BALTIMORE — For teachers and aspiring teachers, talking certification is a very sensitive topic.
"The certification process is hard to talk about, because we are servicing kids. So the kids themselves, that's the heartstring," said Zakia Mcallister, Certification analyst at Baltimore City Public Schools.
There are multiple routes to becoming certified. Professionally certified teacher certificates last for five years , those are the instructors who have the pedagogy and went to school to be an educator with a 3.0 GPA or higher.
Then, there’s conditionally certified teacher certificate that last two years, those instructors still have knowledge, but don’t always meet the same professional standards.
"Everyone should want high-quality teachers, but we shouldn’t have barriers to entry that don’t make sense, or to test the wrong thing," said David Steiner, Professor and Executive Director for Johns Hopkins education policy.
According to Steiner, some of our would be minority teachers often face extra challenges.
"Some of our tests do two things wrong, first they don’t test the right things. Second, is that we know from good research from Danny Goldhabin, for example, in the University of Washington that some of these tests create barriers for would be minority teachers that are unnecessary," said Steiner.
Dr. Steiner says some of those barriers include the price of certification tests which increase every time you take it and the questions asked on the certification tests which he feels are often outdated.
"In 17 states, the reading test we gave to prospective teachers don’t actually test the science of reading, namely what we need them to do when they teach children how to read.
And so we are unnecessarily using tests that keep potentially really strong minority teachers from teaching minority children," said Steiner.
He’s referring to tests like the Praxis test, which is the test most often promoted to aspiring educators in Maryland. Baltimore City School administrators weighed in on this issue saying they’ve tried to make the process of conditionally certified teachers in their district much smoother.
They too recognize some of the challenges that are often presented.
"They have seen their teachers struggling with with some of the entrance exams. So they will pivot very quickly, and they will one ensure that there is appropriate testing support and also financial support, because it can be really expensive to have to retake exams, again and again," said Sarah Diehl, Executive Director of Recruitment and Staffing.
In addition to the Praxis test, there are other choices for those working to become certified.
But what's most important, is that aspiring educators don’t give up.
We have to show them the different routes, you know, to say, okay, you came here you wasn't able to get by. So now go this route. Try this avenue, because this avenue may actually get you where you want to be where you need to be. Because at the end of the day, our kids, they need you," said Mcallister.
