Teacher Certification

The new consensus only accentuates the difficult question of "Who may teach?" Because the politics of teacher certification are of most interest to teachers, they and their self-appointed representatives tend to dominate the political process of setting requirements for entry into the classroom; the general public has little input. The dramatic conclusions of value-added research and the new emphasis on teacher quality- which coincide with a renewed focus on achievement, standards, and accountability- demand a reexamination of questions about teacher supply. As if the results of research and the dictates of common sense are not enough, two other factors command that we focus our attention on teacher supply issues.

Given these various pressures, now is the time to think about the future of the teacher supply. Although the labor market for teachers is affected by many things (e.g., relative performance of the outside economy, methods of teacher recruitment, preparation, and compensation), we can learn a great deal about who enters the classroom by understanding a single step in the production of new teachers: teacher certification. Even without other much-needed education reforms, successful reform of the current system of teacher certification would go a long way to improving lagging student achievement in the United States.

A brief foray into the history of teacher certification laws will help us understand the present system and the motivations and assumptions of those who created it. As will become evident, the political context that gave rise to our current system was very different from the ideas and values of the present day.

For the past century, certification laws have been under state jurisdiction. This largely remains the case today, although as part of the No Child Left Behind Act, the federal government requires states to set their certification laws within certain parameters. In fact, this is just the latest step in a process of centralization stretching back to the 19th century. In early America, the job of ensuring that teachers were of good moral character and qualified for their tasks was the work of local church authorities. As the 19th century progressed, the job increasingly became the work of local and county governments and became more centralized.

The history of teacher certification laws is marked by the ceaseless and often successful efforts of the teaching profession to gain more control over the process of teacher certification. The case of New York state - the first state to have a uniform system consolidated under state control - is instructive. In 1834, a state law was passed that provided for the specialized education of teachers in separate departments in private academies that were nevertheless subsidized by the state. In 1856, the state superintendent was empowered to create rules for certification exams administered at the county level. By 1894, the state superintendent was allowed to set questions for the certification exams, score the exams, and establish the cut-off score for admission to the teaching profession. In a final consolidation of power in 1899, the teacher institutes themselves were placed under the state superintendent's office. Thus New York had established the first uniform, state-controlled system of teacher certification.

By and large, teacher certification laws did not take root until the early 20th century. At the turn of the century, 28 states certified teachers solely on the basis of graduation from a "normal school" (teachers college) while only three states- New York, Rhode Island, and the then-territory of Arizona - had requirements that all teachers be certified by the state. By 1937, 41 states required state certification. This trend was driven by the intellectual elites of the first third of the 20th century who, concerned with rapid urbanization and the destabilization of American life brought on by industrialization, had a clear model of reform for all levels of American society.