Supporting Effective Teaching in Tennessee: Executive Summary | Page 26

Tennessee also has several independent alternative certification
programs. The most prominent statewide program is Teach
Tennessee, which is operated by the Tennessee Department of
Education. Teach Tennessee aggressively recruits mid-career
professionals and retirees to enter the teaching profession,
especially to teach math, science, and foreign languages.
Candidates must have at least five years of work experience in
fields similar to those in which they wish to teach. The program
provides a four-week training session over the summer and a
mentor for the first year a candidate is in the classroom. Since
its inception in 2005, the program has trained 202 teachers.38
Teach for America and The New Teacher Project, two
nationally renowned independent alternative certification
programs, operate in both Nashville and Memphis. There are
also a range of highly successful local alternative certification
programs, including the Distinguished Professionals program
in Knox County. Several of these programs are discussed in the
promising practices section of this report on page 45-48.
The breakdown of the number of new teachers trained in
2008-09 by the Tennessee Board of Regents, University of
Tennessee, private colleges, and independent alternative
certification programs is shown in Figure 3.10 below.
To further encourage the expansion of independent alternative
certification programs, the State Board of Education recently
adopted the Transitional Licensure Policy, which goes into effect
in Fall 2009. This policy will replace the existing Alternative
Type I, Alternative Type II, and Teach Tennessee licenses with
a single transitional license that is good for one year but that
can be renewed for two additional years. Most importantly,
individual school districts and education non-profits, such as
Teach for America and The New Teacher Project, can grant
Figure 3.10

Sources of Newly Trained Teachers, 2008-09
7.9%

7.9%

42.9%
42.9%

35.0% 35.0%
14.3%
14.3%

Source: Tennessee Department of Education

Tennessee Board of Regents system
Tennessee Board of Regents system
Independent alternative providers
Independent alternative providers

transitional licenses independently without having a formal
partnership with a traditional teacher preparation program.39
Despite these progressive efforts on teacher licensure, teacher
recruitment efforts in Tennessee remain limited. While some
independent alternative certification programs such as Teach
Tennessee, Teach for America, and The New Teacher Project
have significant recruitment budgets, most traditional teacher
preparation programs report they spend little, if any, of their
budget on recruitment. The only two statewide recruitment
programs are the Minority Teaching Fellows program, which
gives $5,000 a year to 100 minority students training to become
teachers, and BASE-TN, which provides limited financial aid
for traditional classroom teachers seeking a graduate degree in
special education and for teacher aides seeking initial certification
in special education.40 An effort to pass a $5,000 scholarship for
math and science teacher candidates that would be funded by
corporate and philanthropic foundations for the first two years
was tabled in the General Assembly’s 2009 legislative session.41
The presence of these alternative licensure routes makes it
critical to create an accountability system to ensure both that no
low-quality programs are training teachers and that all teacher
training programs are constantly improving. The state currently
has two efforts in place to ensure some level of accountability,
although neither effort is effectively driving continuous teacher
preparation program improvement.
The first effort is the Tennessee Department of Education’s
Office of Teacher Education and Accreditation, which is
responsible for accrediting all the state’s teacher preparation
programs. The office trains a Board of Examiners, which
is composed of individuals from various education-relat ed
organizations in Tennessee, to conduct inspections of each
teacher preparation program in the state. The Examiners are
charged with ensuring programs are in compliance with State
Board of Education standards and NCATE standards (the
latter only when the institution is NCATE accredited, as 20
of Tennessee’s 39 institutions are).42 Each teacher preparation
program is evaluated every five years. While Examiners ensure
institutions meet state and NCATE standards, the accreditation
teams intentionally do not differentiate between strong and
weak aspects of preparation programs unless the weak aspects
are in violation of either state or NCATE standards.

Private colleges and universities
Private colleges and universities
University of Tennessee
University of Tennesseesystem
system

The second effort is the Tennessee Teacher Preparation Program
Effectiveness Report Card, which is produced annually by the
State Board of Education. Using TVAAS data, the report card
includes the percent of teachers from each teacher training
program that are in the upper and lower quintiles of teacher

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