Teacher technicality: Educators with high-level training and experience seek change in state rules to allow them full licenses
December 26, 2009
Jennifer Smith Richards
The Columbus Dispatch
KIPP Journey Academy teacher Jenna Davis says of licensing: “It’s the enigma of it all. Just tell me what I need to do.”
Teachers at KIPP Journey Academy have college degrees in areas such as education, philosophy, political science, communication and business. Many have master’s degrees in education.
They have experience teaching urban kids and the data to show how effective they are. What they don’t have are professional teaching licenses in Ohio.
That could give parents a false impression that KIPP’s teachers aren’t qualified, the charter school says. It also could make it harder to attract prospective teachers, KIPP officials fear.
State legislators are considering a change that would allow full licenses for teachers who, like those at KIPP, completed a two-year stint in an urban or rural district under the Teach for America program but might be missing normally required college courses or credentialing tests.
The KIPP teachers are working this year under long-term substitute licenses.
The Ohio Department of Education says state law sets the number and types of courses required to become a teacher. Officials can’t award full licenses to people just because they are considered good educators by some other standard, the department says.
The Thomas B. Fordham Institute in Dayton, which oversees KIPP Journey and Columbus Collegiate Academy along with four other charter schools in the state, is pushing for the exemption.
“These aren’t people who popped out of the woodwork and decided they wanted to spend some time in a classroom and see what it’s like,” said Kathryn Mullen Upton, who is in charge of charter-school sponsorship for Fordham.
Teach for America takes top-of-their-class college graduates, trains them to teach in urban or rural settings, uses data to track their impact on each student and sends them to a high-need district for two years.
Having fully licensed educators would send a message to parents that teachers, in the state’s view, are of high quality, said KIPP school leader Hannah Powell.
Most of the school’s teachers are licensed as long-term substitutes, but a couple have been working under a regular substitute license, something that requires a college degree but no teacher training. That meant the school had to write to parents telling them that substitutes were teaching their kids’ classes.
“‘Licensed’ means we don’t have to send a letter home. It’s a hard process for the teachers to go through all this,” Powell said.
Schools in the Knowledge is Power Program network, which has been praised nationally for successes with students who don’t typically succeed, often hires former Teach for America teachers. So do Columbus Collegiate Academy and a couple of charter schools in Cleveland.
KIPP Journey teaches fifth- and sixth-graders in a former Columbus City Schools building in North Linden; Columbus Collegiate has sixth- and seventh-graders in its University District building.
KIPP teacher Jenna Davis graduated from the University of Dayton with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in education but has been told she doesn’t qualify for a full license.
“I stayed in Ohio (to train to become a teacher), and I’m not even recognized as a teacher at all,” she said. “It’s the enigma of it all. Just tell me what I need to do.”
Kaela King, the sixth-grade reading teacher, said she’s been told she needs to take an extra class. She worries that her already-15-hour days will become longer and cut into time with her students.
“Although I have a master’s and all the coursework I need, Ohio isn’t honoring it,” said King, who is originally from Grandview Heights. “I want to be certified by the end of this year.”
Jennifer Kangas, associate director of the Education Department’s office of educator licensure, said the former Teach for America teachers aren’t being denied licenses. They just have to follow the rules like everyone else. The department, she said, doesn’t have the power to bend the license rules that are spelled out in state law.
Kangas said there was a time when former Teach for America teachers did have a harder time getting a license in Ohio because the program was so new. That’s not true anymore, she said.
“It seems like perhaps there was an assumption that these candidates were having more difficulty than they actually were,” Kangas said.
The schools think the state is shutting great teachers out with tangled bureaucracy. At Columbus Collegiate a math teacher has been trying to convince the state that her college-level math courses should count toward her math-teaching license, said Principal Andrew Boy. The teacher taught through Teach for America and, like the other educators seeking a license at KIPP, has data to show her effectiveness, Boy said.
“There were so many other hoops she had to jump through, so many people she had to talk to. As if her experience, and what she’s done in the classroom, meant nothing,” he said.
