For Ted Weber, the path into teaching ran through the homes of his students.

He and other rookie teachers participating in the Los Angeles district internship program (a two-year alternative certification program offered by the school district and other school systems in the state) were required to visit the families of their students--all of their students. And they had to make the visit before the start of their first year of teaching.

"The challenge was to develop a relationship with them," Weber remembers, and, for a new teacher, "the assignment was really hard." But, looking back, it was also a rich, concrete experience that helped prepare new teachers for the rigors of the profession, says Weber, who is completing his seventh year in teaching as a bilingual education teacher at Logan Street Elementary in Los Angeles.

For Weber, the family visits were "the biggest and most positive requirement" of the program, he says. "I still do it--I still visit my students' homes two or three times a year."

These types of practical, hard-nosed exercises set the tone for L.A.'s district internships, says David B. Goldberg, another alumnus of the alternative certification program and a six-year teaching veteran in Los Angeles public schools. "Much of what you did was based on a portfolio of work, so it was a much more authentic way of buying into the program than just getting grades in the classroom," says Goldberg, a bilingual teacher at Murcheson Elementary in Los Angeles who also was recently elected to the board of directors for the AFT-affiliated United Teachers of Los Angeles.

The internship program "set up long-term time-line projects," adds Weber. "It took a lot of organization--which is really teaching you how to teach."

Another key, both Weber and Goldberg agree, is that new teachers spend two years in the district internship program with more than a dozen other new practitioners who are facing the same challenges. These cohorts galvanize quickly and support one another through the demands of teaching full time while learning pedagogy in classes led by veteran teachers in the district. "We formed an informal network around teaching issues," Goldberg remembers. "Maybe I just got lucky, but there were some sharp, sharp teachers in my class.... I learned a lot of the nuts and bolts of teaching" from the experience.
 

EXPLOSIVE GROWTH

As the nation struggles to find more than 2 million teachers to staff classrooms over the next decade, alternative certification is becoming a popular tool in the effort, a new survey from the National Center for Education Information (NCEI) finds.

Roughly 25,000 teachers were certified through alternative routes in each of the past three years, according to Alternative Teacher Certification: A State-by-State Analysis 2002. Today, 45 states offer some alternative certification path--up from just eight in 1983. "Considering that an estimated 75,000 newly minted teachers are now being hired per year, alternative routes could be contributing about one-third of new teachers being hired," NCEI reports.

Growth has been market driven, as school systems look for new ways to staff classrooms with talented individuals who decide to go into teaching later in their careers, says C. Emily Feistritzer, co-author of the report. For these mid-career professionals, "it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that getting these people back into college and into a traditional education degree program doesn't work."

The influx of these new professionals is also changing the composition of the teaching work force. Compared with professionals who enter teaching directly from a traditional college-based teacher preparation program, teachers from alternative programs tend to be older, are more likely to be people of color and are more likely to be men, NCEI reports. They also tend to stay in teaching longer. For example, more than 70 percent of those entering Los Angeles schools through the district internship program are still teaching after three years.

Part of that success rate in Los Angeles is attributed to the program's careful screening of applicants. To be admitted, every applicant must have a bachelor's degree with a major or minor in the subject to be taught. Applicants also must pass a state-approved subject-matter exam along with a basic skills test. To graduate, interns also must pass a multisubject assessment for teachers and a reading instruction competency exam. They must earn a minimum of 24 semester units (elementary teachers must earn even more) over a two-year period, taking classes on Thursdays and Saturdays while teaching full time.

Program director Mary Lewis says the rigor of the program screens out the "Gee, it might be nice to teach" applicants. She remembers explaining the requirements to one intern applicant and being met with bewilderment. "'I thought you were hard up for teachers,' the prospect told her," Lewis says. "It's rigorous, and we tell them to let their families know that beginning teaching is hard."

For those who take up the challenge, there is strong support both in the classroom and in their coursework. In school, interns get on-site help from a mentor teacher and their principal; they are encouraged to call the district intern central office for help when they need it. "Some interns will say, 'If I ask for help, you'll say I don't know what I'm doing,'" Lewis reports. "I tell them, 'Of course you don't know what you're doing--that's why you're here with us.'"
 

GAUGING QUALITY

Along with the proliferation of state programs has come additional attention to quality concerns. The goal is to achieve a delicate balance--minimize unnecessary red tape that might discourage talented, qualified individuals from entering the classroom while at the same time keeping professional standards high. Feistritzer has detailed several components of quality alternative certification and believes that more programs have been gravitating toward these benchmarks in recent years. The components are:

• programs designed specifically to recruit, prepare and license individuals with at least a bachelor's degree;
• rigorous screening programs that include interviews, tests and demonstrated mastery of content;
• strong field-based components;
• coursework or equivalent experiences in professional education studies before and while teaching;
• close working relationships with trained mentor teachers; and
• high performance standards for completion of alternative certification programs.

There are many positive signs that alternative certification might help curtail the teacher shortage, but it's much too early to declare victory, cautions David Hasselkorn, president of Recruiting New Teachers Inc., a national nonprofit organization founded to help expand the pool of prospective teachers and improve the way the nation recruits, prepares, selects, inducts and supports new teachers. He believes that the debate about the success of alternative paths to teaching is still evolving. Measures of success that deal with head counts of new recruits and teacher retention rates are fine-but-limited gauges, Hasselkorn says. Now, the challenge is to examine alternative certification from a "value-added dimension" that would include a range of statistical measures and evaluations of how recruits and their students are succeeding over the long term. "We want good longitudinal studies" that can point the way to success, explains Hasselkorn. He points to the Urban Institute's recent analysis of career ladder programs for paraprofessionals (see story on page 13) as an example of the types of study needed to gauge accurately the effectiveness of alternative certification offerings.

Hasselkorn adds that districts still need to shore up the resources and support that can keep talented new teachers in the classroom. "One of the problems with the alternative route is that they repeat the sins of the past, like taking the greenest recruits and placing them in the most challenging environments without supports."
 

IF I KNEW THEN ...

The newly reauthorized Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) also recognizes alternative certification as an important tool in the fight to recruit teachers. Among the initiatives supported in the law is $18 million in funding for the Troops to Teachers program, which helps former military personnel make a transition into teaching as a second career. This is a five-fold increase in funding targeted to the program, which provides prospective teachers with information on alternative teacher certification programs and up to $5,000 in financial assistance to cover the costs associated with gaining a teaching certificate. Districts that hire former military personnel as teachers or paraprofessionals receive a $50,000 incentive grant. Since 1994, more than 3,800 people have moved into teaching thanks to Troops to Teachers, which was a relatively new initiative when retired Lt. Col. Charles Brumfield entered the program seven years ago.

Today, Brumfield is a mid-career educator, still working in grades 4, 5 and 6 as a special education teacher at Rillieux Elementary School in East Baton Rouge, La. His career in teaching continues to offer many personal and professional rewards: "I've never rethought the decision," Brumfield says. "It's going well, and I've gained a lot of insights on how to reach the kids."

The biggest challenge in the first few years, Brumfield acknowledges, was learning to adapt his style to the students, many of whom didn't have fathers in the house and often looked to the former officer for structure and discipline in their lives. But you need to proceed on a student-by-student basis, the AFT member cautions. "You have to be flexible and use that spectrum of leadership" in the classroom, says Brumfield. "I've learned to adapt from my military style. In the classroom, sometimes I have to tighten up, and sometimes I have to draw back. But I try to keep aiming high and keep expectations high" for students.

The retired army officer credits many of his colleagues for helping him successfully navigate a demanding mid-career transition into teaching special education and says his experience offers several keys to success for alternative certification. There must be regular in-classroom feedback from experienced colleagues, a personal plan for professional development and education-related college coursework, Brumfield says.

Also, new teachers should have a mentor who can give guidance, share techniques and lesson plans, and offer help with student motivation and classroom management.

When it comes to this kind of one-on-one support, "the sooner the better," notes Brumfield.