Research into teaching certificates have found that many issued documents have been given to those who lack the proper training to lead a classroom.
According to the data, in 2015 approximately 644 certificates were issues to would-be teachers that were untrained. The number has only been increasing.
The following school year, the number rose to 1,856. The number reached a fever pitch in 2017 with 3,286 certificates granted to otherwise untrained teachers. Arizona has been dealing with a teacher shortage for years now, which partially explains the influx of untrained teachers.
Hiring underqualified teaching professionals allows public schools to overcome the teaching shortages that have peaked across the state. However, parents and other education experts warn that this could have adverse effects on the achievement of students instructed by non-certified teachers.
While every educator in Arizona public schools must be certified per the requirements instituted by the state, charter schools do not have such requirements. With 13.3 percent of the student population going to charter schools, Arizona has a larger proportion of students enrolled in charter schools than any other state.
This allows for a unique situation where tens of thousands of students are dealing with potentially uncertified instructors. Unsurprisingly, according to a Brookings Institution report, students who attend charter schools tend to do worse than their public school counterparts.
To remedy this shortage of teachers Arizona Governor Doug Ducey debuted a program for “subject-matter experts” in 2017 to draw in potential teachers. This added an additional teaching certificate bringing the number for untrained teachers to a record five.
The “Subject Matter Expert Standard Teaching Certificate” allows people to instruct a specific subject for middle school and high school students so long as they meet one of three requirements: a bachelor’s degree, postsecondary teaching experience or five years of work experience in teaching.
Untrained teachers can also get an “Alternative Teaching Certificate.” This allows people to teach full-time while they’re working on fulfilling all basic qualifications to receive their official certification.
There are specialized certifications for career and technical professions and STEM subject teachers that allow them to teach so long as they have five years of work experience in the subject. Completely eliminating the need for a teaching certificate or any kind of training in how to operate a classroom and draft lesson plans for impressionable students.
For situations where schools are in dire need of replacements, they can petition the state government, by way of stating an emergency in personnel shortages, someone through the “Emergency Teaching Certification.” This emergency certificate only requires a bachelor’s degree and are valid for a full school year.
All these certification loopholes have been utilized by school districts to fill vacancies that have sprung up due to teaching shortages in the state.
In fact, over one-third of new certificates handed out since the start of the new academic term were given to untrained teachers. This upcoming school year, over one-third of Arizona teachers will be untrained.
While it is unknown how common these untrained teachers are, a preliminary report by The Arizona Republic, studied 162 schools in the state and found that 22 percent of the instructors did not meet the state’s requirements for teachers with less than three years of experience.
Many officials in the Arizona education department, from superintendents to presidents of education associations, have concluded that the last impact of untrained teachers in the classroom could prove dire for Arizona. They see this as an experiment that sacrifices the right of Arizonan children to a proper education.
