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Back to SectionWWC Quick Review of the Report “An Evaluation of Teachers
Trained
through Different Routes to Certification”1 *
What is this study about?
This study examined whether having a teacher who chose an alternate route to certification (AC) rather than a teacher who chose a traditional certification route (TC) affects the reading and math achievement of elementary school students.
The study included about 2,600 kindergarten-through-fifth-grade students and their 174 teachers. These students were enrolled in 63 schools across seven states.
Pairs of regular classroom teachers—one an AC teacher and the other a TC teacher—who both had five or fewer years experience were identified within each grade level in each school. Students were randomly assigned to one of the two paired teachers.
The study compared students’ standardized reading and math scores from the California Achievement Test (CAT-5), which were collected at both the beginning and the end of the school year.
What did the study authors report?
The authors found that elementary school students whose teachers chose an alternate route to certification scored no differently on standardized math and reading tests from students whose teachers chose a traditional route to certification.
Similarly, the authors found no statistically significant test score differences between the students of AC and TC teachers when they restricted their analysis to high coursework AC programs (averaging 432 hours of instruction) or to low-coursework AC programs (averaging 179 hours of instruction).
* Absence of conflict of interest: This study was prepared by Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. (MPR), which also operates the WWC. For this reason, the study was reviewed by staff from RAND Corporation, ICF International, and Concentric Research & Evaluation.
