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More and more new teacher are coming from alternative programs. About 40 percent of new teachers hired by school districts come from outside of teacher education programs. That’s up from a mere 22 percent between 2002 and 2004.
According to a new study released by the National Center for Education Information:
K-12 public school teachers in the United States are amazingly similar over time. They constitute a unique profession that has self-propagated itself for at least the last half century. But, due to an influx of individuals from non-traditional backgrounds entering teaching through non-traditional preparation programs, the teaching force may be changing.
The findings throughout this survey illustrate striking differences between this non-traditional population of new teachers and teachers who enter teaching through undergraduate and graduate college campus-based teacher education programs, especially in attitudes concerning current proposed school reform measures and ways to strengthen teaching as a profession.
Unsurprisingly, teachers who attended teachers colleges have different views about tenure, performance-based pay, and evaluating teacher effectiveness using “student achievement” measures than those who became teachers through alternative programs.
It’s not clear from the survey, however, why it is that schools are hiring more teachers who don’t come from traditional teachers colleges. Are there budget reasons for this? Is it logistically easier to hire alternatively certified teachers? Or is it that school districts understand that people trained in teacher colleges aren’t necessarily very good teachers?
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Tom on August 03, 2011 6:24 PM:
As a former teacher (four years), I saw the way things were going in public education way back in 1961.
After four years in the U. S. Navy (1951-1955, I decided that I wanted to teach because of the things that my teachers had done for this son of an Ohio coal miner.
By the end of 1957, I had received my B.S. (on the GI Bill)and started teaching in a public school in central Ohio.
When I left work in 1951 to go in the Navy, I was making $5,000 per year at a semi-skilled job; I started teaching in 1958 and made only $3700.00 per year and had to go to college each summer to get an M. A. if I wanted to get any future pay raises. Ater I took a survey course on school and administration (as a way to earn a living wage), I was told by the instructor that I was too "idealistic and honest" to ever become a school administrator
It took me four years to learn that the inmates (students) were in charge of the public education asylum and that the school administrators were protecting the incompetent teachers (usually their long-time
friends). I left and took an even lower wage professional job so that I could start a family and earn a decent living. I never looked back and never regretted that choice
The vast majority of the teachers I worked with were dedicated and highly competent teachers; the administrators not so much.