Teacher Certification Resources

NEA believes that all teachers should be “profession-ready” from their first day of responsibility for student learning. This means that before becoming a teacher-of-record, teacher candidates must demonstrate the skills and knowledge needed for effective classroom practice.

To improve the quality of the teacher workforce, some states have tightened teacher preparation and certification requirements while others have eased requirements and introduced “alternative” ways of being certified to attract more people to teaching. This article evaluates these seemingly contradictory strategies by examining how preparation and certification requirements affect student achievement.

States have adopted a pathway to teaching, alternative to the standard state certification otherwise required. Is this new pathway genuine or merely symbolic? Does it open the classroom door to teachers of minority background? Does it help—or hinder—learning in the classroom? Claims about all of these questions have arisen in public discourse. Recently, data have become available that allow us to check their validity.