Hiring Policy
Eligibility for Standard License: Hawaii allows out-of-state teachers with valid, standard professional certificates to be eligible for its standard license.
Evidence of Effectiveness: Hawaii requires teachers to verify at least three years of satisfactory full-time teaching experience out of the last five years.
Testing Requirement: Hawaii does not ensure that out-of-state teachers seeking licensure in Hawaii meet the state's own licensing test requirements. Traditionally prepared teachers need only have met passing score requirements of their original state. Alternate route teachers are not required to meet Hawaii's testing requirements if they have a content major, at least 30 semester hours in the content field, an advanced degree, or National Board certification.
Additional Requirements: Hawaii requires a criminal-history background check.
Require evidence of effective teaching when determining eligibility for full certification.
To facilitate the movement of effective teachers between states, Hawaii should require that evidence of teacher effectiveness, as determined by an evaluation that includes objective measures of objective student growth data, be considered for all out-of-state candidates. Such evidence should indeed be a factor for candidates who come from states that make student growth a determinative factor of a teacher evaluation, especially in Hawaii, which does not allow a teacher to be rated overall effective if rated ineffective for student growth. (See 7-A: Measures of Student Growth analysis.) Although Hawaii requires proof of satisfactory experience, the policy falls short of ensuring that evidence of effectiveness will be considered.
To uphold standards, require that teachers coming from other states meet testing requirements.
Hawaii should insist that out-of-state teachers meet its own testing requirements, and it should not waive its teacher testing requirements unless an applicant can provide evidence of a passing score that meets its own standards. By continuing to allow testing waivers, Hawaii cannot ensure that teachers who have passed assessments in other states have met comparable content-knowledge expectations.
Hawaii was helpful in providing NCTQ with the facts necessary for this analysis. The state added that it honors reciprocity for a standard license for teachers prepared in another jurisdiction and first licensed since July 1, 2006. This is based on the attainment of the license, not on whether the preparation program was traditional or alternative. The state also noted that content verification methods are the same regardless of whether an individual is prepared in a traditional or alternative program.
6A: Requirements for Out-of-State Teachers
Evidence of effectiveness is far more important than transcript review.[1] In an attempt to ensure that teachers have the appropriate professional and subject-matter knowledge base when granting certification, states often review a teacher's college transcript, no matter how many years earlier a bachelor's degree was earned. A state certification specialist reviews the college transcript, looking for course titles that appear to match state requirements. If the right matches are not found, a teacher may be required to complete additional coursework before receiving standard licensure.[2] This practice holds true even for experienced teachers who are trying to transfer from another state, regardless of their prior success. The application of these often complex state rules results in unnecessary obstacles to hiring talented and experienced teachers.[3] Evaluation systems which prioritize effectiveness and evidence of student learning offer an opportunity to bypass counterproductive efforts like transcript review and get to the heart of the matter: is the out-of-state teacher seeking licensure in a new state an effective teacher?
Testing requirements should be upheld, not waived. While some states have historically imposed burdensome coursework requirements, many have simultaneously failed to impose minimum standards for licensure testing. Instead, some states have offered waivers to veteran teachers transferring from other states, thereby failing to impose minimal standards of professional and subject-matter knowledge. In upholding licensure standards for out-of-state teachers, the state should be flexible in its processes but vigilant in its verification of adequate knowledge. It is all too common for states to develop policies and practices that reverse these priorities, focusing diligently on comparison of transcripts to state documents while demonstrating little oversight of teachers' knowledge. If a state can verify that a teacher has taught successfully and has the required subject-matter and professional knowledge, its only concern should be ensuring that the teacher is familiar with the state's student learning standards.
States licensing out-of-state teachers should not differentiate between experienced teachers prepared in alternate routes and those prepared in traditional programs. It is understandable that states are wary of accepting alternate route teachers from other states, since programs vary widely in quality. However, the same variance in quality can be found in traditional programs.[4] If a teacher comes from another state with a standard license and a clean criminal record, has demonstrated evidence of effectiveness, and can pass the state's licensure tests, whether the preparation was traditional or alternative should be irrelevant.[5]