Chapter 20: Evaluation of Teachers Trained Through Different Routes to Certification

A new study by Mathematica Policy Research finds that students randomly assigned an alternatively certified teacher did no worse on achievement tests than students whose teacher came through the traditional teachereducation route. Moreover, the report, titled An Evaluation of Teachers Trained through Different Routes to Certification and funded by the Institute of Education Sciences,¹ concludes that there is no association between greater amounts of teacher training coursework and effectiveness in the classroom. These findings are likely to be warmly received by commentators calling for the scaling-up of alternatives to traditional teacher certification. For example, Malcolm Gladwell advocates that “Teaching should be open to anyone with a pulse and a college degree—and teachers should be judged after they have started their jobs, not before.”² Yet such a reception is not warranted in this case, because few if any valid conclusions about teacher certification policy can be drawn from the Mathemat- ica study, and those conclusions that can be drawn tend to favor traditional routes.