New Licensure Test in California

Does anybody know any of the inside story about this? Is it a positive development? Are there implications related to accreditation? From Teacher Magazine:

Calif. Approves Teacher Test

By Vaishali Honawar

California has given the nod to a rigorous assessment created by teacher colleges that requires aspiring educators to show students are learning before they earn their preliminary licenses.

The California Commission on Teacher Credentialing this month approved the Performance Assessment for California Teachers, or PACT, developed by a consortium of 30 teacher education programs in the state. Led by Stanford University, the group includes colleges in the University of California and California State University systems, and other private and independent schools.

Starting next school year, all teacher-candidates will have to pass a performance assessment before they can get their teaching credentials. A state law passed in 1998 requires such evaluations take place, but a lack of state funding delayed implementation.

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PACT . . . occurs mainly during student-teaching, when candidates are expected to put together extensive, subject-specific portfolios, similar to those that teachers seeking national-board certification create, though on a smaller scale.

“In their [lesson] plans, they have to describe how to take the needs of special education students and English-language-learners into account,” said Linda Darling-Hammond, a professor of education at Stanford and one of the founders of the consortium.

Every day, candidates reflect and write about the day’s teaching experience, analyze what students learned, what they didn’t, and consider changes to help students who didn’t master the materials.

“It is a much more holistic assessment, a deeper assessment of teachers’ content knowledge and pedagogy, a deeper assessment of student learning and teacher response to student learning,” said Ms. Darling-Hammond.

Read the whole thing here.

When the Alternative Becomes the Norm

Lawrence Baines explores alternative certification programs in English in the December issue of Phi Delta Kappan . He describes the explosive growth of "NUCPs" (Non-University Certification Programs) and of "pared-down degrees delivered over the Internet" by for-profit entities. According to Baines, one in five new teachers in California now enters the profession through NUCPs. In Texas and New Jersey, it's one in four. One example of an NUCP is the LosAngeles Unified School District which, according to Baines, "requires next to nothing. That is, prospective teachers in the Los Angeles program can move from applicant status to full-time, salaried teacher without bothering to gain experience in an actual classroom, and the only courses required by the LAUSD are delivered in-house in brief seminars or online . . ." Baines also points out that of the five largest secondary English programs in the U.S. in 2004, only one was a traditional university-based program.

Online programs, some offered by for-profit institutions such as the University of Phoenix and some by traditional universities, are even larger. "For example," writes Baines, "the second largest producer of English teachers in Texas (behind Texas NUCPs) is the program at the University of North Texas. North Texas offers a traditional on-campus, field-based undergraduate degree in education but it also offers a one-year, accelerated, graduate program over the Internet."

My experience with understanding the alternative program landscape has been that just about anything can be called an "alternative certification program," so it's difficult to make blanket judgements, but the numbers Baines includes in his piece suggest that unaccredited, unaccountable, quick and easy routes to becoming an English teacher may be on the way to becoming the norm. The article is "Deconstructing Teacher Certification." Unfortunately, you need to be a Phi Delta Kappan subscriber to access it at the PDK website, although it's probably available in full-text databases through your university's library.