Alternate Route Preparation: Missouri

Expanding the Pool of Teachers Policy

Goal

The state should ensure that its alternate routes provide streamlined preparation that is relevant to the immediate needs of new teachers.

Meets a small part of goal
Suggested Citation:
National Council on Teacher Quality. (2011). Alternate Route Preparation: Missouri results. State Teacher Policy Database. [Data set].
Retrieved from: https://www.nctq.org/yearbook/state/MO-Alternate-Route-Preparation-7

Analysis of Missouri's policies

Missouri does not ensure that its alternate route candidates will receive streamlined preparation that meets the immediate needs of new teachers.

Candidates in the Innovative and Alternative Professional Education Program must complete an unspecified amount of preservice coursework in the areas of adolescent development, psychology of learning and teaching methodology in the content area. Eight additional semester hours of professional education coursework are also required. Program guidelines indicate that candidates "usually complete about 30 semester hours of coursework."

Temporary Authorization Certificate candidates must complete nine semester hours of coursework in their area of assignment. Overall, coursework is limited to 24 credit hours in the areas of psychology of the exceptional child, behavioral management techniques, measurement and evaluation, teaching methods/instructional strategies, methods of teaching reading and developmental psychology.

Innovative and Alternative Professional Education Program candidates are assigned a mentor who teaches the same subject and approximately the same grade level for the full length of the program.

Temporary Authorization Certificate candidates also receive a mentor, but no details are provided.

American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence (ABCTE) candidates do not have coursework requirements and receive mentoring.

Innovative and Alternative Professional Education Program candidates can receive full certification after two years. Temporary Authorization Certificate candidates may qualify for an initial license after teaching for a minimum of two years. 

The state does not outline any requirements for candidates working under the Doctoral Route to Certification.

Citation

Recommendations for Missouri

Establish coursework guidelines for alternate route preparation programs.
Simply mandating coursework without specifying the purpose can inadvertently send the wrong message to program providers—that "anything goes" as long as credits are granted. However constructive, any course that is not fundamentally practical and immediately necessary should be eliminated as a requirement. Appropriate coursework should include grade-level or subject-level seminars, methodology in the content area, classroom management, assessment and scientifically based early reading instruction. 

Ensure that new teachers are supported in the first year of teaching.
Missouri should provide more detailed induction guidelines to ensure that new teachers will receive the support they need to facilitate their success in the classroom. 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

Missouri asserted that all alternate routes approved by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education have guidelines and coursework requirements. Further, the state explained that all beginning teachers are required to have a mentor regardless of the route he or she has taken to earn a teacher certificate.

Last word

NCTQ encourages Missouri to make its coursework guidelines more specific to ensure that programs meet the state's intents and purposes for alternative certification. The state can add specificity while still leaving programs with flexibility in their program design. 

Research rationale

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 Ducharme, E. R. & Ducharme, M. K. (1998). "Quantity and quality: Not enough to go around." Journal of Teacher Education, 49(3), 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 Miller, J. W., McKenna, M. C., & McKenna, B. A. (1998). Nontraditional teacher preparation: A comparison of alternatively and traditionally prepared teachers. Journal of Teacher Education, 49(3), 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 (2007): 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 at: http://www.mathematica-mpr.com/publications/pdfs/education/teacherstrained09.pdf

See also Alternative Certification Isn't Alternative (NCTQ, 2007) at: http://www.nctq.org/p/publications/docs/Alternative_Certification_Isnt_Alternative_20071124023109.pdf.