Telkia Jones, a fifth grade teacher at Charles Brown Elementary School in Birmingham, Alabama, high fives a student on Wednesday, March 1, 2023. Alabama’s State Board of Education has launched a 35-day public comment period on a proposed overhaul to modernize and streamline the state’s teacher certification process. (Andi Rice for Alabama Reflector)
Alabama’s State Board of Education Thursday opened a 35-day public comment period for a comprehensive update to the state’s teacher certification rules.
The overhaul aims to consolidate and modernize the teacher certification process, addressing inconsistencies and outdated language that had built up over decades of piecemeal amendments.
“This will be the first time that we know of that it has been completely rewritten in probably 50 years or more,” said State Schools Superintendent Eric Mackey. “It’s a huge undertaking that has been years in the making.”
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Final adoption of the changes is anticipated by March. The Alabama Education Association, a group that represents public educators in the state, had no comment on Thursday.
The revisions were developed with input from the deans of Alabama’s colleges of education and other education partners, Mackey said. The rules aim to provide clearer guidance on teacher preparation requirements, including coursework for various subjects and special education training.
Mackey said the rules cover what colleges need to teach, whether they’re preparing an elementary reading teacher or a high school science teacher. The chapter also outlines alternative preparation pathways and maintains Alabama’s rigorous teacher code of ethics.
While the content of certification requirements remains largely unchanged, the updated rules eliminate redundancies and contradictions.
“We just made it more clear, shorter, more consistent, and removed some extraneous and old language,” Mackey noted.
Alabama has tried to attract more teachers through targeted initiatives and financial incentives. The state is expanding UTeach, a program enabling college students to earn STEM degrees and teaching certifications simultaneously, across seven universities, with projections to add 250-500 new STEM teachers.
The initiative is supplemented by the TEAMS act, which provides stipends to teachers in high-need areas, and substantial pay raises, including increases of up to 21% for experienced teachers. Officials credit these measures with reducing retirement rates and attracting retired teachers back to teaching.
A 2022 state report found declining education certifications over the last 15 years, with math and science certifications at just 114 and 101 in 2021, the lowest among major subjects. While emergency certifications surged 1,052% from 2010 to 2021, traditional certifications in elementary education — still the most common — fell sharply. Nontraditional certifications, particularly in elementary education — 1,049 in 2021 — are increasingly filling gaps, with alternative pathways to certification providing a way to address the shortage.
The revision aligns certification standards with recent legislative priorities, including the Literacy Act and the Numeracy Act, which aim to improve reading and math outcomes in Alabama schools. Mackey said the changes are a key part of broader efforts to strengthen the state’s education system.
“We want to make sure that all of those are encoded correctly and that they’re consistent with one another, so those consistencies are in place. But as far as the teaching standards and those kind of things that didn’t go up, it didn’t really change,” Mackey said.
Mackey seemed optimistic that the changes will help improve teacher preparation and support Alabama’s educators in providing high-quality instruction to students statewide.
“We needed to get it consistent. We needed to get it right,” Mackey explained.
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