Plagued by instructor shortages, some states are turning to accelerated accreditation.

Elaine S. Povich, Stateline Louisiana Illuminator // July 24, 2023

Elaine S. Povich, Stateline Louisiana Illuminator // July 24, 2023

Photo courtesy of DepositPhotos.

Faced with an alarming shortage of instructors, Virginia agreed last month to partner with a for-profit online instructor certification company, hoping that more instructors will get in faster and without the high tuition rates of classical schools and universities.

While some Virginia School Board members had qualms about the process, they agreed to review it because of the persistently high rate of teacher vacancies. The board unanimously approved a three-year pilot program and partnered with one of the largest corporations in accelerated induscheck out accreditation, iteach.

These corporations engage a candidate for training in about a year. The iteach program includes online courses, after which applicants are placed in classrooms, with some supervision and agreement from school districts.

According to state statistics, Virginia had more than 3500 full-time instructor vacancies for the 2022-2023 school year, a rate of about 4. 5 percent, though vacancies in some specialties are higher. The scenario is worse than last year, according to statistics. .

Daniel Gecker, then a member of the State Board of Education who voted in favor of the online certification scheme, said he agreed because the program is a three-year pilot assignment and an “opportunity to collect data. “

“We’re in the midst of a pretty significant instructor shortage,” Gecker said in an interview. “Having trained online is better than having the untrained contractors we had. “

He said that before the COVID-19 pandemic, it probably would have been imaginable to fill the instructor void with increased retention. “After the pandemic, the abyss is too wide; We can’t fill it with increased retention and other people leaving school.

Virginia is just the newest state to turn to for-profit instructor certification corporations in a pressing effort to recruit and train more instructors. well exercised as historically accredited instructors and will not do any favors to young students.

States have other features to address the shortage of instructors, adding reduction criteria to seek to attract more recruits.

Education Week reported last year that a dozen states had instructor accreditation criteria or were contemplating doing so. They intend to teach. Oklahoma enacted a law last year to eliminate the requirement for a general school exam.

Some states are pressuring “temporary” instructors to enter the service. Last year, Arizona allowed replacement instructors to fill full-time positions to address the state’s instructor shortage. In addition, a law was passed last year for Arizona instructor applicants seeking a school degree to teach at the same time.

Iteach operates in 11 states, according to its website: Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Hawaii, Indiana, Louisiana, Nevada, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia. The Mississippi Teacher Licensing Commission, a panel created to compare such systems for that state, unanimously named it as a certification provider at the July 7 commission meeting. This advice now addresses the state board of education.

Another giant corporation, Teachers of Tomorrow, works in nine states, though its credentials would likely be in jeopardy in Texas, where the corporation was put to the test after state regulators found that the corporation misled future teachers in its advertising and failed to prove its research-based education.

Iteach has been accredited through the Council for Accreditation of Educator Preparation, which accredits schools of education for classical educators. Andrew Rozell, president of certification for iteach, said it’s the most accredited for-profit program of its kind.

For-profit corporations are distinct and different from online university programs, such as Western Governors University or Southern New Hampshire University, which also offer instructor-training courses but do not have rapid accreditation. For-profit accreditation corporations tout their ability to attract other people. in study rooms in a year or 18 months, depending on when they start.

Nationally, the shortage of instructors is as severe as in Virginia, especially in very rural or low-income city districts. A Brown University newspaper “conservatively” estimated that, as of August 2022, there were 36,000 college vacancies in the United States.

And the newspaper noted that those vacancies are not distributed lightly. “The vacancy rate for 10,000 scholars is more than 159 times higher in Mississippi than in Missouri,” the authors wrote. scholars in Missouri and 68. 59 teachers consistent with 10,000 scholars in Mississippi.

In taking the step of helping fill vacancies, the Virginia State Board of Education followed Executive Directive No. 3 from Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin to address teacher shortages, in part through reducing “bureaucracy related to licensed teachers, while ensuring the highest standards. “”

Iteach meets the criteria of some, according to Macaulay Porter, a spokesman for Youngkin, in an email to Stateline. school divisions with an effective and effective option for recruiting and preparing new teachers,” Porter wrote.

Iteach’s approach is based on reducing time and load barriers, according to Rozell, “without reducing rigor. “It is designed so that applicants for initial education take about a year to prepare, if they pass state exams.

Second, newly trained teachers download transitional leave and teach intermittently through professionals who show themselves up to the class, infrequently out of nowhere. All of this happens with the wisdom of school administrators, who can provide their own support.

But critics argue that iteach and other systems that temporarily exercise teachers are not subject to the same demands and intensity of training as teachers who stick to the classic four-year bachelor’s degree route, at least one year to earn a master’s degree and several months of training. the training of students under the almost constant supervision of a qualified teacher.

Heather Peske, president of the National Council on Teacher Quality, a think tank and advocacy, said in a phone interview that for-profit online education systems are a “brutal instrument” in addressing teacher shortages. Take into account whether instructors are qualified for the subjects they will teach or whether they will rejoice in their paintings and stay in the race or leave after a year or two.

“If you have an accelerated curriculum and your style is completely online, the question arises as to how do you give long-term teachers a position to practice. . . content wisdom and clinical practice,” he said. School districts deserve to tailor the hiring and schooling of new teachers to vacancies and needs, he said, which are maximum “specialized teachers” such as special schooling or multilingual students.

Iteach advertises that its fee for a full program is $4,399, plus a $99 registration fee. The Teachers of Tomorrow program costs about $5,000.

By contrast, the average annual tuition at a four-year educational establishment can range from $9,193 in one state to $26,543 in an out-of-state arrangement according to the College Tuition Compare website, an independent school assessment site. Elite establishments are higher. Graduate tuition levels range from $10,806 consistent with the year to $19,796, according to the site.

Iteach’s Rozell said many students in her company’s systems are already working in s, as paraprofessionals, assistants for children with special wishes or in other non-teaching skills, and already have a sense of control and other skills needed to be a teacher.

But Peske said the “develop its own” movement, which takes paraprofessionals or other workers and turns them into teachers, while a smart idea, still demands “a thoughtful clinical study to prepare them. “They themselves are already in it or already running with the students, that worries me,” he said.

“Someone may also have been a paraprofessional applying as an assistant to a student with a disability, but never had the experience [of learning] about neurological differences in those students or possibly would never have had a mentor. “

The American Federation of Teachers, the nation’s largest instructors union, in a 2022 report, called for more rigor in instructor training, less, and criticized state efforts to lower the qualifications needed to be an instructor.

“[T]here are more non-traditional options and tactics for an instructor in the United States than ever before, and unfortunately, many of them are of poor quality,” the report said.

The teachers’ union emphasized strategies that are reflected in traditional training, saying long-term teachers get “extensive” class reports “along with a qualified professional over a significant period of time” and “a solid foundation in the content of the subject. “

“We cannot cure the shortage of teachers and schools by taking shortcuts and lowering the bar at the entrance,” the report says.

The biggest blow to rapid accrediting societies came here in Texas, where Texas Teachers of Tomorrow, also known as A Texas Teachers, was put to the test. The Texas Education Agency found that the company has not addressed many shortcomings, adding the number of hours of content required for instructor applicants, and whether they are evaluated to see if their existing skills are “suitable for the certification sought. “

Attempts to succeed at Texas Teachers of Tomorrow were unsuccessful.

A 2021 study from the University of Texas at Austin College of Education on national readiness found that on the subject assessed, “students do better if they have college-educated students,” and that for low-income students, “have a college education. “ter may compensate for some or more of the poverty-related disadvantages.

In addition, the review showed that college-educated teachers had a retention rate of 73 percent for nine years, while 59 percent of teachers with “alternative certification” continued to teach.

But Rozell said the exam was due to problems with Teachers of Tomorrow. He said an internal survey of his company’s students showed that after the first year of class, 93% said they were “excited to be back next year” and planned to be an instructor for at least five years.

This article was first published through Stateline, a component of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported through grants, and a coalition of donors as a 501c public charity(3). Stateline maintains its editorial independence.

July 26, 2023

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