Alternative Teacher Certification a possibility in Missouri
A new program aimed at helping mid-career professionals to get their foot in the classroom door is now accepted in Missouri. The program is called ABCTE, which stands for the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence. The law authorizing the program goes into effect today, and already more than 350 prospective Missouri teachers have signed up.
Candidates must pay $850 to enroll, which is completed mostly online. They have to complete 60 hours in the classroom, 30 hours of professional development, participate in mentoring programs, and take exams on teaching knowledge and their subject matter. The program takes the average person about 8 months to complete, although the first person to complete it in Missouri did it in only three weeks.
Teacher’s unions aren’t crazy about the program because they think it provides a “quick fix” to the teacher shortage, and that ABCTE-certified teachers didn’t go through formal classroom training.
What do you think of the program?
Wow, I’m so glad I’ve invested 5 years in my teaching degree. What a slap in the face! Why would anyone go through a traditional program when they can just do this in 8 months?
We expect students to do the work, to not “cut and paste” their Google search, that learning happens through work (not just teacher at front of class lecturing). Well, what does this teach those same students if that teacher has taken a short-cut to teacher certification? What about classroom methods–that cannot possibly be learned in less than 1 full-time week of work, right?
How does this teacher develop their educational philosophy? Will they have an educational philosophy?
I would think that school district’s would not look upon this certification as a good thing. Will these ABCTE people only be hired by the most desperate districts?
Missouri already has an alternative certification that requires a set amount of college coursework in the education field (no non-education courses required). Was that method not quick enough for our “just add water and microwave” society?
I think it is a great idea, especially if it can increase the number of science and mathematics teachers available to public schools. Degrees in education are too heavy on the “education” courses and too light on discipline subjects (i.e. mathematics for math teachers, English for language arts teachers, etc.) Except for faculty in Colleges of Education, college and university instructors don’t take “education” courses and most are great teachers.
I am embarrassed to see this happen in Missouri. Our standards are already behind other states and this is another slip down the slope that our legislators have pushed us down. Lottery/Casino funds, a scam, taking away student loan money and now this. I have fairly well decided that my grandchildren will be homeschooled.
Back to basics, where do you get your information? I am a current Secondary Education major. When you choose to teach Sec. Ed. (high school), you must choose an emphasis. I chose Biology. An emphasis does not give you a degree in the field, but it comes very close to doing so. I have taken so many science courses– (genetics, evolution, micro, ecology, animal beh., plant bio, three chem’s, two physics, through calc 1, the list could go on) enough to where there is very little difference between me and a Biology major. So please, don’t preach to me about content knowledge. I’m tired of people like you telling me how stupid I am when I have taken a significant content course load in addition to all of those ’silly’ education courses.