Many education officials publicly claim that teachers need special certification in order to be effective. Although this seems reasonable on the surface, virtually all academic research documents that there is no positive correlation between teacher certification and student performance.

Academic Research on Teacher Qualifications

The following summary includes several research projects and opinions of professional educators, confirming the absence of a positive correlation between teacher qualifications and student performance:

(1) One of the most significant studies was performed by Dr. Eric Hanushek of the University of Rochester, who surveyed the results of 113 studies on teacher education and qualifications. Eighty-five percent of the studies found no positive correlation between the educational performance of the students and the teacher’s educational background. Although 7% of the studies did find a positive correlation, 5% found a negative impact.

(2) Dr. Sam Peavey, Professor Emeritus of the School of Education at the University of Louisville, earned advance education degrees from Harvard (Master of Arts) and Columbia (Doctor of Education) and was involved in the preparation of thousands of prospective teachers for state certification. He has served on numerous committees and commissions dealing with the accreditation of schools and colleges. Dr. Peavey testified before the Compulsory Education Study Committee of the Iowa Legislature on the subject of teacher qualifications, citing numerous studies. He stated:

May I say that I have spent a long career in developing and administering programs for teacher certification. I wish I could tell you that those thousands of certificates contributed significantly to the quality of children’s learning, but I cannot. . . After fifty years of research, we have found no significant correlation between the requirements for teacher certification and the quality of student achievement.

Later in his testimony, Dr. Peavey explained that he found one valid way of identifying a good teacher:

However, in spite of years of frustration, I am pleased to report to you there has been discovered one valid, legal, honest, professional, common-sense way to identify a good teacher. As far as I know there is only one way, and it is about time for legislators to recognize it and write it into school law. It involves a simple process. Step one is to stop looking at the teachers and start looking at the students. Step two is to determine how well students are learning what they are supposed to be learning. The quality of learning provides the only valid measure of the quality of teaching we have yet discovered.

(3) Dr. Donald Ericksen, professor of education for the University of California at Los Angeles, stated in a recent interview:

Some of the worst teachers I’ve ever seen are highly certified. Look at our public schools. They’re full of certified teachers. What kind of magic is that accomplishing? But I can take you to the best teachers I’ve ever seen, and most of them are uncertified . . . . We don’t have evidence at all that what we do in schools of education makes much difference in teacher competence.

In a well-known case before the Michigan Supreme Court, concerning a Christian school’s challenge to the state’s teacher certification requirement, Dr. Ericksen testified as an expert witness on teacher certification. There he explained that extensive research has established that no significant correlation exists between certification (or teacher qualifications) and student learning and that student testing is a far superior method of determining teacher effectiveness. Dr. Lanier, an expert who testified on the side of the state in favor of teacher certification, admitted under oath that she was unaware of any empirical evidence establishing any correlation between teacher certification requirements and student learning or teacher competence.

(4) Two education researchers, R.W. Heath and M.A. Nielson surveyed 42 studies of "competency-based" teacher education. Their findings were that no empirical evidence exists to establish a positive relation between those programs and student achievement.

(5) L.D. Freeman, R.E. Flodan, R. Howsan, and D.C. Corrigan did separate studies in the effectiveness of teacher certification requirements. They all concluded that there is no significant relation between teacher certification and teacher performance in the classroom.

(6) C. Emily Feistritzer, Director of the private National Center for Education Information, claimed in a recent interview that she does not know "of a single study that says because a teacher has gone through this or that program, he or she is a better teacher." Supporters of teacher training programs "argue eloquently that teachers need to be grounded in all of these things, but there has yet to be a study that shows that in fact this is the case."

(7) John Chubb, a fellow at the Brookings Institute (a liberal think tank), extensively studied various popular reforms including the push to professionalize teaching, the toughening of teacher certification standards, and the implementation of more extensive teacher evaluation systems. As a result, he authored a book with Terry Moe, Politics, Markets, and America’s Schools, on the subject of educational reform. Mr. Chubb found "no correlation between student achievement and any of the variables on which school reformers have been concentrating so much time, effort, and money." He continues, "There is little reason to believe" that these actions will improve student achievement and "there is considerable reason to believe they will fail."

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