New Jersey's Alternate Routes Produce More TeachersUp 10 percent from two years ago and showing a two-thirds increase from the 1990’s, the number of New Jersey teachers entering the classroom through alternate certification routes has significantly grown, according to state education officials. Forty-two percent, or about 2,800 teachers, hired by New Jersey this year have come through an alternate route. Most of New Jersey’s alternatively certified teachers work in urban-districts, in those positions usually avoided by traditionally prepared teachers. Alternatively certified teachers are college graduates who enter the classroom while receiving intensive training throughout the school year, and are therefore, just as highly qualified as those traditionally prepared teachers maintain state officials. While completing their year’s worth of training, someone other than the alternative candidate must be labeled as the classroom’s teacher of record – a result of the tougher highly qualified standards for disadvantaged districts, outlined by the federal No Child Left Behind law. In order to counter this problem, colleges of education that offer alternate programs, such as The College of New Jersey, are revising and revamping their alternate route curriculum in order to incorporate new research-based teaching methods, and to educate new teachers on how to measure if students are learning the material. New Jersey forged the alternate-route program 19 years ago, resulting in a larger cadre of teacher candidates. Today, New Jersey’s New Pathways to Teaching program is a forerunner in alternate preparation programs around the nation, and is partially attributed with the sharp increase of alternate route hires. The New Pathways to Teaching program is offered at community colleges, and provides summer training, which includes a crash course in classroom survival skills. On Wednesday, May 5, New Jersey’s State Board of Education approved
a preliminary measure to create more flexibility in general for teachers
to become licensed. This will help New Jersey to rid itself of some of
the roadblocks to getting traditionally and alternately prepared teachers
into the classroom. As of September, 2004, college graduates will need
a 2.75 grade point average on a 4.0 scale to become licensed. However,
if a candidate scores 10 percent or higher than the minimum requirement
on the Praxis licensing exam, they can become certified with as low as
a 2.50 GPA, and conversely, if a candidate has earned a 3.50 or above
in college, they may become certified with a Praxis score of 5 percent
below the minimum requirement. |
