Hed:Highly Qualified

NCLB asks states to define what it means to be a 'Highly Qualified Teacher.' So, are Montessori-credentialed teachers 'highly qualified?'

By Mark Anderson

Many schools, struggle in vain. Teachers without Montessori certification are placed in Montessori schools.

In Colorado and Maryland, educators have sought greater acceptance of Montessori credentials. They have sought ways to allow teachers with college degrees and Montessori credentials, but without a traditional teacher education credentials, to serve in public Montessori classrooms.

The logical group to lead the effort is the Montessori Accreditation Council on Teacher Education's Commission, lead by Executive Director Gretchen Warner,. She offered the following assessment of the work of the MACTE Commission:

"Over the past several years, the MACTE Commission has increasingly worked to support states in recognizing qualified teachers with appropriate Montessori training.

"The Commission's Two-Year Strategic Plan, revised in May 2004, lists "Develop a general campaign targeting state governments and presenting accreditation by the MACTE Commission as an alternative to state certification" as part of its second strategic initiative.

"There is an active Commission task force working with the Executive Director, on a state-by-state basis and nationally, to support legislative efforts in this area. States are informed that the MACTE Commission, as an accrediting agency recognized by the U.S. Department of Education through the year 2008, has established standards, criteria and competencies that meet federal guidelines."

The road is long. Here's a look at what is happening in two states.

COLORADO:

Losing Ground

It s never been easy to become a fully trained public school Montessori teacher.

Generally, the path led not just through Montessori training centers but traditional post-secondary education departments, too, adding more tuition and classroom time to the cost of becoming a teacher.

Those barriers may be getting even a little higher as the nation s new reliance on universal standards for teacher training unfolds, one of the many outcomes of the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law and its Highly Qualified Teacher (HQT) rules.

That seems to be the case in Colorado at least, where a handful of educators sought to use the local deliberations about HQT standards to open the door a little wider for Montessori trained teachers,but without much luck.

Bill Zajic, head of school at the DCS Montessori charter school in Castle Rock, CO, and a former public school administrator, was one of those advocates.

What we asked for at the state level," Zajic said, "was recognition of Montessori experience, training and practice teaching as credentials that could fulfill some of the requirements in an alternative licensure program that is undergoing revisions this year.

The group also included Bethany Hamilton, principal at Denver Public Schools Denison Montessori and several Denver district officials. They outlined for the state licensing staff the Montessori curriculums used at accredited post-secondary schools such as the AMI-based Loyola University, and tried to demonstrate broad equivalencies between the two.

But state officials didn t see enough matches between the two approaches, Hamilton said. There s a greater commitment to the idea of standards in Colorado now: standards for students and standards for teachers, in the environment that NCLB has created, she said. I think school officials are really interested in preserving those standards. According to Hamilton, they aren t in the mood to provide much leeway to non-traditional curriculums.

The outcome of that small-scale campaign held some extra urgency in Denver, because of another NCLB-related change that was occurring. Colorado officials also closed an adjunct teacher licensing program this year that had enabled several Montessori-trained teachers to gain three-year teaching licenses in Denver each year for most of the last decade.

Under the adjunct rules, college graduates who had completed Montessori training at accredited colleges such as Loyola or Xavier University could obtain a temporary teaching license in Denver public schools after passing content and Praxis tests.

The end of adjunct licensing will immediately affect seven Denver Montessori teachers whose licenses are expiring this year, Hamilton said. We could lose teachers in our programs as a result, and we may have a harder time replacing them, under the new regulations.

That setback came despite strong support from the Denver district for its three growing Montessori programs. They ve advocated hugely for us, Hamilton said, even though the affected staff are only a tiny fraction of the district s corps of 4,000 teacher.

The district hopes its advocacy will eventually pay off in the form of recognition for Montessori training, which would enable trained applicants to win endorsement to teach Montessori in public classrooms. But that s at least a year or more away, according to Robin Kane, director of human resources in the district.

In the meantime, Denver is finalizing its alternative licensure proposal, which it will submit along with other local districts for approval by the state education department. But evaluation of each applicant s credentials under those local systems will still remain with the state officials who found Montessori falling short of most of its training standards.

The result for non-certified Montessori-trained teachers in Denver will probably mean a return to college and another several thousand dollars in tuition to meet Colorado requirements.

An option that might make more financial sense for Montessori-trained teachers is an online program offered by Western State College in Gunnison, CO. That curriculum was designed for college grads taking the alternative track into public school teaching, and can serve teacher candidates anywhere in the state. Perhaps the biggest advantage, though, is a federal Transition-to-Teaching grant that gives each eligible student up to $5,000 to offset tuition during the three-year program.

That financial benefit will probably be short-lived however: the grant ends in three years.

MARYLAND:

A Resident Teacher Program

The tendency towards narrowing teacher training standards hasn t had an affect so far on a Maryland licensing regime that s probably the nation s most accommodating to Montessori training.

Prince George s County School District near metropolitan Washington, DC, still is licensing Montessori-trained teachers through a resident teacher program created in 1999.

Applicants must have a college degree (with a B grade average), have certification from a MACTE-accredited center and demonstrate mastery of Maryland s Praxis and content requirements. If they meet those standards, they ll be eligible to teach a year under supervision. If that year is successful, they can apply for a full Maryland teaching license.

The program certifies only two or three teachers each year, according to Linda Massey, Montessori Instructional Specialist at PGC schools, but that s because turnover has traditionally been low in the district s two pre-K-8 Montessori schools.

Massey said the district s enthusiasm for Montessori goes back to the early 1980s, and the widespread support in the district helped when it sought recognition for its Montessori teachers training.

We were able to put together a broad coalition, district leaders, local magnet and certification specialists, and heads of local AMI and AMS training centers, when we started meeting with state and county certification people.

The group took pains to document its case, too, developing tables and charts detailing the similarities between Montessori training and the state s standards.

But there was another crucial advantage that Massey and her counterparts had during those 1998 negotiations, one that may be hard to duplicate in other states. That advantage was Dr. Lawrence Leek, who headed Maryland s teacher certification office at the time.

He understood Montessori, and he was very supportive, said Massey. He wanted to make certification easier for teachers who were already well-trained in Montessori methods.