As education leaders have anticipated an increasing teacher shortage in the United States, with predicted retirement rates hitting an apex by 2035 and schools of education declining in enrollment each year, there has been a growing acceptance of alternative certification programs, or ACPs, to fill the void. The very use of the word “alternative” suggests that ACPs are the fallback for school districts when they can’t fill their vacancies with university prepared candidates. That may not be the reality for school districts today or in the future.
As a superintendent of large school districts, I have always been drawn to the potential of ACPs and it is probably why I decided to lead the largest provider in the country. We have been experiencing the current teacher shortage for several years, and these types of programs have helped address the quantity of certified teachers needed and create more robust pipelines to the teaching profession. I liked that candidates in ACPs were most often career changers and brought valuable work experience into the classroom. Another attraction was the potential to diversify the workforce. I would often go to my university providers and ask for more racial, ethnic, and linguistic diversity with their candidates so that I could ensure that my teachers better reflected the students we were serving. This was a huge challenge for ed schools. ACPs allow for a proactive recruitment of minority candidates that can help fill this critical gap.
All of these factors play into the growing acceptance of ACPs as a leading source of providing teachers for school districts. HR directors used to only start looking at alternative certification teachers once university candidates had been hired. However, an HR Chief in Texas recently commented, “We are just as excited and committed to bringing in alt cert teachers as university candidates; we do not see a difference in quality and there are more to choose from these days.” In Texas, universities only provided 11% of new hires last year; alternative certification accounted for over 19% of new hires.
With universities declining in enrollment in education programs by almost 3% each year, school districts will have no choice but to embrace other ways to secure certified teachers. It’s not difficult to imagine an environment where hiring a teacher from anywhere else but an ACP will soon be the “alternative.”
It’s Time to Take “Alternative” Out of ACPs
