Certification and Licensure
A highly qualified teacher as defined by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 must hold a bachelor's degree, be fully licensed or certified by the state, and demonstrate competency for each academic subject taught. However, there are questions regarding whether these requirements guarantee a teacher's success in the classroom:
- Are the states' certification and licensing processes predictors of student achievement and other related outcomes (i.e. number of discipline referrals, dropout and attendance rates)?
- What do we know about the effectiveness of the states' alternative routes to certification?
- How important are other teacher factors (i.e. general ability, knowledge of how children develop, pedagogical knowledge, demographic similarity to students) to student achievement?
The TQ Source houses the following resources for teacher certification and licensure:
- State Policy Database - General Education
- State Policy Database - Special Education
- Data Tool
- Publications Database
- Initiatives Database
The purpose of the teacher certification and licensure section of the TQ Source is to help policymakers, teacher educators, and others answer these and additional important questions and find out about programs, data, policies, and the realities of general and special education teacher certification and licensure across the country.
