We use frame analysis to analyze the first iteration of the Texas District of Innovation policy, which allows districts to take exemption from state education requirements mandating the hiring of a state certified teacher. We analyzed 451 district policies and find the plans use very similar, and sometimes identical, language to frame both the…

For decades, school districts have relied on unlicensed teachers to fill vacancies in special education, leaving students with disabilities to receive educational services from individuals without the necessary preparation, resulting in inequitable educational opportunities. An emergency certification, granted in numerous states, allows unlicensed…

Just as states require anyone interested in operating a motor vehicle to meet specific driver's license requirements, state policies dictate that any individual interested in teaching in a public school must first fulfill a series of requirements to obtain a teaching credential. As schools increasingly struggle to find an adequate number of…

Much recent debate among policymakers and policy advocates focuses on whether states should reduce teacher licensure requirements to ease the burdens of recruiting high quality teachers to the workforce. We examine the effectiveness of individuals who entered the teacher workforce in Massachusetts during the pandemic by obtaining an emergency…

In 2022, authors conducted a research study of SC teachers who had completed the first-in-the-nation teaching endorsement in Project-Based Learning (PBL) between the years of 2014 and 2020. Researchers' key question was to what extent have teachers trained in the SC PBL endorsement implemented PBL in their classrooms? This study sought to assess…

Decades of research has documented the negative effects of physical punishment, including spanking (Heilmann et al., 2021). Since 1998, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has endorsed the use of time out from positive reinforcement (TO) as an alternative to corporal punishment (Sege et al., 2018). Despite urging at the federal level…

Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation is defined by the Mayo Clinic as a lifesaving technique that is useful in many emergencies, such as a heart attack, stroke, choking, or drowning, in which someone's breathing and heartbeat have stopped. Under the guidelines put forth by the International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation (ILCOR) and the Emergency…

The Commonwealth of Virginia has seen an increase in the number of educators completing Alternative Teacher Certification Programs, contributing to the diversity in the teaching work force. The purpose of this study was to identify the perceptions of alternatively certified public K-12 teachers regarding their preparedness to teach. The researcher…

Accountability-era reforms have promulgated a discourse of crisis and a looming threat for public schools. While these threats negatively affect all, this paper focuses on how schools' responses to these threats shape novice Teach for America Corp Members' (CM) socialization. By analyzing nearly 6,000 daily reflections from 38 CMs about their…

The national teacher shortage makes it challenging for principals and superintendents to hire certified teachers. To address this problem, a university in a rural state in the Midwest partnered with their state's agencies to develop a teacher apprenticeship pathway (TAP) for 78 paraprofessionals working in the state's public, non-public, and…

Student mental health has been in steady decline for the past decade, and many school personnel believe they cannot adequately support student mental health needs. While professional school social workers (SSWs) are recognized as critical school-based mental health professionals in many states, 14 states do not yet offer a path for SSWs to become…

A long history of scholarship on teacher professionalism documents how different narratives about teaching animate education policy and practice. We bridge the Advocacy Coalition Framework with institutional logics to examine how beliefs about teaching unite and divide a state-level coalition pursuing teacher licensure policy reform and manifest…

Induction programmes can support new teachers to succeed in the profession (Smith and Ingersoll 2004). These programs can be particularly helpful for alternatively certified (AC) teachers, who enter the profession through non-traditional measures. AC programmes are commonly defined as 'any pathway into teaching other than the traditional, college-…

Little is known about differences between traditional, university-based certification programs and alternative certification programs in terms of outcomes for students and teachers. Across all preparation pathways, however, too many early career teachers leave the field (over 40% within first five years). This attrition problem is likely to grow…

This study investigated the extent to which public school K-12 staff in the United States teaching physical education were certified in physical education and had an academic major in physical education during the 2015-2016 school year. Data were collected from a nationally representative sample of public school teachers in the United States.…