the alternate route debate) identified that
after three years, traditional and alternatively-certified teachers demonstrate
the same level of effectiveness, see J.W. Miller, M.C. McKenna, and B.A. McKenna, "A comparison of alternatively and traditionally prepared teachers". Journal of Teacher Education, Volume 49, No. 3, May 1998, pp. 165-176. This finding is
supported by D. Boyd, D. Goldhaber, H. Lankford, and J. Wyckoff, "The Effect of Certification and Preparation on Teacher Quality." The Future of Children, Volume 17, No. 1, Spring 2007, pp. 45-68.
Project
MUSE (http://muse.jhu.edu/), found that student achievement was
similar for alternatively-certified teachers as long as the program they came
from was "highly selective."
The
need for a cap on education coursework and the need for intensive mentoring are
also backed by research, as well as common sense. In 2004, Education Commission
of the States reviewed more than 150 empirical studies and determined that
there is evidence "for the claim that assistance for new teachers, and, in
particular, mentoring [have] a positive impact on teachers and their retention."
The 2006 MetLife Survey of the American Teacher validates these conclusions. In
addition, Mathematica (2009) found that student achievement suffers when
alternate route teachers are required to take excessive amounts of coursework.
See An Evaluation of Teachers Trained
Through Different Routes to Certification: Final Report at: http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED504313.pdf
See
also Alternative Certification Isn't Alternative (NCTQ, 2007)
at: http://www.nctq.org/p/publications/docs/Alternative_Certification_Isnt_Alternative_20071124023109.pdf.