Part Time Teaching Licenses: Ohio

Expanding the Pool of Teachers Policy

Goal

The state should offer a license with minimal requirements that allows content experts to teach part time.

Meets goal in part
Suggested Citation:
National Council on Teacher Quality. (2011). Part Time Teaching Licenses: Ohio results. State Teacher Policy Database. [Data set].
Retrieved from: https://www.nctq.org/yearbook/state/OH-Part-Time-Teaching-Licenses-7

Analysis of Ohio's policies

Ohio offers two teaching permits that allow content experts to teach part time: the 12-hour STEM permit and the 40-hour STEM permit. Candidates teaching under the 40-hour STEM permit must not exceed 40 hours of instruction a week. Candidates must have a bachelor's, a master's or a doctoral degree or significant experience in the intended teaching field. Applicants are not required to pass a subject test.

The state does include the provision that individuals under this license volunteer their time, or that a contract with their current employer be agreed to by the school board. A school or district cannot hire an individual under a STEM permit if it displaces an existing licensed teacher.

Citation

Recommendations for Ohio

Require applicants to pass a subject-matter test.
Ohio is commended for offering a license that increases districts' flexibility to staff certain subjects, including many STEM areas, that are frequently hard to staff or may not have high enough enrollment to necessitate a full-time position. Although this license is designed to enable individuals who have significant content knowledge to teach, Ohio should still require a subject-matter test. While the state does require a degree or significant experience, only a subject-matter test ensures that teachers on the 12- or 40-hour STEM permit know the specific content they will need to teach.

Allow other subject matter experts to teach under a similar certificate.
While Ohio is commended for offering a license that increases districts' flexibility to staff STEM courses, the state should consider extending such a license to content experts in other subjects that are frequently hard to staff or may not have high enough enrollment to necessitate a full-time position.

State response to our analysis

Ohio was helpful in providing NCTQ with the facts necessary for this analysis.

Research rationale

The origin of this goal is the effort to find creative solutions to the STEM crisis. While teaching waivers are not typically used this way, teaching waivers could be used to allow competent professionals from outside of education to be hired as part-time instructors to teach courses such as Advanced Placement chemistry or calculus as long as the instructor demonstrates content knowledge on a rigorous test. See NCTQ, "Tackling the STEM Crisis" at: http://www.nctq.org/p/docs/nctq_nmsi_stem_initiative.pdf

For the importance of teachers' general academic ability, see R. Ferguson, "Paying for Public Education: New Evidence on How and Why Money Matters," Harvard Journal on Legislation 28 (1991), 465-498.

For more on math and science content knowledge, see D. Monk and J.R. King, "Subject Area Preparation of Secondary Mathematics and Science Teachers and Student Achievement," Economics of Education Review 12, no. 2 (1994), 125-145; R. Murnane, "Understanding the Sources of Teaching Competence: Choices, Skills, and the Limits of Training," Teachers College Record 84, no. 3 (1983)