Education Week - October 4, 2017 - 13

GETTING CERTIFIED
increasingly, states are choosing college-entrance exams as their official
way to measure student achievement
at the high school level.

Competition for Contracts
College Board officials announced
an expansion of that contract work.
Starting in December, they said,
schools-not just districts and
states-can negotiate contracts to
give the SAT during the school day.
The contract battle between ACT
and the College Board showed big
gains for the College Board this
year. Participation in its "school
day" program rose from 458,000 in
2015-16 to 800,000 in 2016-17, powered in part by Michigan's decision
to switch from the ACT to the SAT.
The ACT currently has contracts
with 19 states, and is still the most
popular college-admission test:
2.03 million students in the class of
2017 took it. The College Board has
contracts with 10 states, the District
of Columbia, and more than 250 districts. But company officials expect
200,000 more students in their testing pool next year, which could make
the two exams equally popular.
The College Board is working to
build business with a suite of PSAT

by Education Week deferred
comment to chairman Freeman
Hrabowski III, the president of
the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Through a spokeswoman, he declined to answer
questions about the status of the
commission.
Monique Toussaint, a senior
adviser to the White House Initiative on African Americans who
also worked in that role during
the Obama administration, did
not respond to an interview request.
Liz Hill, a spokeswoman for the
U.S. Department of Education,
referred questions on the future
of those programs to the White
House.
The Trump administration still
has a number of leadership posts to
fill in the Education Department,
but did appoint an executive director for the White House Initiative
on Historically Black Colleges and
Universities last month.
The president signed an executive order in February that moved
the initiative to the White House,
transferring responsibility from
the Education Department.
It is unclear if the administration plans to take a similar approach with its initiatives on Asian
American and Pacific Islander,
black, and Hispanic students.

'Integral Role'
John B. King Jr., the second
education secretary during the
Obama administration, co-chaired
the AAPI initiative during his
tenure.
He said the groups "have
played an integral role in highlighting persistent opportunity
gaps, improving educational outcomes, and ensuring that more
students of color can reach their

tests. There are now three: the redesigned PSAT, aimed at 11th graders;
the PSAT 10, and the PSAT 8/9. The
College Board's figures show a modest one-year increase for the PSAT
and the PSAT 10: 4.3 million students, 46,000 more than in 2016-17.
But the PSAT 8/9 showed a big gain,
47 percent, for a total of 1.3 million
students in 2016-17.
Average scores on the PSATs
rose in all grades, the College
Board said. The company envisions the collection of PSAT and
SAT exams, along with its "official
SAT practice" provided online for
free by Khan Academy, as a way
schools can shift from short-term
test prep to building instructional
strength over time.
Doubts persist about using a
college-admissions exam as a measure of student achievement, in part
because of who takes the test-and
who doesn't. Lauress Wise, the
former president of the National
Council on Measurement in Education, an association of psychometricians, said an accurate measure of
achievement requires giving a test
to a nationally representative pool
of test-takers who take it under the
same circumstances. Neither the
SAT nor the ACT qualify, he noted.

full potential."
Guidance from the White House
and the Education Department
has also lapsed with a fourth
group, the National Advisory
Council on Indian Education.
"I hope that the work we did
continues whether it's the current council or whatever," said
the council's chairwoman, Superintendent Deborah JacksonDennison of the 1,600-student
San Carlos, Ariz., schools. "It's
really important in Indian Country where we're passionate about
fighting for the neediest children
in the country."
Unlike the commissions, the
council on Indian education's
charter does not expire this
weekend.
Since the 1965 passage of the
Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the nation's original federal K-12 law, "we became committed as a nation to better [educate]
disadvantaged youngsters, youngsters who had faced discrimination," Kress said. "This is a priority
of the country and it was a priority
of every administration."
That priority-and the work of
the commissions-remains important in an era when the overall
number of Latino, African-American, and Asian students in public
K-12 classrooms now exceeds the
number of non-Hispanic whites,
King and Rodríguez said.
"You can trace a decades-long history of both Republican and Democratic administrations committing
themselves to these initiatives because they're focused on the work
of closing opportunity and achievement gaps," Rodríguez said.
"That imperative still stands
today," he said.
"It's important to continue this
work regardless of the administration in the White House."

Does the state have
additional coursework
requirements in place for
out-of-state teachers?
Yes

SOURCE: Education Commission
of the States

11 States Eased
Out-of-State
Licensing Rules
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

Aragon, a policy analyst for ECS
and the report's author.
Both Arizona and Nevada became
full reciprocity states over the last
couple of years (joining Florida, Mississippi, and Missouri). Oklahoma
went almost as far, granting out-ofstate teachers an initial license immediately, and then making them
eligible for a full standard license
after a year.

Easing the 'Nightmare'
Megan Allen, the 2010 Florida
Teacher of the Year, moved to Massachusetts a couple years ago to be
with her now-husband. She said getting a handle on the states' reciprocity requirements was a "nightmare."
(Allen also writes a blog for Education Week Teacher.) "It's so complicated to try to navigate the system
and find answers," she said.
For the ECS analysis, Aragon
waded through state statutes, regulations, and department of education
web pages. "This is the work I do and
what I think about all day, and some
of these systems were difficult for me
to make sense of," she said.
The ECS report, which includes
a map with licensure reciprocity requirements for every state, also shows:
* 31 states require out-of-state
teachers to take extra coursework
or training before entering the classroom or within a certain number of
years of entering;
* 43 states and the District of Columbia require out-of-state teachers

to take assessments;
* 24 states and D.C. make reciprocity easier for out-of-state teachers who have advanced credentials,
such as a master's degree;
* 27 states have special provisions
for military spouses.
But what makes a teacher
qualified in one state but not in
another? Why isn't credentialing
national?
In places like Arizona and Wyoming, teachers need to take a
course or test on the state's constitution before receiving their
credentials, the data tool shows. In
California, teachers need to complete courses on teaching Englishlearners.

That was the big
takeaway for me-
that this is something
states care about and
they're doing a lot
of work on."
STEPHANIE ARAGON
Policy Analyst, Education Commission
of the States

The ECS report also points to a
North Carolina study showing that
teachers from out of the state were
significantly less effective than
those prepared in state.
"Part of it is labor supply in that
state," said Aragon. For example, "if
they're preparing way more teachers
than they keep in the state, ... teachers who are most qualified to teach

may stay in the state." And those who
can't find jobs may cross state lines.
That's why a blanket policy on
reciprocity across the states may not
make sense, she said.

Links to Teacher Shortages?
As for the renewed legislative interest in reciprocity, that could be a
product of increasing concern about
teacher shortages.
The idea that there's a national
teacher shortage appears to be a
myth, according to some experts.
Shortages do certainly exist, however, in certain geographic regions
and subject areas.
States are showing an appetite for
changing policies related to licensure generally, said Aragon, to help
fill open teaching positions. Easing
the reciprocity regulations is a part
of that, she said.
The complexity of transferring her
license is a major reason Allen, the
former Florida teacher of the year,
who also has her National Board for
Professional Teaching certification
(which has no bearing on reciprocity
in most states), left the public school
classroom. She ended up taking a
job in higher education.
"There were great jobs open and
I didn't have to jump through as
many hoops," she said. "Maybe it
was me being stubborn, but I already felt like I'd done so much to
prove I was an effective educator."
Coverage of policy efforts to improve
the teaching profession is supported by
a grant from the Joyce Foundation, at
www.joycefdn.org/Programs/Education.
Education Week retains sole editorial
control over the content of this coverage.
Visit the TEACHER BEAT blog, which
tracks news and trends on this
issue. www.edweek.org/blogs

EDUCATION WEEK | October 4, 2017 | www.edweek.org | 13

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Education Week - October 4, 2017

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