Alternate Route Preparation: Louisiana
Expanding the Pool of Teachers Policy
Analysis of Louisiana's policies
Most Practitioner Teacher Program candidates participate in nine credit hours, or the equivalent of 135 contact hours, in Summer Preparation Sessions. Grades PreK-3 as well as General-Special Education Mild/Moderate candidates must complete 12 credit hours or the equivalent of 180 contact hours. Elementary coursework topics include instruction in child development or psychology, the diverse learner, classroom management/organization, assessment and instructional design/strategies. Special education coursework topics include methodology, behavior management (classroom management of students with disabilities),
curriculum-based assessment/IEP, vocational transition, reading and literacy,
foundations of special education, and child and adolescent psychology.
Practitioner Teachers participate in two seminars (12 credit hours) during the school year and receive one-on-one mentoring support through an internship.
Program providers, principals, mentors and practitioner teachers form teams to
review and evaluate first-year teaching performance. If a practitioner teacher
demonstrates weaknesses, a prescriptive plan of up to nine credit hours or 135
contact hours will be implemented. Candidates are eligible to earn full
certification after one year and all program requirements must be met within three years.
Master's Degree Alternative Certificate Program certificates must complete a
total of 33-39 credit hours. Fifteen credit hours must be coursework on
"The Learner and the Learning Environment," 12-15 credit hours are in
methods and six-nine credits are required for student teaching or an
internship. Special Education candidates substitute six-nine credit hours of methodology for reading instruction.
Non-Masters/Certification-Only Program candidates must complete 27-33 credit
hours within three years. The Certification-Only program includes 80 hours of
classroom readiness training focused on instructional design and delivery and
classroom management. The Certification-Only route also requires
candidates to complete 12 credit hours of coursework on "The Learner and
the Learning Environment," as well as six credit hours of student teaching
and six credit hours of methodology coursework. Program requirements must be met within three years.
The Practitioner Teacher Program and the Certification-Only program provide new
teachers with mentoring support during the first year of teaching, with support
for additional years if necessary.
Recommendations for Louisiana
Ensure that new teachers are not burdened by excessive requirements.
Alternate route programs should not be permitted to
overburden the new teacher by requiring multiple courses to be taken
simultaneously during the school year. Louisiana should also ensure that the
program can be completed within two years.
Establish coursework guidelines for all alternate route preparation programs.
Louisiana should ensure that coursework requirements are contribute to the
immediate needs of new teachers. Appropriate coursework should include
grade-level or subject-level seminars, methodology in the content area, assessment and scientifically based early reading
instruction.
Extend induction to all alternate route teachers.
While Louisiana is commended for requiring Practitioner
Program and Certification-Only teachers to work with a mentor, all new teachers
should receive this support. In addition, the state should consider providing
sufficient guidelines to ensure that the induction program is 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.
State response to our analysis
Louisiana recognized the factual accuracy of this analysis.
-
Louisiana
Select another topic
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.