Earlier this month, an Indiana state panel that supervises teacher licensing in the state successfully swept aside many of the more arcane rules governing teacher certification-remnants of the "Sue-Ellen" era that her replacement, new schools superintendent Tony Bennett, is determined to change.
From now on, teacher candidates in Indiana will only be allowed to major in education if the education school's content requirements meet or exceed the content requirements of a subject major that non-teachers on that same campus must pursue.
The new regulations signal a dramatic end to the state's long held distaste for alternate routes. Now, teacher candidates with a baccalaureate degree in any subject can receive a license by taking an education minor (roughly 15 credit hours) and passing a content-knowledge test. This new provision will make it much easier for districts to hire so called "profession changers."
Bennett also attempted to sharply curtail the amount of professional coursework an education school could require, but his rather untenable proposal of only 15 to 18 credits of professional coursework went down with a thud.
The National Council on Teacher Quality is a nonpartisan research and advocacy group committed to restructuring the teaching profession, led by our vision that every child deserves effective teachers.
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